Tuesday Special: The Poe Consequence with Keith Steinbaum

Keith Steinbaum

www.keithsteinbaum.com

In a section of Los Angeles near Dodger Stadium, two rival gangs rule the streets. For the Alvarado Street Diablos, it’s been a year since the murder of one of their closest members at the hands of their sworn enemy, the North Rampart Lobos. A drive-by killing in his honor is planned, but things go wrong and an innocent bystander is the victim. Several hours later the one who pulled the trigger suffers a horrifying death, caused by something never before seen in its uniqueness. Many more such cases follow, but all of them involving only these two gangs among the hundreds throughout the city. And each death occurs at the same time of day. The exact same time of day.

What can these two enemies do to survive against an unstoppable power intent on their mutual destruction? How is a gang-hating young boy’s attempt to save the life of a gang member tied into preventing a loved one’s soul from eternal damnation? What does a mysterious psychic’s prophecy conveyed earlier in New Orleans have to do with all of this?

Exploring both the darkness and hope that define our emotions, The Poe Consequence integrates social and ethnic divisions through acts of fate and supernatural horror for the reader to observe and imagine.

Audiobook links:    Audible.com         Amazon.com        i-Tunes

About Keith:
After several years devoted to poetry, followed by about a decade and a few minor achievements as a professional song lyricist, I eventually developed a strong desire to write a novel, culminating in the completion of The Poe Consequence, a modern day supernatural thriller/human drama. I’m quite grateful for some acknowledgments that it’s received. In its first year after being published, the book was awarded Supernatural Thriller of the Year by Books-and-Authors.net, an online literary website. In 2015, Kirkus Reviews selected it as one of its top Indie books of the year, and in 2017 it received a Finalist placing in the international Book Excellence Awards competition.

My forthcoming second novel, published by Black Opal Books, is entitled, You Say Goodbye. It’s a whodunit murder mystery featuring The Beatles, a one-hit wonder ex-rock star, and a little girl with cancer who's a big fan of the L.A. Lakers. The child's character was inspired by the life, and unfortunate death, of Alexandra Scott from the Alex's Lemonade foundation.

Although I pay the bills through a long career in the landscape industry, in my heart I’ve always considered myself a creative writer first and foremost. As I’ve often replied when asked about my license plate that reads, Do Write, I make my living through landscape, but my loving through writing. 
 

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Here are my personal website links: 

KeithSteinbaum.com 
ThePoeConsequence.com

 

I’ve Been on This Planet 40 Years and All I Got Was This Ridiculous Insight

Today, the Write Way Café welcomes Samantha Anne, a Crimson Romance author and new entrepreneur in audio books, who is moving on and up.

As I enter my 40th year – some days feeling like it’s my 20th, some days feeling like it’s my 60th – I’m compelled, like many, to take stock of where I was, where I’m at/who I am, and where/who I want to be. Have the years before been rough? What did I do about it, how did I live as a result; were my conflicts truly closed? Am I still living in the past? Am I even ready for the future? I mean, it sounds like the standard mid-life crisis, yeah? It could be worse, I suppose – I could be running around throwing my disposable dollars (disposable? Hah!) in the g-string of one of the La Bare boys in Dallas or buying an over-priced car and haphazardly traveling the world photographing and writing and… wait, how’s that worse?

The good news is that, since moving to Texas last year, my life has changed. Gone are the days where I spent most of my time underground, contending with crowds of people who’ve forgotten to brush their teeth or have no concept of how much excess space they actually take up (lookin’ at you, manspreaders), running from work to home and home to band practice and from there to a show or the studio. I’m no longer really harried or in a rush; New York City’s fast-paced hypnotic influence isn’t exactly there anymore. Have I been busy planting roots into the Texas soil and even, in some cases, struggling to fit in? Sure. But the reality is, life slows down when you leave the city. There’s a lot more time to – well, see stuff. And I can safely say that I spent my final year as a thirty-something blessed because of the opportunity I’ve had to open my eyes and get a good look at the people and things around me, both in and out of my body of work. Admittedly, I enjoy seeing evolution – gradual development of anything for the better of groups of people as a whole. And while you and I both know, reader, that some things in this world have de-evolved, I’d like to touch on the evolution of books as it pertains to (oddly enough) sound.

