Getting easier, getting better

Podcasting is getting easier, the more I do it. I’m either getting more confident, or more sloppy, the more hours of audio I record and put online. Today I put together this week’s episode faster than ever, partially because there was less editing required. The mid-week episode wasn’t so bad, either, and for a similar reason. That, I think, has something to do with another thing I think I’m getting better at: writing.

It isn’t necessarily going faster, or easier, during the actual writing. But especially as I’ve been deep in the midst of writing a spinoff novel to Lost and Not Found and my immediate flow into a spinoff of that while recording the audio version of Lost and Not Found, I’ve been able to see how my writing has changed. Or, at the least, to see how much my writing could be improved from what was in Lost and Not Found. Hopefully by seeing that I’m able to steer away from it in my new writing. Even just little things like maintaining tense consistently, or using the same version of a word throughout a book (ie: either the British or the American version, but not switching back and forth between the two), which I thought I’d corrected in the Second Edition of Lost and Not Found, are very frustrating. I don’t know how much time I want to keep sinking into that book, but it isn’t up to my current standards.

I’m writing something very strange, right now. I’m not sure anyone will understand it. I’m not sure what to do with it, this collection of stories. The strangeness, the expected failure to understand, are iterative. I see them in individual sentences & paragraphs, in each story, and in the collection as a whole. I’m not sure it’ll be book length when it’s complete. Maybe, but book length feels very far away, right now, and my list of stories yet to be written for it feels like it’s dwindling. Perhaps I will write a series of stories even further removed from Forget What You Can’t Remember, which are spinoffs of these spinoff stories and which show the stories of characters who are incidental to the stories of the incidental characters in that novel. I already have one in mind, actually. If it’s just the one, I’ll pretend it’s relevant. If I can come up with more, perhaps I’ll divide More Lost Memories into chunks.

I discovered in the last few days that NaNoWriMo doesn’t really matter to me, any more. Not in a giving up way, not in an apathetic way, but in the following way: This is my job. It doesn’t matter whether I hit your word count goal, as long as I reach a length that I, as the publisher, feel is ‘book length’. It doesn’t matter whether I hit your time goal, because if I finish early then great, get to work on writing the next thing sooner and if I don’t finish on time I still have to keep writing. This is my job. This is what I do. I write. I make publishing decisions. When one book is done, I work on another (I’ve got at least four books either partially written or entirely written and partially edited right now, with at least a couple more ready to be worked on, and an endless supply of imagination) and when that’s done this will still be my job. So it doesn’t matter. Not practically. Although: we did buy Little Big Planet as NaNo-bait, and we aren’t allowed to open it until both Mandy and I finish our books. So, there’s that.

Alright. It’s 5AM. This isn’t an early post, it’s a late one. Been up all night. Barely written anything. Even more fun, I need to be up on Saturday, during the day, for North Valley Art Walk, followed by an Iron-Chef-type battle (Pumpkin), followed by the NaNoWriMo all-nighter, followed by church, then probably the Scottsdale Art Fair, and then my Nephews’ birthday party. No, seriously, if I don’t get to bed on time tomorrow night I’ll be running from early Saturday morning until late Sunday evening on almost no sleep at all. Because my life is awesome. Time for bed. Whenever it is I get up, I’ll record an intro for the Modern Evil Podcast, mix the episode, and get it online, ASAP. I’m going to aim for …9AM? Someone call me at 9AM.

Modern Evil Podcast

So, in addition to posting the audio version of Lost and Not Found on Podiobooks.com (coming soon), I’ve decided to start my own podcast feed for Modern Evil Press.  This feed will update at least once a week with the latest episode of a novel (beginning with Lost and Not Found), and I hope also to update it mid-week with something else.  The ‘something else’ would be shorter, perhaps a poem from one of the Worth 1k books, a short story, or a preview of a work-in-progress.  If you want “pure” feeds for the novels, definitely go to Podiobooks.com and subscribe to the ones you want, but if you want to have a taste of everything we (which means me, it’s a one-man-publishing-company) have to offer at Modern Evil Press, the Modern Evil Podcast is the way to go.

Point your “Podcatcher” (ie: iTunes, for most people) to: http://modernevil.com/Podcast/?feed=podcast

Incidentally, I simultaneously added a “news feed” to modernevil.com, where I’ll try to post things like the upcoming Art Walk at Intatto Coffee (9/27/08) … so there’s relevant information there beyond book descriptions and sales pitches.

Lost and Not Found audiobook, coming soon

I’ve been working on various aspects of this project throughout the month of August, and there is yet quite a lot of work to be done before the project is complete, but it is complete enough to begin putting it out there for the world to see (by which I mean hear).  Tonight I submitted the first episode of the Lost and Not Found audiobook to Podiobooks.com.  I am assured that their queue is not too long right now, so it should go up there … well, relatively soon.  Maybe next week, but certainly within September. *cough*  I hope to have everything in place to start my own podcast/feed of my audiobooks by the end of this week, at modernevil.com.

