4/14 Half-Week In Review

 4/11

Because I still use my AOL email address from 1996, I get rectumloads of spam every single day.  It doesn't matter if I unsubscribe or block addresses, there's new ones every day, like hydra heads, Trump lies, or Instagram accounts that simply repost pictures of hot chicks from other Instagram accounts (or TikToks).  I delete them like crazy, but every once in a while (like the two the other day that had my password as their subject line), there will be an email that really catches my eye.

Today's was "Suffering from constant fatigue or death?"

I can't honestly imagine experiencing both, can you?

We got a big snowstorm today, with winds so strong it made me worry about my brother having to be out in it (he works as a lineman two towns over).  My nephew's full-sized basketball hoop fell over into the street, and it took two of us to pick it up and onto the lawn.  When I got up the next morning, one of my boxes out on the deck (I had meant to put it under the deck, but was too lazy) had blown over and twenty or so DC Multiverse figures had been covered in snow, which then froze.  I brought them inside and thawed them out, but the cardboard went soggy and fell apart.  It's not the end of the world or anything, just annoying.*

Having finished Abbie's book, it was time to move on to one of my own (as I've been saying for months now).  I emailed myself three files, "Pizza Triangle," "Winter Break," and "But Now I'm Found," figuring I could do one of those over the next few days.  The first two are probably not very good stories (and I doubt they're in a condition even Christopher Tolkien could've made presentable), so I opened the third one and started recording on it.**  Forty minutes later, I had finished the first chapter (I believe there are seven).  That ain't great, but hey, that's how it works.  I had also filled up my recorder, save thirteen minutes.  

One of my goals for the month was to get the "Delusions of Grandeur" we recorded in March edited.  It took me a minute, but I got that one done.  Now on to the Audio Collection Volume 4, which shouldn't take quite as long.

4/12

I started reading a short story by Joe Hill called "Late Returns," about a man who gets a job driving a Bookmobile, and some of the customers that show up are ghosts (it's from a collection called "Full Throttle").  It made me long to write a story (or stories) that move people, that people remember, that make folks say, "That was one solid story you made up, son."  I'm still trying.

I'm at the library again, for the first time since last Friday.  I opened up "Balms & Sears," and it's at 28,952 words.  My goal for April was to get it over 30K.  The thing is, I know I wrote more scenes that aren't here, and I'd hate to write them again, only to have them turn up in another notebook or on my laptop (I have tried the laptop and three notebooks).  The book is in such rough shape right now, but I had chalked that up to me writing it over an eight year period in a number of different places.  If the 28K of words that I currently have is all that I will recover, then I should just go through, from the beginning, and patch holes, until I get to the point where I left off in 2019: when Alec finds out what happened to his mother.  THEN, I could write three or four thousand more words, and the story would be ended.

It all sounds so easy, don't it?  But everything--say it with me, children--everything takes longer than you think that it will.

Take the audiobook for my fourth collection, for instance.  I actually published the text version last night, and when I had a few minutes this afternoon, I logged into the Audiobook Creation Exchange  (I have two accounts, one as a narrator and one as an author--the system must've been new enough in 2013 that they hadn't figured out someone could be both yet), and thought I'd at least upload the first couple of files for the audiobook.  But ACX couldn't find my book.  I did a search under my name, under the title of the book, under a combination of both, but nope.  Maybe it takes a little while for the database to update, I dunno.  I'll try again tomorrow.

I thought I could find the rest of my book "Balms & Sears" in one of my notebooks, and took two to the library on two different days.  One of the notebooks had none of it, though it had the "Ice Cream Droid" story I had started transcribing a few months ago and never finished (guess I never will).  The other did indeed have "Balms & Sears" in it (from back in 2014), but it was the beginning, which I typed up years ago.  It shocked me to discover I've been working on this story for nearly a decade now.

One thing that I found interesting (which you won't, though), was a note I had written on a random page was a character name that I thought I'd use one day.

