Not much to report today. I started the second book in my potentially-massive-but-contractually-large series, and finished another book for Ryan King, who wrote "No Kinda Life," which I recorded earlier this year.
I started my fourth Kristine Kathryn Rusch story, and got a nice note from her about my work on her tales (it surprised me that she had heard my recordings, but I suppose she'd have to have approved the narrator her agent hired, right? I'm not really sure how this sort of thing works. While I highly doubt she listens to the full recordings, she'd probably listen to the first thirty seconds of each sample before approving or disapproving. Heck, maybe she participates in the audition process, but leaves the rest to her agent) I spent a lot of time editing, bouncing between audiobooks and the marathon of That Gets My Goat episodes Big and I recorded in the month of July. Not a great deal to complain about.
Although . . . in the recording of that story, the battery ran out during my recording. I grabbed another battery, stuck it in, and started recording again, and it too ran out (within five minutes). I went to my recharger and grabbed both of the batteries there. I stuck one in and continued. Within five minutes, that too ran out. It took me four tries to get the (very short) story recorded, and I commented that this particular story must be cursed.
When I transferred the files to my computer, I discovered that both of the first two recordings were blank, despite being large files. In fact, the first thing that actually survived from that session was me saying, "I think this story is cursed." Instead of editing it, when I was feeling ambitious, I had to record the darn thing again, and then wanted to watch TV or sleep when I was done.
Though unrelated to my audiobook work, Big sat me down to show me how he uploads the show. It has more steps (and is slightly less confusing) than watching Scotty prep the warp drive on the Enterprise before leaving spacedock, but he assures me that doing it again and again will make things easier. I have had a laundry list of problems posting outtakes to these pages, so I used the new way on the above outtake. Hopefully, it is easier to listen to than they have been in the past (I don't think I'll go back and alter the previous outtakes, since I usually delete those files as soon as I've posted them in my blog, but from here on out, they'll look like the above).
Having so many projects going concurrently could potentially be disastrous, but I've found it breaks 99% of any monotony to switch from, say, "The Backworlds" to a That Gets My Goat episode, to my novel series, to the Rish Outcast, which is my stripped-down solo podcast, which I've recorded a couple of shows of, but haven't edited them. I remember Renee Chambliss saying that she would record any audiobook for a publisher, if they were willing to do the editing themselves. This was before I started doing this quote-unquote professionally, and I thought, "Really? You'd record any kind of book? Even a boring one?" But now that I've done this for a while, the recording experience is the dessert, and the editing is the brussel sprouts and stale potato salad. I think I'd be on book five of my five-book contract if I didn't have to edit them, and eager to take on more. But ah well; nobody's making me do this, against my will.
I also auditioned for a novel, despite having felt a month ago that I didn't want to do this anymore. As far as I know, I've sold literally no audiobooks in the month of August, which is a punch to the solar plexus, but I can't let that get me down. It could be that things only sell when they're new, or that I'll sell more old stuff as soon as some new stuff catches someone's eye. It may be a glitch in the system, and the next time I check, it will have jumped up a huge number.
Rish Outfield, Audiobook Dork
P.S. The sales number did eventually start going up again, just not by much.
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