On Mondays I usually take care of my two nephews. I don't do a very good job.
Today, I was coming in from the mailbox and I saw the two-year old finger-painting on the floor with something brown. "Oh no," I said. "Is that chocolate?"
"No!" he exclaimed, "It's poop!"
Monday, August 26, 2013
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Rish's Story "White House Tour" in the Masters of the Macabre contest
June/July/August 2013
Man, I have lived too long, since every one of my blog entries is about the same things. I guess I could switch things up and talk about how I’ve been alone so long, it doesn’t even hurt anymore, or how my nephews have now become the second most important people in my life, and that doesn’t seem too sad to me either. But today I’m at my family cabin, typing on my brother’s laptop, and the first thing I did was to get the story out that I wrote for a contest next month, and read it over, in case I could polish it up.
Unfortunately, turds have a strong aversion to being polished, and it occurred to me that there’s not really much I can do to fix the story: it just isn’t very good. And instead of depression, a strange bit of apathy overcame me. No, it’s not a good story, but I'm not of a mind to care, and I certainly don’t care to try to fix it somehow. It’s a tale I wrote (the third or fourth, depending on your interpretation, that I’ve written) for the Horror Addicts podcast, and it’s the one I did the most research on. They have a contest every year called the Masters of the Macabre, in which there’s an overall topic, and specific details given to each participant.
The first time I entered, in 2011, the topic was Phobias, and I was given Fear of Insects. I also had to include a luau and hang gliding in the story. What I came up with was something I called “Friends in Paradise,” about a little girl who goes on a Hawaiian vacation with her family, and ends up using her ability to control bugs to cause mayhem. It wasn’t a great story, and having never been to Hawaii, I had to ask a friend who lived there a couple of questions, and went ahead and wrote the story. It turned out alright, neither very good nor very bad, and I recorded it myself, asking my niece to voice the main character.
I didn’t win the contest, but it was an activity worth doing, since I never would’ve written that story without their prompts. If left to my own devices, I'd probably write the same two or three stories over and over again.
The next year, I was eager to enter the contest, and the topic turned out to be Curses. I got given the Curse of Macbeth, and wrote a story called “The Scottish Scene,” about a high school assignment to do a reading from a Shakespeare play. The story turned out really well (I thought), but it was significantly too long, and I had to cut it down to fit it into the time limit allotted.
I absolutely despise doing that kind of editing, because yes, it can increase one’s writing talent, trying to use an economy of speech and figuring out what is necessary to the story and what is expendable, but when you have to cut out too much, it becomes a waste of time and a detriment to the finished product.
For the podcast version, I asked my friend Renee to record the female characters, and I did the narration and the male characters (I ended up doing the witch’s voice myself, since Renee’s voice is too clear and youthful). It’s hard to objectively state how good something I write is, but I really enjoyed writing, narrating, and editing the audio of that story, and would someday like to produce the full version, just because I enjoyed writing it, and the character who did the watch monologue from PULP FICTION as his reading in class.
You know, I will write a bit about my next story for Horror Addicts (“Unreleased”) and will publish it before this bit, but it was next, and written especially for the podcast, and again, I really liked everything about that one, except for cutting it down for length.
But the third contest, the one for 2013, is due soon, and its theme was Hauntings, a subject fraught with Horror possibilities. They gave me the location of The White House, and an instruction to put “An Unopened Letter From 1842” somewhere in there. It could only be ten minutes long, so I figured the tale had to be pretty simplistic. I thought I’d write about a paranormal investigator, or a ghost expert, who goes to the White House to see if there’s any truth to the haunting stories there.
My pal Jeff and I went on a trip to Denver last month, and he tends to go to sleep early (and rise early too), while I can’t go to sleep unless it’s too late for non-criminals to be active. That night, I thought I’d do a bit of research on the haunting of the White House, and spent an hour or two reading about the various ghosts or occurrences that have been reported over the years. Turns out people way back in the 1800’s claimed to see or hear ghosts in the White House, and there have been various Presidents and civilians sighted there ever since. I wondered why I’ve never seen a horror movie set in the White House, and figured it was probably budgetary.
I decided the story needed to be too short to have it be anything other than a simple, direct narrative (this blog post is itself nearly fifteen hundred words long so far), and figured I’d write the tale of when the paranormal investigator was a boy, and what got him interested in the unknown. The boy is ten years old and goes on a tour of the White House with his mother and new stepfather.
Unfortunately, though it’s debatable whether the story turned out good or not, it’s definitely NOT scary (this is the "Masters of the Macabre" contest, after all, not "Masters of the Mundane"). I decided which of the famous ghosts he’d encounter, and went ahead with as short an account as I could. It ended up being almost exactly two thousand words, and I stopped, content that it did what it was supposed to do.
Today, I re-read it, making a couple of minor changes, adding a bit of dialogue, and expanding it slightly to 2060 words. I don’t imagine it’ll take much shaving to get it down to size, but if I need to, there’s a bit of fat here and there I can slice off. The real problem with the story is that it’s not particularly compelling. It’s straight-forward, and I leave the answers to the end (as you’re probably supposed to do), but it’s as though I went out of my way to make it tame and unthreatening, like I wrote it for the Disney Channel or something. Also, I was sorely tempted to convey a lot of information from my research in the tale, but I’m afraid that would make it even less of a Horror story, and more of an Children's Educational piece.
I’ve complained a lot about the listeners of EscapePod (the Science Fiction podcast), and their arrogant tendency to claim to know where every story is going, bleating about predictability in each and every episode, and wow, they would have a field day with this story. They’d probably ensure that I’d never appear on that vaunted podcast again.
