Narration Musings

I'm so inspired by the narrator I'm working with right now. She's juggling English and Scottish accents as she reads through this book, as well as changing the tone of her voice for all the various characters. I wish I could do that.

I'm audio editing Jo Barrett's Highlander's Challenge and enjoying the heck out of it. My job is really fun when a good narrator and a great story combine. Sure, it's still a nit-picky job, but I drop right into the work and time flies.

The Highlander's Challenge audio book will release in April - I'll put up more information about it as we get closer.

It's Writhe, Not Writh

I don't mean to make fun of anyone - we all mispronounce words from time to time - but it strikes me as odd that multiple narrators have gotten writhe wrong in the last few months.

English teachers have long found humor in their students' misspellings or outright misunderstandings of our language. Editing audio has given me a whole new appreciation of how funny English can be in the mouths of the unaware. Since I've done my own fair share of narrating audio books, I sympathize with my narrators - it's not easy to get everything right - but a well-placed slip of the tongue in the middle of a sex scene (awful pun intended) can have me howling with laughter; not the intended effect at all.

For now, a gentle reminder: the 'e' at the end of writhe makes the 'i' long!

Yep - I'm Living the Northern Exposure Life

Last night at about 10:30 pm I was sitting in my living room watching Netflix when movement out on the street caught my eye.

I sat up straight just in time to watch two moose run down the road. There was no time to take a picture - they were moving pretty fast - so the picture above is one we took two winters ago when another moose spent a couple of weeks hanging out in the neighborhood.

The first time we ran into that one, two of my kids got caught playing out in the snow when it waltzed down the road. The moose was between them and the house, so the older kid grabbed the younger one and ran with her to a neighbor's house until it left.

Moose are funny critters. They look all sweet and gentle, but they're huge and when they're agitated they have a propensity for running people down...They'll stand still for pictures, but it's best to use a telephoto lens.

Ebooks, Audio Books, and Computer Games!

I'm involved in a new project that promises to be a lot of fun. Rusty Axe Games is creating an interactive fiction flash game that will partner with an ebook and audio book for a complete package.

Confused?

Let me walk you through it. We'll start with a 20,000 word novella - a gritty contemporary suspense story featuring deceit, betrayal, lust and murder that AudioLark will publish as both an ebook and audio book. Rusty Axe Games will take that novella and turn it into a choose-your-own-ending kind of interactive fiction flash game. All three titles will go up for sale simultaneously.

We're looking for an author capable of writing in a Carl Hiaasen-y style, plus an artist. If you are interested, contact lennard@rustyaxe.com for more information!