Datacenter Dungeons Audiobook On The Way

By popular demand, I've been working on an audiobook for Datacenter Dungeons. Let me share some highlights of this process with you.

First, let's just say, I'm super stoked that I actually found the same narrator voice as some of my favorite audiobooks out there. It's an AI clone of basically Luke Daniels. Would it be so much cooler to actually have Luke Daniels narrate my book? Absolutely. Yet I still am a struggling writer and am literally losing money by publishing a book, so to make an audiobook that actually sounds semi-professional, I have to spend what little extra money I have on tools like ElevenLabs. Anyone want to sponsor a professional narrator for book two?

Let me also say that the process of constructing and engineering the audiobook has been kind of bittersweet. I signed up for ElevenLabs seeing it taut all of these amazing features and I dropped $100 on it thinking I could literally get anything I wanted. That it was as easy as AI chatbot prompting. Not so unfortunately. When I finally found some voices I was happy with, it turns out that they aren't fully compatible with the new v3.0 of ElevenLabs, so all of those amazing features aren't available unless I let the system attempt to adjust a non-v3 voice to v3. I tried this as the quality wasn't pretty.

I had envisioned an immersive storytelling experience with various AI voice actors in a sort of dramatized old school radio show style, complete with sound effects and music. But when I heard the narration switch off and the voice actors switch on, the experience felt very off. I may still embed some music and potentially sound effects, but don't hold your breath for a lot of it. I want to prioritize the quality of the narrative experience and have a better overall performance over adding cute finishing touches.

The audiobook is half way finished narration-wise. Once I've finished the once-over of the content, then it's time to re-listen and make sure everything is just right, potentially making little tweaks here and there. So far it's coming along nicely. I really wish you could hear how it's sounding, but best you wait for the final product isn't it!

My aim is to have it released by Thanksgiving or Black Friday, but realistically it could be closer to Christmas. If you're subscribed to my newsletter, you'll be first to know as soon as the audiobook is released.