Audiobooks – Page 6 – Teel McClanahan

undisciplined, unfocused, distractible

I have a reasonably long attention span, I don’t suffer from anything like what gets diagnosed as ADD/ADHD, but I do find myself having trouble focusing on one thing for very long. Not minutes, not hours, but … usually after a few days or weeks, I have trouble staying focused and interested on working on the same thing.

Right now it’s this book, Cheating, Death. I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my next novel about four months ago, and had its initial outline done by mid-July. Then I spent two and a half months reading modern, popular, and recommended zombie novels until I was on the verge of being so sick of zombies I couldn’t have written Cheating, Death. At which time, in the middle of reading one of the books, I just stopped reading and began writing. And I’ve spent the last 5 weeks working on it. In a conversation with my brother earlier tonight, I estimated that I’m on roughly the ninth or tenth pass through the full text of the book, between writing it, editing it, copyediting, hand-coding the kindle version, recording the audiobook, and now editing the audiobook.

It’s no wonder I’m having trouble maintaining interest in editing the audiobook. (Have you tried reading the same book 9+ times in a month?) If I’d been able to sit still and work through the edits, hour after hour, I should have been able to finish the first pass through the entire audiobook in (at most) two days, finishing today. Alas, I’m not quite halfway through with the main edits, I’ve barely begun the work of marketing the book, and I’m nearly fed up with it. I want to work on anything else.

I want to work on my next book. I’ve been brainstorming & worldbuilding for the next book and have come up with at least one more (longer, more complex) novel in addition to that which will be set in the same universe. I lost a couple of nights recently in looking toward what I’d like to accomplish in the next five years. I spent several hours with my brother tonight developing (from scratch) the basics of a video game we want to develop. I’m able to work on each of these other ideas & projects for hours at a time over multiple days; it’s not a moment-to-moment shifting from project to project, it’s an urge to work on anything other than Cheating, Death, right now.

I am aware that other authors work on a single book for months, often for years, before ever considering submitting it for publication – and that’s before professional editors start working with them on it, a process that typically stretches on for a year or two before the book reaches the market. I am aware of it. It’s just not something I do. I’m undisciplined, unfocused. I have trouble working on a single project (a book, an audiobook, learning a language) for more than a few weeks. I have trouble working on a single image (a painting, a website design) for more than a few days. I have trouble working on a single blog post for more than a few hours.

On the other hand, I’m intense. I’ve written several novels in about two weeks each, and I wrote one of them in under 3 days. I’ve won NaNoWriMo four times. Cheating, Death is the second novel I’ve gone from first word to finished-paperback-book-for-sale with in under a month. I usually take a website redesign from zero to done in less than two days. When I’m working passionately, I dive in completely, forsaking sleep, the normal bounds of time, and press on diligently until I’ve exhausted either the idea or my interest in it – and then, like I’m certainly going to do with the Cheating, Death audiobook, I usually continue working on things in which my interest has waned, at least until that phase of my work is complete. Even my sense of responsibility (& stubbornness) is intense; I remain dedicated to completing the work, and doing so to the best of my ability, in spite of even intense apathy.

I’ve just spent nearly four hours working on this post, and I’ve had a headache for almost half that. I ought to be sleeping. Not just because I’ve been awake so long, but also so I can wake in the morning and dedicate tomorrow to working (at least a few hours) on editing that audiobook. To marketing it. To getting it from being just a book I wrote to something people are actually reading and listening to. Hopefully the acetaminophen I took a little while ago will take effect soon; I’m not sure how easily I’ll be able to sleep with this headache.

Cheating, Death – chapter 13 (ie: complete!)

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Whew. Done! Now I just have a whole stack of things to do! But at least the 1st draft is written! One of the first things I have to do next is print it out and read it for the first time. I’ll do this out loud and make notes as I go. It’s a pretty good way to see if it all works, and whether any sentences need work. I actually read quite a bit of it out loud as I was working on it; since beginning podcasting all my fiction, I pay a lot more attention to making a good read-aloud book.

Speaking of the podcast: No voices, for this one, just narration and enough vocal variation to be able to tell any two lines of dialogue apart. Also, based on a schedule I’d just laid out, I should be able to start this one on the Friday after Untrue Tales… Book Three is complete and then post two chapters a week (one chapter per episode, like FWYCR) from 11/13/09 to 12/25/09. Because, yeah, I’m going to post the stunning conclusion to the novel on Christmas day. :p

Oh, in addition to writing chapter 13, I’ve also written Appendix Z, included here:

Appendix Z: About the Zombies

Some helpful information about the zombies in this book:

Zombies are slow.

