The Worldwrights
Our latest title: The Worldwrights by Max Grant:
Kalukan awakens from millenia of cold sleep to find his companions dead. He has been charged by the long-dead Worldwrights to protect their creation from its out-of-control Overseer.
As Kalukan prepares for his final quest against the Overseer, now named the Ghala, he begins to learn that the World’s purpose is not that which he was taught. With a frayed sense of faith in his purpose, Kalukan sets out to reach the inexplicable construction known as the Skylock, where history tells him a city will be built to stand againstthe Ghala, a final bastion of civilization. Kalukan hopes but cannot believe that he is the hero they imagine he is.
August 7th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Whoa! I see that Kalukan and his merry band are actually charting, and getting ratings. I have no way of telling who it is who’s listening in, but I’m glad you’re liking it. Thanks for listening, and I promise there are more chapters on the way. I have recorded chapters 6-9 and I’m finished producing/editing all but one of those chapters. I’ll be releasing them over the next couple of weeks. That takes us to the middle of the book.
August 7th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Hi Max-
I just recently subscribed to your story. Although I’ve olny made it through the first chapter I’m really enjoying it.
Keep up the great work!
M
September 8th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
I see someone is still listening. I am releasing chapter 8 — waiting for it to be put up now. And someone has bought the book from Lulu. I hope to have the book back up on Amazon soon, and I’m hoping to have the rest of the episodes recorded here in a couple of weeks. I will then speed up the releases to get the thing out. Glad to see that people are liking it.
September 14th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
OMG! I just found the statistics page for my book, which I had no idea existed until I started poking around. I had NO IDEA that over 300 people were listening. I also just spotted that two more of you have given me ratings. Thanks so much.
I am absolutely jazzed about this. Chapter 9 will be up this weekend, and that’s half of the book. I have not recorded chapters 10-18 yet, but damn I’ll get started right away.
September 20th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
OK. Chapter 9 is up, and 10 is ready to go. I will probably release it this weekend. As I type this I’m mixing 11 down. That leaves 7 chapters to go. I hope the outage didn’t mess people up too badly.
If anyone has any comments about my production values on this please don’t hesitate to drop me a line, either here, on my website, or on my blog: http://maxgrant.blogspot.com. I’m especially interested in people’s opinion of the soundtrack and its volume. I am basically doing atmospheric chords adlib throughout the track. I keep it low so you can tune it out if you don’t want to hear it very much. Occasionally I’ll mix up this or that bit; sometimes I’m quoting actual completed compositions that I’ve dredged up from the past. Anyway, I hope that the quality of the narration has noticably improved throughout the recording: I feel I’ve learned a lot doing this and grown as a narrator.
September 27th, 2006 at 11:30 am
OK. A few issues with my internet connectivity. I hope to publish chapter 10 up tonight. I’m looking at my ratings and my subscriptions, and I’m hoping that the 36+ people who have subscribed this week aren’t repeat subscribers from Before The Big Move.
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:04 am
What a fantastic adventure you create. I have not read anything so well imagined nor have I ever heard audiobooks as original as this. from the creation of this world I am cleansed of any familiarity of reality. everything in this world is alien and new. This story is simply an exploration in imagination. Keep up the good work and I hope to have the next chapter soon.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Thank you for your very kind review, Conook. I believe yours is the first unsolicited review I’ve gotten. I will be mixing down and releasing Chapter 11 in a couple of days — and I’m inspired that my stories are being enjoyed.
October 14th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Greetings, companions of Kalukan! Chapter 12 should be appearing shortly. I spent more time with the music for this one than I usually do, putting multi-part compositions in, because essentially the whole chapter is a battle sequence and I wanted to add some zing to it. I’ve enjoyed “scoring” my own book and I think this one will be the most rewarding for that. Enjoy!
October 22nd, 2006 at 2:41 pm
I AM enjoying this story.
That said, your narration needs work. Hoping that my criticism does not sound overly negative, you sound like you are reading a list. You often sound bored when you read.
November 7th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Sorry about the long gap. This will be the fourth time I’ve tried to update the blog for this book here. Let’s hope it takes. I have just uploaded Chapter 13. I see a lot of people queued up at the end of 12. Some real life issues have intervened. I’ve branched out into adding some small sound effects and other interesting studio trickery to the podcast. I’m hoping it is more interesting.
Henk, I do hope your opinion was formed sometime in the first five chapters — I can give you that. I re-listened to some of them earlier and I thought I was reading in a “golf whisper.” I hope that your opinion of the later chapters improves. I have tried to make use of my voice range a little more (I can actually be very loud if I want to, and I often pull back to avoid crashing my meters when I read). Anyway, point taken and I’m learning. There are more books after this one. I already have all kinds of ideas about how I’m going to podcast them.