I couldn’t tell you why I railed against audio books for as long as I did; I can only say that, in my mind, books were as perfect a medium as they could be – and why would anyone want to change that? But as I gradually accepted e-books, including joining the ranks of writers who would take full advantage of the ease of self-publishing in this form over the last few years, it hit me pretty hard that I couldn’t ignore the birth and growth of the audiobook. A lot of thought went into this, believe me – I ultimately decided that, for all the people who wanted to read a book but (for whatever reason, and there are a few) couldn’t, putting my support behind the audiobook was the right thing to do.

It occurred to me that I should have been behind the audiobook as soon as it hit the market! As a pre-teen, I loved writing angsty and puppy love-riddled stories that my friends called Daydreams. And the thing is, they were all focused on reading school things – they didn’t want to read any of my stories, no matter how interesting it was or how much it involved them! What they wanted, however, was for me to narrate – and narrate I did, adding flourishes and accents that can’t be seen on paper and can only be properly interpreted by a story’s author. I cannot count the number of amazing sleepovers we had, staying up way too late while I sat with a five subject notebook filled with chapters about us and our favorite boy band members and read to them, gasping and giggling so loudly we often got busted.

And there it was – why wasn’t I doing this? I’ve also had a great speaking voice, and have had the ability to narrate a story just as well as I write one since I was a kid! A passion for the medium grew pretty quickly and, next thing I knew, I was setting up an audiobook production service, called D.D. Audiobooks (Day. Dream. Cute/Poetic, amirite?!) – designed as an affordable option for indie authors like myself to have a fairly affordable option to get their work onto ACX quickly. And I’m happy to say that, while I’ve been working on the novel to follow my 2015 release Company Ink, I’ve recently completed an audiobook, titled Snowbound, with the wonderful Lynn Crandall.


So, now that I’ve turned 40, what’s next? More of everything that makes me happy – books, movies, art… to create new things by way of new mediums would certainly be a great adventure!

But first, a glass of wine. *drops mic, picks up corkscrew*

Company Ink available at:

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble






Author Samantha Anne is a born and bred New Yorker, raised in the Soundview section of The Bronx. Her passions include writing, cooking, music, and an unbridled refusal to be categorized into one genre. 

www.samantha-anne.net

From My Pen to Your Ears: The Cavanaugh House Audiobook

Elizabeth Meyette shares her first audiobook experience with The Write Way Café.  

GIVEAWAY ALERT: Enter to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card below!

I was startled when I listened to the first audition for my audiobook version of The Cavanaugh House. The narrator read one of my characters, Italian cop Marty D’Amato, like Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon. You know, like a 1940s Bogart detective, all wry out-of-the-side-of-your-mouth: “Okay, Bugsy. I’m a copper, ya see…” Holy smokes. I didn’t see this coming when I decided to create an audiobook.

The process of creating an audiobook was vastly different from writing or publishing that book. On the upside, the writing, editing, revising, editing, revising…had been completed. On the downside, I had a huge learning curve.

As a hybrid author, I had already learned the process of publishing my own book. My first two books, Love’s Destiny and Love’s Spirit, were traditionally published, so I just had to hand them over to my editor (not as easy to surrender your baby as it sounds) and editing, formatting, cover art, uploading, and some marketing were all taken care of for me. Not so as an indie author. I slogged through blogs, devoured online articles and took copious notes at conferences to learn the process of self-publishing. When I was ready, I released The Cavanaugh House, and it has been very well received.

Then I decided to publish The Cavanaugh House as an audiobook. I used ACX.com which is the audiobook self-publishing arm of Amazon. I had used Amazon’s CreateSpace site to publish my ebook and POD (Print on Demand) versions and found it very user friendly. Because I had gone through the process with The Cavanaugh House as an ebook and POD, I felt prepared. But publishing an audiobook follows a very different path. 

