(Update: 21-05-2021), I’m in the process of moving Hosts, but I’m also dragging all this old tat over with me (for prosperity), because you never know, years from now – the data miners and text diggers might find it amusing. A less amusing fact: is that all of my old download links have been removed.

Hello:

Well that took forever .. I started the re-write of ‘Book One the Gathering’, just after August the 9th 2011, and finished it on 23rd of September this year, is it still the same one? It doesn’t feel like it.

It represents a major update, and re-write and has taken me over one and a half months with a proof-reader to get it right, but it’s finally finished. It’s on my web site as a download. The Book now has all those ‘Typos’ removed. It forms into constructive sentences, with commas, and breaks inserted, and where they’re supposed to be .. I’ve declared it as Version 7.a, it’s also the last time I’m editing the dammed thing. What you see is what you get. BTW: You should hear It with ‘AMY’ speaking .. I think she’s great, but for you to experience ‘AMY’ for yourself you have to buy her voice license from ‘IVONA’.

Still looking into getting a distribution licence, but its expensive. That said I do need people to sample and proof it for me. [peek guider.]

Sigh: Book Two next, but not today.

Other notes:

My purchase of ClaroRead, was a waste of money. If you’re in my position use the Macro Here. Or find it. Its under the top menu : ‘About->Software Primer->Free Speech.’ It’s a full and intense tutorial. I suggest you print it out and work from that. It does work, and works well.

(Update: 21-05-2021.) Don’t waste your time: because after Word 2000, nothing macro-wise works anymore.

IVONA costs about £50.00, but it could be cheaper. I paid £32.00 for it, with a special offer.

And note: That price is for personal use only!

Unfortunately they only accept Pay-Pal, which is a pain. Anyhow for that price, it includes one VOICE : The one I use is ‘AMY’ : But ‘DAVE’ is OK. What you get for your bucks is the voice and the support Programme.

Anyhow : The Support Programme is a browser window, that does a brilliant job of saving your DOC->TXT file {because it converts it} then reads it to an MP3 audio file. You can also use it as a basic editor as well, but as I’ve said elsewhere. I needed to format my Book as I write it.

This is why ClaroRead was a waste of money:

Logic:

It’s all to do with the ‘Punctuation Editors’ that come with both ‘IVONA’ and ‘ClaroRead’. They are both completely different. So If you proof-read with ClaroRead, then use ‘AMY’ to construct your Audio file. It mispronounces common words.

For example words like ‘read’ : OK, as in. ‘You read a book, and think its great’

Now try this.

‘The book was read to him and he said it was great’.

The English is correct, but in your mind you’ve just converted the word from ‘read’ to ‘red’ as the above sentence demands. Which is why a great many people have ‘red’ my book {GRIN} Typos and all. As you read, you convert automatically.

The correct way to write the above is.

‘The book was ‘red’ to him’ and he said it was great’.

It’s spelt wrong, but sounds right. This is the job of the ‘Punctuation Editor’. It replaces words on the fly to sound the words correctly.

Another example.

Lead: 1st use, malleable soft metal, but If I wanted to write.

‘To Lead astray.’ Comes out as the metal sound, you have to write it as. ‘To leed astray.’

It’s now pronounced correctly, but spelt wrong.

And this is a good one.

Wind: As in the air blowing, or, ‘to wind someone up?’

You have to pronounce it as wy’ind.

So it has to be written as. ‘To wy’ind some one up?’ and now it sounds right, but looks completely wrong.

My friends are getting fed up with me badgering them to listen to my book, and I’d appreciate some feed back from new ears. Use the CONTACT tab if you want to consider it, but there is an intensive and complex set of conditions that must be met before I can release it. Namely it should be understood its not for general distribution. Just for testing purposes only and at no point does it become yours to copy or re-distribute. I need ear testers, could you do it?

And reconsider it hard before you say yes. The files aren’t small. They constitute a whopping 697 Meg. I don’t know how this will play out, so I’ve buried this invite inside my rambling post. If you’ve got this far you must be interested.

One of my words I had to replace was ‘Tra’: Who was, and is, one of my characters, in Gennaro’s Children. It came out sounding like Tr’a .. no ‘y’ on the back of it. I had to replace the word with ‘tray’, to get it to sound right, and hit a brick wall in ClaroRead as in. ‘She carried a tray in from the living room!’ : The word ‘tray’ double spoke! But
in IVONA Voice it was perfect.

Now also ClaroRead doesn’t save as MP3 files. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t, and I’ve got the ‘LAME’ files for MP3 installed. Audacity finds it OK, but ClaroRead won’t?

All in all. I’m not really happy with ClaroRead. Another thing, ‘the Spell Checker’ is a swine to use, and as for trying to add words? Forget it. You need administrator privileges to work with it. And I’ve learned to my cost that you don’t run your machine as an admin.

It’s sad really, because that was one of the big selling points with ClaroRead and why I went for it in the first place. We’ll see later when I shift from ‘Word 2000’ to something cheap and cheerful that saves in the Windows . ‘DOC’ format, because the spell checker in Word is really showing it age.

The future is bright, the future has been read.

Thanks for reading : Jessy.