Why I Love Narrators: Part 1

If I haven't mentioned before how often, in the course of casting 30 or more books a months, our narrators pull my sorry, inefficient b*tt out of the fire, now would be as good a time as any.

Here's this week's example:

When Bo Caldwell's City of Tranquil Light landed on my desk over a month ago, I took a couple of shots at reading it, but I always got interrupted by something urgent and never got a chance to delve into it as deeply as I wanted to. To judge by the opening chapter, it appeared straightforward enough: An old man reminisces about his life as a missionary in China--how he left his life as a midwestern farmer to pursue a calling, how he met his wife in China and how much they both loved their adopted homeland. But I knew there was more. Caldwell's previous novel, The Distant Land of Our Fathers, was based on family experiences and had profound spiritual aspects, and some research told me that she is considered a lyrical writer and masterful storyteller. I yearned to get a better handle on it so I could do it justice. But as the production deadline loomed and I started running out of time, I made a logical, if hasty, choice. I decided to send it to Bronson Pinchot.

If you aren't yet familiar with Bronson's narration work, you should be. He has an exceptional ability to adapt himself to just about any sort of book you can think of, from sardonic humor (The Learners) to vampire-laced thrillers (Blood Oath) to taut war dramas (Matterhorn). I've also been struck by the fact that each author he encounters (and he's not shy about contacting them) thinks that he's the PERFECT narrator for their book. Being an exceptionally well-read person, he's acutely sensitive to the style and tone of a book. And if you've seen his work on stage or in film, you know that he's preternaturally quick on his feet. It's not that his approach changes drastically from book to book--it's just that he puts all his energy into serving the text in detailed and nuanced ways.

So I figured if anyone could help me out here, it would be Bronson. Imagine my relief when I received this email:

"You mentioned being slightly on the fence about the book...it is STUNNING. Takes her 90 pages to get going, which is, admittedly, a lot. Yesterday read the diary entries of a young couple slowly watching their baby die and wept through the whole thing, quite restrainedly of course, but it was perfect for the tone of the writing. The book is a watercolor masterpiece.

B"

If anyone wants to know what I think audiobook narrating is about, this pretty well sums it up. Here's someone who's frankly assessing the mechanical challenges of the material, but completely giving himself over to the emotional and intellectual rewards found therein. And it's reassuring to hear him pat himself on the back a bit--it tells me he thought about his choices and likes what he's done.

Best of all, he's done a huge part of my job for me--the part I wish I had more time for! How grateful should I be for that?

Now I want to listen to it--don't you?

Bo Caldwell's City of Tranquil Light pubs September 28th.

Cryoburn

If you're a big Lois McMaster Bujold fan, you probably already know this.  If you're sort of a fan and haven't heard, you'll want to know.  If you've never heard or read her stuff--well, you really should.

Cryoburn is the latest installment in Lois's wonderful series featuring Miles Vorkosigan, the frail, dashing, ever-resourceful and hopelessly romantic space-traveler who uses brains and charm to overcome severe physical handicaps as he flits around the universe in the service of his home planet's security force.  If you're not familiar with these books, I can barely attempt to sum them up.  Ms. Bujold has created a finely-textured, richly detailed, eminently logical--and deeply human--universe.  The first in the series, Shards of Honor, finds Miles's future parents on opposite sides of a planetary war.  Romance blossoms and in Barrayar they have married and are attempting to conceive in the midst of a fierce political battle that turns violent, with devastating effects on the child they finally manage to bring into the world.  With Warrior's Apprentice, we jump ahead sixteen years to pick up the story of Miles and his struggle to live up to his father's--and his own--high expectations.  And on we go from there--for ten (now eleven) terrific books, plus some short stories and spin-offs--following Miles as he learns the ropes of war and politics to become ever more respected--and powerful.

