A Covid-19 Success Story: Speak Softly My Love, an Audiobook. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako


 

To fall in love is to be young again. To count the cost is to die a little bit inside. In Speak Softly My Love, Inspector Gilles Maintenon goes out for a litre of milk and stumbles across a dead man. The trouble is, when the dead get up and walk away. They have one too many missing-person reports, too many wives, girlfriends and other mysterious blondes.

Louis Shalako has released his first audiobook, Speak Softly My Love, an Inspector Gilles Maintenon murder mystery. Read by Mike Manz, it’s available through Audible, Amazon and iTunes.

“Mike was looking to build his portfolio as a voice actor. I had published it five or six years ago. There’s nothing to lose. Audiobooks are big right now. You have to get that first one out, to do the work and to learn the lessons.” It’s all uphill from there.

Choosing his first audiobook was a no-brainer.

“I liked the cover with the sultry blonde. With a series, building readership is easier. If they like one, they like them all. The Maintenon stories are set in Paris, in the twenties and thirties. The world is in ferment. Recent history hasn’t been written yet. The writer, and the readers, get to play in that world.” There is a certain dark humour.

“Inspector Maintenon, a WW I veteran and a middle-aged widower, just wants to get the right guy. The price of a mistake is to send an innocent person to the guillotine.” He’s very French, but not a parody.

Louis hopes to produce further titles in the series. He studied Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College.

 “I wanted someone to teach me how to write. That was my dream. I’ve put over thirty years into it. You get out of it what you put into it.”

“When I really started, on the internet for the first time, a famous and successful author said, a professional writer can write anything.” The real challenge is our expectations.

“I can write and edit a sixty-thousand word novel in a hundred and fifty to two hundred hours. You just put your head down and do the work. It’s not hard—it just takes some patience.”

“I’ve gotten three-quarters into writing a book, and I still didn’t know how it ended.” It’s actually better to have the gag first, to go back in time, and then write towards that end point.

To take it from text both adds something, and possibly takes something away.

“It is to create a completely different work of art. In terms of the experience, there was a book that I wrote six years ago. I hadn’t read it since, and then it was being read back to me by a talented voice actor.” All you can is to sit there and just listen.

“When it’s published, you sit there and wait to see if anyone will buy it.”

Louis has given away 150,000 ebooks in ten years just by setting the price at zero. All ebook titles are currently free for the duration, on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, iTunes and other platforms.

“It’s not really about money. It’s not about me. It’s about love. I know it sounds mad. But. You want people to enjoy your book.”

With Mike Manz living in Hangzhou, China, under lockdown and having lost a teaching job, there were some obvious challenges. Paying jobs had to come first, ahead of the more chancy royalty-sharing agreement.

“The point is, Mike got it done, which shows character. I am very happy with the results.”

The audiobook is available from Audible, Amazon and on iTunes.

It's also free to listen to with an Audible trial membership.



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Check out Louis' drawings on Fine Art America.

Thank you for reading, and listening.