Just over a week ago while posting to my McGyver blog, I saw a button that asked if I wanted to turn this post into a podcast. I had never seen this in the hundreds of posts I’ve published. Looking for new ways to promote my books and in particular my upcoming fantasy novel, Dragons in the Dungeon, I took the plunge. Clicking the button transferred me to Anchor.

Once at Anchor, I found my way around quickly. The learning curve wasn’t that steep. There were only two confusing aspects of it.

1) All my posts for my Diane McGyver blog were imported. I don’t know if there was an option to avoid this, but there they were. That left me searching for my newest one. Thankfully, there was a notice at the top that said if I couldn’t find my post, it was on the last page, and there it was.

2) The link to the exact podcast was difficult to find. The links provided were to the homepages of my podcast at Anchor and Spotify. I clicked the podcast, got the link, then posted it to my blog.

My first few podcasts had this at the beginning:

Prefer to listen to this post?

No problem. I’m giving Anchor and Spotify a whirl.

To listen to this blog post recorded by Anchor, click here. If you want to hear it on Spotify, click here. Let me know what you think about it. No, that is not my voice, but he does read very well.

Prefer to read? Here it is…

Links

Once the podcast was recorded with the gentleman’s voice, I went back to my blog and added the links. Now, I leave this introduction out, record the podcast and then return to the post and add the introduction and links.

Recorded Voice

As D. G. Kaye correctly pointed out in the comment section of one of the posts: I feel it’s more authentic to use my own voice than a robotic one.

She’s right. It is. But this venture was unplanned. The button was there, I clicked and carried on. I wasn’t waiting. I was not set up to record my voice. I’m still not, but I plan to within a few weeks. Fortunately, the computer voice is one of the smoothest I’ve ever heard. The male voice, that is.  We get to choose between a male and a female voice, and the female voice grates my nerves, so she’s out.

Plans

I’m going to play with this for a few months to see if I like it and to see if it generates listeners. I’m not going to create a podcast from every post. Some won’t work. I’m thinking of tours of my garden that are mostly images. They wouldn’t make good podcasts. In fact, the only podcasts I will create will focus on my upcoming novel: Dragons in the Dungeon.

I’ll keep you posted to what comes of it and why I’m limiting it to one book.

Posts

Currently, I have four podcasts/posts. The most recent one is here: The title of my fantasy novel is…

Do you have a podcast? Do you use Anchor to create one from your blog? What do you think about it?