You know, I'd be the last to claim that I have any certainty about what happens after death, but I confess a certain sympathy to the idea of reincarnation (and remember, even the Christian church believed in reincarnation before the Council of Nicea), and most takes on reincarnation include some kind of "karma" or progression/regression between lives based on your performance.
So... if you buy that... the last three months leave me with one burning question: what the HECK did I DO in a past life to deserve the, pardon my Latin, utter shitstorm of the last three months?
I get back from APAC, excited about getting my audiobook career going, feeling good about my continued recovery from fatigue etc., and my older dog starts dying. We save him, after many hospital visits and running up serious credit bills, and my son manages to basically get himself kicked out of the home he's been living in, and potentially in much more serious trouble. And now, my day job, the financial engine which has thus far made it possible for me to get set up and moving on this second career, has gone away. The company I work for has... what's the word? "Restructured", and by whatever set of opaque criteria they claim to have used, has decided that my services are no longer required.
You want stress? Yeah, I got stress. So much awesome, especially given that stress is my most reliable migraine trigger.
Right now, and pretty much every day of the last three months, I'm just trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I feel like the stereotype of a shark: if I stop moving, I'll sink, and smother alone on the ocean floor.
Oh, and happy effing birthday to me. What a way to begin my 46th year on this planet. Thanks to everyone who has wished me a happy one. I really do appreciate it.
Yeah, I'll live. If raising an autistic and at times violent son didn't kill me, this won't either. This is just one of those days when it's hard to even imagine where I'm going to be next week, let alone next month or next year.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Monday, June 9, 2014
June is Audiobook Month!
So, I've been wanting to write something since I got back from APAC on the 30th. But, if you've read this blog at all, you'll know that I've been struggling with fatigue for quite some time now (which also explains why there were no posts at all last month...), so it's taken me this long to get the combination of spare time and gumption to sit down and start typing. Funny how going from mostly frozen food to cooking completely fresh, every single day, after working a full day in the office, kinda sucks up your energy and time, isn't it?
Anyways, as the title says, June has been designated "Audiobook Month", by our benevolent overlords at the APA, so I'm finally using this as an opportunity to get off my butt and post some Audiobook stuff! So: what am I up to? Well, this weekend, I actually got back into my studio and recorded the first three chapters of A Multitude of Monsters (the next book in the Ebenezum series, after A Malady of Magicks). You just know it's a good sign when even listening back to the raw session had me chuckling. I'm planning on writing some posts detailing my process as I go through recording the book, so those of you who just can't get enough touring of sausage factories, buckle in.
Also, after uploading my new demo excerpts to ACX (and other places, like my website, of course), I got contacted by a couple of authors who liked what they heard, so I've got two very different follow-ups after Multitude is done.
The first book I'll be tackling after I get my latest Wuntvor fix is Knights: The Heart of Shadows, by Robert E. Keller. This is a series (I'm coming in at the third book) that is definitely High Fantasy, aimed at perhaps a bit younger crowd, which follows the journey of a young man plucked out of obscurity to train as a Divine Knight because of his ability to access a little understood power known as the Eye of Divinity. It should be a fun contrast from the Ebenezum books--almost the flip side of those stories--where I get to play the full gravity of the fantasy setting as opposed to poking gentle fun at it. No enchanted chickens or Brownie Power here!
Then last, but very definitely not least, I'll be narrating When The Dead, a very serious post- (and maybe "during-") apocalyptic novel by the surprisingly hilarious Michelle Kilmer (seriously. Just tossing jokes back and forth with her has single-handedly doubled the number of tweets in my till-now-neglected Twitter account). What really intrigues me about this one is that it starts with the same perspective that made The Walking Dead so compelling (to me): that, in a zombie apocalypse, it's not so much the zombies you want to watch out for as your fellow survivors. And there's a nice departure from the mainstream (if that term really applies to zombie stories), in that these survivors do what most of us would really do in that situation: they hole up in their apartment building, with neighbors they barely know, and hope to ride the disaster out. Nope, no possibility of crazy interpersonal drama with life-and-death stakes there at all, amiright?
