Well, it took about five more hours than I really wanted it to, but I finally managed to wrestle DriveThru and Lulu into submission. It looks like they’ll behave themselves now as far as Mythos Audio Library: Call of Cthulhu is concerned. You can now purchase a version of the audio book in MP3 and listen to a sample.

After many travails, I have finally managed to get Mythos Audio Library: Call of Cthulhu published through CafePress as an audiobook on CD. I’m hoping to have MP3 files available for purchase shortly, but I’m running into delays trying to get the files uploaded to both DriveThru and Lulu. I’ll post an announcement here as soon as that happens.

The delay in getting the MP3 files up is also delaying my ability to get a direct download link to a sample of the audiobook. But if you click through to CafePress, they have several samples available for you to listen to.

THAT IS NOT DEAD WHICH CAN ETERNAL LIE,
AND WITH STRANGE AEONS EVEN DEATH MAY DIE…

On February 28th, 1925, a terrible cataclysm wracked the Pacific Ocean. On March 22nd of the same year, the world nearly came to an end.

But humanity lived through it all on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity. And perhaps it was merciful that it should be so, for if those who had in their possession the disparate clues which might have pieced out the truth of it had ever had a chance to compare notes a true panic would have broken loose.

Such secrets should remain buried… and more than buried.

“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

Buy CD – Buy MP3
72 minutes – Sample Audio

“Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival… a survival of a hugely remote period when… consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity… forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds…”

– Algernon Blackwood

Frustration.

A little over three years ago I recorded an audio book edition of H.P. Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu. It was designed to be the inaugural entry in the Mythos Audio Library, to be followed by the much larger and more complex project of At the Mountains of Madness. Unfortunately, the original distribution plans for the audio book (and the Mythos Audio Library) as a whole fell apart completely before it could be released.

So I was quite excited, when prepping City Supplement 1: Dweredell for release, to discover the Lulu.com also offers an audio CD service. I quickly went in, converted the audio files to the proper format, and started uploading them to Lulu. (A process which took a not-inconsiderable amount of time. Uploading 700MB takes awhile.) While the upload was proceeding apace, I was preparing a cover and CD label for the project.

But when it came time for the project to be completed, I received only an error from Lulu’s web interface: “Cannot create ISO.” After spending several days trying to get in touch with customer service, I finally succeeded and discovered what the problem was: For some reason, Lulu can’t produce CDs with a length longer than 70 minutes (whereas the typical CD has a maximum length of 74 or 80 minutes.)

The length of Call of Cthulhu? 72 minutes.

Gah.

I’m not sure what to do about this. I want the Mythos Audio Library to feature unabridged versions of the stories, so simply excising two minutes of audio is essentially impossible. I could simply split the audio book across two discs, but Lulu doesn’t offer CD bundling. So not only would you have to pay nearly twice as much, you’d also have to order essentially two separate products just to get 2 extra minutes of audio. Plus the story is dramatically designed to be absorbed in a single gulp — there’s no good place to put an intermission.

(Obviously I would split the audio down the middle of the story if I did this, not just tack 2 minutes onto a second CD all by themselves.)

The other option is to convert the files to MP3 and offer the audio book as a download-only. I’d probably do that in any case, but I really want to make the CD version work somehow.

Sigh.