P.J. Murphy's Writer Site

The audiobook version of Six Steps to Salvation was released today on Audible UK, US, Amazon and Apple Books.

You can listen to a sample here:

‘Better late than never!’ you might say, and I would agree with you. I had intended for the audiobook version to come out on the same day as the novel, but for various reasons too annoying to recount here, that didn’t happen. Still, here it is!

Six Steps to Salvation is narrated by Jez Sands, the guy I worked with on Dead Letters. He did a wonderful job with Dead Letters, so I approached him again. My thinking was also to increase read-through from one audiobook to the other. As a recent convert to audiobooks, I’m well aware that the voice of the person reading the book is just as important as what they’re reading. If listeners like one, they’ll hopefully move on to the other.

Jez did a particularly good job with the various character dialects in Dead Letters. Without thinking about it, I ramped up the difficulty level for him with Six Steps. This novel is set internationally, featuring characters from all manner of countries. Of course, I didn’t think to mention this when I approached Jez, so he found himself switching accents multiple times within dialogues, which was quite a challenge.

Still, he did a much better job than I would have and hopefully offended a smaller swathe of my readership. Whenever I attempt accents, they all sound like a cross between Scottish, Indian, and Australian, offending all three nationalities and everyone in between.

I’ve posted previously about the process of getting an audiobook produced (My audiobook adventure, parts 1, 2 and 3), so I won’t repeat it here. What I will say is that, once again, it was a pleasure to experience my own writing as a consumer. There’s something about being read to that allows you to take distance from your writing. It also makes it much easier to pick up repeated words and phrases. They do say that one of the best ways to self-edit is to read aloud your own work. I’ve never had the time or inclination to do that, but suffice to say that listening to Jez’s recording resulted in a few last-minute edits to the novel’s text, and he was nice enough to accommodate them into the recording.

Where to now with my audiobook adventures? Well, I hope that this version of Six Steps sells a bit better than the Dead Letters audiobook. That version suffered from being released some time after the paperback / ebook version, so it became quite difficult to market. Here’s hoping that Six Steps picks up better. If so, I would contemplate commissioning an audio version of Troubleshot and Yesterday’s Shadow.

So please, go forth and listen!!