As I talked about in my last blog post, I started writing the rough draft for the novella version of ‘Hunted Under the Light of the Moon” and some of the changes I made to the original short story version. Progress has been slow, mostly because I am completely changing how the story starts. Chapter 1 now starts in the location where Jonas, our main character, is kidnapped by Darius the vampire. I just finished chapter 1 and recently learned about an AI speech tool. So I decided to have Speech Synthesis read the first part of chapter 1 of “Hunted Under the Light of the Moon.”
It is developed by ElevenLabs and I used, what I assume, is their generic voice designated Conversation/Adam (American, clear). Apparently you can upload clips of people’s voices and it will recreate them to read anything you type into the box in the voice you want.
I have to say, I was really impressed by the quality of the reading and wished I could have let it read the whole chapter. But, the free version has a 10,000 character limit so I uploaded a portion of my first chapter. Like I said, the quality is really good and even kind of spot on at points of the dialogue. Other points of the dialogue were off with the tone I envisioned in my mind.
Still, the quality is far beyond a lot of the crap used in YouTube videos that you can tell are text-to-speech.
So I decided to input the text, download the audio files, splice them together, and upload it to YouTube if you would like to hear what it sounds like while reading the text here in the blog post. I’m curious to hear what you guys think of the quality of this prime voice AI.
Personally, I think there is a lot of potential for this. Especially when it comes to creating audiobooks. It is also really useful for hearing your words spoken out loud by something else rather than yourself. So another use for this kind of technology that writers can utilize.
Hunted Under the Light of the Moon – Rough Draft
Chapter 1 – The Ambush
Jonas was sitting at his usual corner table of The Knight’s Folly, an off-the-beaten-track kind of bar that only the locals knew about, while sipping on a glass of sparkling water. He always liked to sit at this high table, his back to the wall, which provided him a view of the entire bar. Sitting there gave him a sense of security knowing that nothing could come up behind him. Especially when someone like him was accustomed to being out in the wilds where you could be attacked from behind at any moment.
At the table, sitting with him, were his two friends who he had known since middle school. To his right, Ben was cradling an almost-finished mug of amber-colored beer, while shifting it slowly back and forth across the black tabletop, while Robert was drinking a diet soda. They hadn’t ordered their food yet and were waiting for the waitress to come back after making her way around the brightly lit dining area which would be a little while. The Knight’s Folly was packed, like it was every Saturday night, and everyone was having a good time.
It was mostly an older crowd of Jackson Township residents. Most of the town’s younger bar hoppers preferred the more dazzling displays and atmospheres of trendy clubs over in Atlantic City or the rowdy rambunctiousness of a college dorm or frat house. The Knight’s Folly wasn’t cool enough for them, but it suited everyone here just fine with its more mellow atmosphere where people could actually have conversations and talk without having to yell over bass-thumping spacebar-created selections that assaulted the ears.
Though, at the moment, the music was a little more old-fashioned with Frank Sinatra’s “You Make Me Feel So Young” playing through the speakers. As it does every Saturday night when Mr and Mrs Dango, sitting together in a booth by a window, arrive. Ever since their semi-retirement, they come every Saturday night while their children and grandchildren run the restaurant and the first thing Mr Dango does is request that the establishment play that song.
Jonas could see that, even after all these years, the love between those two was still strong. Though even a blind person could see it.
“Yo, Ames, “Robert said to Jonas, a smirk on his face. “Seeing the Dango’s make you wish you were married by now?”
Jonas just looked at his friend with a slight smile and said, “Not really, no. But I can admire that their relationship is still so strong after so many years.”
“Come on, “Robert pushed while adjusting his tan-colored, buttoned down shirt.” Not even after your near-death experience down in…where were you this time?”
“Venezuela,” Ben added while wiping his hands clean of condensation from the mug of beer on his black jeans rather than on his white shirt; his old dog tags showing through the opening where the top two buttons were undone.
“Right,” Robert said. “Venezuela. Are you telling me that almost getting killed by a jaguar isn’t enough to make you think about settling down? Maybe with that young, Latina waitress they recently hired here?” Robert quickly turns to look at the waitress who is dropping off some burgers to a table of diners who belong to one of the local bowling clubs.
“She’s really cute,” Robert exclaimed to emphasize his point. “Considering how you look, she might think you are Latino yourself.”
“Hey man, “Jonas said as he continued to look around, noticing Mr Barnes in the corner sipping his beer while watching a game on the flatscreen TV. “Just because your marriage is boring doesn’t mean you can try and live vicariously through me.”
“Boring,” Robert said in a slightly higher tone while looking around in an exaggerated fashion as if looking out for someone and making the sign of a cross, “Who says my marriage is boring? Not me!”
“We know,” Ben said. “You are too scared of your wife to even think it.”
“I ain’t scared,” Robert protested. “And I ain’t bored. You guys are just jealous that I’ve been married since college while your 35-year-old, brittle-boned asses are still single.”
“Our bones are brittle,” Jonas asked. “Then what about yours since we are the same age?” As they continued to talk, Jonas noticed the waitress coming to their table and couldn’t deny Robert’s assessment that she was cute. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, small, silver hoop-earrings hanging from her ears, while the a-bit-too-tight white shirt with the words “The Knight’s Folly” written on it and form-hugging blue jeans showed off her petite figure.
