Communion Of Dreams

A good friend – the one who actually got me started in book conservation (and has written a brilliant book on her time in the UICB program) – was by to visit for the first time in a long while. No discredit to her, we were just unable to have guests for the last year or two of caring for Martha Sr.

Anyway, last night, over a glass of wine and chatting, she handed over a wrapped package. “Your Christmas gift.”

(We’ve always been close enough friends that such things can be done whenever the timing works out, rather than obsessing over calendar pages.)

I unwrapped it. A small CD/DVD travel case. I unzipped it – and saw the first disc labeled “Communion of Dreams by James T. Downey.”

I was stunned. Gobsmacked, the Brits say.

My friend’s husband (also my friend – I’ve known them since they were first married) does custom audio books. He’d read Communion of Dreams last year, and really liked it. And together they conspired to produce the book as an unabridged audio production. 12 CDs worth.

I’m not sure yet just how long that is – I’m guessing about 20 hours. I just listened to the first chapter last night – and it was brilliant! A wonderful adaptation of the text, with some fun interpretations of the characters. Over the next few days I’ll get nothing much else done, I’m guessing, as I listen to the thing. Wow.

And here’s the best part: I have permission to use the MP3 versions that also came along with the gift as podcasts!

My good lady wife is starting to do the work of adapting my CoD site to host the MP3 files, and once we have all the details worked out, those will be available as a free download as well.

This is really cool – and really exciting! Just this past weekend downloads of the text of the book surpassed 7,750. I was just starting to think of contacting agents/publishers again – now having the podcasts of the book available will really help to promote the thing and make it easier to arrange conventional publishing.

Very, very cool!

Jim Downey