Feral is now available as an audiobook. You can get it today, RIGHT NOW, at fine retailers such as Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I couldn’t be more excited to share this with you. No, it’s not the first of my books to be adapted into audiobook, but it is the first I’ll wholeheartedly support and recommend.
For you mercenaries who are just here for the links, let’s do that first. Head over to Audible and get downloading. Of course, you can always buy via Amazon as well. It should be hitting iTunes in another day or two. I’ll update this article when that happens.
Now if you’re still reading, I want to take an opportunity to talk briefly about why Matt Godfrey’s brilliant read of my first novel means so much to me.
I’m not someone who likes to dwell on my words once a book is finished. I’m just too exhausted to revisit the individual battles after the war has been won. So I didn’t want to listen to this audiobook at all. In my head, I’d be too focused on the “errors.” That is to say, all the ways in which 2018 Matt would’ve written things differently. My ego’s fragile and I had no desire to take myself down a few pegs just as I’m beginning to feel good about this whole writing thing.
There’d be no way I could enjoy this, right?
Well, here’s the thing. Within a minute of clicking play, narrator Matt Godfrey drew me right in. All of those “first book” sentences were smoothed right over by an artist with genuine talent for bringing the written word to life. As the audiobook played on, I listened to my characters take shape right before my ears. I started to find excuses to keep listening night after night and the twelve hours raced right by. Those “errors” I was so worried about catching were just part of the story, and Matt’s narration is so good that I was glad to spend more time in this world. Inside my characters’ heads.
It feels egomaniacal to say something like that, but I’d be lying if I didn’t. I recall hearing somewhere that Stephen King once said that he considers his Dark Tower audiobooks the premiere way to experience those stories. I say the same of Feral as read by Matt Godfrey.
Longtime readers know that I wrote Feral between 2006-2010, and that it was first published in 2012. It was my first book and, if I’m being perfectly honest, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. It’s a miracle that the book was any good at all, or even readable. I’d like to think my skills as a writer have evolved since then, but that doesn’t make me any less proud of Feral. Getting a really killer audiobook out of the deal makes me so incredibly happy.
So whether or not you’ve read the book before or intend to experience it for the first time, I think you’re going to love what Matt Godfrey does here.
I do.