Zombies are stupid.

Zombies do not use tools.

Zombies do not use language.

Zombies do not experience romance.

Zombies are not just old, hungry vampires.

Zombies do not want to exact revenge on the living.

Zombies do not have any magical abilities or super-powers.

Zombies can only be killed by damaging or destroying their brain.

Zombies eat the living, and are attracted to the motion and commotion they make.

Zombies like eating brains, but are not possessed of superhuman strength, so how are they supposed to bite through your skull?

Zombies who did manage to eat the brains of their victims wouldn’t be much of a threat, since they’d prevent the spread of zombie-ism by doing so.

Zombies are created when a human has had fluid contact with a zombie; primarily via saliva transmitted into a bite wound.

Note: Hell is not full, zombies are not a sudden and global phenomenon bringing all unburied dead to life, the dead are not clawing their way out of graves, and this book’s cover is intentionally misleading.

Zombies spread quickly because the living are stupid, too.

I’m posting it here because it’s at the end of the book, which means it isn’t in the free preview. Which still contains (roughly) the first four chapters of the book. Have you checked it out, yet? You should. The full book’s price is, as promised, at the full eBook price of $4.99 (subject to change) over at Smashwords. It is currently in its first-draft, unedited state. Please let me know if you find any problems or errors in it, so I correct them before I send it to press (probably next week). When it’s corrected, I’ll update the Smashwords copy again, and release it to “Premium Distribution” as well.

Time to go throw it into InDesign, so I have a page count to submit for the PCN request. I hope you enjoy it.

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Cheating, Death – chapter 1

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Yesterday, I finally started work on my new novel, Cheating, Death. As I’ve been working toward, as soon as the first chapter was done, I got to work getting it set up on Smashwords. My idea is to write the book “live” on Smashwords; to make the rough draft available to readers as it unfolds. The first few chapters will be free, and after a certain point I’ll gradually start increasing the price so that by the time the book is fully written, the eBook will cost full price. Because of the way Smashwords handles versioning and rights, once you’ve paid for an eBook you have access to it no matter what the price gets updated to or how many times the text is modified – in fact, you actually get to choose which version of the book to download, if it’s been updated since you purchased it. So whatever price you pay, whenever you purchase it, you don’t have to pay again and you get access to all future updates, including the final one.

I plan to update the book on Smashwords every time I finish a chapter (or if I’m on a roll, at the end of each writing session with any completed chapters). I expect to finish the book by Halloween at the latest (because NaNoWriMo starts at midnight on Halloween), and perhaps as soon as the end of next week, if the story really flows out. (One time I wrote a book over a long weekend, so there’s no telling, maybe I’ll be done by Monday.) Your feedback on the novel-in-progress is appreciated. Feedback on the content, the grammar, spelling, the unlikable characters, whatever – anything is welcome. I’d like to get the thing in as good a shape as possible while I’m writing it.

I plan on doing as much of the back-end work as possible while writing it (plus I’ve already got the cover almost finished, and I’ve just put together several pages on modernevil.com for it) so that within a couple of weeks of finishing the first draft, I should have the paperback in hand. Then, with any luck, I’ll start podcasting the audio version of the novel on November 13th – one week after Untrue Tales… Book Three is finished on the Modern Evil Podcast… which should give me podcast content until around mid-January, 2010.

Continue reading Cheating, Death – chapter 1

wishing I hadn’t renamed my blog, right now

Calming down.

I’m calming down.

I get too upset, too easily. Little problems sometimes feel very big. Little frustrations, little failures, sometimes feel very big. I can get very emotional. A little while ago, a few words, a realization, a revelation, a simple email, got me so upset, so angry, that my vision literally went blurry. A few words. A small mistake. A communication failure. And anger.

I’m trying to calm down, though. I’m calming down. Nothing can be done. Anger can do no good. Emotional turmoil can not help, here. Nothing can. Too late.

