As old readers will know and new ones can tell from the left column, one of the things I do besides lawyering is writing satirical, political cybersecurity thrillers - four to date, with a fifth out within a couple of months. Recently, Tantor Media offered me a contract to bring out the first three titles in audio. Tantor is an imprint of the largest publisher of audiobooks in the world, and I was delighted to say yes. Now the first title, The Alexandria Project, a Tale of Treachery and Technology, is available at Audible, Amazon, and everywhere else audiobooks are sold.

And it all began right here at the Standards Blog.

Longtime readers will recall that one day way back in 2011 my usual flow of blog posts on standards and open source issues was interrupted by something new: the prologue of what I said would be a cybersecurity thriller. For the next thirty-six weeks, I posted a new chapter every week. In some ways, that was the easy part. Learning the ins and outs of the rapidly emerging world of self-publishing and promotion was far more difficult. Seeing my titles come out in audio, and through a publisher, is the latest step in that road.

I’m delighted to note that the narrator of all the titles will be Roger Wayne. You can find the 116 titles he’s narrated to date here. They include books by many best-selling fiction authors, including Elliott James, Forest Pritchard, Lorelie James, Kim Holden, T.M. Frazier, and Drew Hayes, to name just a few. He also narrates best sellers for many non-fiction authors, including Erik Barker and James Campbell.

Loyal Friends of Frank would of course require our hero’s narrator to be capable of rising to the challenge of convincingly expressing both irony and humor. You will therefore be comforted to learn that one of Roger’s more popular non-fiction narrations earned a performance review of 4.6 out of 5 stars on an astonishing 85,199 ratings. What best-selling title was that, you ask? That would be Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. I’m sure you’ll enjoy Roger’s narration.

You can look forward to the release of the next two titles as follows:

• September 19 – The Lafayette Campaign, a Tale of Deception and Elections
• October 9 – The Doodlebug War, a Tale of Fanatics and Romantics

If you decide to give any of my books a listen, I do hope you’ll take the time to post a brief review. If you do, I’ll thank you – and so will Frank.

I also have some free copy download codes and would be delighted to send one to any of my loyal readers that would be interested in posting a review after they’ve listened to it. As with eBooks, a strong showing of favorable reviews is crucial to getting exposure and further sales.