Oh wait, I have never appeared there. Touché, EscapePod listeners. Touché.
In a recent episode of That Gets My Goat, I spoke of missing the deadline for submitting this tale, and how it was the sort of stupid mistake I've made all my life, but it turns out there weren't a lot of participants in this year's contest, and they extended the deadline for a few days, so everyone could get theirs in.
Here's the link to the aired episode: http://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/horroraddicts-net-093-masters-of-macabre-contest/
It's a contest, but I'm not asking anyone to vote for it. That's not my bag, baby, even if I thought it was the best thing I'd ever written. And I doubt that would work if I made it my bag.
I recorded the story, and once again had my niece voice the part of a kid (I honestly don't know if that makes the listening experience better or worse, but I like it when kids are used instead of adults, and want to encourage her to be artistic, if she likes). Sure enough, the story was a couple of minutes too long, despite me trying to head that off at the pass. It's easier to edit text than audio, since you can always shorten a paragraph to convey something in two sentences instead of five, but when it's recorded, you usually have to leave a sentence or two intact and lose the rest. All in all, it was short enough it only took twenty minutes or so to get it to length.
They've also included the text of the story at this link: http://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/mmm-contestant-1-rish-outfield/. It's probably about one minute off from the recorded version, since I went from cutting out lines in both, to just trimming the audio.
Right now, my story is called “White House Tour,” and I wanted to be clever and call it something like “Tour De Force,” but that’s as lame as, I don’t know, a Dane Cook fan. I could come up with a good title, if I really try, but the larger problem, the story’s content, is much more difficult.
I gave it my best shot, and the story is what it is (or rather, what it turned out to be). Ultimately, I think I’m just gonna let it go. I apologize to the Horror Addicts folks, who continue to encourage me to write stories I would never otherwise pen, but this will just have to be chalked up to experience. I am, in my own estimation, a writer of some talent, but some projects turn out better than others. You never know until you write them, and I’ll sometimes suspect a crappy story partway through, and will abandon it.
It’s a part of life, reminding me of that ancient Spanish proverb, “Aun Spielberg hizo Hook.
Man, I have lived too long, since every one of my blog entries is about the same things. I guess I could switch things up and talk about how I’ve been alone so long, it doesn’t even hurt anymore, or how my nephews have now become the second most important people in my life, and that doesn’t seem too sad to me either. But today I’m at my family cabin, typing on my brother’s laptop, and the first thing I did was to get the story out that I wrote for a contest next month, and read it over, in case I could polish it up.
Unfortunately, turds have a strong aversion to being polished, and it occurred to me that there’s not really much I can do to fix the story: it just isn’t very good. And instead of depression, a strange bit of apathy overcame me. No, it’s not a good story, but I'm not of a mind to care, and I certainly don’t care to try to fix it somehow. It’s a tale I wrote (the third or fourth, depending on your interpretation, that I’ve written) for the Horror Addicts podcast, and it’s the one I did the most research on. They have a contest every year called the Masters of the Macabre, in which there’s an overall topic, and specific details given to each participant.
The first time I entered, in 2011, the topic was Phobias, and I was given Fear of Insects. I also had to include a luau and hang gliding in the story. What I came up with was something I called “Friends in Paradise,” about a little girl who goes on a Hawaiian vacation with her family, and ends up using her ability to control bugs to cause mayhem. It wasn’t a great story, and having never been to Hawaii, I had to ask a friend who lived there a couple of questions, and went ahead and wrote the story. It turned out alright, neither very good nor very bad, and I recorded it myself, asking my niece to voice the main character.
I didn’t win the contest, but it was an activity worth doing, since I never would’ve written that story without their prompts. If left to my own devices, I'd probably write the same two or three stories over and over again.
The next year, I was eager to enter the contest, and the topic turned out to be Curses. I got given the Curse of Macbeth, and wrote a story called “The Scottish Scene,” about a high school assignment to do a reading from a Shakespeare play. The story turned out really well (I thought), but it was significantly too long, and I had to cut it down to fit it into the time limit allotted.
I absolutely despise doing that kind of editing, because yes, it can increase one’s writing talent, trying to use an economy of speech and figuring out what is necessary to the story and what is expendable, but when you have to cut out too much, it becomes a waste of time and a detriment to the finished product.
For the podcast version, I asked my friend Renee to record the female characters, and I did the narration and the male characters (I ended up doing the witch’s voice myself, since Renee’s voice is too clear and youthful). It’s hard to objectively state how good something I write is, but I really enjoyed writing, narrating, and editing the audio of that story, and would someday like to produce the full version, just because I enjoyed writing it, and the character who did the watch monologue from PULP FICTION as his reading in class.
You know, I will write a bit about my next story for Horror Addicts (“Unreleased”) and will publish it before this bit, but it was next, and written especially for the podcast, and again, I really liked everything about that one, except for cutting it down for length.
But the third contest, the one for 2013, is due soon, and its theme was Hauntings, a subject fraught with Horror possibilities. They gave me the location of The White House, and an instruction to put “An Unopened Letter From 1842” somewhere in there. It could only be ten minutes long, so I figured the tale had to be pretty simplistic. I thought I’d write about a paranormal investigator, or a ghost expert, who goes to the White House to see if there’s any truth to the haunting stories there.
