Oct 27, 2021
Use this link to purchase your own copy of “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor:
Become a patron today and get a copy of each of these short stories as they are released. Go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse today.
Also, Krissy Barton offers free consultations and sample edits. www.littlesyllables.com
The following is a transcript of this episode. The full transcript can be found on the show’s website.
[00:00:00] Are you in the market for some light reading, then you need to read "Brigitte," Tales from Vlaydor Installment One. Today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello! Hello! Hello. This is Devin Davis and you are Writing in the Tiny House. I am the guy in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who is here to show you the different ways to write the things, to write the fiction that you have in your brain, that you are convinced you are too busy to do.
[00:00:51] It's interesting sometimes recording podcasts, just because we record on a different day than we release things. And so today is not October 27th in my world, but this podcast is going to be released to the public on October 27th. If you are a patron, you're going to get this a few days before that.
[00:01:12] But all of this means that today in this magical world, October 27th, we are one day after the release of "Brigitte," Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One. And that is good news, my friends. This is the episode where I get to gush all about my writing and about this fun, little journey of this novelette and what it has taught me and what I have learned and grown from and where, and most importantly, I guess, where you can buy it.
[00:01:48] So let's actually deal with that first. "Brigitte" Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One is available on amazon.com as an ebook download. It costs $2 and 99 cents. So go there, follow the link in the show notes and go to there and get it today. There were a lot of people who reserved their thing. I did a pre-release for this book and I'm so glad that I did.
[00:02:12] I can delve into reasons why in another episode, I don't want to talk about the things that went wrong. So instead follow the link in the show notes and go to amazon.com and you can search for Devin Davis. And you can search for Brigitte which is the French spelling spelled B R I G I T T E, Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One.
[00:02:38] Anyway, it is available. It is affordable and it is really good. It's a good short story, guys. I have had really good feedback from this from very trusted sources, and I am proud as proud to release this to you and to have it available for people to go to and find it and buy it. And so yeah, this is an example of, I guess, following your own advice. The things with with this podcast that I share, I do those things, and I had the goals starting in September to get this short story underway. And I gave myself an extra week, but I wanted a short story or a novelette cranked out in eight weeks. And because this was the first one in a long time and I needed to re-establish all of my systems for it and reach out to friends and family and people who would be interested in helping me out.
[00:03:38] Just because so many works of fiction, especially if you are writing to market, if you are writing to sell your stuff, you need to involve other people. You need to consistently get other people's points of view, just because they will see things that you might miss. And if you are hoping to make money on your writing, you need to get additional points of view and other opinions.
[00:04:04] So I knew from the beginning with this first installment of Tales from Vlaydor with Brigitte that I would need some extra grace time to get all of those systems in place again, just because it has been a minute since I have written something that would go along the different steps of editing so rapidly.
[00:04:25] And so, yeah, reaching out and contacting and phone calls and emails. All the social media contacts, all the things. So I gave myself some wiggle room and I was able to do it in eight weeks. I was actually able to do it sooner than that. And that's cool. That means that I can do this again.
[00:04:47] And so starting November 1st with NaNoWriMo, I will be working on installment two of Tales from Vlaydor entitled Otto. So it's a different story in a different city of the land, and it's going to be another fun ride, friends, another fun novelette or short story. I haven't started drafting it yet, so I don't know exactly how long it will be, but I think it'll be comparable to Brigitte, which tows the line between short story and novelette and falls in novelette. That is the next project. And I am stoked for it. I'm stoked for NaNoWriMo. I'm stoked and scared to have another thing to write, another thing to draft, but a good friend and I have already been brainstorming what the story of Otto can actually look like.
[00:05:43] And so it's something that I already have an amount of clarity on. And so getting started isn't going to be hard. It's not going to, I mean, it will definitely be work, but it's not going to be impossible to do. And it's something that I'm eager to do. So during this whole process there were people that I asked to read Bridgette, there were people who gave good feedback.
[00:06:07] There were people who showed me that they are willing to support my work, which is cool. All the people, when I announced on this podcast and on my social media, that Brigitte was available for pre-order, there were a lot of people who immediately pre-ordered and I am just going to publicly say, thank you.
[00:06:27] That is really a cool thing for me. And that is really reassuring to me. I absolutely love that. And so thank you for all of the pre-orders. However, I am not living under a rock. I'm living in a tiny house and I know that most people do not pre-order. And so thanks in advance to everybody who orders a digital copy of Brigitte and I'm excited to see what happens with this, guys.
[00:06:55] I'm really excited about this. I'm excited to do another thing that should be released around Christmas, and it's just going to be good times. So things that I have learned. I have found that I can crank out a pretty good story in one week. That's how long it took me to draft Brigitte.
[00:07:15] It took me about nine or 10 hours of drafting And I think about nine. And I have found that I have wonderful people in my circle who are more than willing to bounce ideas back and forth off of me. And they are excited to see what comes of it all. There are so many people who love fiction, who simply don't write it.
