Little Bits Of Progress On The Long And Winding Road

Welcome to the June 2025 edition of...
What I'm Into, What I'm Up To
#57

Summer is here (officially, two days from now) and SKYTRAILS is in full launch mode.

Book one, Spirits Of The Brinaatii, is live in ebook form on Amazon.

Aaaaaaaand, Book Two, Quest Of Kindred Spirits, is up for pre-order, also as an Amazon ebook.

I am slowly generating audiobook chapters one at a time. It's a time-consuming but rewarding process. Book one is done and book two is under way.

For those of you who remember my experiment with Google's AI-narrated audiobooks a couple years ago with my Ready-Player-One-esque novella, Ghost_Layer, this is light years better than that was. It's actually really incredible.

So that's what I've been up to. Generating audio narration chapter-by-chapter (it still requires work getting the right pronunciation and emphasis and a certain level of quality), getting things cleaned up and a little more marketable over on Amazon, seeing if anyone is still around to hear about the new books on social media platforms since I've been pretty absent the last few years (I think they've all gotten worse while I've been away—more ads and sponsored feeds, less actual interaction with friends), book cover designs and re-designs (Ghost_Layer has an all-new cover using the image at the top of this email and I really love it), and sending emails to you all.

Thanks for everyone's help buying the new books, reading/listening to them, leaving reviews, or even just following the journey! I appreciate your support!

And now, here's what I've been into...

(TV first, then bicycling.)

Murderbot on Apple TV+ — I wrote about this series of novellas a while back when I was reading them and the new show does a great job capturing the mood and humor of the books. It's about an anti-social security bot who just wants to watch his space soap opera shows in peace, but has to keep saving the hippy humans he's been assigned to protect.

Long Way Home on Apple TV+ — This is the fourth time Ewan McGregor and his buddy Charlie Boorman have done a Long Way trip/show together. This one's a big circuit around Europe on old motorbikes. We watch these shows as a family and talk about all the places in the world we want to go and explore. It's great. There's a family of five that goes by Mali Mish online who have been living in a van or camper truck for almost two decades and they've said they were initially inspired to begin their travels after watching Long Way Round.

Clarkson's Farm, Season 3 on Amazon Prime — Jeremy Clarkson is a controversial figure, but boy does he make great television. It used to be cars and now it's farms and it's as funny and entertaining as ever. Seems like more cursing and crude humor and animal sex talk this season, which makes it a little cringier to watch as a family, but it's educational about what goes into running a farm in the 21st century and trying to make some kind of living at it.

In addition to watching TV and building a patio and launching books, I've been riding my bike once a week on a long trail that starts close to where we live and goes north 40+ miles up into Pennsylvania.

It used to be a railroad that connected Baltimore with York and there are signs all along the Maryland section that say something to the effect of, 'This used to be a big railroad town with a station and a hotel and some other buildings and now it's a quaint little farm town or just woods with nothing left at all but some old ruins.'

It's interesting what happens to towns and cities over time.

Anyway, I'm doing a few miles up and back each time, and each time starting from where I left off the last time. I'm into Pennsylvania now and in a few weeks I will finish the whole thing and then probably turn around and do it again going south.

I'm loving it. And it's reinforcing for me one of the most important things I've learned since having kids and starting to write books.

A tiny bit of work, consistently done, eventually leads to big accomplishments.