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YouTube Playlist: “Vazev, 1887”

Вазев, 1887

Audiobook


(Original publication: August 20, 2022. Прочетете поста на български.)

Readers, supporters, patrons, all-in-all incredible people! I am happy to announce that the recording of the first novelette in the Vazev trilogy has been completed and that the audiobook download is completely free for all members right from this link: buymeacoffee.com/petertoushkov/e/84296

I completed this little project in the span of 42 days—including reading the novelette aloud and putting together the resulting audio recordings. The audiobook runs for 2 hours and 22 minutes. It’s available in three audio formats: M4B, M4A, and MP3. You are of course free and very welcome to share with your friends the files of the audiobook and the link to its YouTube playlist:

A Word About the Novelette


“Vazev, 1887” is written in the speculative fiction genre. Its subgenre is alternate history.

In this strange adventure-romance, the prototype for whose main character is Bulgarian writer Ivan Vazov (1850-1921), Bulgaria has lost, instead of winning, the Serbo-Bulgarian War. The state’s capital is besieged by foreign troops and the government is in ruins. Everything is at stake while our hero, the poet, writer, and publicist Yoan Vazev, leads his daily battles from the pages of the City Herald newspaper or, quite frankly, through any other means possible when it comes to truth, justice, and ideals.

The story of me finishing writing it is kind of sad. Back in 2017 and based on this novelette alone, I signed a deal with Ciela Publishing House to deliver a manuscript of a three-part novel. “1887” was supposed to be Part One followed by two more exciting, refreshingly weird, and highly polished parts depicting the main character in a chain of suspiciously unrelated (and contradicting each other) periods of his life. Three years later, I was forced to postpone indefinitely the novel having major headaches with Part Three. The publishing house graciously waved the breach of contract. Maybe one day the novel will be finished, but, yeah, this would be another, hopefully happier story. In the meanwhile, trying to salvage the first part, I included it in my second book, the short story collection “Bluegrass” (ErgoBooks Publishing House, 2021).

Some reviewers argue that the novelette “Vazev, 1887” is written “in the language of the 19th century,” and that, funnily enough, alongside my other work, it proves that I am “a language chameleon.”

I am always grateful of such a reader insight. One of the problems facing the obscure, practically unknown, writer with one or even a second book that doesn’t have the support of a competent marketing machine behind their back, is the impression that the narrator’s voice and the author’s voice in their work are one and the same thing—that the author has been actually brought up during the 19th century, or that during their workers’ class upbringing they didn’t read a single book and their drug addiction forced them to sell their body instead of getting a degree in the humanities. You must communicate these kinds of things to the inattentive, first-time-hearing-of-you reader if you are going to compete against well-known authors.

Anyway, if you are interested of what other people say about “Vazev,1887”, I could happily direct you to “The Neanderthal’s Cave” and the “First Impressions from my Latest Readings” reviews.

A Word About Formats


This audiobook is DRM free. Which means you could listen to it on as many devices you want, in any audio player you’d like.

M4B is a specialized format geared towards audiobook content. With it, the whole audiobook is packaged in a single file with internal table of contents for the individual chapters. You could listen to it without problems in iTunes (Windows, MacOS), VLC (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android), and Smart AudioBook Player (Android).

The M4A and MP3 formats are quite popular, so I won’t bore you with them. In them, and in this particular case, every chapter is in its own file and you could listen to them in much the same way in the audio players listed above.

The Audiobook World


I realize that production wise, I am neither Storytel nor Audible. If you enjoy the novelette as it is, please contact me through any of your preferred channels and I’ll promptly record more of my short stories and even my first book, the hard-boiled alternate history crime novel (set in the 1950s), “Department H” (ErgoBooks Publishing House, 2015). I am not earning anything from YouTube. Buy me a coffee is much better suited for a writer to do this. But I simply love the contact with new readers through this medium.

Have a One-of-a-Kind Summer


Thank you for your support, for the feedback, for your general interest, and for the encouragement. Literally all these things helped me finish the recording and, in a way, kept me busy throughout the start of the summer. Now I wonder what happens in the next chapter.