Category: Emergence Collective

Audible · Emergence Collective · reading

Audible update: 0 success, almost.

Joe HallettLeave a comment

It was a close one. Computers are weird and I think that they have a will of their own sometimes.  It all started with a zoom meeting with my son’s teacher. I started the meeting, but the Zoom did not detect my microphone. For the zoom meeting I just use the microphone on the laptop, so I figured there would not be an issue, but no joy.   We managed to get through it using text, but it was clumsy. Moving forward, after getting the recording studio (my closet) all situated and ready to go, blocking out the time and getting a fresh cup of coffee (not only recommended by writers all over the globe, but a requirement.) I sat in my new comfy chair and opened audacity. Opened my book (yes, I am reading from my personal print copy) and hit the record button. 0 success. That was the error code I saw. Audacity failed to recognize my Yeti microphone. Failed to detect anything.

So, I messed around, frustrated and disappointed. I had put the Audible project on hold for the holidays and finally got around to starting it again only to be thwarted but determined to not let it beat me. I did eventually get the recording done! It is now available on Spotify. 

I hope I don’t sound boring on my intro. I was trying to decide on how I wanted to go about restarting the project now that I am satisfied with the audio quality, which had been a thorn in my side. Do I re-record chapter one or keep everything the way it is and just move forward. But in my ADHD addled mind as I was organizing I decided to clean up the drafts (somehow my blogs migrated to Spotify as drafts) I got trigger-happy and ended up deleting the first episode on accident anyway, making the decision for me.

Thanks for stopping by!

30-minute shivers. · about me · Audible · Author · blogging · Emergence Ascended · Emergence Collective · Horror · Instagram · NaNoWriMo · narrators · readers · reading · science fiction

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Joe HallettLeave a comment

I have always liked that saying. I don’t know why. Maybe I enjoy duality. As I poke my head out of the cave of 2023 into the dawning of 2024 I am looking ahead for a great writing year. I have some great intentions, both long-term and short-term.

I will pause here and do my obligatory reflections of 2023. I’ll start with the fun stuff, I published another novel “Emergence Ascended.” I Wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo, which was a bucket list item. (Now I feel like I can legitimately say I am a Novelist.) I Did an interview on Youtube to promote my new novel (It didn’t help, but it was a fun experience). If you follow my social media accounts you may notice that I do not do the random selfie post as I prefer to stay in the background (Introvert stuff) but in the spirit of self-promotion I powered through.

There is probably more highlights of fun things in 2023 but sometimes I want to keep things for me. That being said there was some interesting things in 2023, just to keep it spicy. The big one is a series of events starting with a road rage incident, our vehicle got a nice bullet hole. Sent it to the bodyshop for repair, of which there was a break in and OUR vehicle was stolen to commit a crime. It was recovered a month later with a group of homeless occupying it in an alleyway. Toxicology report deemed it hazardous and it had to be ‘totaled’ by the insurance (we didn’t want to drive a Meth car anyway.) Replaced the vehicle with a new one from the insurance money. Whew. But that is not all. A month later a windstorm took out a tree, causing it to fall onto our home, and, Guess what?… The new Van. Yup. Lucky it was a glancing blow and our Insurance (again) fixed the repairs for that (No we did not take it to the same bodyshop) But wait there is more. Our upstairs bathtub cracked and flooded the garage. SO now we have a shiny new bath room remodel (that we are still paying for at the cost of 400$ a month)All in all, though it was a financially and mentally stressful year, we survived, and I still think the good outweighed the bad as far as 2023 goes.

Whats next? I have some very good intentions for the year coming up. First on my agenda is to finish “Yellow Man.” the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo. There are some good bones in the story, and I am working on fleshing out some details and adding things I missed or neglected in the first rough draft. Who knows how long this process is going to take me, but I am optimistic I can get it finished soonish.