The waitress, whose name tag read “Rosalita” came to their table, stood next to Jonas while taking out a pad and pencil and asked him, “Hola, que te gustaria encargar?”
“Lo siento,” Jonas immediately replied as if said a thousand times before, a smile with a hint of regret on his face. “No hablo español señorita.” It was his normal response when anyone from Latin American countries would try to converse with him in their native tongue.
“Oh,” Rosalita exclaimed. “I’m so sorry! May I take your order gentlemen?”
“No worries, “Jonas said. “Can I get another sparkling water, the boneless buffalo wings, and fries please?”
“Nothing else to drink,” she asked.
“Sorry, “Jonas replied. “I don’t drink alcohol.” The waitress’s eyebrows raised as he said this, a common reaction whenever someone took his order.
“Another beer, cheeseburger, medium, with fries,” Ben added.
“Wings, philly cheesesteak, fries, and mozzarella sticks,” Robert said to complete their order.
“You got it,” the waitress said cheerfully while giving Jonas a wink as she walked away to put in their order with the young, dark-haired bartender working tonight.
Jonas gave her a friendly smile in return.
Robert’s green eyes narrowed as he witnessed this interaction, “Damn, man! She is totally digging you. Even though you are the shortest one among us three!”
“Well,” Jonas said while raising his arms up in a don’t-look-at-me gesture, the sleeves of his black blazer receding to expose his wrists. “Maybe if you lost that gut of yours she would be wishing for some black coffee tonight. You do know that, despite what women say these days, the dad bod isn’t in vogue?”
“Not everyone has the time to workout like you,” Robert mumbled as Jonas started to put his hands down, only to stop mumbling, quickly grab Jonas’s left arm, and exclaimed, “Hold up! What’s with this fancy watch?”
“Nothing,” Jonas said, wresting his arm back from Robert and pretending to clean it off the black-gold watch. “I got this shortly after returning from Venezuela. Ordered it from an American company called Watch Where You Go that deals in high-end, customized watches and comes with a built-in GPS-tracker.”
“Now it makes sense,” Ben said while admiring the wristwatch as Jonas shows it to them. “The waitress must have seen that expensive piece of bling and now thinks you got money. Not that you aren’t an attractive guy. No homo.”
“Nah,” Jonas quipped. “She would go for your six-foot tall frame if you had some color in your skin you pasty ginger. Guess all you got to look forward to are the sheep your ancestors got kicked out for stealing in your future.”
“Screw you,” Ben said, smiling.”
“Not my type,” Jonas answered.
Robert, still mesmerized by the watch, said, “How much did that cost?”
“Around six figures,” Jonas said nonchalantly as he took another sip of water.
“What,” Robert said, sloshing a bit of his soda onto the table. “Those rubies are real?”
“Red diamonds, actually.” Jonas calmly took another sip of his water as Ben whistled in response to the price tag.
Oh,” Robert said, cleaning up the spill with a napkin. “My bad. Red diamonds, not rubies.” He then proceeded to throw his arms up into the air, pointed one hand at Jonas and proclaimed to the rest of the bar, “Yo everybody! We got a baller over here! A genuine baller!”
Most of the people in the bar gave a mock cheer with some raising their drinks in a toast towards the friends’ table. The majority of the patrons there already knew that Jonas had money, though not the extent of how much he had. Rosalita’s head turned in their direction, a slight look of admiration on her face.
Jonas avoided making contact with those large, brown eyes of hers, not wanting to encourage anything from the young woman and returned his attention to his friends. “Can we change the subject?”
“Why,” said Robert. “I bet if that young waitress wasn’t interested in your looks before, she is interested in you now.”
“Shaddup.”
“So that piece of bling set you back six figures,” Robert asked. “Didn’t your Tesla cost six figures as well?”
“Yeah, but I bought that back in 2022. I figured since Elon Musk indirectly made me a fortune from Dogecoin I could at least pay him back by purchasing one of his cars.”
“Back to Venezuela, “Ben said, changing subjects as Jonas adjusted his sleeves to cover the watch. “Tell us exactly what happened that kept you down there for a while.”
As Jonas started to answer, he noticed the door to the bar open and a middle-eastern man with olive skin entered. Wearing a rich blue suit with golden embroidery throughout, and a white silk shirt, Jonas watched as Rosalita and the bartender acknowledged the man who holds up one finger. She sees it and nods before going off into the back while the man sits at a table; running a hand through his long, dark hair and then stroking his similarly long and straight beard. Jonas is not familiar with the man who seemed to be known by the staff. But what he does notice is that the noise in the bar gets perceptibly quieter as soon as Blue Suit entered. Similar to when animals suddenly go quiet when they detect the presence of a predator.
Like I stated earlier, I’m very impressed by the quality of this AI and its ability to read. I might even use it to create my audiobook whenever I finish this novella. But what do you think? Is the quality good enough to use for creating audiobooks?
Author’s Note:
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[…] 2 and end chapter 1 where the AI voice bot read which you can listen to or read along with in a previous post. Obviously, chapter 1’s title will have to change since the ambush event transpires in […]