As promised in my newsletter, here is a nearly 15 minute (6 page) excerpt from Dreamfever. Due to the length of the excerpt it will take some time to load. It's worth it.
Do NOT listen if you don't want spoilers.
Enjoy!
We have another teaser for you!
This is an audio outtake from the actual book, with Mac/JZB interaction (get your minds out of that gutter! LOL! The gutter doesn't come until tomorrow...oh! Did I say that?) Do not listen if you don't want to know anything about the book before you read it. Though it doesn't exactly contain what I would call spoilers, it is part of the book.
I was at Joseph Beth yesterday signing pre-orders and saw so many familiar names (Jo, crazy Jo, Stapes, Esther Marie, and many more) on the books! It was a total blast. I felt almost as if you were all sitting around me (with duct-tape over your mouths of course, because I wasn't being bombarded with questions). I can't wait to meet those of you coming in for the signing, and see familiar faces. I can't thank you enough for your support of Dreamfever and for helping independent bookstores like JB hold their place in the publishing world.
I hate to move from a happy note to an unpleasant topic but I have to say it, at least once.
Lately I've been hearing from authors and publishers that internet piracy of books has become such a significant problem that it’s destroying careers. Midlist authors are losing contracts because so many people are stealing the book instead of paying for it. Great new voices are being lost before they even really get to begin. I may be a hopeless idealist, but I believe most people don't think "Gee, I'm stealing a book." Rather they think, "Well, if it was illegal, surely someone would stop me, so it must be okay."
Unfortunately the Internet defies anyone's efforts to stop it. For every ten illegal copies pulled down, a hundred more go up. Passing a book to a friend is one thing. We all do it. But uploading it so thousands, and in some case tens of thousands can copy it? What are these people thinking? Do they want the authors to lose their jobs? Do they think authors shouldn't get paid for their work? I don't get the mind-set. But then I've spent most of my life working two jobs.
I think people don’t realize the crippling impact of what they’re doing when they download an illegal copy of a book, so I’m going to share a bit of personal information.
At a single illegal download site last month, over 70,000 copies of three of my books had been downloaded. 70,000 at one site! Does it hurt me financially? Yes. Will I survive it? Maybe. It depends on how much worse it gets. (Then there's the whole emotional component: creating springs from joy; to watch what you've created get stolen nihilates that joy. It's a tough tangle of emotions to balance.) Will less-successful authors survive it? No, many of them won’t. Many of them will lose their contracts, or quit writing because they can’t afford it anymore, and some will give up the ghost simply because they can't bear to see their hard work stolen. It is theft.
I love libraries. I love used book stores. But uploading books illegally so hundreds of thousands of others can download them illegally is wrong. It’s a violation of copyright, it’s illegal and it must stop. Illegal downloads end up driving prices higher for the actual book, and consign wonderful new voices to oblivion before they even get a chance to perfect their craft. I don’t know which bothers me more: the idea that I could lose my job, or the thought that there are fabulous storytellers out there I may never get to read because their contracts get cancelled due to poor sales. I love you guys and know you aren’t the ones doing it.
What I’m asking is that you raise the awareness of someone you know that is doing it. Save the midlist writers that may be the next Stephanie Meyer or Stephen King, and give anonymous theft a kick in the petunia!
If you come across a site offering illegal downloads of my books, please let us know at manager@karenmoning.com.
I'm hopping off my soapbox now.
I hope you love this clip! Stay tuned for a newsletter tomorrow or Sunday with something scorching!
Happy listening!
Karen
Hi everyone, Leiha here. Karen promised you more clips from the Dreamfever audiobook but has been incredibly busy this week preparing for the release of Dreamfever and the simultaneous release of BloodRush so she sent me here in her stead to post the clip.
Outtakes are fun because they are the audio versions of deleted scenes and I know as a fan I want to hear and see as much as I can, even if it is a blooper. In fact, it's more fun because it is a blooper.
Enjoy!
Times have changed. I get that, no point in dragging my feet. I have two iPods: A hot pink one for Mac and a black one for me—although recently Mac, the wench, took mine. She thinks she’s a real badass. We’ll see…LOL.