Lorelei Skruggs ended up being the lady gunslinger that showed up in the second Ben Parks story, "A Sidekick's Journey."  I always wanted to write another story with her in it--somebody with a beautiful first name and a horrible last name--but I doubt I will.

4/13

So, I tried last night, around 2:30, to see if my book had shown up on the ACX site.  It hadn't.  But by today's afternoon, there it was.  Nice.

Now I'm uploading the files, one by one.  And just like last time I did this, I am IMMENSELY grateful that they tell you immediately what (they think) is wrong with each file--whether it has too much background hiss, has too long silent bits, or the volume is too quiet--something I had flagged on literally every other file.

It's a slow process, but it fills me with a sense of accomplishment, as the total length gets longer and longer (right now, it's at one hour and thirty-nine minutes).  It was frustrating, because some files I would turn the volume way up, but worried they were pegging (if that's the word I mean), and then paranoid the room tone would be too loud, so I'd remove that, only to find that Audible still though the file was too quiet.  

Well, I've spent nearly two hours on it (somehow), and have only gotten to Track 21.  But that equals three hours and fifty-three minutes, and that ain't nothing.

I got a casting call email looking for Caucasian men between the ages of 35 to 65 who can do a British accent.  They wanted a headshot and "a short video of yourself reciting something in your best British voice."  I hesitated about sending one in, but then read in the fine print they were especially looking for people with undersized nipples . . . so I feel I HAVE to try out.

Well, I dicked around at the library for a while, looking up songwriters on Wikipedia and finding out what else they wrote.  I then went down the rabbit hole, looking up various artists who were part of the "27 Club."  It was a thoroughly unproductive effort.

I did force myself to type hard and fast there at the end, and crossed the 30,000 word mark.

3/14

I got another one of those spam emails with an awful subject line.  This one is "Is 7 pounds of poop trapped in your belly?"  I don't dare open the email, in case the answer is not no.

I got the audio collection nearly complete (though I'm still missing one story, "The Key Collector," which I had audio of, but it was a low-quality version from an early Rish Outcast episode, complete with Kevin MacLeod music).  Got it to six hours and forty-one minutes, which I think, is a good day's work.  

I toyed with the idea of including author's notes with some (or all) of the stories, since I tend to write them for anything I finish now that isn't flash fiction.

I didn't know if that was unprofessional, or worse, uninteresting, so I created a little poll on my Patreon, asking people's opinions.  Every single person but one said I should include author's notes, and the outlier said I could if I wanted, since the listener could just skip it if they didn't want to hear it.  There was one vote for "Donkey Dung," but hey, there always is.

So, tomorrow I'll sit down and record two author's notes to pad out the audiobook's length--er, to make the book a more complete listen.

I wasted another ninety minutes uploading files to Audible today.  The frustrating thing is, I'd upload one, it would say the file was too quiet, so I'd increase the volume, it would say it was still too quiet, so I'd increase the volume again, upload a third time . . . and it would say the volume was too loud.  This happened no less than five times (and if you consider that each edit/upload takes three or four minutes, that explains where my afternoon disappeared to).

I'm taking one more break on this project.  The total length is seven hours forty-seven minutes.  I think eight hours is a reasonable goal.

Tonight, I'm working on another Christmas movie, so I might not have time to write.  Or, I might have several hours to write.  You never know.  

I feel like I ought to do a whole write-up on the movie, but they made us sign an NDA that said we would not talk about it or take pictures.  Of course, on the set, people were taking photos galore, and I even saw extras taking selfies with the actors.  So, I'll compromise, and talk about it on my Patreon address for May.***  Hope you're a supporter.

*If I had taken the container and put it under the deck a week or so back, they would've probably been fine.  Thanks, Captain Hindsight.

**Weirdly, I couldn't remember if I had finished it in 2021 or 2022, no matter how hard I tried, so I said both of them.  From the file date, it looks like it was November 2021.

***In fact, I already did, during the drive home.  Oops, all berries!