[00:07:37] And so to have them involved with this and to allow them the chance to give feedback and give ideas and do the back and forth, was a really cool thing. I could tell that they were edified by that as much as I was. To have that exchange and to have that back and forth was so good. That's a good thing.
[00:07:59] I think I said earlier in this episode that I actually completed Brigitte sooner than in the eight weeks that I was expecting. I actually completed it in about six maybe even five. There were some things that did not take nearly as long as I was expecting them to do. And the main thing was my editor, Krissy Barton from Little Syllables Editing is fast.
[00:08:27] She is always in contact with the people that she is working with. And she did a great job with the line and copy editing and the proofread of this book, of this novelette. And so. Little syllables editing. She is, I mean, that business is kind of the editor on board with this entire Tales from Vlaydor project.
[00:08:49] And so of course, I'm going to give her a shout out because she did a great job. So that was the thing that I was able to save some time on. There were a couple other steps too that simply didn't take as long as I was expecting, I had. Eight weeks in a spreadsheet. And I had planned out in two-hour blocks, what I would be doing just because I usually have about two hours to work on stuff.
[00:09:16] With this next installment with Otto, it's entirely possible that I will be thrown to the wolves with this next installment with Otto. And that here I am spouting all of these wonderful things about how efficient the process was. And maybe with Otto it's going to be kind of a car wreck or a garbage fire.
[00:09:37] One thing that I was able to try. And that I was able to do and that we are still deliberating back and forth on is I sat down and I have always had the desire to narrate my own books. And so I took my audio equipment and I managed to make the tiny house as quiet as I could make it just because there are certain technical requirements for audio books.
[00:10:04] If you wish to publish them to audible, which I do. And I sat down and I recorded Bridgette twice. And the thing is, guys, the audio for it. This is the first, you know, audio narration that I have ever done, but it was so fun to record all of this. I am still in the middle of editing. I think that once we nail this down and we decide that it's a good thing to do, I'll be able to release this to audible at about the same, I mean, closely after the ebook is released on Amazon. I was able to sit down. I was able to narrate, I was able to just do all of that, which is what I've wanted to do for such a long time. I have found out though, why audio books often take a while after the printed book is released. It is more expensive to produce an audio book. So with this, there were parts in the audio that had to be recorded several times. There were parts in the book that it was not just about making the text pretty, just because there is no text in the audio.
[00:11:22] It was about sound. It was about pronunciation. It was about tripping over my tongue. It was, it was about reading. It was about staying close enough or far enough away from the microphone. It was about all of those things. Also, it has been a really rainy October in Utah. And so I wasn't able to record on some of the days just because of rain and I didn't want to have to deal with rain in the background. And so turning the tiny house into a recording studio is not necessarily the most ideal thing, but I think it worked. I'm goingto see though, I'm going to have to see if it's okay.
[00:12:05] Like I said, there are technical requirements to audio files if you hope to publish to audible. And I think that I will be squeaking in pretty easily. If not, I can send it to an audio engineer to kind of clean up the noise floor of the files a little bit, a very little bit. I was surprised at how well the things turned out recording in the tiny house.
[00:12:30] So yay for all of that. Brigitte released October 26th. It is now available to purchase because today is October 27th. And look for the audio version of Tales from Vlaydor Installment One, Brigitte in audible coming up soon, I will keep you abreast with this podcast as far as how that is going.
[00:12:58] But guys, here is one of the big take homes that I want to include with this podcast. Now is a great time to become a patron of this show. I'm grateful for the patrons that I already have for their donations, just because they wanted to support the podcast.
[00:13:17] And they believed that the podcast is such a good resource and something that was worth supporting financially. And I have been so grateful for, I mean, I treat them, I see them as gifts. Those monthly installments are gifts to me, but now if you have been on the fence of becoming a patron to Writing in the Tiny House, now is a good time to join. If you go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up, you will see that, with these installments that I'm writing, I am going to be providing electronic versions of these short stories to my patrons as they are published. And so if you want to be one of the first people to get a copy, or perhaps even a few days in advance, a copy of these installments of Tales from Vlaydor as they are released, I will likely also release the audio to my patrons.
[00:14:20] If you're interested in an audio book, I'll see how all of that works. Audio books are kind of are kind of ratty. I mean, it's a lot of different files that a program ties together. And so we'll see how that goes. I think I can make it work though. But absolutely yes, the eBooks of these small installments of Tales from Vlaydor I release those to my patrons.
[00:14:45] And then they are available to purchase on amazon.com. So if you sign up as a patron today, you will be receiving as a thank you, a copy of Brigitte. And in December, when I publish the next installment, Otto, you will receive an ebook of that too. So go onto patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and become a patron today.
[00:15:14] So that's it for today. Follow the link in the show notes and navigate to amazon.com today and purchase your copy of "Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor. And be sure to follow me on my social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is @authordevind.
[00:15:37] And that is it for today. Thank you for joining me and have fun writing.