The Thieves Guild Listening Guide

Thieves Guild Audiobook Cover 2023 Edition

The Thieves Guild is an epic length serial that gets longer with every episode release. How epic? Well, the currently released episodes will fill almost three full novels and listening to it from the beginning will take more than 20 hours. Of course, that’s part of the appeal! Having a collection of characters you love working their way through challenges can be a wonderful visit every week. However, for new listeners I get that it can be a bit overwhelming. So, can you jump in at any episode and get caught up quickly? Or are there places where you can start that are later in the series? Let me give you some guidance.

Can I start with any episode and not get lost?

You can. The Thieves Guild is a lot like old soap operas from network TV. Soap opera story lines are complicated and twist and turn and go on for years, but if you start on a random episode you can pretty quickly get up to speed. The Thieves Guild is similar to that. If you start on a random episode, the nature of the character interactions and the clear goals they have should make it not too difficult to get caught up. You may be lost for a few episodes, but you’ll eventually get comfortable with the story.

If this is what you want to do, I would recommend finding a number of episodes that you are comfortable with as a time commitment and then starting that far back to get a sense of things. For example, if you want to start and feel like an hour commitment isn’t too much, you can go back five or six episodes, which would be about an hour to an hour and a half and start there.

One of the things that is helpful is that I tend to rotate the character focus on a fairly regular basis. That isn’t always the case, of course, but, generally speaking, if you go back five or six episodes, you’ll get an introduction to all the characters.

Are there specific points where I can start listening that start new story lines and are easier to follow?

There are! This is probably the best way to start listening to The Thieves Guild without getting lost. The good news is that I’ve written the series with various story lines that all have endings, even as the larger story continues. There are currently two points where multiple story lines converge and a new start is easier to follow.

Starting Point One: Episode 63

Without spoilers, I can say that episode 63 starts with the city-state of Ness in a state of stability. The machinations that worked through the first 62 episodes are resolved, and Ralan is set and accepted as the Guildmaster Thief. Things immediately go sideways with a new story line, and while some of the back story is in previous episodes you’ll easily be able to follow what’s happening as all the characters are trying to figure it out.

Starting Point Two: Episode 95

In this episode, the major story from episodes 63 to 94 has been resolved, and the focus changes to picking up the pieces after the violence and chaos. As you may expect, the aftermath of chaos is itself full of drama and chaos, and we’re off to the races with a new story line.

Okay, I’ve heard amazing things about the story and want to start on episode 1. Will I ever be able to catch up?

I have good news and bad news: The good news is that each episode is betwen 10 and 15 minutes, so binging The Thieves Guild is particularly easy. If you have a long drive or commute, you can quickly get through three or more episodes each listening session. The further good news is that I am currently releasing one episode a week, so getting caught up may take a while, but it is certainly achievable in a relatively short period of time.

The bad news is that there are more than 100 episodes, so even if you binge you have a lot of story ahead of you. But is that really a bad thing? 🙂

How Do I Catch Up or Read/Listen to The Thieves Guild?

The Thieves Guild epic fantasy audio drama podcast is becoming quite popular. It is also available as novels and also as a serial at Kindle Vella. With so many options across three platforms, how can you catch up if you’re interested? Let me give some recomendations.

You Want to Read The Thieves Guild

The Thieves Guild started out as a book series, and that will continue. However, the podcast and Vella are currently ahead of the book series. Basically, when there is a book’s length of material from the podcast available, I will publish it in book form. These will always be available for the lowest ebook prices available in Amazon, which is currently 99 cents. Additionally, the books are available in Kindle Unlimited as part of your free subscription.

However, the easiest and cheapest way to get caught up on The Thieves Guild is to join my mailing list. By signing up, you will be mailed links to download the ebook of The Thieves Guild and The Burning City for free. I will never sell or share your data, nor willI I spam you. The volume of emails will be less than once per month. You will also receive all subsequent volumes for free.

If you don’t want to sign up for my mailing list, here is how to read the series:

Episodes 1-99

You can find episodes 1 to 99 in two books: The Thieves Guild and The Burning City. Here are the links to buy them:

The Thieves Guild on Amazon

The Burning City on Amazon

Episode 100

Episode 100 is an interview with me and not available (yet) in text format.