I've never been a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy stuff, but from the very first book in this series I was hooked.  The characters grow and mature and take on wonderful shadings and subtleties.  The dialogue is priceless, and Lois never misses an opportunity to mingle wry humor with taut action and a sprinkling of philosophical commentary. 

I think her fans assumed that with Diplomatic Immunity, she had pretty much wrapped up Miles's tale.  To our delight, she has sprung Cryoburn on us and I can safely say that it does not disappoint.  Miles, now married and with a growing family, and thoroughly enjoying his job as an Imperial Auditor (read: galactic trouble-shooter), is sent to Kibou-Daini (also known as "New Hope") to investigate peculiar goings-on in that planet's cryogenics industry.  Getting cryo-ed is now big business and virtually everyone, at some point, opts to be frozen alive, in the hope of awakening to a cure for disease or old age, or simply a more pleasant future.  But corporate shenanigans threaten to wreak havoc on millions of slumbering customers unless someone gets to the bottom of a burgeoning scandal.

The writing, plotting and character development are as sharp as ever, and the philosophical issues make for some hair-raising contemplation.  So cheers to Lois for giving us yet another Miles Vorkosigan novel.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more.

Cryoburn will be released October 19th.    

Why I Haven't Been Blogging

If you're wondering why I haven't blogged lately, I'll sum it up in two words:

Sixty.  Eight.

That's the number of titles we've been preparing to release for October.

Just for some perspective, twenty-five is a healthy average.  Thirty-five is a very busy month. Sixty-eight is insane.

What accounts for this madness?  Well, we've been making a big push into the library market and have been responding to requests.  Thus--eight Amish romances, eight English bodice-rippers, a smattering of young adult stuff...oh, and vampires, let's not forget vampires!  Half-dead, sort-of-dead, not-so-dead, really dead, nearly dead--you name it.

Also, a lot of topical material, mostly politics.  We won't delve into it too deeply, suffice it to say that there's a lot of anti-this and anti-that that's very hot right now and we'd be fools not to cash in on the various sentiments flying around this season.

Add to that a number of what we call "drop-ins"--hot titles that pop up out of nowhere that nobody's grabbed for audio, and which need to be rushed to market if we're going to catch the wave.

Anyway, I'll be blogging about these and other new stuff in the coming weeks.  I promise to be better!  In the meantime, picture me trotting back and forth between the copying machine and the shipping department, my arms loaded with stacks of manuscripts.  The narrator in me finds it thrilling.  The producer in me is exhausted!

Our Summer Vacation

It's been a very busy three weeks and I haven't had time to really sit down and write something decent, but it's time to get caught up.

I'll start with our summer "vacation" at the end of July.  "Vacation" is in quotes because out of a two-week trip we actually end up with about three days to ourselves as a family.  We headed to Washington, DC on the 15th and spent five days with Tanya's parents.  Alicia was practically raised by her Grammy and Pop-Pop for her first three years when both of us worked in DC.  In addition she now has a four-year-old cousin to play with.  And I have to admit that the backyard pool is not bad, especially since it was ROASTING HOT on the East Coast.  A visit to the National Zoo was almost more than we could manage--even the two little ones wilted after a couple of hours.  Tanya wanted to see the Vermeers at the National Gallery, which she did while Alicia and I played a nifty little treasure hunt game that they print up for kids.  The we slogged through the ROASTING HEAT to the Museum of Natural History, which is only a block away but it felt like ten miles in the ROASTING HEAT.  Once you get used to the lovely dry heat here in Southern Oregon, the humidity back east is pretty draining.

Anyway, we headed up to Maine for the AudioFile Lobsterbake the following Wednesday, stopping overnight to visit our EVIL COMPETITOR friends Kevin and Laura Colebank of Tantor Media.  We had a lovely overnight stay there in Connecticut and I won't tell you what we gossiped about but it might well have been YOU!

Then on to Boothbay Harbor, ME and a cabin we rent every year in the Sprucewold community on the hill above town.  To our surprise and delight the owners had added a new kitchen which made all the difference in the world.  It was "cozy" before but now it was really comfortable.