Well, that means it's time to close out this journey (I swear, the reason I don't post as much as I plan to is that every darned post turns into a freaking novel!) by passing on an audiobook you might want to check out. Your first Just-Add-Caffeine-endorsed link is to a 2014 Audies finalist in the Audio Drama category: The Fall of the Kings, by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, read by a full cast. From the AudioFile review: "the third installment in Ellen Kushner's Riverside series is flush with all the intrigue, sex, and politics of its predecessors." If that doesn't intrigue you, well, you're probably reading the wrong blog. Til next time--listen to some good books!
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Accent on narration
So I'm working with my teacher Pat Fraley via one of his excellent home study courses, and the last piece of "homework" had me recording an excerpt, all narration, involving a dog stolen (or rescued) out of the back of a pickup truck. I got in the studio, recorded the piece, did a tiny bit of editing to cut my couple of takes and silence down to a single useful track, and sent it off.
Pat, as always, sent back some kind and helpful remarks, but one of them was particularly interesting: he observed that it sounded as though I kept wanting to fall into an accent of some kind for the narration (happily for me, I just barely avoided doing that). I laughed when I read that, because I realized he was exactly right... I guess something about the whole pickup-truck-and-stolen-dog setup just put my voice into a particular cadence that was way too close to a Southern accent. But the funny part is that the reason that was an issue didn't quite sink in until today.
I had thought to myself, "Oh, sure. I probably shouldn't go into an accent because it'd be distracting from the story, from the narrative technique I'm trying to practice in this lesson."
Um... no. Finishing up my day at the office today, and thinking about writing this post as I listened to the next lesson in the course, it hit me like a wet fish: "No, you idiot, you don't want to use an accent because the narrator isn't one of the characters."
Granted, you want your narration to have some connection to the characters, some "tude", as Pat says. But the narrator in a third-person narrative is far more likely to be you, telling the story, than to be someone actually in the story.
Guess that's why he makes the big bucks...
Pat, as always, sent back some kind and helpful remarks, but one of them was particularly interesting: he observed that it sounded as though I kept wanting to fall into an accent of some kind for the narration (happily for me, I just barely avoided doing that). I laughed when I read that, because I realized he was exactly right... I guess something about the whole pickup-truck-and-stolen-dog setup just put my voice into a particular cadence that was way too close to a Southern accent. But the funny part is that the reason that was an issue didn't quite sink in until today.
I had thought to myself, "Oh, sure. I probably shouldn't go into an accent because it'd be distracting from the story, from the narrative technique I'm trying to practice in this lesson."
Um... no. Finishing up my day at the office today, and thinking about writing this post as I listened to the next lesson in the course, it hit me like a wet fish: "No, you idiot, you don't want to use an accent because the narrator isn't one of the characters."
Granted, you want your narration to have some connection to the characters, some "tude", as Pat says. But the narrator in a third-person narrative is far more likely to be you, telling the story, than to be someone actually in the story.
Guess that's why he makes the big bucks...
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
On top of the table, all covered with dice...
So, many thanks to the folks out there who have given "A Malady of Magicks" a shot. It's pretty awesome to check in on my ACX dashboard and see actual sales. I sincerely hope you enjoy my take on the story and characters.
But I'm writing this post about something else near and dear to my heart: table-top gaming. One of the things that I remember fondly from my childhood is that, every so often, my parents and I would take a night to sit at our dining room table and actually play a game together: Monopoly, Sorry!, Scrabble (sorry, Mom, that one was never my favorite), even once in a great while, Risk. Growing up as an only child, and a shy, geeky one at that (remember, kids: this was before being "geeky" had any cultural cachet whatsoever), I didn't have a ton of friends I could do that with, so I enjoyed it for that reason--and I also think it helped me feel closer to my parents, too. Now, sure, I was never going to get them to play D&D, or Avalon Hill's Magic Realm, but I'm pretty sure I got them to play at least one round of the original Dungeon.
That formative experience led to a lot of hanging out in game stores in my teenage years, and to a little too much take-home pay being spent on employee discounts during my brief stint in retail (at a game chain whose name I can't recall now). It's also why I instantly fell in love with Wil Wheaton's web series "Tabletop", on the Geek and Sundry channel at YouTube. Wil gets guests together around a (gorgeous) game table, breaks out a different game each episode--some more "mainstream", some slightly geekier--and basically has a blast playing the game, tossing jokes around, and (unfortunately for him), generally losing. If you haven't seen the show, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It is honestly one of the shows Alisha and I enjoy watching the most out of all the TV and web series we follow.