My pal Jeff and I went on a trip to Denver last month, and he tends to go to sleep early (and rise early too), while I can’t go to sleep unless it’s too late for non-criminals to be active. That night, I thought I’d do a bit of research on the haunting of the White House, and spent an hour or two reading about the various ghosts or occurrences that have been reported over the years. Turns out people way back in the 1800’s claimed to see or hear ghosts in the White House, and there have been various Presidents and civilians sighted there ever since. I wondered why I’ve never seen a horror movie set in the White House, and figured it was probably budgetary.
I decided the story needed to be too short to have it be anything other than a simple, direct narrative (this blog post is itself nearly fifteen hundred words long so far), and figured I’d write the tale of when the paranormal investigator was a boy, and what got him interested in the unknown. The boy is ten years old and goes on a tour of the White House with his mother and new stepfather.
Unfortunately, though it’s debatable whether the story turned out good or not, it’s definitely NOT scary (this is the "Masters of the Macabre" contest, after all, not "Masters of the Mundane"). I decided which of the famous ghosts he’d encounter, and went ahead with as short an account as I could. It ended up being almost exactly two thousand words, and I stopped, content that it did what it was supposed to do.
Today, I re-read it, making a couple of minor changes, adding a bit of dialogue, and expanding it slightly to 2060 words. I don’t imagine it’ll take much shaving to get it down to size, but if I need to, there’s a bit of fat here and there I can slice off. The real problem with the story is that it’s not particularly compelling. It’s straight-forward, and I leave the answers to the end (as you’re probably supposed to do), but it’s as though I went out of my way to make it tame and unthreatening, like I wrote it for the Disney Channel or something. Also, I was sorely tempted to convey a lot of information from my research in the tale, but I’m afraid that would make it even less of a Horror story, and more of an Children's Educational piece.
I’ve complained a lot about the listeners of EscapePod (the Science Fiction podcast), and their arrogant tendency to claim to know where every story is going, bleating about predictability in each and every episode, and wow, they would have a field day with this story. They’d probably ensure that I’d never appear on that vaunted podcast again.
Oh wait, I have never appeared there. Touché, EscapePod listeners. Touché.
In a recent episode of That Gets My Goat, I spoke of missing the deadline for submitting this tale, and how it was the sort of stupid mistake I've made all my life, but it turns out there weren't a lot of participants in this year's contest, and they extended the deadline for a few days, so everyone could get theirs in.
Here's the link to the aired episode: http://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/horroraddicts-net-093-masters-of-macabre-contest/
It's a contest, but I'm not asking anyone to vote for it. That's not my bag, baby, even if I thought it was the best thing I'd ever written. And I doubt that would work if I made it my bag.
I recorded the story, and once again had my niece voice the part of a kid (I honestly don't know if that makes the listening experience better or worse, but I like it when kids are used instead of adults, and want to encourage her to be artistic, if she likes). Sure enough, the story was a couple of minutes too long, despite me trying to head that off at the pass. It's easier to edit text than audio, since you can always shorten a paragraph to convey something in two sentences instead of five, but when it's recorded, you usually have to leave a sentence or two intact and lose the rest. All in all, it was short enough it only took twenty minutes or so to get it to length.
They've also included the text of the story at this link: http://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/mmm-contestant-1-rish-outfield/. It's probably about one minute off from the recorded version, since I went from cutting out lines in both, to just trimming the audio.
Right now, my story is called “White House Tour,” and I wanted to be clever and call it something like “Tour De Force,” but that’s as lame as, I don’t know, a Dane Cook fan. I could come up with a good title, if I really try, but the larger problem, the story’s content, is much more difficult.
I gave it my best shot, and the story is what it is (or rather, what it turned out to be). Ultimately, I think I’m just gonna let it go. I apologize to the Horror Addicts folks, who continue to encourage me to write stories I would never otherwise pen, but this will just have to be chalked up to experience. I am, in my own estimation, a writer of some talent, but some projects turn out better than others. You never know until you write them, and I’ll sometimes suspect a crappy story partway through, and will abandon it.
It’s a part of life, reminding me of that ancient Spanish proverb, “Aun Spielberg hizo Hook.
Rish Outfield
P.S. In the weeks since I wrote the above (they gave us an extra few weeks so that more than . . . one person could enter the contest), I feel I may have been overly harsh with my story criticism. I worked on it when I could've been doing something else, and tried to make the best one I could. If you like my writing, it has the same charm I try to put into everything I do (even what you're reading now), and my niece's voice sounds good in the recording (better than mine, which has been so sped up to shorten the tale that it's almost ridiculous). I'm still not going to ask anybody to vote for me over the other two entries, but if somebody out there actually does like the story, I'm not going to begrudge them for it.
P.S. In the weeks since I wrote the above (they gave us an extra few weeks so that more than . . . one person could enter the contest), I feel I may have been overly harsh with my story criticism. I worked on it when I could've been doing something else, and tried to make the best one I could. If you like my writing, it has the same charm I try to put into everything I do (even what you're reading now), and my niece's voice sounds good in the recording (better than mine, which has been so sped up to shorten the tale that it's almost ridiculous). I'm still not going to ask anybody to vote for me over the other two entries, but if somebody out there actually does like the story, I'm not going to begrudge them for it.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
"The Calling" available on Amazon.com
Today is a momentous day. I actually did something I said I would.
Not sure that's ever happened before.
Almost a year ago, back in November or so, I vowed to start putting my stories up for sale on Amazon.