Future Episodes/Books

Once I get to about episode 130, I’ll be releasing two books:

The Third book in The Thieves Guild series as a stand-alone novel. This will simply be a continuation of The Burning City and be similarly priced at 99 cents. This book will be available for free to my subscribers.

An omnibus of books 1-3. This will be a single volume of the first three books and be priced at $1.99.

You Want to Buy the Paperback or Hardback

You can currently buy the paperback version of both books of the series via the above ebook links. Click on the paperback box on the upper right.

You Want to Listen to The Thieves Guild

Podcast

All of the episodes of The Thieves Guild are available as a podcast on every major podcast provider. Below is a link to a page with direct links to nearly all of them.

The Thieves Guild podcast

Audiobook

The Thieves Guild is not available as an audiobook. I may release it as an audiobook in the future, but it is currently not being planned.

Find Me on Social Media

Beyond this website, there’s a few places you can find me in social media. Feel free to reach out to me, ask questions, or simply follow me if you want.

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@jakedfw
Mastodon: https://kerr.social/profile/jake
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jake.kerr.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jakedfw/

My Facebook profile is limited to close friends, but I occasionally publish publicly, so feel free to follow me there.

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/jakedfw/

Artifacts of the Arcane Podcast Coming

Season One Cover Image

I’ve had so much fun writing The Thieves Guild podcast as a serial story (with one chapter per week) that I’ve decided to launch another podcast with my friends at In Shambles Productions. This is an an adaptation of my Tommy Black series, which has been renamed for the podcast: Artifacts of the Arcane.

The podcast will have a very lengthy but still limited run, with each book encompassing a season. Season three will be all new material, so this will be quite exciting for the poor, patient fans who have been waiting on book three.

This will be a narrated audiobook-style audiodrama, so a bit unlike The Thieves Guild, which is full cast. I do love the narrator, however, so I think you’ll like how it is presented.

The podcast will be hosted by Speaker, but will be available via all major podcast platforms. The first episode drops on September 6.

The Thieves Guild Hits 100 Episodes!

The Thieves Guild, the audiodrama podcast written by me, has offiically reached 100 episodes. I’m quite proud of this podcast, as it’s a full cast production and is epic in scope, even as the characters are personal and easy to root for. I started writing The Thieves Guild as a serial and an homage to the pulp writers and nineteenth century writers that gave me so much joy. So this podcast is a way for me to honor them.

The 100th episode features an interview with me, and it does contain a few mild spoilers, so if you are interested in checking out the interview and the podcast, you should listen to the first 99 episodes first. Don’t worry, they’re all about 10-15 minutes long, so it’s not as much of a time commitment as you may expect.

If you’re interested, you can listen to the podcast below or subscribe via your favorite podcast app.

The Burning City Release Date is Tomorrow

Book two of my series, The Thieves Guild, is out tomorrow. All of the personal chaos that Ralan experienced in book one gets blown up into tons of political machinations. I hope you enjoy it. It’s titled The Burning City because, well, the city is burning. 🙂

The Burning City Cover Reveal!

It’s been a busy year, and part of the year has been revising and updating my Thieves Guild series. It was previously known as The Guildmaster Thief, but I have expanded some of it and totally re-edited both editions. Additionally, I’ll be releasing book 3 in 2024! In addition to the Thieves Guild, I’ve released by sci-fi thriller Thursday. Behind the scenes, my production company, In Shambles Productions, is producing a popular pulp fiction podcast, Conan And Friends. Lots more to come, but back to The Thieves Guild

The Burning City, Book Two, comes out on December 1, and here is the cover. I love it, and I hope you do, as well.

Thursday is Now Available!

My sci-fi thriller Thursday is now available to buy. You can find it at all major bookstores in either ebook or paperback. I hope you enjoy it. I intentionally wrote it to be a fast-paced edge-of-your-seat read, but I also wanted to examine the question as to who is the “bad guy” when you are undercover.