The show, along with the rest of Geek and Sundry (which was started by Felicia Day, of The Guild fame), has been sponsored by Google up to now, as part of Google's efforts to encourage the creation of great YouTube content. Apparently, that sponsorship is ending, and Wil has taken to Indiegogo to fund development of Season Three of Tabletop.
I'm proud to be supporting that effort, and I hope at least some of you will consider doing the same.
Play more games!
But I'm writing this post about something else near and dear to my heart: table-top gaming. One of the things that I remember fondly from my childhood is that, every so often, my parents and I would take a night to sit at our dining room table and actually play a game together: Monopoly, Sorry!, Scrabble (sorry, Mom, that one was never my favorite), even once in a great while, Risk. Growing up as an only child, and a shy, geeky one at that (remember, kids: this was before being "geeky" had any cultural cachet whatsoever), I didn't have a ton of friends I could do that with, so I enjoyed it for that reason--and I also think it helped me feel closer to my parents, too. Now, sure, I was never going to get them to play D&D, or Avalon Hill's Magic Realm, but I'm pretty sure I got them to play at least one round of the original Dungeon.
That formative experience led to a lot of hanging out in game stores in my teenage years, and to a little too much take-home pay being spent on employee discounts during my brief stint in retail (at a game chain whose name I can't recall now). It's also why I instantly fell in love with Wil Wheaton's web series "Tabletop", on the Geek and Sundry channel at YouTube. Wil gets guests together around a (gorgeous) game table, breaks out a different game each episode--some more "mainstream", some slightly geekier--and basically has a blast playing the game, tossing jokes around, and (unfortunately for him), generally losing. If you haven't seen the show, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It is honestly one of the shows Alisha and I enjoy watching the most out of all the TV and web series we follow.
The show, along with the rest of Geek and Sundry (which was started by Felicia Day, of The Guild fame), has been sponsored by Google up to now, as part of Google's efforts to encourage the creation of great YouTube content. Apparently, that sponsorship is ending, and Wil has taken to Indiegogo to fund development of Season Three of Tabletop.
I'm proud to be supporting that effort, and I hope at least some of you will consider doing the same.
Play more games!
Sunday, April 20, 2014
It's heeeere!!
So I got this message in my inbox on Thursday:
Guess my superstition paid off, eh? Well, in any case, that's a nice way to start off the weekend, not to mention a good way to make this all feel real, and the last eight months worthwhile!
I'm proud and happy to be able to let folks know that what I've been calling "Book Number One" is in fact "A Malady of Magicks", by Craig Shaw Gardner. It's a very funny satirical fantasy originally published in 1986, and most recently re-issued by Crossroad Press. If you liked "The Princess Bride", or you've ever read and enjoyed any of Terry Pratchett's work, there's a good chance you'd enjoy this book. It's told from the point of view of Wuntvor, apprentice to Ebenezum, the "greatest mage in the Western Kingdoms". Ebenezum attracts the attention of a powerful demon, and ends up stuck with an allergy to magic. The story follows the duo as they attempt to travel to Vushta ("the city of a thousand forbidden delights") to find a cure for his condition--and, of course, hijinks ensue.
It was amazingly fun to read. I had a blast finding voices for the many (many, many) characters and doing my best to bring out the humor, and I'm looking forward to recording the second book in the trilogy, "A Multitude of Monsters"--which I already have the contract to read (he said smugly). Hopefully folks enjoy it.
You can find the audiobook on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. Happy listening!
Guess my superstition paid off, eh? Well, in any case, that's a nice way to start off the weekend, not to mention a good way to make this all feel real, and the last eight months worthwhile!
I'm proud and happy to be able to let folks know that what I've been calling "Book Number One" is in fact "A Malady of Magicks", by Craig Shaw Gardner. It's a very funny satirical fantasy originally published in 1986, and most recently re-issued by Crossroad Press. If you liked "The Princess Bride", or you've ever read and enjoyed any of Terry Pratchett's work, there's a good chance you'd enjoy this book. It's told from the point of view of Wuntvor, apprentice to Ebenezum, the "greatest mage in the Western Kingdoms". Ebenezum attracts the attention of a powerful demon, and ends up stuck with an allergy to magic. The story follows the duo as they attempt to travel to Vushta ("the city of a thousand forbidden delights") to find a cure for his condition--and, of course, hijinks ensue.
