Turning Left at Albuquerque

Turning Left at Albuquerque is a new weekly audiobook podcast about a man named Jason, and he’s just been sacked from his job. Once he gets home, we experience Jason’s life as he goes through the paces of learning to deal with the whole situation.

Now, I gotta come clean; I have known the author Mary R Higgins through the internet for nearly a year now - I originally got to know her through our shared fandom of The Guild, the online web series. I follow her on Twitter and FriendFeed, and I get a charge out of her wry wit and silly humor - but I did not know that she was an author until recently.

Some of you may already know of her; she goes by worldofhiglet online, and if you follow The Guild or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, you’ve more than likely come across her name, be it through her blog posts, her name streaking across Twitter, or her videos on YouTube, she certainly does spend a good deal of time online - which is full of win for everyone.

This spring I learned that she was working on releasing her latest book in audiobook format for free consumption as a promotional medium for her work.  At first I was not exactly sure what she was talking about when she started promoting a chapter from something she called “Turning Left at Albuquerque”, but as usual my curiosity wins and this time I struck gold - I am really enjoying this series.

… no worries folks, there are no spoilers beyond the jump.

Jason’s a likable fellow. Having been laid off from work in the past, I definitely can relate to this poor man and the predicament he finds himself in. Mary certainly gets the feeling of dread that one experiences when they’ve been let go; having been through it myself, it’s both haunting and entertaining to listen to. And despite it being a very somber setting, her writing keeps things mostly upbeat by allowing humour to show through.

And the more I learn about Jason, the more alike the two of us are! He’s a fellow geek, making him all the more likable to me.

As of chapter 20 in Turning Left at Albuquerque, there’s only a couple of characters that we’ve met, and a few others that we get a glimpse of information about. I suspect we’ll meet more though, after speaking with Mary I am ensured that there’s plenty more story to be told; there’s over 150 chapters in this book, which makes me smile because I am really enjoying the story so far.

Don’t let 150 chapters daunt you into passing this series, Mary is currently releasing them at a pace of 5 chapters weekly in an omnibus format that allows you to sit back and enjoy. Each 5-chapter omnibus runs around 25 minutes long, and that includes the intro and outro. Now, I’m not the strongest in math, but I think 150 chapters ÷ 5 chapters/week = 30 weeks of audiobook listening goodness… roughly.

So far each weekly podcast has been tight production-wise. The chosen audio quality is bang on if you ask me - they’ve managed to keep the audio clean and crisp; you rarely hear anything clicking or popping in the audio, leaving no distractions as you soak up the story.

If you want to geek it up with me a little, the chosen bitrate is 128 kilobits per second, in stereo, and sampled at 44KHz. The result is a more than adequate quality of recording that’s very easy on the ears. I am so thankful they chose to produce the series with good audio, I find it hard to stick with shows that sacrifice audio quality to save on filesize - I wish more people producing content would keep audio in mind when they are packaging things up.

The narrator is superb, period. He has a British accent, which lends a freshness to the whole experience; I love hearing accents, and his is very listenable. His skill at reading aloud really comes through as he reads the story. I imagine the narrator will be reading the entire book too, he is Mary’s husband; she’s totally scored a perfect voice to read Jason’s story.

So far I’ve listened to the entire set of 20 chapters twice - I’d been tuning in weekly, and just today I listened to all 20 chapters while driving in traffic.

You should add this audiobook series to your weekly podcast regiment; I really do feel that you are missing out if you are not tuning in to find out what is in store for poor Jason. Each chapter of this story is entertaining, and the 25 minute episodes go by fast.

Head on over to Podbean to sign up for the podcast’s feed. And if you enjoy Mary’s audiobook, please take the time to leave a comment. I hope you enjoy the series!