Here we are: It’s May 1st, it’s supposed to be the deadline for my contest. You remember the one, where I ask people to tell me what Forget What You Can’t Remember is about, and the winners get free books & maybe their name in my next novel? Timed to coincide with the Podiobook’s completion two weeks ago, when hundreds of people would suddenly be able to consider and answer the question. Plus, by using a mid-roll ad, I could have a quick announcement of the contest inserted into the Intro of every episode of FWYCR downloaded from Podiobooks.com. Starting three weeks ago, a couple of chapters before the final chapter was posted, the ads were supposed to be started. This would have let everyone who was partially done with the book know about the contest, and the ad would have continued after it was complete -which is a trigger for a lot of people to go dl the rest of the book, and for many who like to listen to an entire book at once to begin- for the two weeks leading up to today. I had also hoped that this would spur people who might not be keeping up with new episodes to try to get through the rest of the book in time to enter the contest, and that if people started thinking about answering the question 3 weeks ago they might have a better chance of coming up with a good answer by today. In addition, my contest was announced over at Podioracket (I recorded an audio insert for them, similar to the one that was to be inserted mid-roll at podiobooks.com), and I blogged about it and tweeted it and talked about it with friends.

Yet I’ve only received two responses so far. Two. Two? Dozens of people have bought the paperback. At least 176 people have downloaded all 31 episodes from Podiobooks.com (and over a thousand have at least got the first chapter). Something like three thousand chapters should have had a reminder of the contest in them. Is my work so seriously a failure to engage an audience that only two people were willing to send an email to try to get a free book?

It’s hard to say.

See, the email that got me so upset was one that let me know that the person over at Podiobooks.com that I trusted to turn on the ad-insert … never turned it on. Maybe it was my fault for not being clear enough, or for putting too many thoughts/words into a single email. Maybe it was my fault for not checking sooner to be sure that they’d followed through. Maybe it was their fault for not doing it. Turns out it doesn’t matter whose fault it is – as is generally true, placing blame can’t alter the outcome of events. Deciding whose fault we think an error is doesn’t go back and run the ad in three thousand episodes. Nothing does. Nothing can go back and make the hundred and fifty plus people -who were actually engaged enough with my book to keep current with the episodes and/or to get the whole book as soon as it completed- aware of the contest.

I could extend the contest. 2/3 of the people who have at least downloaded two chapters haven’t finished downloading the rest of the book. I could extend the contest, make up a new version of the mid-roll ad, and hope that some of the people still listening will bother to answer. That’s certainly a possibility.

Instead, I’ll probably just send books to the two people who entered, put both their names in my next novel, and say ‘fuck all’ to running contests. And to relying on other people to do what they say they’ll do. And to the thought that I could ever build a fucking fan base. I’m pretty sure I could name all my fans, right now, and count them up without running out of fingers. I’ve been putting out books for five years, podcasting books for nearly a year, and I can’t get three people to send me an email to win a free book?

fuck all

background noises

I’m sitting in my living room, listening to the early morning sounds. Birds chirping, neighbors revving their truck engines, planes flying overhead, the refrigerator running…. And now that I think about it, these sounds are present throughout the day, more or less. Sounds I am aware of because, time and again, I record audiobooks at home. Audiobooks that I don’t want full of birds tweeting and engines revving and dogs barking. Audiobooks in which the thumpa-thumpa of a car stereo’s too-loud bass competing with its ill-tuned engine (well-tuned to produce the most noise, that is) is simply not appropriate. My hearing is not perfect, not by far, and I often have trouble making out speech over background noise – a cocktail party is basically a place where I have no idea what most people are saying to me. (Not to mention, I’m not much good at small talk, which is all the talk most people in such situations seem to want to have.) Still, my hearing is good enough -attuned enough- that little noises like these become big annoyances.

There seems to be less traffic noise in the mornings, after everyone has gone to work and before they begin to be released from it, so I tend to try to record in the mornings. My sleep schedule has been bizarre, of late, and I’ve been sleeping starting at roughly 3AM-7AM and -despite my best efforts (hampered significantly by an ongoing and severe bout of depression) to get out of bed after only a few hours- running through the middle of the afternoon. Today it’s further off – I put myself to bed last night at 10PM, managed to fall asleep somewhat quickly, but then my mind woke me up at 2:30AM. I tried to sleep, I fought against waking, I felt quite … I don’t know whether I’m physically or mentally tired, but … tired, but at 3:30AM this morning, I gave up on it. Got up. Started laundry. Played the Free Realms Beta for a while…

