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.