Wait, even before that, in October, I was in the makeup trailer with a guy who was telling me about his super-dull local history book that he'd listed on Amazon, and that he still sold several copies a month. I thought, "If this guy can do that . . ." Of course, he was the type to tell a stranger all about his writing, and I'm not that type.
Then, in November, Abbie Hilton came down and told me how easy it would be to upload stories, putting them in little groupings, little themed collections, bigger unthemed collections, etc. and all but forced a commitment out of me, that I would at least try it. Her theory was (and I'm a subscriber to it) that once I'd seen how to do it, and actually done it once, I'd do it again and again.
But months and months passed. And I never did. We even had a kind listener volunteer to do all the work--to take our stories and create a Kindle file with cover art and everything--and it didn't sway me.
I did create an account in May or so, and came close to being brave and putting up one of my favorite stories no one has ever read. But when I saw that it required cover art for each story or book, I gave up. I realize I could just have blank text like so:
yet folks have told me that an image is always better. The better the image, the more likely someone will click on it.
So, I gave up. Oh, I thought I'd go back to it, trying to come up with a cover image I could do without much effort, but it was half-hearted. I am no aspiring-author-only-slumming-it-doing-extra- work, apparently.
But this month, when we ran my story "The Calling" on the Dunesteef (http://dunesteef.com/2013/08/02/episode-145-bmse-the-calling-by-rish-outfield/), the response was really positive, and people had all sorts of thoughts and suggestions about the story. They were supportive to a T, which it seems is what I need to hear.
But instead of doing what I always do, I actually sat down and incorporated a couple of those changes into the tale, and, encouraged by all the listeners, I went ahead and listed the text for sale on Amazon.
"The Calling" is a story about a man who fled a religious family years before because he didn't believe in what they believed: that demons are walking the Earth in human guise, and it's they're job to kill them. He runs into his twin sister, and it all comes flooding back. Here's the link: www.amazon.com/The-Calling-ebook/dp/B00ENMZIGC
It's my plan to do this again and again, if I can overcome the damn cover art problem. And if anybody buys it, maybe I'll do it again faster.
Rish Outfield, Aspiring Author Slumming It By Blogging
Not sure that's ever happened before.
Almost a year ago, back in November or so, I vowed to start putting my stories up for sale on Amazon.
Wait, even before that, in October, I was in the makeup trailer with a guy who was telling me about his super-dull local history book that he'd listed on Amazon, and that he still sold several copies a month. I thought, "If this guy can do that . . ." Of course, he was the type to tell a stranger all about his writing, and I'm not that type.
Then, in November, Abbie Hilton came down and told me how easy it would be to upload stories, putting them in little groupings, little themed collections, bigger unthemed collections, etc. and all but forced a commitment out of me, that I would at least try it. Her theory was (and I'm a subscriber to it) that once I'd seen how to do it, and actually done it once, I'd do it again and again.
But months and months passed. And I never did. We even had a kind listener volunteer to do all the work--to take our stories and create a Kindle file with cover art and everything--and it didn't sway me.
I did create an account in May or so, and came close to being brave and putting up one of my favorite stories no one has ever read. But when I saw that it required cover art for each story or book, I gave up. I realize I could just have blank text like so:
So, I gave up. Oh, I thought I'd go back to it, trying to come up with a cover image I could do without much effort, but it was half-hearted. I am no aspiring-author-only-slumming-it-doing-extra- work, apparently.
But this month, when we ran my story "The Calling" on the Dunesteef (http://dunesteef.com/2013/08/02/episode-145-bmse-the-calling-by-rish-outfield/), the response was really positive, and people had all sorts of thoughts and suggestions about the story. They were supportive to a T, which it seems is what I need to hear.
But instead of doing what I always do, I actually sat down and incorporated a couple of those changes into the tale, and, encouraged by all the listeners, I went ahead and listed the text for sale on Amazon.
"The Calling" is a story about a man who fled a religious family years before because he didn't believe in what they believed: that demons are walking the Earth in human guise, and it's they're job to kill them. He runs into his twin sister, and it all comes flooding back. Here's the link: www.amazon.com/The-Calling-ebook/dp/B00ENMZIGC
It's my plan to do this again and again, if I can overcome the damn cover art problem. And if anybody buys it, maybe I'll do it again faster.
Rish Outfield, Aspiring Author Slumming It By Blogging
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Audiobook Adventures: Post 24
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Rish Performs "Pandora's Box" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Audible.com
Of the many stories I've recorded for sale on Audible.com, the one that has sold the most copies has been by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She's a very talented writer, and in looking over her Wikipedia page, she's got as many published works out there as I have abandoned short stories in my notebooks.
I performed "The Case of the Vanishing Boy" a couple of months back, which is being touted as "Spade/Paladin Book 1," even though it isn't (the first Spade story was published in 1997 and will probably be for sale in late September on Audible),* that had the rotund Science Fiction convention detective helping the lovely Paladin find a teenaged runaway. It can be found here, if you like: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_3_9?asin=B00CA4P784&qid=1376585839&sr=3-9
So, this week, a second story, "Pandora's Box," has been made available. In this one, Paladin has apparently made an impression on some crazy person, who promises to send a bomb to an SF convention, to either kill her or impress her, y'never know. Spade once again teams up with her to take care of the problem.
This was about 96% percent easier to get approved than the first story, and that makes me want to sign on for more. It's now available for purchase at this link: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_2?asin=B00EILQPZ6&qid=1376584740&sr=1-2
I make almost nothing off these little stories. But they are well-written, uniquely geeky, and every little bit helps.