November 14th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Real quick: there’s been a game of 3-chapter monte going on here, and somehow Chapter 14 has gotten published ahead of Chapter 13. I’m hoping to get this corrected real soon now before too many more people pull it down. So you aren’t losing your mind if you see this going on.
December 20th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Chapter 15 is on its way. I uploaded night before last and I guess the new schedule is to release chapters on the weekend.
15 is the longest chapter I’ve done since 8 — almost an hour. Editing was a major undertaking. The next 3 chapters put together won’t be quite as long as 15, and those are the last, so hopefully I will be done here soon. I have learned a lot from this process and I’m eager to do another book with my lessons learned.
January 15th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
This should be the final gap. I lost my voice over the holidays and am just now getting back to where I can read. I should have completed chapters sometime this Sunday, and I intend to finish the remaining three, which are fairly short. I remind myself that I’m never going to go into live production on one of these again unless I’ve got 80% of the work done before I air it.
January 18th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I listened to Chapter 1 last night. I am worried about Kalukan. I fear he is great danger. I am slowly going to listen to the remaining chapters over the next few weeks.
My compliments on another of your many life achievements. You are quite the star! -Alan
January 28th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
OK, this is it. I’m in the process of mastering down the last three chapters as I type. With any luck they’ll be put up very quickly after I submit them.
It took all my spare time this week to wrap these up, and boy is it nice to be finished. I didn’t take this long to *write* the book in the first place. Thanks to everyone who’s tuned in for your patience and support. I hope the finished product is to your liking. I tried to have some fun with the sound design this time around and I’ve learned some cool stuff. The next time I do a podcast I’m likely to set aside an entire year to work it up and do a whole soundscape for it. The few moments where I have put in effects have been very rewarding.
February 5th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Just finished the book this morning and I really enjoyed it. The ending was quite enlightening.
Max it seems as though you are really trying to improve on your podcasting abilities so I’ll provide a little feedback there. Overall your narration has gotten a lot better and more entertaining. Technically I noticed that even in the latest chapters your voice sometimes echoes just a bit. The underlying soundtrack is quite good and definitely adds value and entertainment to the listening experience. It isn’t too loud, in fact I’d say most of the time it is just right.
Occasionally I found it hard to keep track of who is who and where they were in the story. I had trouble linking the names to the entity. I’d possibly simplify the names a bit, they can still have a mystical sound to them while being common. Part of my problem was that the episodes were often spread far apart from each other so I would forget exactly where I was in the book last chapter. In this case it might be good to have a fifteen or twenty second review at the beginning of each chapter.
Keep up the good work!
February 5th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Thanks for the feedback, Red Chef. I’m glad someone could hear the improvement in the narration style. I am of half a mind to ask Matt if I can re-submit the first 5 chapters.
The names issue with the story I can totally agree with. I wrote this story almost 18 years ago, so some aspects of it are very immature to me. I have written much since then. I re-worked a lot of aspects of the story as I brought it to “publication” but I completely rewrote the climax of the story at the 11th hour and was so pleased with how it came out I almost started completely over — it was very difficult to decide when to let go of it.
As for the episode spread — that’ll never happen again. I will not release any episodes of a podcast again until I am over 75% done with the entire recording. There were too many unexpected setbacks that slowed it down and I was painfully conscious that readers were dropping out left and right as they waited for me to get on with it. And the “recap” is a good suggestion too. Thanks so much for listening. There is more to come, I assure you.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Forget the half mind, Max. Just do it. Updating chapters is a fairly simple task, and if it will make your book sound better, go for it!
E.
March 17th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
My first book and experienxe with Max Grant was vey pleasureable. The Worldwrights is a wonderfully written book packed with a full exciting cast of characters on both sides of good and evil. I sill amazes me how these talented writers can keep their story consistently going forward with so many intertwineing story lines going in and out. Every one of these favorite authors of mine I am so surprised they are not on the New York Times Best Sellers List each and every week at least one of the. Max Grant is the latest entry into my list of personal favorites, I hope to see more from him very soon.. In years to come I hope we can all look back and see what contribution Podiobooks has made to the success of this new type of distribution of new authors and gives the new authors the recognition they all rightfully deserve. This book could be easily adapted to a beautifully crafted film. We rae now seeing the success of Seth Harwood with his Jack Palm Crime Series, Scott Sigler with his huge successes with Infected, and now Nocturnal, Tee Morris Billbub Baddings and of course Moravi (another great movie project) and I could go on and on. Definately recommend everone to come to Podiobooks. They are the formost repository for the latest in the up to date and popular young writers. You will see them here before anywhere else most of the time.
Good job Max Grant with the Worldwrights and I will be waiting for many more great novels and novella’s from you.
Anthony Cascella