The podiobooks.com feed will be strictly the book by itself, same as for Dragons’ Truth.  The Modern Evil Press podcast (Should that be just “Modern Evil Podcast”, or “Modern Evil Press Podcast”?  Hrm…)  will also include short stories and future audiobooks (including the followup novel to Lost and Not Found I am currently writing) as well as a small amount of “chatter” and promos for other podcasts / podiobooks I want to spread the word about.  It should be an ongoing / continuous podcast, going forward.  bleh.

I never really wanted to do a podcast of my own (though I did try my hand at audio blogging now and again, long before podcasts became popular, and it recently occurred to me that I was doing a sort-of podiobook back in 2001, when I “released” a serialized audiobook as I was recording it, week by week sending out installments… by snail mail, rather than the as-yet-uninvented RSS), so I’m not sure how much “chatter” I’ll actually be doing, but at least some more information and advertisement than in the 20-second intro/outro I did for the podiobooks.com version.  At least to remind people that there are paper versions of the books available, and perhaps updates on what else I’m working on that week, instead of just saying “see modernevil.com for more info…”

I’ve never been much good at maintaining regular content-update schedules, so we’ll just have to wait and see how things go with the podcasts.  I’ve got 5 episodes of Lost and Not Found recorded and -nearly- ready for upload.  I can record/edit/mix roughly an episode a day at this point (since I’ve done most of the music and planning work in advance… though my crazy plans require a certain amount more work on the music for a few future episodes… you’ll have to wait and listen to find out what I mean), and I expect there to be in the vicinity of 15 episodes total, so even without working on it every day, I should still be a couple of months ahead before my birthday rolls around, which will make things easier in that regard.

Anyway, along with the podcast, I plan to be adding a proper sort of “news feed” to modernevil.com (and to wretchedcreature.com as well) with updates on things like the next Art Walk at Intatto Coffee (September 27th!  Come and see my latest art, and get books signed!) or… well, I’ll probably go do the Phoenix Art Walk October 3rd, as well.  And I need to throw together a website specifically for Lost and Not Found, like I did for Dragons’ Truth … except I need to let people know this one exists, rather than putting it up late and not really linking to it.  I own lostandnotfound.com already.  In fact, I’ve put a couple of media files there, already:  Listen to a “five minute” preview of the Lost and Not Found audiobook, or grab the 60-second promo for Lost and Not Found to share with your friends/blog-readers/podcast-listeners/pets/self/et cetera.

That’s it for now… getting sleepy. Been up (and working) since before 7AM.  Mostly on the audiobook.  Forgot (slash was too busy for) to paint, today.  In the middle of at least 4 new paintings, and have another I need to photograph & get online… Exciting stuff.  And did I mention I’m over halfway through the new novel?  I’m sure that’ll take up some of the days I’m not recording & editing audio between now and forever…  So, lots of stuff in the works, I hope you tune in, and I’ll try to post again soon.

starting work on Lost and Not Found audiobook

I’ve begun work on recording the audio version of Lost and Not Found this month. I recorded the first 14 pages or so, though I need to re-listen to them … I think I may have been reading a little too quickly. I want to set a good pace, speak clearly, and really create a professional product. The current plan is to record at least half a dozen episodes and at least one promo and get it started online on Podiobooks.com under their “normal model” – which is to say, one episode a week until it’s done, somewhere between a normal podcast and a limited run series. They require 5 episodes done before they’ll start you, anyway, so that’s easy enough. Theoretically I could record them all in a week or so and get started as soon as they get the book started online. Due to some system changes they happened to be putting into effect at the exact time I submitted it, it was several weeks after I submitted it that they put Dragons’ Truth online. Since I’m known, since I’m already set up in the system, and especially because I hold myself to such a high personal quality standard (I really want to be putting out as professional quality of work as I can), it shouldn’t take as long with Lost and Not Found.

Depending on how recording goes and how quickly I read and how long each episode is (there are no chapter breaks in Lost and Not Found, so I have to find places in the story where it makes sense to stop), I expect to have somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen to twenty-five episodes for the full book. This puts the length of time for the serialized release at roughly three to six months. I would like to have the novel I’m currently working on come out concurrent with or prior to the completion of that audio program, since it is almost -but not quite- a sequel to Lost and Not Found, and the cross-promotion should probably be helpful. Also, since I expect to be able to do most or all of the recording of the audio version of this new novel during that period as well, so that people could start listening to one immediately after finishing the other. I’m trying to build an audience, see?