Rish Outfield, Audiobook Narrator
*My thought is that "Vanishing Boy" was the one I auditioned for, of the three stories available, and had I auditioned for one of the others, it would now be called "Book 1."
I performed "The Case of the Vanishing Boy" a couple of months back, which is being touted as "Spade/Paladin Book 1," even though it isn't (the first Spade story was published in 1997 and will probably be for sale in late September on Audible),* that had the rotund Science Fiction convention detective helping the lovely Paladin find a teenaged runaway. It can be found here, if you like: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_3_9?asin=B00CA4P784&qid=1376585839&sr=3-9
So, this week, a second story, "Pandora's Box," has been made available. In this one, Paladin has apparently made an impression on some crazy person, who promises to send a bomb to an SF convention, to either kill her or impress her, y'never know. Spade once again teams up with her to take care of the problem.
This was about 96% percent easier to get approved than the first story, and that makes me want to sign on for more. It's now available for purchase at this link: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_2?asin=B00EILQPZ6&qid=1376584740&sr=1-2
I make almost nothing off these little stories. But they are well-written, uniquely geeky, and every little bit helps.
Rish Outfield, Audiobook Narrator
*My thought is that "Vanishing Boy" was the one I auditioned for, of the three stories available, and had I auditioned for one of the others, it would now be called "Book 1."
Friday, August 09, 2013
Audiobook Adventures: Post 23
I try to stay away from my stats (whether it's Dunesteef downloads, page reads here, or feedback on eBay), because invariably, I get bummed out by the numbers. I recently signed on to do a sequel to a piece I recorded earlier in the year, and to match my narration, I went to my Finished Projects. There, I saw the actual numbers of most of the books and stories I've recorded over the past half-year.
There were a couple with zero sales. Zero.
That means, even my evil twin did not buy them. Kind of depressing to think about, really.
Of course, there are some with several purchases, and those should way outweigh the non-starters. But zero . . . yikes.
But that only discouraged me for as long as it took me to type this. Then I felt alright.
I haven't signed on for any new projects lately, and I plan to spend August finishing up the obligations I've already made before tackling anything new. But having said that, I'm instantly curious about what books/stories are newly available, since I always think something awesome, like an old novella by Stephen King or something, is going to show up.
I was able to record that short story, another of Kristine Kathryn Rusch's, in two sittings, and I might have been able to do the whole thing at once, had I not stopped to edit the first fifteen minutes and see if that passed muster enough to continue. I had more than enough reason to worry that my beginning would not be satisfactory in some way or another, but it went through fine, and in just a couple of days, I had the whole thing recorded . . . and edited. Barring something unforeseen, this one will be ready to sell within the week, and I'll audition for another one in that series soon.
I started the second book in my five-book commitment this week. Whereas for the first book, I had an actual paperback in my hands, this one has an electronic copy in front of me. I was surprised to discover the e-book version is much, much easier to narrate, and has, oddly, fewer typos. I actually had to make a couple of executive decisions whilst performing the first book, because a sentence made no sense, or there was a word missing/extra in there a time or two. I'm not sure how a digital file comes to exist, but it MAY be that someone had to physically type it into a computer somewhere. And while that should fill it with more mistakes, the first chapter, anyway, only had one, and it was very nice to be able to make the text bigger with the click of a mouse.
Lastly, there was an author (and book) I recognized looking for auditions this week. I remember podcasters advertising the book, and even thought Big had read it, so I emailed him and asked him if it was good, and if I should audition for it. He told me it was right down my alley, but only I could make the decision as to whether it would be worth it to dedicate, what, seventy-odd hours to it. I looked at the audition piece, and it was two full chapters of the book (which again, is asking waaaay too much of a prospective narrator). In the end, what made me go ahead and audition was Big telling me, "I think you'll read it and feel like you're narrating something you wrote yourself."
We'll see if I get that contract. And if so, whether his prophesy turns out to be correct.
Rish Outfield, Audiobook Guy
There were a couple with zero sales. Zero.
That means, even my evil twin did not buy them. Kind of depressing to think about, really.
Of course, there are some with several purchases, and those should way outweigh the non-starters. But zero . . . yikes.
But that only discouraged me for as long as it took me to type this. Then I felt alright.
I haven't signed on for any new projects lately, and I plan to spend August finishing up the obligations I've already made before tackling anything new. But having said that, I'm instantly curious about what books/stories are newly available, since I always think something awesome, like an old novella by Stephen King or something, is going to show up.
I was able to record that short story, another of Kristine Kathryn Rusch's, in two sittings, and I might have been able to do the whole thing at once, had I not stopped to edit the first fifteen minutes and see if that passed muster enough to continue. I had more than enough reason to worry that my beginning would not be satisfactory in some way or another, but it went through fine, and in just a couple of days, I had the whole thing recorded . . . and edited. Barring something unforeseen, this one will be ready to sell within the week, and I'll audition for another one in that series soon.
I started the second book in my five-book commitment this week. Whereas for the first book, I had an actual paperback in my hands, this one has an electronic copy in front of me. I was surprised to discover the e-book version is much, much easier to narrate, and has, oddly, fewer typos. I actually had to make a couple of executive decisions whilst performing the first book, because a sentence made no sense, or there was a word missing/extra in there a time or two. I'm not sure how a digital file comes to exist, but it MAY be that someone had to physically type it into a computer somewhere. And while that should fill it with more mistakes, the first chapter, anyway, only had one, and it was very nice to be able to make the text bigger with the click of a mouse.