Friday night the gang met up at McSeagull's on the waterfront and typically I had too much to drink.  But it was a great way to start the weekend.  Saturday everyone wandered over to Robin Whitten's lovely cottage on the water in East Boothbay for the traditional afternoon of steamed lobster, clams, sweet potatoes, boiled eggs and Robin's fantastic salsa mixes.  [Robin is editor of AudioFile magazine, the premier news and reviews magazine for the audiobook industry.]

Last year it was jammed.  Not only did the Audio Publishers Association hold their board meeting in Boothbay, but a whole crop of new faces showed up from New York and other points.  It was very festive, but the traditional round of evening readings got very long.  This year Robin cracked the whip and held us to five minutes.  I pleaded for TEN and suggested that everyone bring something they were currently working on or had recently completed.  This invariably peaks listener interest.  Well, it was an exemplary presentation this year.  Every reading was riveting and pertinent.  Too bad most of the publishers begged off this year!  But I met some new faces and got a refreshing take on some older ones.


Sunday featured brunch at Robin's--leftover lobster salad and other concoctions, and a nice group of folks who were able to arrange their schedules as to be able to stick around for another day.

Monday we were finally able to get some time to ourselves and luckily the weather was beautiful.  We spent some time at the beach and took a whale-watching cruise during which we actually saw some whales!  During the cruise my cellphone rang, which was shocking because AT&T in those parts is awful.  On a whim I decided to check the internet signal and got the best reception of the whole trip.  Do not be too hard on me when I tell you that I spent a portion of the four-hour boat ride catching up on my email.

Thursday we reluctantly left but headed down to Portland for a pleasant two-day visit with narrators Tavia Gilbert and Bill Dufris.  Tavia took us to one of the best restaurants I've ever experienced--and I've travelled all over the world.  It was Thai/fusion and just spectacular.  We ate there again the next night and it was even better than the first night.  [It's Boda on Congress Street in downtown Portland if you're ever in the area.]


Finally we flew out from Boston on Saturday wishing we had another week.  I'm usually glad to get back but this year I could have used a few more days at the beach.  But kudos to United Airlines for a flawless round trip.

 

I drew shocked stares...

...at a Blackstone meeting yesterday.  We were scheduling upcoming releases, and one of our acquisitions people announced that she had acquired several series of--wait for it--Amish romances.

"Oh goody!" I exclaimed.

Now, between you and me, we audiobook folks can be a snobbish bunch.  It's about great literature, timeless books in a timeless format, high art preserved for the ages by the great actors of our time, yaddah yaddah.

And, me being the gatekeeper of this great art form, I guess everyone expected me to groan and roll my eyes.

Nothing of the sort!

I love mass market fiction.  It's fun, it's easy to cast, it's a breeze to record.  Any narrator with a sense of humor and a little perspective is going to have a blast romping across the moors tossing bodices this way and that, or creeping through the sagebrush to ambush the gol-darn rustlers, or even clopping along the country roads of Ohio while the seasons turn and life's little lessons are played out against a backdrop of barns and bundling boards.  You know there's an eager audience hanging on every syllable, breathlessly awaiting the next lusty (or wholesome) kiss and the inevitable meting out of just desserts.

One of the pleasantest times I ever spent behind the mic was recording a sunny little Christian teen romance novel.  The characters were colorful and lent themselves to creative "mental casting" (a little Judy Garland here, a touch of Walter Brennan there, and some Barbara Stanwick thrown in for good measure); no violence or grueling slasher scenes; NO boudoir stuff (most narrators dread graphic sex--it's embarrassing); and everything turns out ducky in the end.  What's not to like?

Even more fun is goading skeptical actors into treating this stuff like Tolstoy and breathing life into the cliches and recycled plots.  "I dare you to make this sound great!" I tell them.  It's the satisfaction of a B-movie director who, against the odds, turns out an engrossing little picture.  I love bursting the bubble of low expectations.

