Leenie Brown

A Fogo Island Sunset

This is a picture I took many years ago as I sat on the rocks near Joe Batt’s Arm, Fogo Island, NL, watching the sun go down.

(If you’d prefer to listen to this post in audio read by Christopher, my cloned narrator, you can do that on YouTube at this link.)

Many years ago, at the very beginning of my writing “career” (while I still had a day job as a teacher), I wanted to make writing a regular practice. This desire became a plan for a writing exercise called Thursday’s Three Hundred, which was doomed to fail. 🙂

The plan was to use a random visual prompt and write three hundred, equally as random, words of a story scene, that I would share on my blog each Thursday.

The exercise failed because I found I couldn’t just write three hundred words and move on. That very first three hundred words begged to be turned into a story called Hope at Dawn, and the next new story I started begged me to turn it into a series — what is now my Willow Hall Romance series. So, while the exercise failed in part, that failure has produced a fair number of stories, and I did develop a consistent writing practice. In that way, it was more of a success than a failure.

Today, I’m sharing the first chapter of that first failed exercise that was prompted by the image in the video graphic of a Sunset on Fogo Island. I took this picture not too far from the cottage at which I was staying in Joe Batt’s Arm. This was the first trip I had ever taken to Fogo and was when I fell in love with the remote and rugged beauty of the place.

Hope at Dawn begins on a rocky shoreline as a gentleman, who was not deemed worthy enough to marry the lady he loves, waits for her to return home after an extended period of time away.

As he sits, watching the waves while darkness fades into light, faint hope is the only thing to which he has to cling as he waits to see if the work he’s done while she’s been gone is enough to now be worthy of her hand.

Protected: OC Refresh: Oxford Cottage, Ch. 9

George James Drummond’s Room at Oxford, 1853

By George Pyne (1800 – 1884) Details on Google Art Project – UwEQxfU8YqFodA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21907517

The scene below takes place in a sitting room that is for the private use of Charlotte and her sister Louisa. I thought this picture looked like it could be such a room. I also liked that this room is in Oxford since that is location around which His Sensible Heart takes place. The hero is still in school at Oxford. The heroine is at her father’s estate a few miles outside of Oxford.

This book is the sixth and final book (so far) in my Touches of Austen series. It’s an almost forced betrothal and marriage sort of story, a he falls first story, a she doesn’t like him (or so she says) story, and a story about how utterly sacrificial true love can be. There are nods to and mentions of Sense and Sensibility in this book, but it is a completely original story (as are all the stories in this series).

I’m including a full chapter of the story in this post to hopefully give you a good feel for who each of the main characters are.

Enjoy!

An Intro to a New Project

Hi.

I wanted to let you know that I have started to make some digitally narrated audiobooks to share on YouTube for those who would like to listen to them.

I know audiobooks are not everyone’s thing.

And then there’s the whole AI voice thing…

I know… Those two letters can cause quite a reaction, but before you automatically condemn me or this audiobook for those letters, let me assure you that my use of the AI voice I am using to create the audiobooks PAYS the voice actor.

You see, I’m using Elevenlabs to create these audiobooks, and Christopher, the narrator I have selected, is a professional voice actor, who of his own free accord, submitted a professional reading sample to Elevenlabs. They, then, made a professional clone of his voice, after which, with his full permission, they added his voice to their narrator voice library, and every time anyone uses Christopher to narrate their project, the voice actor gets paid for the use.

Now, obviously, the pay is not at the same rate that he would earn for a production that he is commissioned to do, but he is paid. And that means that when I’m making these audiobooks, I’m supporting a fellow creative. That’s important to me and is why I am doing my best to only select professional cloned voices as I make my audiobooks for both my pen names.

At present, I have selected to use Christopher for all my Leenie books because I find I rather enjoy listening to his voice read me stories, but who knows, that might change as I go on.

If I had time and more experience (and for fun and to offer a different version of audio), I might try using a mix of male and female voices to create a duet style audiobook, or I could pull out all the stops (and likely drive myself crazy) and use a different voice for each different character when they speak. 😀 Will that ever happen? I wouldn’t say never, but it does seem unlikely at present.

I’ve long wanted to have audiobooks, but I could never afford to do them. They’re not cheap, and I’d be paying with Canadian dollars which means they’re even more expensive for me. So, I had thought I’d never get to do them.

And then, my father’s wife (he remarried after my mother died) started losing sight in her one good eye (she’s been blind in one eye all her life), and her ability to read was slowly taken from her. That’s when I started to look at audiobooks as something more than just a nice thing to create if you can afford to do it.

So, I started to look for ways to do good quality productions at a fraction of the cost, and in that search, I came across Elevenlabs. After taking a short how-to course on using Elevenlabs to make audiobooks, I have arrived here at the beginning of a slow process of producing audio files.

I am starting my audiobook sharing on YouTube with the little vignettes that I’ve written for The Saturday Broadsheet. Since they are so short, it’s been a good way for me to practice my production and video making skills. I hope you will give at least one a listen and hopefully, you’ll find some enjoyment in these audiobooks. But, like I said; I know this won’t be for everyone. It’s not intended to be.

As I get each audiobook ready, I plan to schedule and share these videos on Saturdays on YouTube. So, if this is something that interest you, I’d love to have you subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the notification button so you won’t miss when I upload a new story.

I am posting the first vignette, Percival the Frog, below. You can listen to it here or click through to YouTube.

I do hope that this will make my books more accessible to more readers.

<3 Leenie

My Favourite and Least Part of Publishing

There are so many tasks that go into a published book, and today, I’m sharing the parts that are currently my most and least favourite parts of the publishing process.

Enjoy!