Lastly, there was an author (and book) I recognized looking for auditions this week. I remember podcasters advertising the book, and even thought Big had read it, so I emailed him and asked him if it was good, and if I should audition for it. He told me it was right down my alley, but only I could make the decision as to whether it would be worth it to dedicate, what, seventy-odd hours to it. I looked at the audition piece, and it was two full chapters of the book (which again, is asking waaaay too much of a prospective narrator). In the end, what made me go ahead and audition was Big telling me, "I think you'll read it and feel like you're narrating something you wrote yourself."
We'll see if I get that contract. And if so, whether his prophesy turns out to be correct.
Rish Outfield, Audiobook Guy
Thursday, August 08, 2013
Meet the Rish Outcast
Months ago, when Big and I recorded our last episode of the Dunesteef (by "last," I mean "most recent"), he encouraged me to create a solo podcast where I read stories and then talk about them. I told him that I already have a podcast where I do that (The Podcast That Dares Not Speak Its Name), and he told me nobody ever hears those, that he was suggesting I do something like his Anklecast, where he records it during his drive to work, does no editing, and posts it on his blog. "You could call it," he said, "the Rish Outcast."
Well, I sort of scoffed, despite the title being rather brilliant. And then, on the drive home, I went ahead and decided to do it. This is the recording I made on that drive, and the actual story-driven episodes are forthcoming.
Enjoy?
Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Waiting For Hall H
(I typed this outside, waiting for the Saturday show to begin . . . twice)
So, I was saying that it's my choice to come to Comic-Con, so I shouldn't complain. I hate the crowds and the long, long, long walks (I probably got the kind of exercise this weekend that Big gets in a normal day, the runnin' bastard). And everything costs a fortune, and yes, it's pretty much impossible to park. I found that they'd built a Mexican supermarket in the area where I used to always park my car (which is still about 1.3 miles from the Convention Center, but at least it was free), and after driving around frustrated, I just parked there.
But despite adversity, I was in a much better mood on Friday than I had been on Thursday (Thursday was hard simply because I'd spent the whole previous day driving, got almost no sleep, and despite rising at pre-dawn, I still ended up arriving to the Convention Center late. And then, there was the chafing, the less said about it the better). And despite this laptop's best attempts, I refuse to be in a bad mood this morning.
The line up and moved again at around seven. Last year, they told people to clear out their tents and sleeping bags at eight o'clock, so the line moved incredibly after that. This year, they did so earlier, and once all that space is compressed (there were people sleeping on those huge air mattresses this year, which would be really nice), a couple of literal blocks of the line disappear. When it closed up, we were on the grass next to Hall H, which shouldn't be possible, but it happened. I typed a lot, and then, the program just froze. When I reopened it, everything but the first few paragraphs had gone. I've gone through and tried to recreate that, but I did despair for a minute or two.
So, here I am in the Hall H line at Comic-Con. Again.
I predicted that the line would be longer this year than last, and I was right. It was so much longer that, if I recall, where I ended up at 4:45 in the morning was about where the end of the line was last year at 9:30 or 10:00. The line begins at the sidewalk before the Convention Center, then loops around and around there on the grass, then goes across the street and down the sidewalk there, then takes a sharp left back toward the dock (which is where I sat last year at this time), then loops around again just alongside the railing, then goes past all the boats as far as you can go, then takes a left, goes down that sidewalk, and onto the grass there (this is where I ended up today), and loops again on the grass, and keeps going to where only Rod Serling knows for sure. But ah well.
It was dark when I arrived, and I was tired, so I laid down and closed my eyes. A minute or two later, something tiny crawled over my arm. It was an ant. I flicked it off and tried again. After five or more minutes, the line suddenly started to move. I can't explain it (as it was about five am when this happened, and still dark), but everyone stood and walked slowly forward, until the line stopped again about half a mile upward. My new spot was against the pier railing, where the water meets the land, about seventy people from where I started in 2012.
People talked all around me, and I never really tried to sleep again. The family directly behind me in the line were jonesing for coffee, and when Starbucks opened, their dad volunteered to go get them some. He never returned.*
After a while, when the sky got grey, I got out this laptop, and began to type. There's a cold breeze blowing off the water onto my back, as I am three feet from the ocean. That breeze felt awesome yesterday and Thursday, but this morning, it's really chilly. I'll try to be a man about it, though.
This is my first year using my brother's laptop (instead of my own--deceased--craptop), and I worry about the battery. My craptop might not have been very useful, but it had a battery that lasted for four or five hours (that was instrumental in my decision to buy it, despite it having absolutely no other features). This one seems to last about an hour, maybe ninety minutes. We'll see.
So, I have to admit that there were a few minutes on Thursday morning when I thought I shouldn't come back next year. Mostly, it's just the crowds, the incessant sea of sweaty, shoving humanity. I thought it would be fun if Joss Whedon would make a short film about Bruce Banner being at Comic-Con, saying, "Excuse me, Please don't shove. Uh, please stop shoving me. I'm warning you, please don't shove me anymore."
Maybe I'm the only one who would dig that.
But yesterday was pretty darn satisfying, pretty darn fun, and I walked back to my car feeling happy to be here. There was a parking ticket on my windshield (despite the section I was in having no posting time limits), saying I'd been there too long. I'm not sure if I'll pay it or not, but I won't dwell on it now.
I have been getting up early each day, and so I'm tired, but all of this is by choice, and I'll not complain.
Oh my god. This fucking program. I've been typing for nearly an hour, putting down my thoughts and ideas, and writing a story even . . . and it deleted it all.
