What did I do?

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.

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!

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...

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!

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!

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.

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.

The Price of Dreams

So I've talked a bit about what a long process it's been getting here, and how awesome it feels to finally be moving towards doing something creative with my life again. But I glossed over, at least a little, the reasons why it took so long to get to recording this book and even writing this blog. I thought I'd use this entry to explain a bit about what those reasons are.

My wife always had problems with her feet. They'd ache after a long day shopping or cooking. But it was never serious, until about 8 or 9 years ago. A combination of an exercise program that apparently was over-stressful, and some ill-advised moving of heavy furniture caused her feet to--let's say--"blow up" on her. She developed chronic plantar fasciitis and bursitis in both feet. She went through several surgeries and various therapies (some of which even made them worse), and ended up with the physical problem cured, but chronic nerve pain in her feet. The long and short of it was that she spent a bit over a year practically on bed rest, and even afterwards, her mobility is very limited. She can't be on her feet, or even have them down on the floor (as in sitting) for a very long time without them hurting terribly.

This would be stressful enough, but add to that the fact that we were busy raising my stepson, who is high-functioning autistic. Yeah, there are stories there. About three years ago, things got so hard at home that we had to send him to a treatment program out-of-state for several months. That was a low point for all of us. It ended up making a big difference in his behavior, and we were able to get him moved into an adult placement and living outside our house (he's now 21, so it's not like we sent our tiny kid away, mind you); he has a good shot at establishing a happy adult life. But you can imagine it's made things extra-fun at home.. and we think that stress contributed to my wife coming down with fibromyalgia and arthritis in her hands a little over a year ago.

Now, I love my wife fiercely. We've known each other since our high school days, which means more than half our lives now, and we spent 10 years pining for each other and marrying other folks before we could get together. We've always been the best of friends, and can have more fun just sitting on the couch with each other than I ever had--doing anything--with anyone else. So you might imagine that I wouldn't be terribly happy about her being loaded with all these burdens, and you'd be right.

As my wife's health has deteriorated, more and more of the household duties have fallen to me. I don't mind that as such, but over the last couple of years, work had become more and more stressful as well. I'd become the lead of a development team focused on a payment gateway application that we took over from another team, and that was already deployed in several customer sites. As we found our footing in the new codebase, we had to deal with customer support issues. A customer relationship that somehow ended up become very toxic led to many many late nights and weekends, and was perhaps epitomized by an early morning conference call with a customer VP literally interrupting our troubleshooting attempts to yell at all of us and tell us how he was tired of us "running away" every time there was a problem.

That kind of stuff adds up, leading to things like, oh, I don't know... deciding to become an audiobook narrator. But it also seems to have a nasty way of wearing you down. Right when I was getting things moving in the narration field, I came down with a series of sinus infections, from which it seemed like I just couldn't recover. I got to the point where I felt as though I was constantly swimming through syrup just to get through the day, the fatigue was so bad. After several visits to (basically) urgent care, and several courses of antibiotics, our new doctor finally ordered about four pints (okay, maybe not that much, but...) of blood drawn and a boatload of tests.

Turns out I'd developed some serious vitamin deficiencies, which at least is easily treatable, but it can take months to recover. So just at the point where I felt like I was getting going, my gearshift was stuck in first! Everything just dragged. Even though I'd get energized whenever I did anything voice-related, it was often hard to break the fatigue and inertia long enough to make the long trek upstairs to my studio--leaving my new career to develop at a glacial pace.

Well, that's the short and long of it. Obviously I'm at least a bit recovered, or I wouldn't even be trying to do this. But if you read my last post and thought, "Why did it take you so long to get this going?" then here's your answer. And if it takes me a little longer than I'd like to post updates... now you know why.

(Why, yes, I) Want to be Starting Something...

So, this has been a long time coming. In point of fact, I've been meaning to start writing this blog since at least last August--but life, as always, has gotten in the way.

Folks who have only known me since, oh, let's say the early nineties, probably think of me as a software engineer. Hopefully a really good one, since I've made a pretty decent career of it, but that's about the extent of it. Folks who have known me a bit longer than that might remember that, in high school and college, I actually had a completely different set of plans for how my life was supposed to go.

I spent a lot of time training in musical theater, in dance (wasn't so great at that part), and voice--yeah, I sang a pretty mean aria for a while there. I had hoped to have some kind of career in performing, or failing that, at least in college-level music education. But, when I got married for the first time, I felt that I needed a steady income, and more or less gave up on those dreams to focus on software development.

(I feel compelled to add that those few who've known me since about the fourth grade will be aware that, in fact, computers and programming have also been one of my great loves... a fact that played no small part in that decision, and that has allowed me to succeed in this path)

So the last nineteen years have been good, in a lot of ways. I'm proud of what I've accomplished. But the last three years in particular have seen a lot of challenges, and I've been giving some serious thought to where I want my life to go from here.

About two years ago, I noticed a tweet from the prolific Neil Gaiman mentioning something called the Audiobook Creation Exchange, or ACX. It's a platform that allows authors and/or publishers to contract with individual narrators to produce recordings of their audiobooks. He linked to a blog by a man who had successfully started narrating books with some simple training, and I thought to myself, "Hey! I could totally do that!"

I kept the idea in the back of my mind, and as things at home and work became more and more stressful, I'd come back to ACX every so often. Finally, in June of last year, I decided to do more than just wonder. The original blog I'd read mentioned that this gentleman (whose name I can't recall now... sorry, my friend!) had gotten pointers and training from a fellow named Pat Fraley, who was--happily for me--based in the Los Angeles area. I sent an email to Pat, describing my situation, my hopes and dreams, and asking him for some advice.

As I now have the pleasure of knowing, Pat has to be one of the kindest, most genuine people you could ever hope to meet, and he responded with some encouragement and ideas for training that might be a good fit for me. To make an already-too-long story a tiny bit shorter, I've been able to attend several classes that Pat has held, and to learn from him and some other luminaries in the voice-over/audiobook worlds, and with a great audiobook demo "reel" under my belt, got my profile started on ACX.

I've been fortunate enough to land a contract to produce a book through the site, about which I'm very happy(and will doubtless be posting more soon). So a whole new chapter in my life is opening up--one where I have the opportunity to get back to being creative, to really performing and making art--and I frankly couldn't be more excited.

I hope to use this blog to document my journey, and to share large and small things about the process. If I'm able to pass on any useful information, or to inspire anyone else out there to take a step towards their dreams, then I'll count myself lucky indeed.