Mandy’s up now, eating a breakfast I made for her, and as I finish writing this, she’ll be getting ready for school today. I don’t think I knew how noisy getting ready for the day is until I started recording audio books. So, in an hour or so, she’ll be done with that and I can try to begin recording. I’d like to get a couple of hours of recording done today, if my voice works that long. I need to get ahead of my podcasting; trying to record at the last minute doesn’t always work, especially when I’m depressed and/or my sleep schedule is severely kinked. Last minute is where I’m at right now, actually. I don’t have today’s podcast episode edited yet. Realistically, I give myself until midnight of the day I’ve said it will go up. Preferably, it always goes up on the morning of that day. Which, for episodes longer than a minute, means I have to have it recorded ahead of time.

((For the episodes going up on Podiobooks.com, I really need to be done ahead of time – in my experience, if I fail to have my episode uploaded & ready to go there by late Thursday night, chances are it won’t hit the site until Monday. Which feels like I’m three days late, even if I uploaded it at 7AM Friday. Even if it was on my own feed at 7AM Friday. Podiobooks.com feels like the “real” venue for my audiobooks. So I really need to be ahead. Consequently, I think I’m going to let the Podiobooks feed run a week or so behind my direct feed for the next few books.))

Recording a half-hour episode takes a lot longer than half an hour, by the way. (Assuming I’m not doing multiple voices, which takes even longer.) The actual recording part tends to take me about double, so about an hour. (Last night I tried to record in the evening, since I seemed not to have a choice, and it took me over 100 minutes to record what will be about 30 minutes of text.) Editing what I’ve recorded – selecting takes when I’ve recorded multiple takes, cutting out dead air, background noises, mouth noises and the like – takes about double that, so about two more hours. With my new computer, mixing together the intro, outro, multiple sections of an episode & transitions between them, leveling everything so volume matches within and across episodes… actually only takes a few minutes. I haven’t timed it, but I seem to be able to do both versions (MEPod & PB) in under half an hour, now, including compression. Then I have to listen to the entire episode, to be sure I didn’t miss anything during the edit. I usually do this while uploading it to both servers & writing the episode description. So, for a typical 30-minute episode (without character voices), it takes me 4 hours of work. All of it while listening carefully not just to my own voice, but also to tiny background noises.

This is not work I can do eight hours a day, five days a week. And not merely because wearing the over-the-ear headphones becomes annoying well before the 4-hour mark. I am certainly going to try to put in a few long days over the next few weeks, though. I am certainly going to try to get the other 8 episodes of this book recorded, edited, and ready to go just as fast as I am able, and on to the next book. Theoretically, it should only take me a total of 40 hours to complete this entire book (not to mention I’ve already got the first episode done), so why not? The next two books in the series are each almost exactly the same length book – so three 40-hour work weeks and I should be done with the entire series, right?

Except I’m also an artist. And I’m also writing a book on my Self Publishing experiences. And I’m also creating a deck of Christian cards (and a book to go along with them). And I’m also a househusband – cooking and cleaning and the like are part of my responsibilities. And I’m also a marketer. And a web developer. And a blogger. And a filmmaker. And involved in social media. And emotionally unstable, currently depressed & off-kilter.

It’s only 1 week until the next First Friday, when I have another Art Walk to show at. (If you’re in the Phoenix area, come down and see me! I’m among the ‘Roosevelt Row‘ vendors, and I’m usually near 5th & Garfield.) I’d like to produce some more new art before that happens (though I have plenty in stock, right now – more than I could possibly show), so that cancels out part of the next week. I’ve only just begun writing that book on MicroPublishing, and I’d like to build some momentum in the writing of it, instead of letting it perhaps wither with only a couple thousand words. I can’t record every day (I can’t recall now which day it was, exactly, but one day this week I managed to stay up late enough that I thought I could record in the morning, after Mandy left, at the end of my waking hours – but apparently that was when Bulk Trash Pickup decided it was time to slowly and noisily scour my neighborhood.) and I can’t usually stand to work on audio all day, when I do. Oh, and because I want to continue posting two episodes a week to my feed, I’m doing poetry episodes again – a one to two minute episode of which seems to take 30-45 minutes to create.

So maybe I’ll get ahead by a couple of episodes in the next week. And hopefully I’ll get ahead by the rest in another week or two. Mandy just walked out the door. I’d better get to it.