F**k you.
So, let me start again, god dammit.
I guess I was saying I was here by choice, and then I started talking about writing. I write a lot, and then it gets deleted for absolutely no reason. In fact, fuck this program.
I’ve started again in a new word processing program. I cannot believe it lost everything but my first half-page. I feel like a kid again, and am about a second away from throwing this against the wall.
But I’m going nowhere, and unless my battery dies, I have time to start over, type it all again.
So, I was saying that it's my choice to come to Comic-Con, so I shouldn't complain. I hate the crowds and the long, long, long walks (I probably got the kind of exercise this weekend that Big gets in a normal day, the runnin' bastard). And everything costs a fortune, and yes, it's pretty much impossible to park. I found that they'd built a Mexican supermarket in the area where I used to always park my car (which is still about 1.3 miles from the Convention Center, but at least it was free), and after driving around frustrated, I just parked there.
I did all the stuff you do on the first day of the con (fight your way to the doors, be told you're at the wrong door, fight your way to another one, be told the first door was actually correct, get your badge, try to buy or see something only to be told that the line was capped hours before anyone would've been allowed inside, see someone in a cool costume, stand in a line, be shoved by someone who has no reason to touch you, admire a display only to be told not to look or take pictures of it, discover that San Diego is hot in July, realize there's no God, etc.), and after I'd loaded up on purchases, I wandered back to my car. There's a Mexican eatery (not really a restaurant as I typed the first time) attached to the supermarket, so I decided to eat lunch there, to reward them for letting me park there. It was really heavy food, if you know what I mean, and sat solidly in my stomach for hours. I went back to the con for a couple hours, saw a panel or two, then decided to duck out early so I could go get my motel room, have a bath, change clothes, check my email, and lather some aloe vera all over the sunburn and groin chafing I'd received.
Again, to be decent, I went into the supermarket to buy sunscreen and aloe vera, only to discover that everything was in Spanish. The announcements over the intercom, the price signs, and the employees. I realized I had no idea how to say "sunscreen" in Spanish, but luckily, found a manager who spoke Spanglish to me (they had aloe vera, it turned out, but in *drink* form rather than something to lather onto burns). I also bought a Pepsi from them, feeling I'd earned my day's free parking there. So when I got the parking ticket the next day, I was a bit disappointed, but hey, I hadn't shopped there that day.
So, the other thing I wrote about, besides Comic-Con, was how I wish I could write more. Even though I write more than anybody reading this, and wrote today, yesterday, and the day before, I know I can do more. For example, yesterday, I had an idea for a story while walking down the street, and I was too busy to sit down and write it, but sat down to do so in the afternoon . . . and it was totally gone. No clue what it was about or how complete an idea it was. How could my mind think it up and then toss it out like that?
It pisses me off, and to think of all the hundreds of projects that I’ve started and then abandoned, it makes me wonder how many of those would have been better than the ones I actually managed to midwife into completion.
I tried to think of what the story might have been, whether it was a horror story or a comedy or what, but it didn’t come. This morning, I thought about writing a superhero story set in the Wild West, of maybe a telekinetic living in the frontier or something, trying to make a difference in a rugged land, but trying also to keep his abilities a secret. I also thought about a story set in the future (or a parallel now) where everybody born has superpowers, and a kid is born who is just a normal human, and how much that sucks for him. I thought about writing about some kind of virus that makes every child between one and five go insane and want to kill adults, and how at night packs of murderous children run rampant through the city, killing and raping, and whatever else a four year old would do if allowed. My friend Ian loves the idea of feral children that run on all fours, so if I wrote the story maybe I could dedicate it to him.
Then I thought of a man, traveling somewhere, maybe lost, and he sees a sign that says “Murdertown 1 mile.” He is curious, and a motorcycle cop pulls him over and asks if he’s headed into town. “No. Why, will I get murdered?” “If you go cross into town, you’ll have to kill someone, so don’t enter unless you have to.” The guy laughs, and asks for directions. The cop tells him to make a U-turn and where to go. The man considers turning, but is curious, and goes into town, seeing a gas station ahead. There’s a billboard that says, “Do Unto Others. Kill Humanely.” He is worried. A couple of old men watch him drive by, but they’re not armed. At the station, it’s all full service, and a kid comes out. Twelve, maybe. “You here to kill me?” the guy asks. “No. You want to kill me?” “Not today. Not when you’re pumping my gas. Haven’t seen that in a while.” The boy explains that this used to be Indian land, and through a loophole, one murder is legal here. People kill their wives, kill their friends, kill strangers. “Have you ever killed somebody?” the man asks, thinking this is some kind of hoax or publicity stunt. “No,” the boy says, "but I don’t want to leave.” He explains, if you kill, then you must move away. He thinks the boy might be telling the truth.
An old woman comes to him, asking if he’ll kill her husband, who’s real sick. He declines. A farmer asks if the dude has killed yet, and if not, if he’ll kill his teen son. “He don’t like girls, you see.” The man is disgusted and heads out of town. A pregnant woman actually lays down in the road and he goes around her.
I wrote this story in a bit better detail, to the end (or at least until the point where the man makes his decision and runs into the policeman again) before my "mishap" with the computer. I didn't use MS Word before because there's all these irritating hoops to jump through because it's not a registered version, but I've got to jump through them from now on, to avoid losing it all. When I think about the extra half hour or so that I wasted rewriting all this, when I could have been fleshing out "Murdertown," or working on synopses for the other two ideas I had, or talking about the things I saw each day at the Con, I just feel tired.