So all you secret romance fans--you know who you are--get ready!  Blackstone has a great cross-section of this ever-popular genre coming up this fall, and it's going to be fun to listen to.  We've got your lusty Scottish earls with rippling abs, your winsome Amish lasses who yearn for that perfect fellow, your cozy quilting shops where small-town troubles get "ironed out" (pun intended).  Stay tuned for specifics as the release dates approach.

          

I am Technology's...well, you know

Can I say how much I love my new iPad?  Sorry to boast, but this thing is a marvel.  I mainly got it for reading manuscripts--I get tired of printing out stacks of paper and dragging them home and into bed with me.

[Did I say "home"?  We had a colleague over for dinner a few weeks ago and caught her staring at the piles of manila folders on the dining room buffet.  "Is that...work?" she gasped.  Well, yes it is.  When else is it going to get done?]

Anyway, now I can load a bunch of PDFs on the iPad, crawl into bed and skim to my heart's content.

But even more than that, I love narrating from my iPad.  Yes, you read that right.  I take it into the booth, punch up the wondrous GoodReader app, load the PDF, turn off the light, adjust the brightness, crop the pages a bit to enlarge the type, and off I go.  I'm amazed at how much fumbling with page turns has slowed me down in the past.  I'm generally distracted about a paragraph before, when I see it coming and start searching around for a place to stop while trying to concentrate on what I'm reading.  Then the dang pages won't separate and I spend a few seconds grappling with them.  And after the turn, it's a sentence or two before I get back into the swing.

Now I just flip my finger--quickly if it's a period, more slowly if the sentence continues onto the next page.  

I'm still getting used to it and find myself reaching the bottom of the page and sitting there dumbly for a few seconds before realizing that I didn't have to stop.

Another thing is that there's no glare from a lamp in the corner of my eye, no annoying reflection off the paper, no blurry type from a bad print job.  And best of all, I can see the whole page clearly!  By that I mean, I wear progressive lenses, and with standard size pages there's always a struggle to get everything in focus.  I would strain and crane, raise and lower the stand, move it closer then further away.  Nothing really worked.  I guess I could have invested in a pair of reading glasses--but now I don't have to!  Everything is there, clear and bright on a compact screen.  My whole upper body is more relaxed, my head position is stable and the whole fatigue factor is reduced by magnitudes.  And I so far I'm not sensing any sort of eye strain from reading off the screen.

Oh, and did I mention the heat?  It stays cooler now that I don't need a lamp.

How do you spell Mississippi?

I doubt anyone will be surprised when I admit that, in the course of casting thirty to forty titles a month, I am unable to read them all cover to cover. Some books are fairly self-explanatory--a glance at the dust jacket pretty much says it all. Some are part of a series, which means it automatically goes to the narrator who read the previous book in the series. Sometimes I have to spend a bit more time, "skimming slowly" to suss out the nature of the story and the characters. There are even books that require a good bit of slogging before they give up their secrets. And of course there are many, many books that I wish I could read all the way through, but I know I can't spare the time.

And then, every so often, I pick up a manuscript, start skimming the first few pages--and realize after a few minutes that I'm not going to be able to put it down.

Discipline flies out the window. Interruptions are a nuisance, emails and phone calls go unanswered. At home, the family is neglected, dinner gets cold. Sleep? Who needs that?

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin is a riveting murder mystery set in modern-day rural Mississippi. (The title comes from an old children's spelling trick, " M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I...") The disappearance of a local girl causes two men, one black and one white, to revisit the painful circumstances that led to the disruption of their childhood friendship. The characters are richly drawn, the plot is full of surprising twists and turns and the writing is beautiful.

I think I know who's going to record it but I'm not going to reveal that yet. Suffice it to say I'm looking forward to seeing this one take shape in audio.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter pubs October 5. Keep your eye out for it, I don't think you'll be disappointed.