Audiobook Update

One of my February goals was to get Abbie's book halfway recorded.  Well, that I achieved, and rather easily too (the recording's the good part).  I believe I wanted to have the editing one-quarter done, and that has proved more difficult (the audio seems to be going out on my laptop, which is three steps beyond vexing).  Still, I can get there.

I keep catching mistakes, though, like misreading lines that I only catch in the edit, or a couple lines where I did the wrong voice for a character.  And if you're from the UK, it's got to suck to hear me pronounce the letter A in an American way when I'm doing an English accent . . . because it sucks for me to hear it.*  And then, of course, there are the mouth sounds.  Ohhhh, the mouth sounds.

I've been listening to the audiobook for Stephen King's "Fairy Tale," and I discovered something surprising: there are mouth sounds audible throughout the narration.  If that exists, in a major, mainstream release, maybe I'm sweating too much small stuff.

I've also been doing chapters of my book "Not the Same," here and there.  Sometimes I have to take a break from work and do something else.  I probably ought to get another Podcast That Dares done, but I thought I had two in the can, all ready to go, but when I went to my files yesterday, I couldn't find either one.  I don't have cover art for them either, so it could be the start of Early Onset Dementia.

*"Say Awe-fter, not ah-fter, you idiot!"

Xercise Goal

As far as exercise goes, we had a big snowstorm this week (biggest in twenty-something years), and I'd have been a fool to go running in that.  But I could still exercise inside, and it takes a lot less time.  And one day, the sun came out during the day and melted inches and inches of snow, so I did take advantage of that and did my full run that night.

I did much better this week, mostly because the month is almost over and I'm seeing how few days I've been exercising (the below graphic is immensely helpful, especially filling it in each day when I do exercise . . . and knowing that it will be publicly released).  I don't think I'll quite reach my goal, but that should make me work harder the next month.

I Speak With Abigail Hilton About "Arcove's Bright Side" (Spoiler Edition)

The third and final interview with Abbie Hilton went up on her Patreon, and she's made it available for anyone to hear.  It's basically an hour and a half of us talking about her book, my work on the audiobook, and areas that were difficult.  We do veer off into conversation about my "Lara and the Witch" series, which Abbie has always been the head cheerleader for.*

Anyway, she edited it, and doing that nice turn, I thought I'd mention it here.  Check out the interview AT THIS LINK.  And feel free to support her and her work--it actually does trickle down.

*She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers.

Rish Outcast 244: People We Touch 1

Valentine's Day is approaching, and young Lara Demming would like to do something nice for her English teacher, Ms. Lune.  What could possibly go wrong?

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, go HERE.

Logo by Gino "The Person You Touch" Moretto.

The Case of the Missing Title

A week or so back, I sat down to do a recording of my Lost & Found story "The Case of the Missing Bracelet," and when I opened the file, it was only half there.*  I spent a good long time scouring all my emails, my laptop files, and my blog entries (many of which I wrote as separate files when I had no internet, and included my daily writing at the end), but had no luck with it.  I did searches for "Will Choner," for "Beth," and for "Kenya," which is the name of the girl who hires our heroes to find her piece of jewelry.  But no luck.

In looking around, I found a section of "But Now I'm Found" that I hadn't known existed, and a section that seemed to be from an entirely different L&F story, but I assumed was from "Missing Bracelet."  I even sat down and wrote up a new couple of paragraphs that could serve as the start of the story, if I never found out 

Yesterday, in fact, I thought, "What if I never actually wrote the first part of the story?  What if I just started in the middle, at the point where he goes after the lost bracelet/wristlet**, because that's the most interesting part of the story (indeed, at the writers conference I went to last weekend, one of the panelists stressed that you want to start your story as close to the inciting incident as possible, and so, I thought, maybe I skipped that altogether).  But today was a holiday, and I was using my mom's computer, and I thought, I wonder if . . .

And sure enough, the first half of the story was there, saved on her desktop, but never anywhere else.  Which, I suppose, is good (only my own laziness prevents me from publishing it now), but I noticed something interesting: the title of the story on that file was "The Case of the Beauty's Bracelet."  Hmm.

Now I have a quandary: I think I like Beauty's Bracelet better than Missing Bracelet, but Big has already done a (pretty-excellent) cover for me:

Hmm.  What should I do?  And what do you think?

*In fact, the filename was Lost & Found Bracelet Story (second half).

**I'm not sure if those are the same thing or not.  I think it was a plotpoint in the story, but I can't really remember anymore.

Exercise Goall - with pretty picture!