After setting up my profile on ACX, I uploaded a scene for auditions. Selection of this scene is critical because I wanted to include several voices in order to hear how the narrator would read them (see above). I was amazed at how many interpretations there were of my characters! One narrator read them all in a breathy, sexy way that made me feel like I was being seduced. I narrowed the field of the readers I liked and listened again. One stood out above the rest—Amy McFadden. She nailed my protagonist Jesse’s attitude and personality.

I sent her the contract and we set dates for her First Fifteen Minutes reading and the Full Final reading. When I heard the First Fifteen Minutes I was convinced I had chosen the perfect narrator for my book. Once again I was handing my baby over to someone else to care for. But this was different from handing Love’s Destiny and Love’s Spirit over to an editor. Instead of someone telling me what to do, I was the one telling someone else what to do.

I became the director. I wrote detailed notes about each character including what I thought their voices sounded like (sweet soprano, alpha-male bass, etc.) or I referenced characters in movies as examples (Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada). I was thinking about my novel in an entirely new way. Amy, a professional actress, appreciated the director’s notes, but cautioned me that how I heard characters in my head would not be the same as how they sounded in the audiobook. She was wise to tell me this. All authors cherish their characters having lived with them for months or years. We do hear them speak in a certain voice. 

Words can’t describe how I felt when I started listening to the Full Final reading. Tears streamed down my face. Rich came into my office, looked at me, and realized that my smile meant they were tears of joy. My heart swelled with happiness as I listened to my characters come alive in a whole new dimension. See, I’m so besotted there are at least five clichés in this paragraph. I can’t find the words—clichés will have to suffice.

The process of listening to 10 hours and 34 minutes of my book was wonderful, but also grueling. It wasn’t like listening to a book for pleasure; I had to attend to every word. Any place needing a correction required that I go back to the exact minute and second into the chapter, note the time, write the correction I wanted, and send the list to Amy. Fortunately, she did an amazing job, so there were not too many corrections needed.

Jesse and Joe, Marty and Maggie, have lived inside my head for years. I’ve heard them laugh together, yell at each other, whisper sweet nothings and sob in each others’ arms. I know what they sound like, and now thanks to Amy McFadden, so will my readers…uh, listeners…hey this is a whole new audience!

Now my audiobook is available and I am celebrating with a giveaway on my website. You can enter it below!

Elizabeth’s books are available on:      Audible           Amazon         iTunes


Visit Elizabeth at:

Website       Blog       Facebook       Twitter       Goodreads       Pinterest

When Jesse Graham unlocks the door to the deserted house she inherited from her Aunt Helen, she doesn’t realize she’s unlocking secrets that had lain dormant for years. Reeling from a broken engagement to acclaimed musician Robert Cronmiller, Jesse wants to leave the city where her name is linked to his in all the society pages. Her best friend Maggie, aka Sister Angelina, convinces her to take a job at a private girls’ school in the pastoral Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Anticipating a quiet, revitalizing life in her aunt’s deserted house, Jesse is instead thrown into a maze of danger. Questions about her aunt’s death lead Jesse to investigate events surrounding it and the people involved, but she uncovers a web of deceit that reaches far beyond the occurrences of over two decades earlier. Still dejected from her broken engagement, Jesse finds it difficult to trust anyone, even her self-absorbed mother. Joe Riley is irresistible, but secrets obstruct involvement with him until Jesse can solve the secrets of the Cavanaugh House. Someone doesn’t want those secrets unearthed and will stop at nothing, even murder, to keep them hidden.


The Cavanaugh House excerpt:
This house held secrets.  Secrets that wafted through rotting window sashes on the winter wind. Secrets that spiders wove into webs anchored between the ceiling and walls. Secrets that scuttled on the feet of cockroaches across stained kitchen linoleum and scurried into its cracks. Secrets that peered from holes in the baseboard from glinting mouse eyes. This house held the secrets close to its bosom where they had slept for decades. No one had disturbed these secrets in all the years the house sat decaying from neglect. There was no reason to, and there was no desire.

Enter the Giveaway for a $25 Amazon Gift Card! 

Click here: GIVEAWAY