This is the 108th installment of West Wind, your weekly drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season. That’s a super important milestone!
Happy March everyone! It’s been a bit, but that’s not surprising. I had a long stretch of posting every day, but that was when I had time to sit down and write a newsletter regularly. I do have time for that now, but I’ve been choosing to focus it on other things. Like what, you ask?
Audiobook cover coming soon
I’m nearly halfway done with the audiobook for Reach Book 1, written by Olivia McCarthy. This project has been different from previous narrations in that it’s written in first person, so I have to keep up the same voice for the narrator and the main character throughout the entire thing. I’ve caught a few times where my “regular” narrator voice slips in, but thankfully it’s very easy to change those things. And halfway through the book there’s a time skip where the main character grows up (aww…) by a couple of years so that means a different voice altogether! Whew.
In the mean time, I’ve also been making steady progress on Paper & Feathers DX, the best and most exciting version of the story ever made. The audiobook version was just that, me reading it out loud. I read that the paradigm of an audiobook is “a friend reading you a story over cups of tea,” which is accurate since I drank a lot of tea and coffee when recording to keep my voice working.
But P&F-DX is something completely different. Every section is scored by music produced by the fantastically talented Peritune, enhanced with sound effects, and sprinkled with a few other surprises. If you’ve listened to the audio for the last two Frontier Flora stories, you know what it’ll be like. Which is super amazing.
How is the new version going to work with the existing audiobook, you ask? Well, it serves a different purpose. People expect specific things when listening to an audiobook, such as no music to distract from the narration. So the music-free (boring) version will remain as-is. The DX version will be added to the manuscript chapters on the World Anvil site, when P&F finally makes its debut there. I’m also setting up the requirements to publish it as a podcast, which means it will be available and downloadable for free. I’m hoping to reach new audiences with this project, and lowering the entry requirements is the best way to do that.
So that brings us to today, the one hundred and eighth West Wind newsletter! Eight is my favorite number, but 108 is my lucky number. It’s appeared a LOT over the course of my life, and I always pay attention when it does. I’m only mildly superstitious any more, but I am confident that God communicates with us in many different ways, “coincidences” being one of the most prominent ones.
108 is a prominent number in Buddhism and Hinduism, both of which I studied before my conversion. It’s the number of party members in the popular Playstation-era RPG Suikoden, which I never actually played, but I watched a friend do it, and the number stuck out to me for how specific it was.
Then came the story to tell my grandkids. My wife and I were high school sweethearts, and went to Prom together in both junior and senior years. For the last one, she brought me dress shopping. When it came time to check out, the store had a promotion where you chose a wrapped chocolate out of a bowl, and inside the wrapper was a coupon for 10, 20, or 30% off your order. Since I had a reputation for being lucky, she let me pick, and of course it was 30%. And the final total for her dress? You guessed it, $108.
I’ve carried the legacy on into my works, as well. In the world of Euphony of Seasons, there are 108 Exalts, paragons of exemplary virtue and/or heroism that have been enshrined into the modern culture. Only a few have been mentioned in stories so far, since they are a bit hard to find places for.
The other main place you’ll find it is in Frontier Flora. I decided to gradually release Florabeasts in a weekly lore drop, the ever-popular Frontier Friday, but I knew I needed a maximum number so I had a goal to work toward. I thought that 151 was a little too high, so I picked the next best number, 108. You can see the thirty Florabeasts that have yet to be discovered in the Handbook Index article. Having that many also means we can fill up two whole playing card decks, each one with a unique Florabeast and maybe their planter on them! Generation 2 is already in development, but only 54 beasts this time. We’re taking it one deck at a time from now on.
January 8th is already gone, and August 10th is too far away (in Europe, anyway), so today will be the day to celebrate this important milestone! To those of you who have read all 108 of these newsletters, you have my thanks. None of this would be possible (or necessary) if it weren’t for you, the reader. Here’s to another full round of fun and hope!
Photo by the author