I have several more stories I want to get down. Most are just thumbnail thoughts, and don’t have names yet. The “Bigfoot” story is next after Yellow Man. I love Cryptids and am excited to get that one rolling. I have two possible endings rolling around, I guess I will decide when I get there. Another one is the Will-o-the-wisp story. I want to get that one done before the BIG project. The Big Project is a storyline that will turn into a series (more than likely) with some vignettes here and there. There is a great setting that I thing I can create a small little world around with different adventures to play with. But this one I am going to give a lot of thought while I finish the other three stories. I want to get those out of the way because I predict that the big project will consume a few years (at the least, unless I get bored or distracted, which is probable)

Of course I will keep on keeping on with the blog. I will jot down some more short stories for your enjoyment. I am still compiling short stories for my book “30-minute Shivers.” A collection of short horror stories.

The Audible project, I intend to start recording (for realz this time) on Sunday mornings. I can enjoy my new “recording studio” and give you my least cringy narration to Emergence Collective on Spotify.

Thank you for spending your time visiting my blog; I sincerely appreciate it. I love interacting and building friendships, so feel free to comment and like. You can follow my socials and other projects by clicking the linktree. https://linktr.ee/jshallett

amazon · Emergence Ascended · Emergence Collective · Podcasting · readers · reading

Emergence Ascended is to be featured on a podcast December 8th

Joe HallettLeave a comment

Free Writer reviews is a podcast by T.A. Walker. She reviewed Emergence Collective, and I am happy to announce that she will review Emergence Ascended! T.A Walker (a.k.a the Bookie) has over 25 published works. Her work can be found on Spotify T.A.Walker audiobooks. Check out her work, its great stuff!

If you haven’t already read Emergence Collective, buy it now! So you can follow her read-along before Dec 8th, where she will read and review Emergence Ascended on Free Writer Reviews.

buy it here. Get the whole story experience.

amazon · Audible · Emergence Ascended · Emergence Collective · NaNoWriMo

NanoWinner 2023

Joe HallettLeave a comment

I completed the NaNoWriMo 2023 Challenge a day early! But I am not finished with the novel. I succeeded in meeting the fifty thousand-word minimum, but there is still a lot to do.

My takeaway from completing the challenge: First of all, I have been a member of NaNoWriMo since 2012. I have started it but never got anywhere. This year I officially registered for the challenge, (it has been on my bucket list of things to do at least since 2012)

Dedicating time to write every day and write enough to keep up with the daily word goals had developed into a habit. And when I am writing I am writing more, faster. Remember it too almost two years to the day to complete Emergence Ascended from starting it after Emergence Collective and that is a little over sixty-thousand words. So to do comparatively the same in thirty days blows my own mind.

It is changing my writing ‘style’. I was a ‘pantser’ as they call it, I write by the seat of my pants, making up the story as I go, typically. But For Yellow man I did write an outline, cast of characters, notes and fair about of research before starting it. So The value of the outline for me has increased substantially. Honestly I never wrote outlines because I am lazy. I will use outlines on future books, (Oh the bigfoot story is probably next FYI)

So, what now? Now, I am going to keep working on Yellow Man and finish it. I dread the editing phase that is coming. One of the reasons why it takes me a long time to get the story on paper is that I tend to edit as I go. During NanoWrimo, I didn’t. I ignored types, wrong words, grammar and punctuation to get complete the challenge, but now I have a nightmare to clean up. I am also taking the weekend off from writing, and prepare to start recording Emergence Ascended again. I have some projects that I set aside during NaNoWriMo that I desperatly need to attend to, Laser engraving projects for myself and a couple clients (Custom laser engraving stuff) Check out my etsy site to see what I am talking about.

All in all I am proud of accomplishing NaNoWriMo, (I get to call myself a novelist now) And I am glad os the skills that NanoWrimo has taught me. If I can do it, YOU definitely can, so I expect to see you next year!

amazon · Emergence Ascended · Emergence Collective

Cover reveal!

Joe Hallett4 Comments

Here it is, the cover of Emergence Ascended!

Its been a long road but I can see the end! I have finished the final edits, and just received the cover art! Emergence Ascended will be published on Amazon Kindle And Paperback this weekend so stay tuned and watch for the links!

Check out and follow my Amazon Author page. While Emergence Ascended can stand on its own, you will miss out on a lot if you don’t read Emergence Collective.

Let me know what you think of the cover in the comments!