In order to get even a single episode of the audio book ready for publication I need both the text of the book recorded and to [select|compose] a [piece|pieces] of music for the opening, closing, and as a bridge in between different sections of the same episode. There is also the question of “bed music,” which I understand means music which plays softly in the background of the entire audiobook. Bed music has the benefit of covering the tiny amount of background noise which cannot be avoided without [buying thousands of dollars of gear plus building a soundproof recording booth | removing it in post-production and somewhat distorting the sound of your voice in the process], but also represents the challenge of finding music which relates to the story and setting without becoming distracting or annoying to readers, plus that of finding thirty to sixty minutes’ worth of it for each episode (depending on the length of your episodes). On one hand, I’d like to have bed music, to create the perception of a better recording. On the other hand…

Well, on the other hand, I don’t like to select music, I like to compose it myself. Not that I have any experience composing music – I’m certainly not trained, and I’d pause before describing myself as self-taught. I haven’t even looked up a basic how-to online. I just like to screw around once in a while, whistling, with an instrument, or in GarageBand on my iBook – and I’ve only spent perhaps a total of a few weeks in my life (a day here, a couple days there) doing anything musical at all before this year. On the other hand, I sit in front of an piano or pick up an accordion or a guitar and, after a few minutes of re-acquainting myself with the interface, music comes out. I sit down with an instrument and melodies build from my fingers. Not proper songs, usually, but in opposition to what I’ve seen happen with other people at untrained instruments (how do they get it to sound so bad?), something musical. Anyway, starting with Dragons’ Truth I began composing my own music and I plan to do so for my future audio releases.

For the purpose of opening, closing, and bridge music I only need about sixty seconds of music, max. For podcasts it’s a good idea not to put more than about thirty seconds of anything in before getting to the story itself, or more than about sixty seconds of anything at the end. More than that, and people tend to skip it. For some listeners, even sixty seconds it pushing it for a closing. Most promos (which theoretically I could get other podcasts to play in their episodes) are sixty seconds or less, as well. So for these things you don’t need more music than this. Easy, right?

Would you believe I spent the better part of last week (nearly four full days) working on the music I want to use for Lost and Not Found, and the end result -at four thirty in the morning yesterday- was a sixty second audio file? What if I told you it was just a first draft? That I spent the first three days scrawling in a notebook, obsessively crunching non-base10 math by hand, creating page after page of numbers, up to 24 digits in length (so far), and that I spent the fourth day transcoding the results into the computer as music? Music that I couldn’t guess the sound of before I was finished entering it in and hit play. Music that I think I like with a little faster tempo so maybe I’ll have to do another several hours’ math to get to a full minute again. Oh, and incidentally, music the math for which also creates the possibility of a generic sort of non-repeating but boundless melody, which I may be able to use as bed music? Which simple mathematical variations on could change the tone to match the four different stories in the novel that I’d like to each have individualized music? Hooray, crazy! Hooray, math! Maybe.

I’ll have to spend a couple more days entering the numbers into the system in various configurations to see if the calculations continue to sound good or if I’ll need to start from scratch (or worse, just modify this melody system heavily – I prefer the beauty of math right now) to create working music. And once the music is ready, it can be combined with the spoken word recordings of the book’s text and the book’s promos, and once that’s done I can submit it and start serializing it. Which reminds me, I really need to write a promo for Lost and Not Found. If you’ve read it, how do you think I could sell it to new [readers|listeners]?

One other little thing on the subject of the audiobook – since we don’t really have the room (or the money) to create a dedicated (or even isolated) recording space, I’ve set up in the bedroom. The other day while trying to adjust after working so that people could get by, a piece of equipment fell down and the jack on my headphones broke. These are relatively nice, closed ear headphones of sufficient quality to do near-professional quality audio work (really, my ears aren’t trained to do well enough to know the difference between these headphones and the ones that cost 5x-10x), and the only thing wrong with them right now is they can’t plug in to an audio source. All they need is the jack cut off and a new one spliced/soldered on, though I don’t trust myself to do a good enough job repairing them to end up with quality sound. So I took them to a local repair shop Monday (and called a second one) and the cost to have a professional repair it is the same as the cost to order another set online (depending on shipping cost). Sigh. I can’t really record any more until I have [new|repaired] headphones. So in reality it’s a good thing I’m spending days and weeks on the musical portion of this project right now, since I can’t get any more done on the spoken portion.

I’m sure I’ll post again when I have a promo. Oh, and when I have a site design for lostandnotfound.com, which I would like to be able to launch simultaneously with the Podiobook, and whose design should allow for the new book to be advertised along side it. Sigh. What should that look like? What should it do?

little ‘o this, little ‘o that

I’ve been feeling a bit down, lately. Getting things accomplished is somewhat more difficult in these emotional doldrums.  I’ve been feeling disjointed and unfocused, often even conflicted when it comes to how to proceed with my individual stories and pieces of art.  But I’ve got a bit done.

I put Chapter 1 of the Dragons’ Truth audiobook up at dragonstruth.com.

I added a link to dragonstruth.com over at teelmcclanahan.com, and re-arranged the page a little.

I’ve been waffling for the last week or so on exactly what colors to use for a piece I sketched out, but I spent a few hours working on it in Photoshop last night, pre-visualizing various color schemes, and came upon something which should be both in line with my original thoughts and interesting to look at.  I threw the first coat of paint on it tonight:

coat of black paint

I also started and finished another painting this week.  I’m calling it “things i’ve lost“, and I’ll post later with more images and information on making it:

things i've lost

Yes, that’s my hair.

What else?  Hmm…  I’ve uploaded Dragons’ Truth to Podiobooks.com twice now; I’m told it should go online Monday.

Oh, and I’ve been Plurking a lot lately.