So, I continue to exercise and then not exercise, having done push-ups instead of running three times this week, and running once.  I'm not being too hard on myself, because it's cold outside, and I am a wimp.*

This week, I went to my writers conference, and it was hard to get up, go to panels, come home and ship off toys that I'd sold (one day I just let that go completely), and still have energy to exercise.  But at one of the panels, which was about developing good habits, the instructor showed a graph you could use to track six months' worth of writing or dieting or whatever, and I thought, I can use this for my blog, to track my exercise progress (or lack thereof).

So, here we are:

I don't know what might work for you and your lofty goals, but I find that a visual representation like this one helps me see how my progress is progressing, and really puts into perspective how little exercise I've been getting, even when I feel I'm doing my best.

*Okay, I'm maybe still a bit hard.  On myself, that is.  I'm probably the softest person you know.

Rish Outcast 243: Fountain of Knowledge

It's the third (and final) episode of our exciting "Be Careful What You Wish For" crossover event. Big Anklevich and Marshal "The Manslaughterist" Latham join me to talk about my lil story, "Fountain of Knowledge."

Okay, you can stop wishing now.

To download this episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Aoraki Mountain of Knowledge" Moretto.

The Rise of the Quordel Quell

Okay, some of my ire toward Marshal "The Mutilator" Latham has gone away.  After several attempts, I got an idea that I liked for my assigned words: DRAFT, DRAIN, CLUNGE, and BANJO. 

The only one of those four that ever did anything for me was "banjo," so I kept trying, and finally found a banjo idea that I thought would work.  I started writing it two nights ago, and was absolutely furious when my nephew called me after twenty minutes to come get him at the rec center.  I was even angrier, though, when I logged off my computer, went out to the car, and drove over, to discover that the rec center is only two blocks away from the library--on the same street, even.*

Disgusted, I forced the boy to come to the library with me and sit until it closed, and in that time, I got the first page or so written, and last night, I went back and wrote a couple more pages, managing to incorporate "drain" into the story.  Not sure how the other two words will fit.  This is so much work for a contest I'm not going to win, but ah well.

*I honestly didn't know that, because I always drive to the library from a different side of town.  But now, I feel dumber than Big Anklevich's brother that got a ball-peen hammer knocked through his head.  Has he never told you that story?  It's the weirdest thing: the hammer didn't fall on him, but HE fell on the hammer.  Yeah, I know.

Rish Outcast 242: Abigail's Bright Side

In this episode, I sit down with Abigail Hilton to talk about the audiobook I recently narrated, "Arcove's Bright Side."  

Previously, I appeared on Abbie's podcast in the October 19th episode (LINK HERE), and when she is through posting the entire audiobook for her Patreon supporters, she will drop a third interview, with a lot more spoilers about the book's content.

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To become a much-appreciated Patreon supporter, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Wellington's Bright Side" Moretto.

Cover Art Update

Big has been sickeningly productive as far as publishing and creating cover art for his book and stories lately.  So I keep bugging him to make some for me.  Somehow, he is able to make things look better than I can, having an innate sense of where things should be in the frame and how large to make the text.

He told me he'd downloaded dozens (or hundreds) of fonts, which is interesting.  Only Big could mention that to a girl in a bar and have her say, "Really?  Why don't you take me back to your place and show me some of those fonts?"

I'm not sure how long it takes him to do each one--surely less than it takes me to decide what I want for the cover, go searching for an image, and finally deciding on the one that's closest to what I'd envisioned in my head.

Some of these are older, but I may not have posted them before.

But even if I have, hey, it didn't cost you nothing.

Not to be outdone, I created a cover for him too:

Exercize Goal Update

Exercise 200 Days in 2023.

I've only gone running three times in the past week.  That's not good for my numbers, but I gotta tell you, every time I go out and run and it's below freezing outside, I think, "Hey, THIS is dedication, kids."  It's what I feel when I have to get up super early for work (it happens, from time to . . . . . . . . . time), and see people out jogging at dawn: "Wow, those bastards are DEDICATED."

So, that brings my total exercise days to 11, which is bad, but sometimes, you'll take the bad.  

And if you take the good, and take the bad, you take 'em both, and there you have . . . something.

11 / 200

Big & Rish Join The Journey Into... Podcast (Be Careful What You Wish For)

And for your second wish?  

Big Anklevich and Rish Outfield join Marshal Latham on his Journey Into... podcast to lend their voices and discuss "At What Price Peace?" in our three episode crossover event following the theme of "Be Careful What You Wish For."*

Check it out HERE.

*Maybe we should make this a yearly/bi-annual event.