It was amazingly fun to read. I had a blast finding voices for the many (many, many) characters and doing my best to bring out the humor, and I'm looking forward to recording the second book in the trilogy, "A Multitude of Monsters"--which I already have the contract to read (he said smugly). Hopefully folks enjoy it.
You can find the audiobook on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. Happy listening!
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Here's to progress!
I'm happy to report that, after some much-needed medical leave for downtime, I got notice from the publisher for "Book Number One" that he was done with my recorded audio files. He sent them over to me, I uploaded them to ACX, and a few clicks of our respective mice later, my first title is now officially in QA--which, according to ACX, can take "upwards of 10-14 days". (Why provide a range, then say it can take "upwards" of the range? Do they mean it can take 10-14 days, or that it can take upwards of 14 days? Or something else? The mind boggles.)
In any case, I'm now into "final countdown" for actually having a book out there, and because this book is the first of a series, I've already contracted to produce the second in the series!
I know that technically I could probably tell you all (my "extensive" audience) what the book is, but I guess I'm superstitious. Somehow it feels like I'd be jinxing it to put it out there right now. So what do I feel comfortable saying?
Well, I can say that this book is one by a well-known author, and that I actually remember seeing it and its sequels in a bookstore back in the 80s--probably a Waldenbooks in Plaza Bonita--and really wanting to read them. It's a satirical fantasy story: think something like "The Princess Bride", but with less overt romance, and much wackier. There's practically a cast of thousands--some chapters, I swear I had to come up with ten or more distinct voices in a single scene! And, perhaps most importantly, I had a blast reading it and I can't wait to record the second title in the series.
So wish me luck with the QA process. Hopefully very soon, I'll be able to let the world share in the fun I had recording my first audiobook.
In any case, I'm now into "final countdown" for actually having a book out there, and because this book is the first of a series, I've already contracted to produce the second in the series!
I know that technically I could probably tell you all (my "extensive" audience) what the book is, but I guess I'm superstitious. Somehow it feels like I'd be jinxing it to put it out there right now. So what do I feel comfortable saying?
Well, I can say that this book is one by a well-known author, and that I actually remember seeing it and its sequels in a bookstore back in the 80s--probably a Waldenbooks in Plaza Bonita--and really wanting to read them. It's a satirical fantasy story: think something like "The Princess Bride", but with less overt romance, and much wackier. There's practically a cast of thousands--some chapters, I swear I had to come up with ten or more distinct voices in a single scene! And, perhaps most importantly, I had a blast reading it and I can't wait to record the second title in the series.
So wish me luck with the QA process. Hopefully very soon, I'll be able to let the world share in the fun I had recording my first audiobook.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Fatigue's a [deleted], and some actual work
This'll be a short one. The last couple of days have been difficult--for whatever reason, the fatigue has been higher than normal. I tell you, there's little worse than having only about six good hours in a day. Unless, of course, it's having those six hours be somewhere between 8pm and 2am...
I thought it might be nice to write something about the actual book I'm working on, since this is at least supposed to be a blog having to do with my narration work. Tonight I finished editing together the raw audio for chapter ten (of sixteen), which puts me at a total of just over four and a half hours of "finished" audio out of a projected 6.1 hours--at least according to ACX's (doubtless automated) formula. I put "finished" in quotation marks because the publisher has an audio guy who will, once I'm done with all the rough edits, run a final noise reduction/compression/other magic stuff pass.
It's nice to be on the downhill slope, though. This fledgling career still feels more than half like a dream, and the frustration of losing literally months of work time should ease off a bit once I actually get a book out there and (hopefully) selling.
I thought it might be nice to write something about the actual book I'm working on, since this is at least supposed to be a blog having to do with my narration work. Tonight I finished editing together the raw audio for chapter ten (of sixteen), which puts me at a total of just over four and a half hours of "finished" audio out of a projected 6.1 hours--at least according to ACX's (doubtless automated) formula. I put "finished" in quotation marks because the publisher has an audio guy who will, once I'm done with all the rough edits, run a final noise reduction/compression/other magic stuff pass.
It's nice to be on the downhill slope, though. This fledgling career still feels more than half like a dream, and the frustration of losing literally months of work time should ease off a bit once I actually get a book out there and (hopefully) selling.
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