Monthly Archives: August 2017

I am exploring having “My Old Clock” recorded, using Audiobook Creation Exchange

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I am exploring having my collection of poetry, “My Old Clock I Wind” recorded, using Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX).

ACX allows authors to record their own work and upload to various audio book channels to facilitate it’s sale.

Alternatively authors may advertise for the services of suitable readers using ACX. I have gone down the latter route.

My pitch for a reader to narrate “My Old Clock I Wind” can be found here, https://www.acx.com/titleview/A3EGFIZRP3GE9R.

“My Old Clock” is currently available, in paperback and ebook formats from Moyhill, http://moyhill.com/clock/, and as an ebook only from Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0735JBVBG.

There Was A Young Lady Called Gale

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There was a young lady called Gale
Who drank 10 pints of ale.
When the barman asked “are you okay?”
She replied “tomorrow I will pay,
Without fail, for all of this ale …”!

A Latter Day Dorian Gray

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I am sick of plastic grins
And half-hidden sins,
And those who wink
And think
I do not see
What they see
In me.

Shall I spend my day
(Like Dorian Gray)
Gazing at a portrait
I hate,
Because it ages not,
While I lose the plot
And myself enfold
In arms that are loathe to hold?

In the attic of my mind
I find
Skeletons that given half a chance,
Would dance in the bright day
And give the game away.

It is plain to see
That it is me
Who holds the attic’s key
(Though I can not wield the knife
That will end the portrait’s life).

The Great Wall of China

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Those who control
And patrol
Are accepted
(not rejected),
For they prevent disorder
By protecting the cyber border.

Who needs Mill
When you can shop
As you will.
And the chop does fall
On those who look beyond the Chinese wall.

—

On BBC Radio 4’s “The World Tonight”, which was broadcast on Thursday 3 August, an interviewer asked a number of Chinese people what they thought of their country’s heavily restricted internet. (In China Twitter, Facebook and Google are banned and government approved channels are utilised by those wishing to go online). A few chinese do bypass blocking by using Virtual Private Networks (VPNS) and other similar services, however the majority of the Chinese population search for information and interact online using the approved (government) channels.
None of those interviewed criticised censorship. Indeed one interviewee went so far as to say that he approved of it, as the government needs to prevent disorder.
The interviews took place in a public park, which cause me to wonder whether all those being interviewed would have been quite so supportive of the Chinese Wall had the questioning taken place in private.
While I have visited China, I did not go online while there so have no experience of the great cyber wall surrounding that country.

Reading for All

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Being blind and unable to read print, I find the Amazon Kindle’s text to speech facility a huge boon. For anyone who is unaware of the text to speech facility, when activated, it reads aloud books where the author/publisher has enabled speech. While the reading voice is robotic, it has improved over the years and (in my experience) once the reader becomes lost in a good book, it is easy to forget that a dalek is doing the reading!

The majority of books in the Amazon Kindle store have text to speech enabled. Of those which do not, most (perhaps all) are available as audible downloads from audible.co.uk/audible.com. However, Audible titles are, on the whole more expensive than their Kindle counterparts, which means that someone who is unable to read print must (if the text to speech facility is not enabled on the Kindle version) spend more to obtain the book in audio form. Personally I believe that all titles should have text to speech enabled irrespective of whether they are available from Audible or other suppliers of audio titles, as it is wrong that a blind individual has to pay more for an accessible version of a book.

All of my books have text to speech enabled meaning that they are accessible to all. In addition my collection of poetry, “Lost in the Labyrinth of My Mind” can be purchased, in braille from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), while my latest poetry book, “My Old Clock I Wind” is in the process of being added to RNIB’s library.

To purchase “Lost in the Labyrinth of My Mind” in braille please go to, http://www.rniblibrary.com/iguana/www.main.cls?surl=search#savelist=General_*_LOSTLABYRINTH, and to buy it in print or ebook formats please visit, http://moyhill.com/lost/. To obtain “My Old Clock I Wind in ebook or paperback please visit, http://moyhill.com/clock/.

You can find links to all of my titles on my website, https://newauthoronline.com/about/.

Kevin