Milestone: Hunters Receives Full Audio Adaptation Treatment

It’s funny what heuristics you take as gospel end up revealing themselves as utterly rotted beams on which to build your worldview.

For example, I’m of an age where growing up we learned Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it true…..wait no, not that one, that is still a really good one…

Ahh yeah it’s Never make friends with strangers on the internet.

Yeah, that one!

It’s woefully antiquated. It’s advice that, had I kept it as gospel truth, would have prevented me from becoming, dare I say…friends with one Stephen Roddewig.

And then I wouldn’t have entered into a totally official and binding bet around a recent Vocal challenge with Stephen.

And then, once I won said totally official and binding bet, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work with Stephen on what is definitely the coolest piece of content I’ve created so far. It was a simple bet (in which all the rewards were squarely in my favor with absolutely nothing risked—also known as the best kind of bet) over the History Would Have Burned This Page challenge.

A simple proposition: if I finished ahead of him, he would produce a dramatic reading of one of my stories.

And boy did he produce.

Enter the elite Jonathan Kilgore, Stephen’s longtime compatriot and Narrator of A Bloody Business, The Opening Salvo, and The Counterattack.

A quick bribe by Stephen with tickets to see the incomparable Weird Al, and Jonathan Kilgore swiftly agreed, “sure, I’ll do your dirty work. Also, get better at making bets,” (unconfirmed quote but ehh).

Thus, the audio version of Hunters was born.

I thought the original was mostly polished, it did place in another contest after all, but Stephen was an elite editor with a sharp red pen, something that should come as no surprise. Unconstrained by word count and unleashed through a professional narrator in all senses of the word, this is how the story should be experienced.

I never imagined I’d create something like this, and it’s been a nice kick in the ass to push forward on some other pieces. Most importantly, this is why we join in writer communities, whether as big as the entire Vocal-base, or as small as a couple of guys bullshitting with a Scot across the Atlantic.

Okay, without further ado:

And if you want to follow along with narration, the updated version is here:

If you want to hear more professional quality works by independent artists why don’t you start with a simple subscribe to Jon and Stephen Recorded Readings? I know he’s cooking up a wild season of content that will be hitting the feed soon! Here happens to be a free chapter of A Bloody Business for you to feast on (before being a great champion of the arts and getting a copy for yourself—nudge and a wink)

A final note, in this age of AI, nothing is more important than creators supporting real creators. I implore you to read other creator’s works, get in the comments, leave good reviews, and engage person to person. It’s a little thing that goes a very long way.

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A/N:

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