See my profile on the Eleven Reader App

I’ve been using Eleven Labs to create audio editions of my blog posts, articles, and some fiction for the past several years. I also use it as the platform for my own Wondervox venture, offering AI/synthetic audio production for clients who want that.

Before going further … I embrace technology. I consider AI a tool that can be used to make my work less time-consuming, and to make my writing available to more people. I always wonder: how many people who criticize, if not hate,  AI have insisted on using taxis instead of Uber or Lyft because of the toll those services took on taxi drivers and their families? How many of us refuse to use self-checkout because of the toll it has taken on cashiers? There are dozens of ways in which we take advantage of changing technology because of the convenience it provides us. As an author and artist, I personally do not consider what I do to be of some higher-level than the rest of humanity. A taxi driver or cashier is every bit as valuable as I am, and whatever my creative endeavors are. Writers are not special, as much as we like to think we are.

As another practical matter, I cannot afford to hire human narrators for everything I write. I’ve hired several  over the past 15 years and paid them, sometimes substantially.  I simply can’t do that anymore. I also can’t hire graphic artists to do book covers, let alone the flow of images I use on my websites. So the idea that I’m putting anyone out of work when I could not have hired them anyway is just not a strong argument.

TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

I’m inviting people to let me know which workshops they might be interested in taking, then I’ll arrange them online via Zoom, or in person. I have a wonderful workshop space available to me in Lambertville, and I’m more than happy to offer these in other venues (libraries, private spaces, and even homes!). If you’re interested in one or more workshops, just fill out the survey, provide your name and email, and look for something as soon as October. – Mark

Fiction Writing Essentials
They’re Alive! Creating Vivid Characters
Self-Publshing with KDP (Kindle Direct Publshing)
2-Hour Autobiographical Journaling Introduction

I’m currently updating these columns to publish as a 2nd edition this year, as a handout for my autobiographical journaling participants. They can all relate.

By Mark McNease

While I’ve always been a river person much more than an ocean person, my fondness for large bodies of water remains. Humans seem to share this, or at least many of us. There’s something about water … Is it where we came from? Does it remind us of the first nine months of our lives? We’ll be going on another cruise soon, and my favorite part of it is always the sea  days. Someday I’ll be as the drop of water returning to an infinite vastness of it. Until then, I’ll be drawn to the streams and the lakes and the rivers and the oceans. 

BODIES OF WATER HOLD A fascination for many people, as well as providing an indescribable comfort. I grew up in an Indiana town with two rivers, and I live just a mile from the magnificent Delaware flowing slowly between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For me there has always been something about the movement of these vast waterways that felt like home, as if I really am a fish out of water longing to jump back in where I belong and swim away.

Oceans are like that, too, multiplied a million times. Oceans are adventures without end, journeys we can only take with our minds. Even if we sail out on them in boats or cruise ships, they’re so much bigger than we are that it makes us aware of our true size. Oceans and rivers, lakes, and even streams, cannot be argued with. They are the masters of us, not us of them, and their indifference is acute. An ocean doesn’t care what I think about world events or political developments, loves lost or triumphs enjoyed. Like its celestial counterpart spread across the night sky in a trillion tiny lights, it doesn’t even know I’m alive, reminding me that I needn’t be so consumed with own existence. I’m here. So what? I’ll twinkle like a star, leap like a fish in the shallows, break like a wave, and then I’ll go away. I think of that as peaceful, not sad.

Narration provided by Wondervox.

By Mark McNease

I’ve written in several genres, formats and mediums over the years. Each has its own requirements, expectations and parameters: short stories, novellas (generally under 40,000 words), novels, poetry, screenplays, television scripts, and stage plays. For now let’s focus on some working definitions for genre fiction, nonfiction, and biography/autobiography.

For that past 15 years I’ve written primarily mysteries, thrillers, and some horror/supernatural fiction. I’ve also written countless blog posts, columns and articles, but that’s for another day and would require more words than most people want to read on this, so let’s narrow it down. Note that a lot of these apply to the genres in any form: movies, stories, TV shows, books  and more.

Horror

Horror is designed to evoke fear, dread, and a sense of the uncanny. Horror as a literary and cinematic form explores the boundaries between safety and danger, reality and the supernatural. There are also degrees of horror, from the everyday to the gruesome, from blood splatter to something simple but startling. We can be horrified without being repulsed.

I’ve attended Act 2 Books‘ Flemington Book Festival twice in the past few years, and this year they’re offering something special: Scary Story Fest, for authors in the horror and supernatural genres. I’ve written a few books myself under the name M.A. McNease (it’s my initials, not really a pen name), and I’ll have a booth among the tombstones. I’ll also be able to promote my writing workshops, as well as the audiobooks for A House in the Woods, narrated by Daniela Acetelli, and A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due, narrated by my own Wondervox

It’s been a nice boost, too, for finishing Spellbound, the second book in my duology that began with I, Warlock: The Warlock Wars Book 1.

It’s my favorte time of year, in one of my favorite locations, offering books in my favorite genres (after mysteries, of course). Hope to see you there!

Narration provided by Wondervox

By Mark McNease

People sometimes ask in the workshops I conduct: What’s the difference between a journal and a diary? Autobiographical writing (or journaling) focuses on themes that often require revisiting our lives, and writing about specific events, people, experiences and memories. I refer to it as a process of re-discovery. When we journal, it’s not uncommon to find ourselves remembering things we’d forgotten, or not thought about in a long time. It’s  not so much that we’re discovering things about ourselves and our lives, as that we are coming upon them again. You may realize that one of the effects these memories have is to reawaken us to who we already are: those parts of our character and personality that began long ago and remain foundational to our identities.

A diary, in contrast, may be described as a daily, or near-daily, recording of events, people, and experiences. It can be kept in a spiral notebook, or typed into a document, or written down in a formal diary designed for that purpose.

Here are some broader thoughts about the differences between the two:

Journal versus Diary 

A journal and a diary are both personal writing tools that people use to record their thoughts, experiences, and reflections. However, they differ in purpose, style and content.