The Audiobook (part two)

Part Two of the audiobook chronicles.

I've been waiting to blog further about the audiobook until we had gotten further into the process.

Part One is here: https://ellenwritesdogs.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-audiobook.html

When I last posted about the audiobook, Casey Turner, my chosen narrator went off to read the book's PDF. (At that time, it still wasn't officially published yet and the ARCs were no longer the most recent version). Some time later, we met via a Google Hangouts video conference (highly recommended). Earlier, Casey explained to me how she handled differentiating the voices with a whole bunch of different highlighting over the PDF by using the iAnnotate app on her iPad. 

We spent a long time talking about the main characters voices and how they would be distinguished. (One male character very low, the other average. One female character relatively low and other other one a little higher but not much.) Also, how the dogs might sound and that I didn't want them to sound cutesy (she didn't either). The dogs' lines are very short and telepathic. What's tricky is that the dogs sound like what their person thinks they might sound like. 

We did have to talk about words and places that I had made up, like Choran or what does "pffft" sound like and do I really care about whether the "t" is pronounced. (I didn't. I wanted what works as a performance.) I studied directing in college, so I tend to look for talented people, and give them a lot of latitude. Given that I can't be there, I actually didn't have a lot of choice in that manner. I have to trust her judgement, which is just fine. If you don't trust the work of the people working for you, you will lose your mind. I assure you.

I did have her read to me some sections that were important to me. She kept telling me there was no way she could match what happens in the studio. I got that. I just wanted to get the idea and that was plenty, and I could tell that it was going to work well. 

In a later phone call, we went over one of the dog sections because it there was a lot of back and forth between a dog and his human in a very stressful situation. Listeners are going to be very opinionated about it, so I felt we had to do our best on it.

Then the studio worked out staffing and a schedule for recording. 
I had been referred to Casey and Bill (William Dufris)  the owner of Mind's Eye Productions (MindsEyeProductions.com, contact: wdufris@gmail.com), at the same time.
Bill's name should sound familiar. He was the voice of Bob-the-Builder and has narrated over 400 audiobooks including the marathon 42h43m Cryptonomicron (by Neil Stephenson).

Each audio book has a Producer, Engineer/Director, Narrator, and a Quality Control person.

Producer: William Dufris
Engineer/Director:  Karlyn Daigle
Narrator: Casey Turner
QC: Katie Flood

Big ginormous thanks go to Katie as she found an issue later in the book that two proofreaders and two editors missed.

It took two weeks to record (3 sessions per week, more than that kind-of thrashes the narrator's voice) and then a set of mp3s (one per chapter) was sent to me for review. I then spent a solid weekend listening to the book with the book's PDF in front of me and I got to fill out a proof sheet with any corrections. The reason it's important to work out in advance on what you think a character should sound like is that I don't get to say I don't like a character interpretation. What I get to write down is errors in deviation from the text, or to fix the book's editorial errors/changes, or if I hear something weird (I didn't - it was already proofed), and I've asked for a couple of shouted words to be louder.

Now it will go back in for this last fix-it session and then it will get sent to me again.

Book Published July 9th, and Other Projects

Pursuits Unknown was officially published on Tues July 9th. Some genius at Amazon figured out how to get many of the books delivered on that day precisely, which is probably why the pub day wasn't on a Monday.

My publisher was very nice to arrange for sunflowers to appear that day. I like arranging flowers so it was simple enough to make then look presentable, take a photo, and send a thank you photo to them.

While the paper version is printed and is now out, we are still working on the audiobook, and any minor changes that we discover we need to do can always be worked back into the Kindle version. (This modern world.)

Another thing is that I am guest blogging too which I really enjoy as it makes me consider topics I might not of thought to blog myself.

One is that She Writes asked me to blog about How to Write an Animal Character.
https://www.shewrites.com/blog/view/2869395/how-to-write-an-animal-character
I need to check to see if I can put a copy of this in this blog.

I will be the first one to say I'm no expert, but apparently having created a world like my fictional world qualifies me to at least talk about how I go about it which seems fair enough albeit self indulgent.

Speculative Fiction also sent over a long set of 14 in-depth questions for me to go along with the part that they already posted about the book.

There are other blogging opportunities, but they are more nebulous.

I am trying not to pay too much attention to Good Reads. They are kind of a rough, impatient crowd and are not professional reviewers like Kirkus is. (Hint a professional review includes enough detail about the book that you can tell they've read the book. GR has no such requirement.) My marketing people tell me that GR is much more about readers than writers and I can ignore them if I like. I've made use of GR as a reader in the past, so I find this a little disappointing but probably the reality. I really need to focus on my work and not outside opinion.