Category Archives: The Race (Part 2)

“The Future Burns Bright” : Now available in audio-book format!

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I’m very proud to announce that the entire Future Burns Bright series (Storm In The North, The Race, Against Time and The Future Alight), is now available in audio-book-format! 😀

These audio-books can be purchased from the Rakuten Kobo service… surf to this URL and then do a search for “Marcus Shields” and you will see all four books* in audio-book format.

The Future Burns Bright series is, in total, a little over 60 hours long (as dictated) in audio-book format, which represents a fantastic entertainment experience for sci-fi , super-hero and modern fantasy enthusiasts with busy lifestyles or for who, for whatever reason, would prefer to listen to a book as opposed to reading it.

Note : It’s actually a bit shorter than the totality of the predecessor series, The Angel Brings Fire, largely because the first volume of The Future Burns Bright, namely Storm In The North, is the shortest of all the novels in either series.

In an earlier blog post, I explained the reasons why these creative works have been transcoded into audo-book format… and why it has taken so long to do so. Suffice it to say that the causes were all three of “practical, logistical and technological”.

For the record, although, yes, I’m not an impartial observer, if you give these audio-book series a fair hearing (pun intended) I’m sure you’ll be favorably impressed. I have tried very hard to make the speech output as perfect as possible (and I believe that overall, I’ve succeeded), although there may be isolated cases of mispronunciation, odd tone changes and so on. But I’m sure that the final results well justify the effort involved, and I’m proud of what you’ll hear when you listen to these audio-books.

The Angel Brings Fire and The Future Burns Bright audio-books are available on Kobo as downloadable volumes, broken into numerous chapters, each of which is in standard speech-quality .mp3 file format. (Let me take this opportunity to thank Kobo for being reasonable about the terms and conditions applicable to hosting my audio-books; a lot of other audio-book providers, unfortunately, are not nearly so accommodating.)

I have tried to retain the structure of the corresponding printed books as closely as possible, with only very minor adjustments (for example verbal notification of scene changes, where applicable) to accommodate audio-book mode. Each separate .mp3 is named with the chapter name and number corresponding to the same chapter in the printed or e-book versions of the same novel, to make following the plot as easy as possible.

Also, each of the Kobo The Angel Brings Fire and The Future Burns Bright audio-books includes a sample chapter that can be freely accessed by anyone with a Web browser, so you can experience a little of the audio-book in question, before making the commitment to buy it. (Note : There is a slight pause after the chapter name at the start of each chapter; this applies to the sample chapter as well, so just wait a second or two and the actual speech output will then be heard.)

The total (per storage-media) size of each complete novel in the series varies, of course, but it is typically from a low of about 250 megabytes to a high of around 650 mb. Thus the entirety of The Angel Brings Fire would take up about 2.2 gigabytes of storage space, while the complete set of The Future Burns Bright chapters would use about 1.86 gigabytes of disk space.

Another way to think about this is, having all the chapters of both series on your PC, tablet or cell phone would use slightly over 4 gigabytes of space. That’s for literally days’ worth of entertainment value. We think it’s well worth the use of your SD chip or Flash memory! 😀

Our audio-books range in price from the $15 to the $20 range (per book), which of course is roughly equivalent to what a conventional printed paperback book would cost, albeit somewhat more than the e-Book versions of each volume of the series costs. Basically, as is the case with all audio-books, you’re paying for the convenience of having someone else read you a story.

If you’re on a budget, then just get the e-Book version and read it for yourself!

We believe that having these creative works in audio-book format, will make The Angel Brings Fire and The Future Burns Bright, accessible to entirely new classes of readers, who are interested in the novels but who, for whatever reason, can’t commit to reading a long conventional book (or e-Book). We hope you’ll agree.

Stay tuned to The Angel Brings Fire blog, for updates and further details!

* As a side-note, work is now underway on converting the first sequel to The Future Burns Bright, namely Bonnie’s New Auntie, to audio-book format. According to our current schedule, which is very subject to change, we expect this project to be done by mid 3rd Quarter 2026 (or thereabouts). Bonnie Billings : Superhero will hopefully follow shortly thereafter, perhaps by the end of summer or early fall, 2026.

Jerry has a new war-song! (And… a note about his abilities.)

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As many of you already know, the more powerful characters in the Angel Brings Fire novel series, have a “war-song” — a mysterious type of half-psychic, half-real “music” that sometimes plays when these characters energize or use the alien-powers that they have inherited from the Storied Watcher.

In previous editions of the blog I have added posts that try to describe (in a very general way) what these “war-songs” sound like. The information provided earlier on is still valid, but as time goes by and as I encounter more popular music, I reserve the right to amend the allocations of “whose war-songs sound like what ‘real’ song”.

Today’s one such day… in the last “war-songs” posting I had the following remark about Jerry Kaysten, the former Chief of Staff to the (original) President of the United States :

“Jerry Kaysten : Calgary by Bon Iver, but only the short part beginning at the song’s 1:50 mark; this melody predominates when Jerry uses his “killer joke” ability. When running at high speed, his war-song sounds more like Time Turns Around by the Spoons.”

This is still accurate but there is a different piece of music that much better replicates what the quick-footed Mr. Kaysten’s personal war-song actually sounds like : the fantastic “My Decision” number by the Netherlands pop-rock group, Moss. (Not to be confused with the U.K. heavy-metal band of the same name.)

Make sure you check this one out on YouTube… it’s not only what Jerry sounds like when he gets going, but it’s a crazy good song anyway! (And it’s available for sale on iTunes, so do the right thing and pay these innovative musicians for the use of their creative works… I did.)

As an aside… it may at first seem that Jerry Kaysten’s alien-powers are relatively mundane compared to those of some of the other “post-humans” (particularly ones like Cherie Tanaka and Wolf).

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Jerry’s hyper-speed abilities, although they can only be used for a relatively short amount of time between resting-periods, can render most opponents — either “more-than-human” or just plain old Homo Sapiens — next to defenseless.

Only a very few other characters, for example Misha or Minnie Chu (and of course the Storied Watcher herself), have the reflexes and quick reaction time to adequately defend themselves against Jerry’s rapid-fire attacks. Others, such as Bob Billings, have abilities that somewhat erode Kaysten’s advantages but are still not a complete defense against him.

So give our friend Mr. Kaysten some respect… he may look like an “also-ran”… but he’s anything but! 😉

Marcus Shields