Dimp

The wait is finally over. Whispers from the Machine, book one of the Stapledon series, is available for purchase. After 18 months of intensive work, the debut is for sale on both Amazon and Ingram. While Ingram carries the paperback and hardback versions, Amazon offers those alongside the eBook edition.

In even more exciting news, the audiobook will be arriving within the next ten days. The talented Hetty Elliot did an amazing job with the narration, and I am incredibly pleased that I decided to invest in this production. Whispers from the Machine has come a long way since its inception. Both the story and my own skills as an author have grown together throughout the process. I am immensely proud of the result. It captures the exact story I wanted to tell, the characters I wanted to introduce, and the world I wanted to build.

Discover the World of the Stapledon Series

Whispers from the Machine serves as the debut entry into the wider Stapledon Series. When xenoarchaeologist Clio Cormack accidentally awakens a dormant alien megastructure, she unearths a threat that could consume humanity. To stop an ancient god from rising, she must break every law and form an alliance with a rogue AI.

This series is part of a larger ambition. It is an epic space opera chronicling the unravelling of a fragile peace between humanity and the dead gods of long-forgotten worlds. What begins with a single discovery soon reveals a history written in blood and code. As ancient secrets are unearthed, the silence of the void is broken, first by Whispers from the Machine and then by the roar of rebellion.

Looking Ahead to Book Two

Production on book two is already moving. Act one is drafted, and I am currently chipping away at the second act. My goal is to have it available within the next 18 months. I am taking every lesson learnt from writing Whispers from the Machine and pouring it into the sequel. This includes the writing process itself and the complex production steps like editing, cover design, and audiobook development.

Marketing is another hurdle, and it is a field where I still have much to learn. Whispers from the Machine sold a whopping 12 copies on its launch day. Joking aside, even that feels like a massive victory. While I continue to nudge the first book forward through marketing, my primary focus will remain on the writing.

A Quiet Launch for Whispers from the Machine

People often ask what an author does on such a momentous day. For me, it had very little to do with the book. Beyond a social media post and this blog, I had an eye test, jet washed the drive, and installed four new door handles.

It was a big day, but there was no fanfare, and I did not feel I needed any. I am simply happy to have reached this point, especially as there were many moments along the way where I was not sure I would. Watching the numbers or hitting refresh was not going to help anyone.

Whispers from the Machine is out now, and I think it is a great read, though I admit I am biased. If you have any interest in seeing what Clio found hidden in the deep void, I would very much appreciate your support.

Whispers from the Machine Davill, Richard Buy Now

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To convert CD audio into mp3s, you just follow the steps here

To play mp3 files, you download an mp3 player like Winamp here and away you go

On mobile? There are plenty of free mp3 players for your phone available, too, so check them out

If you have the CDs, it will be easier to rip them. Most music managers include this feature and you will have all the track information loaded into the file. There are also pirate websites where you can download entire albums with their metadata attached, but there could be risks associated (I would worry more about viruses than lawsuits these days, though). Deciding a method for acquiring music is a balance of the required time, the alternative costs, and other pros/cons like supporting the artist or taking the risk of pirating sites.

1. Find the song on Youtube. YT has pretty much every song at this point, usually in comparable quality to what you would get on a streaming service.

This is great if you already listen to music on Youtube, but there might be a better method for going direct from Spotify, though this will work either way. The main downside to this method is that official music (and even lyric) videos sometimes have non-music portions so you might have to listen to the whole thing to be sure. SponsorBlock will highlight non-music sections for most artists, so if you have it installed you can tell at a glance if this is the case.

2. Download the audio from YT. There are many ways to download YT videos completely for free. It’s probably against the YT terms of service, but you’re not going to get sued.

I like y2mate for downloading YT videos (or their audio in mp3s) because it’s a simple, ad-free website. You just paste in the URL for the video you want to download. Sometimes it’s laggy and you have to come back later, but usually after a few moments the video loads, you select your download quality (the highest), and then save it. For easy file management, download everything in folders for the Artist, and then sub folders for the Album, and name the MP3 file the “song name”.mp3.

3. Upload to your music player/manager of choice. The file will currently be lacking metadata (Artist, Album, track number, etc) and will be added to the library as a song with its title set as the file name minus its .mp3 extension. Various music players/managers have different ways to add metadata (usually accessed by right-clicking the song) with varying ease.

iTunes is free and and logical if you have an iPhone, but limited in its capabilities. I do all my management/listening in MusicBee (free for Windows) because of its playlist and management features, as well as having a very customizable interface. You can set it to scan the folders you download music to so it will automatically load things into your library, or do so manually. Once loaded into MusicBee, you can batch edit an entire album’s metadata at once easily with Auto-Tagging. Auto-Tag can fetch the details from the internet and fill in artist, tracks, album artwork, etc and save that information to the mp3 file. You can edit this manually if needed too. Drag and drop the edited songs to any other player you may want to add them to so it can find the files.

4. Now you can use the player of your choice to listen endlessly, form playlists, etc. Some free music managers also have music discovery/recommendation features for expanding your collection.

MusicBee allows you to create playlists with folders, subfolders, and dynamic features. You can export these playlists for cross-platform play on other computers with MusicBee installed. I think the playlist features on MusicBee are better than what is on streaming services. You can create an auto-playlist of your recently-added music so you can easily find the ones that are new and might need need editing, adding to other playlists, etc. I have custom tags for music by LGBT artists, sapphic love songs, and more. I also drag-and-drop these playlists directly into iTunes so I have them on my phone too (you can do this to make a new playlist or just edit/add songs to a current one).

There are many music managers/players, including cross-platform ones with streaming, though they usually have fees for that feature. Because you aren’t streaming the music and rather storing it, you’ll need space on each device you want to play the music on, but memory is cheap these days.

You can buy a 2TB external harddrive for less than Spotify or Youtube Premium costs for six months, so having to store the songs isn’t much of a downside. Plus, the song will never “leave the service”, you can listen to it offline, etc.