But I digress. Although I enjoy the benefits of technology, I rue the loss of simple pleasures. Like Barrons, I love hot cars, the latest electronics and the greatest toys, but there’s a part of me that craves the tactile experience of old books and albums: the feel of a hefty hardcover in my hands, the smell of ink, the crackle of a page, even the annoying popping sound on a scratched album. Twenty years later, I still can’t sing Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut with skipping on one of the lines because my album did, LOL. It was a different world then.
I grew up in a time when the release of a new album by one of my favorite bands was an all-consuming experience. On those sweet but rare occasions that I got a new record as a teen, I’d close my bedroom door, start the music, sit down and study the artwork and lyrics, and totally immerse myself in that world. I miss that!
I recently read that it took the human race nearly 1500 years to double our collective knowledge, but that now—with the internet—we double our collective knowledge every 12-18 months. What it took us from 1 AD to 1500 AD to accomplish, we now accomplish in less than two years. It was a fascinating article that discussed how impossible it is for us to keep up with our own growth, and the stresses of trying to do so result in all kinds of problems from adrenal fatigue to serious illness.
Good fiction carves a bubble out of that fast-paced, frenetic world and takes you to a still place where what’s happening in the story erases the stresses and strains of daily life, and in that fictional world you can safely indulge in a wonderful escape. You can live dangerously, vibrantly, passionately, without fear.
That’s the experience we tried to create with the CD, BloodRush. We wanted to recapture the days-gone-by feel of sitting down and immersing in an album, of reading the lyrics that flesh out Mac’s story, and hearing her heart in the words. We wanted the visual imagery to complement the fictional world as perfectly as the lyrics did. We wanted the paper to be thick, glossy, the pictures beautiful, the type stylish yet readable, and the overall experience to be deliciously tactile. Erotic. Sleek. Sexy. Fun.
I hope it accomplishes what we’ve aimed for—takes you away to a simpler place: a world where everyone’s mission is clear, the stakes are defined, and the battle between good and evil can be safely enjoyed from the sidelines, and perhaps even shed some light on our own battles.
Here’s one of the pages from the booklet, the lyrics and a snippet of the song.
Enjoy!
Okay, tensions are high, and if I could I would step into the board, in the flesh, and hang out with all of you in person, waiting for the release of Dreamfever.
I honestly can't tell you how much you guys mean to me. Some of you I've met, others I feel I know as well as my close friends, from reading your posts and watching you interact with each another.
I'm so proud of the MB community we've got. Sometimes when things are bothering me, all I have to do is think about the amazing slice of space we've created here together and my troubles melt away.
We all make mistakes. We all have strong feeling and opinions. Yet we all manage to stay bonded in a way that supercedes momentary difficulties or conflicts. That's magic, and you should be so proud of yourselves for what we've built together. I applaud all of you for blending into such an amazing group!
I don't know about you, but I need a good laugh! And I've got one for you. Here's Outtake 1, a few days early. Enjoy!
OMG, I just heard outtakes and clips from Dreamfever and I'm still reeling from the experience! It's amazing, sensational, divine! I adore Natalie's Mac, she's exactly what I had in mind and Phil as JZB (which is the only male voice I've heard so far) is swoon-worthy steel in a velvet glove. He purrs, he taunts, he melts me...LOL. You guys are SO going to love it!!! I can't wait for you to hear it!
Here's the rough timeline: we'd hoped to have the website changes and BloodRush ordering page up by now but there have been some kinks in the ecommerce page we're working out. We expect (keeping our fingers crossed) it will all go live sometime tomorrow, and if so, that's when the newsletter will go out, same time as the launch. The new pages contain all the information about the CD and will answer the questions you've been asking, including song titles, price, payment and shipping options, etc. If you pre-order (in the States) by August 12 by noon, it will ship out the morning of the 13th, priority mail which should get it to you by the release date. We've got some great stuff in the newsletter, including the alternative to the excerpt I promised (which is not one of the audio clips or outtakes:).
Stay tuned next week for some delicious audio treats from the Eargasmic Phil & Natalie as we build up to the release of Dreamfever on August 18th!