They have started letting people into Hall H now, so those hours flew by. I ended up sitting toward the back (but still far enough up that I know five or six hundred people behind me also got to go in), next to a couple of heavy-set ladies who were here about the HUNGER GAMES panel. I ended up not liking them in the end. I had no internet access, for some reason, which was disappointing, since this is a better computer than the one I've previously had, but the chaps in the row behind me told me theirs weren't working either. I saw several panels I wasn't particularly interested in, but only one did I truly hate. A better man might have used that time to read, write, or blog, but I didn't for some reason (I kept thinking, I'd better keep this laptop with a little bit of charge in it, in case of an emergency, but ended up not using it again before going back to the car).
I'm not sure how much I'm going to blog about SDCC2013, as Big and I usually talk about it on our podcast, but I imagine I would've gotten more done, had--
Nahh, I won't say it again.
Rish Outfield
*This is an exaggeration, but two hours later, he called his wife on her cellphone and said he was about to order. He asked her if that guy in the line with her wanted anything. I really appreciated that, but wow, I can't imagine any coffee, Starbucks or otherwise, being worth a wait like that. And the saddest part is, that family was from Seattle.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
SDCC: Who's Who
Every year, besides the endless lines, unrealistic walks, and fury at the maddening crowds, I have a Comic-Con tradition of taking really lousy pictures. This is the third camera I've owned since starting my yearly visits, and is by far the best. However . . .
I have still compiled a selection of really awful photos of celebries, and will once again make a game of identifying them. Each one is numbered, see if you can recognize them all!
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
I have still compiled a selection of really awful photos of celebries, and will once again make a game of identifying them. Each one is numbered, see if you can recognize them all!
1.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Back From San Diego
Every summer, I make an effort to go to the San Diego Comic-Con, where I must spend a great deal of money, and suffer either a little or a lot. I've considered not going a time or two, but I've made it a tradition to head down there every July, whether I can afford it . . . or not.
This was the first time I ever went when I was broke. So I reaaaally need to do some work now that I'm back. But I'll try to post a couple of pictures and a few words about it when I get a chance, because this was a pretty great trip, despite the heat, ants, and crowds.
Driving into San Diego, I was surprised (and delighted) to see a huge bank of fog coming in. For about five miles, visibility was suddenly limited, and traffic slowed down for an actual reason instead of it just being Southern California.
There were a bunch of protesters all around the Convention Center again this year. This time they had megaphones and were mostly preaching instead of screaming hate at the passersby (like the Westboro parasites did the last few years). Even so, I didn't really understand why they were there, and holding up scripture signs that said, "Judgement Is Coming" and "God will Utterly Destroy Those Who Reject Him" (which flies in the face of a lot of the hellfire threats you usually hear, though I've no doubt it too is in the Bible). The megaphoners would talk about the emptiness of what we were doing there and that without Jesus, nothing else would matter, though they did it more eloquently than the Phelps clan had. One of them--on the last day--was really young and pretty, and that made me sad for some reason.
As is tradition, Comic-Con attendees brought their own signs. Reading, "Frank Castle Will Punish the Wicked" and "Galactus Is Nigh" and such. Those always amuse me, simply because they're usually clever, and less hateful than they easily could be.
There are, of course, some protests I can get behind.
This was the first time I ever went when I was broke. So I reaaaally need to do some work now that I'm back. But I'll try to post a couple of pictures and a few words about it when I get a chance, because this was a pretty great trip, despite the heat, ants, and crowds.
Driving into San Diego, I was surprised (and delighted) to see a huge bank of fog coming in. For about five miles, visibility was suddenly limited, and traffic slowed down for an actual reason instead of it just being Southern California.
There were a bunch of protesters all around the Convention Center again this year. This time they had megaphones and were mostly preaching instead of screaming hate at the passersby (like the Westboro parasites did the last few years). Even so, I didn't really understand why they were there, and holding up scripture signs that said, "Judgement Is Coming" and "God will Utterly Destroy Those Who Reject Him" (which flies in the face of a lot of the hellfire threats you usually hear, though I've no doubt it too is in the Bible). The megaphoners would talk about the emptiness of what we were doing there and that without Jesus, nothing else would matter, though they did it more eloquently than the Phelps clan had. One of them--on the last day--was really young and pretty, and that made me sad for some reason.
As is tradition, Comic-Con attendees brought their own signs. Reading, "Frank Castle Will Punish the Wicked" and "Galactus Is Nigh" and such. Those always amuse me, simply because they're usually clever, and less hateful than they easily could be.
There are, of course, some protests I can get behind.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Audiobook Adventures: Post 22
I finally finished editing the book I'd been dragging my feet on. I submitted it, and the rights holder only had one change they requested. It blew my mind that there would only be one overlooked mistake in an entire reading (I said "passage" instead of "package"). I fixed that, and the book is now approved.
I really ought to get to work on the second book in the series (this is the one where I'm contracted to do five, but there are thirty-three total), but I'd prefer to concentrate on other, smaller projects, and then get to work on Book Two. What would be nice is if the first book sold so well, right out the gate, that I felt a big adrenaline rush to push me through the next one. Time will tell.
I really ought to get to work on the second book in the series (this is the one where I'm contracted to do five, but there are thirty-three total), but I'd prefer to concentrate on other, smaller projects, and then get to work on Book Two. What would be nice is if the first book sold so well, right out the gate, that I felt a big adrenaline rush to push me through the next one. Time will tell.
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