Last Sunday night, I finally did my first live reading of The Midas Protocol on YouTube, and the biggest success was simply that I did it. I staged the office, put the Midas Files poster in place, set the tesseract on the table, got the Yeti Nano working through OBS, mounted the phone on its tripod, and then sat down and read an entire chapter for better or worse.
My cat seemed perfectly content with the performance, which means I have already secured at least one member of the target demographic. More importantly, the live readings went from being something I kept talking about doing to something I actually do. Chapter Two is no longer another experiment I am considering. It is simply what I am doing next Sunday.
Naturally, the first outing also provided plenty of things to work on. I discovered that when I stop reading and start talking off the cuff, apparently I say “and” quite a bit. Once I noticed it, every subsequent “and” seemed to arrive carrying a flashing neon sign. I also think I was probably a little too loud on the microphone, so I will experiment with the Yeti levels and placement before the next reading. The chat room remained another mystery. I knew there was supposed to be one somewhere inside the YouTube machinery, but between OBS, the phone, the microphone, and actually reading the book, I never quite figured out where I was supposed to be watching it. That is now officially on the Chapter Two checklist: find the damn chat.
The strangest moment involved the phone itself. Its camera light gave me a natural place to look whenever I wanted to lift my eyes from the book and talk directly to viewers, but after a while the light shut off. For a few uncomfortable moments, I wondered whether the whole livestream had stopped and I was now simply sitting alone in my office dramatically reading my own novel to a cat.
OBS still showed the stream running, so I continued, although without that little visual cue I noticed that I looked toward the camera less often. By the end of the chapter, I felt a little like I had survived one of Mortimer Vanterpool’s attacks: the equipment had been tested, my concentration had been strafed from orbit, and Vanterpool himself seemed about ready to descend from his UFO and eat what remained of my brain. Figuratively speaking, the studio was wreckage. Somewhere beneath the broken chairs and smoking electronics, however, an arm was still sticking out of the rubble holding the microphone.
That may actually be the best metaphor for what I learned. First attempts are supposed to be messy. You can watch tutorials, test equipment, talk through plans with AI, and rehearse as much as you want, but eventually you have to turn everything on and discover what happens. Reading the novel aloud also let me hear The Midas Protocol differently. Dialogue develops its own rhythm, some sentences suddenly demand emphasis, and others that looked perfectly innocent on the page become surprisingly complicated when spoken.
That experience is part of why I started these readings in the first place. I still do not know whether I will eventually narrate a polished audiobook myself, but now I have a place to practice and find out. Maybe I have the voice and stamina for it; maybe several chapters from now I will conclude that hiring a professional narrator would be the wisest move imaginable. Either answer is useful.
Fortunately, Chapter Two is shorter, and I will go into it with something I did not have last week: one chapter's worth of experience. I know the basic setup works. I know I can finish the reading. I know what needs adjustment, and I suspect every week the technical machinery will occupy a little less of my brain while the story occupies a little more. That is probably how these things become good—not because the first one somehow emerges polished, but because you keep showing up and improving it. So next Sunday I will tweak the microphone, locate the chat, keep an eye on the camera, attempt to reduce the “ands,” and read Chapter Two. If Vanterpool blasts the studio apart again, so be it. Somewhere in the wreckage, the microphone will still be sticking up.