Audible · blogging · Emergence Ascended · Emergence Collective · NaNoWriMo

Audible Update: Took on too much

Joe HallettLeave a comment

As excited as I am about having my recording studio ready, I will have to wait to record. At least its not because of technical issues that are the most frustrating for me. But because this month is packed, and I don’t have enough time or mental energy to do it all.

NaNoWriMo has taken a life of its own, dominating my time. I wrote a lot in Yellow Man this weekend, but I am still a couple thousand words behind. Currently sitting on seventeen thousand words. (Which is crazy to me.) It was just bad timing to be honest. I had just finished writing Emergence Ascendedand am still working on the final edits. So to try to record Emergence Collective is too much. After NaNowriMo is over, I can cool my jets a bit and dedicate myself to that project.

Emergence Ascended · Emergence Collective · Podcasting · spotify

Audible update: New episode

Joe Hallett3 Comments
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5jF5HvOmGgt4iEVW6LbBSQ?si=38059xvbRCKAEZ4evHCmBA

If you are new and just stumbled on to my blog, you may wonder what my audible updates are… I started recording “Emergence Collective,” my first book, to release on Audible. I have received a lot of feedback about people wanting an audio version of my story; however, I am a bit too poor to afford a narrator, so like just about everything I do, I end up doing it myself. There is the fact that I have no idea what I am doing (as with most things I try). I learn as I go, grow from mistakes, and move on. What is interesting about writing, in general, is that I did not expect it to cost so much. Writing is free; I have a list of things I can not wait to get out of my head, but sharing it is a roadblock. Editors and book cover designs are expensive, something I did not anticipate when I started this journey. So I soldier on because, frankly, I can not, not write or be creative in some fashion. In the end I just hope people enjoy my stories as much as I enjoy thinking them up and writing them.

Back to the Audible thing. I have overcome some hurdles and am getting to the point where I feel that I might start producing something that will pass muster at the Audible People (ACX) and with me personally. The format is very important, and the audio quality as well; they seem to be pretty picky. As far as the narration is concerned, at least in my personal experience, not so much. I have returned audible books because I could not bear the narration. (so honestly not to worried about that, I will get better the more I do it of course.)

As far a NaNoWrimo goes, I had a busy weekend and did not keep up with my word count goal. Not all is lost, though I will try to make up some time on that. That being said, I had a successful weekend getting the recording studio (I am calling it a studio, but to be honest, that is an optimistic name) put together and getting a new episode recorded. I got some side projects in the works, like updating my etsy site. (Thanks Mom for helping with that).

Give my episode a listen, and let me know what you think. Be sure to like and comment!

Audible · Emergence Collective · narrators

Audible update: A new space

Joe HallettLeave a comment

A quick Audible update. I got my recording area set up for the most part. It’s a little ghetto, but it functions. I did a quick audio test, and it sounds a lot better. I still pick up a lot of household noise, but I like to record Sunday mornings when it’s still quiet, so I do not think that will be an issue. I plan on recording a chapter tomorrow just to break in my space. I also made a decision to re-record the first chapters, which had unbearable sound quality.

NanoWrimo : I am keeping up with the word count that I need to, to finish on time. I feel pretty good with how its going so far. The story is starting to flesh out.

Emergence Ascended is still under construction, last round of editing is going well, I suspect it will be ready in the next couple weeks, and the Art for the cover is coming along as well, ETA is undetermined, but I am hoping it will coincide with the editing and get published before December.

amazon · Emergence Ascended · Emergence Collective

I just learned how to do this.

Joe Hallett2 Comments

Here I am IRL. I almost didn’t cringe the entire time watching myself. Let me know what you think in the comments.

I am starting to see the sketches for the book cover for Emergence Ascended. Soon to be revealed. If you have not read Emergence Collective yet, there is still time before Emergence Ascended is released. ETA mid-November (early December at the latest)

Emergence Ascended · Emergence Collective · Horror · interview · music · science fiction · spiritualism · video blog · writing · Youtube

I got interviewed!

Joe Hallett4 Comments

HERE IS THE LINK to the interview by a local video blogger.

Do things that make you uncomfortable in your life complacency and comfort do not help you grow. So I am taking a heaping spoonful of my own medicine. I have always firmly believed that to grow, you need something to push against, even if that thing is your stage fright. I hope you enjoy it! for me, let the cringe begin.