Battle of Nesma Audiobook Incoming

The Divergent Chill: Battle of Nesma audiobook is set to be released soon. It’s been in production for a long couple of months. I used the ACX platform to produce the book and partnered with an incredibly talented narrator and voice actor, Beau Thomas and Grace Noble. Beau narrates and voices the male characters, and Grace performs the female characters. The book is undergoing final review by ACX as the final step before it goes on sale on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.

Divergent Chill: Battle of Nesma audiobook cover. Coming soon!

I even got the original cover artist from the paperback/Kindle version of Battle of Nesma back to design an updated cover for the audiobook. Jerry Shaffer is better than ever. He’s working on some other designs for me and hopefully we’ll have some character vignettes coming soon.

Battle of Nesma has been out for many years now, but the ability to produce and publish an audiobook version remained out of reach for me until recently. I started looking into the possibility after discussing book publishing with my friend, Chris Scarnati, who just published his best seller, Paul Spadafora: Fighting Till the End. I discovered there were many different services I could use to produce the audiobook, but ACX seemed to be the most straightforward and it was affiliated with Audible and Amazon already. Getting the process started with Battle of Nesma was made so much easier with the ability to kind of “side load” all of the book details.

Divergent Chill: Battle of Nesma for sale on Amazon.

Once I created the book project on ACX with a short excerpt, I immediately started receiving auditions from a slew of talented performers. I was impressed, and it took a lot of back and forth before I decided to go with Beau. From there, a long couple of weeks followed as I worked every night listening to each of Beau’s recorded chapters. I caught his mistakes and I caught many of mine. The review and my discussions with my friend Chris made me aware of the possibility of updating the published books on Amazon to fix these errors. I originally thought this was impossible but learned that so long as corrections do not change the page count by more than 10%, they can be made without having to publish a new version.

I made the fixes, lots of small things like confusing “Alden” and “Olin” a couple of times. I also ran the text through a modern grammar and spelling review in Office and fixed a bunch of stuff. In the end, the page count didn’t change and the book should be much improved.

The audiobook is even more impressive. The narration brings a life to my book beyond what my words were able to do. I’ll share a sample below. It’ll be a slightly extended, draft version of the retail sample and demonstrates Beau’s ability to narrate and voice Beriszl with Grace voicing a young Chilali. I can’t wait to share the final product when it releases!

Follow me on X: @DivergentZen

Rise of Skywalker Teaser: More Poor Writing and Stupidity

After I saw The Force Awakens, I eagerly wrote a blog about it. My reaction was ambivalent at best. I was irked a bit by the logical inconsistencies in the script and the ill-defined world. But my expectations and excitement for the Last Jedi grew over the following two years. It was going to be the movie that would make up for The Force Awakens shortcomings, deliver on its setups, expand the mysteries, and build some characterization for the new main characters, Rey, Poe, and Finn.

Instead, The Last Jedi killed the franchise for me. It was stunningly awful. It wasn’t merely B movie awful or boring. It transcends awfulness. Each and every scene is a eldritch winding of poor writing that will drive you mad if you trying to untangle it.

I attempted to write a review of it, just as I did The Force Awakens, but I quit when I realized I wrote 2,000 words and hadn’t gotten past the opening scene of the film. It just wasn’t worth the effort because I didn’t care enough about the film to finish the review. It wasn’t worth my words.

Fast forward another year and a half and here we are seeing the teaser for Star Wars Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker.

No, I’m not going to link to it. It’s as bad as the Last Jedi. It exalts the character of Rey who hasn’t actually done anything in two films except fight Kylo Ren to an inconclusive battle and lift some rocks. I still don’t know why she’s even doing what she does or why anyone trusts her or relies on her. I don’t know how she became so proficient in the force or why she is more powerful than anyone else in the saga, save for the plot device/character of Snoke.

The Episode IX teaser opens with Rey flipping backwards over a speeding TIE Fighter, likely Kylo’s craft, and preparing to slice it with her light saber. It’s the centerpiece of this teaser, the first thing we see of this conclusion to the saga, and it’s so dumb for so many reasons:

  • Rey can lift several hundred tons of rocks with the force, but doesn’t smash the craft into the ground or rip its engines off.
  • Kylo or whoever pilots it decides to close into melee range of someone wielding a light saber instead of just shooting her.
  • The craft has no shields or armor.
  • Rey didn’t need to back flip to slice the craft; she could just duck beneath it or step to the side or throw her saber at it.

The scene belongs in a bad anime or video game, not in a Star Wars film. People have been referring to it as “jumping the TIE Fighter,” a snarky reference to the old term of “jumping the shark.” That’s very much on point.

Everything else that follows or fills in between this “scene” is just nostalgia marketing or more mystery boxes. Palpatine can be heard laughing at the end. Big deal. All that means is something will get made up out of nowhere, with no set up, to bring Palpatine back in some form. I guess no one ever caught onto his plotting in the 30 years between Episodes VI and VII.

I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter to me who Rey’s parents are or hearing Palpatine laugh. None of these mysteries or hooks have any meaningful payoffs. It’s all just a series of a–pulls at this point in a desperate attempt to salvage absolutely poor planning.

And that’s the worst thing in my mind. This continuation of the saga wasn’t planned out from the beginning. With a multi-billion dollar franchise on the line, they REFUSED to do the necessary work to meticulously plan and script out all three films before they even thought of casting and shooting them. It’s inexcusable.

Lastly, The Last Jedi destroyed the film version of the character of Luke Skywalker, reducing him to a coward and child-killer. It’s insulting to have the title of Episode IX further desecrate the memory of such a well-loved character.

Verified by MonsterInsights