Candid camera highlights from
my battle with the German language

Blazing Reader,

Before I move to the Netherlands on April 16, one of my goals is to complete the audiobook version of Much Ado About Corona.

The primary reason it's taken me two years to finish recording the novel is because it contains about 50 verses (in German) from Schubert's Die Schörne Müllerin. Before beginning this project, my German didn't go much beyond "danke" and "gesundheit."

Fortunately, Ina, my newly wedded wife, is fluent in German (as well as English, Dutch, French and Flemish). She spent the last nine days helping me with my pronunciation. In particular, I find the German Ü difficult to pronounce. The sound doesn't exist in English, Spanish or Italian (the three languages I have the most experience with).

The following video contains some amusing highlights from our sessions together...

There is still a month's more worth of work before the audiobook is ready. Until then, you can enjoy Much Ado About Corona in paperback, hardcover and ebook format or... if you're hooked on audiobooks, you can get a free sample of the first two-and-half-hours of my second novel in audiobook format, All the Humans Are Sleeping (which includes another brave attempt at German verse, singing Beethoven's Ode to Joy).

—John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.