Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Lurking Shadows

The new visitor to The Pulp Reader may not realize that this blog started out as a repository for Text to Speech generated audiobooks. If you look at the mission statement at the very bottom of this page you will see where this all started.

As time has gone by there has been some evolution in the content. The Pulp Reader covers pulp, Noir, cliffhanger and classic movie reviews, news of what is going on in video and audio related media and anything else of a general interest to a pulp book, audio and movie fan.

But once in a while I still have a book I'd like to share. And this is somewhat exciting, at least for me, that today I'm experimenting with a new TTS reader. I'm always looking for the latest in technology so that the TTS audiobooks can sound as natural as possible.  I stumbled across a nice British voice that seems to pronounce most words very well without the hitches and sometimes garbled sounds that come with machine driven audio. 

Today's experiment is from the man who is considered the father of the "Hard-Boiled" genre, Carroll John Daly. Though his writing can be a little creaky, it is for the most part a truly pulpy thrill ride that is full of tough good guys and even tougher bad guys.  Outside of my acute admiration for both his Race Williams and Satan Hall stories, there is not much I can tell you that has not been told by more capable hands than mine.

Therefore I leave you with some links for further edification and finally the book Lurking Shadows.  I would be interested in knowing what you think of this new TTS voice. Is it easy to listen to? Is it a better voice than the traditional TTS voice that I use? Let me know.

LISTENING OPTIONS:
listen to LURKING SHADOWS at archive.org!
Direct Download the zip file here
Play the stream in your media player.

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