Rish Performs "The Concrete Mixer" by Ray Freaking Bradbury on Audible

It was exciting to get the contract on this one, to be able to perform a story--any story--by Ray Bradbury during my ill-fated experiment in audiobook narration.  Easily the most recognizable name I've had the pleasure to perform, I'm happy to announce that my reading of "The Concrete Mixer" is now up for sale on Audible.com.

The story was published in 1949, in a pulp magazine, and later republished in Bradbury's collection, "The Illustrated Man."  It tells the story of Ettil, a Martian family man who refuses to participate in his planet's invasion of Earth, as he has read many of our stories about the disastrous attempts to invade us.  Eventually, he is forced to go along, and lands on Earth, only to find it very different than the world depicted in the magazines.

This story, while amusingly dated, was a pretty audacious condemnation on Post-war America, and seemed more overtly comical than any other Bradbury I've read.  Also, it has a very different ending than the version that ended up in the collection, which alone should make you curious.

The recording can be found at this link : http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Concrete-Mixer-Audiobook/B00HETDFHK/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srImg?qid=1388217409&sr=1-1

I did my best on this story, and it was an honor to be able to perform something from the Master of Science Fiction.

Rish Performs "Trick Or Treat" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Audible

So, when I first took on the contract to do the first Spade/Paladin Conundrum story (by Kristine Kathryn Rusch) early in the year, I was told that if it worked out, there were other stories in the series I might be asked to record.  That experience was a very lengthy and bad one, and prompted me to scrap the recording equipment I had been using for a couple of years, and go with the setup I now enjoy (which I have practically no complaints about).

Miraculously, I was asked back to perform the other Spade stories, and here we are at the end of the year with this, the final Spade/Paladin Conundrum story . . . at least the most recent to be published.  The stories vary in length and seriousness, and this one tells of poor Spade being cajoled into babysitting on Halloween by Paladin, who seems to have an unspoken ulterior motive for shackling him with a teenager dressed as a ghost.

The story's called Trick Or Treat, and can be found at this link: http://www.audible.com/pd/Mysteries-Thrillers/Trick-or-Treat-Audiobook/B00HETDOAI/ref=a_search_c4_1_2_srTtl?qid=1388217388&sr=1-2

These tales are always really geeky and referential to fan culture, and Ms. Rusch is a quality writer of more works than I'll probably manage in my lifetime.  Be nice to be proven wrong there, though.

Rish Outfield, Audiobook Lad

Annual Love Actually Christmas Post

Because of work, illness, overwork, and apathy, I was unable to watch LOVE ACTUALLY this year for Christmas. That is a bummer, as that movie does wonders for my outlook on life, and helps me cope with the soul-torturing loneliness that's been known to climb in my window at night.

But, as it's a tradition for me to take a line from the movie and put a picture of it up, I thought it was the least I could do.  I went in search of an image from the scene I wanted, and started making the following:

To my surprise, however, someone had already done a screen-grab of that exact line I was going to use.   It may be better than mine, but I wish I'd discovered it two minutes earlier.

Thank you, random stranger.

The Podcast That Dares Not Speak Its Name 7: Last Minute Shopper

Well, I've had to skip an episode (or four) to get my Christmas show in under the wire.  This was supposed to be the final episode of my solo podcast before I made the switch to the easier* Rish Outcasts.

This one includes a Christmas story (or anti-Christmas story, if you prefer) I wrote called "Last Minute Shopper."  It's fairly short and tells the tale of a reluctant venture into a mall right before the holiday.  Afterward, Sir Fake Sean and I do our worst duet ever, and there's a bit of monologuing by me. 

Hopefully, you'll miss these when they're gone.

Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.

Rish Outfield, Podcaster

*Or perhaps I should say "easier," since it's a difference of maybe ten minutes' work either way.

Sleepytime Narrator

I have another post forthcoming, wherein I detail the quandary I had about the ending of "Kalin," but it's pretty extensive, so I think I'll bump it to next week, when I'm less busy (after Christmas, I mean).

In the meantime, here is a bit about a struggle of a different sort . . . staying awake while narrating audiobooks.  Nothing puts me to sleep faster than having to edit my readings, but occasionally, even the reading of them is a challenge.  As you can hear in the clip, I am aware, most of the time, of my condition, but the worst is when I'm not aware of it, and mumble through lines of the reading, never doing them over, only to be discovered in the editing process.

Yawn with me.

Rish Outfield

Rish Performs "Snipe Hunt" on Audible.com

Carol Hightshoe seems to be a writer I can get behind.  All at once (I got the impression), she put a bunch of her stories for sale on Amazon.com, and then made a bunch of them available for narrators to audition for.  On my brightest, most energetic day, I'd be doing the same damn thing.

During that period when I was looking for small projects, I saw one of them, "Snipe Hunt," and thought it would be up my alley.  I sent an audition, and here I am to plug it in my blog.

It's a very short story, set in the bayou (which I can't do the accent of, but hopefully the dialect police have the day off), and I found it amusing.  A couple of hillbilly-types discover a passel of invading aliens in their neck of the woods.  They've come across the galaxy in search of running targets, but are they wily enough to hunt down the most elusive prey of all . . . the snipe?

I thought it would be fun to give the aliens low-pitched British accents.  I don't know if it worked or not, but for a couple of bucks, you can decide for yourself.  Here's the link: http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Snipe-Hunt-Audiobook/B00H2NMVYQ/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1386723976&sr=1-1

Audiobook Adventures: Part 30

I have finished my recording of "Kalin," the fourth Dumarest of Terra book.  Once again, I was unable or unwilling to sit down and record the whole darn thing in a couple of sittings.  Doing these readings takes a lot of out of me, which makes me wonder what it would be like to be a professional narrator, having to get through a Stephen King or John Grisham book in a studio environment, with tons of technicians standing by, doing it as a full-time job.  I imagine I'd long for these ACX days, when I have a month or so to get even short novels done.

I've done three short stories in the past month or so, and been offered another.  I declined it, struggling as I was with my "Kalin" deadline.  But the author of that story seemed to want me to do it, and sent me another offer, with the deadline extended a couple of weeks.  I accepted that one, and in absolute honesty, I completely forgot about it until I started typing this right now.  Sadly, I've now got two days before the first chapter deadline, and I haven't even downloaded the story yet.  Or finished "Kalin," which needs to be my priority.

I mentioned before the accent I chose for a major character, and how I struggled with it.  As I've been editing, I've either gotten better with the voice, or I've gotten used to it, for it doesn't grate on me like it did.

I have found that nothing is quite so sleep-inducing as editing my audiobook recordings.  Sometimes I can be sitting for five to ten minutes and find myself drowsing off.  If I get paid for each of these gigs, it's for the editing, not for the readings, which are usually a joy to do.

That's difficult, but worse is when I start to fall asleep while RECORDING the book.  That happened to me once in May or so, when I was narrating . . . wow, I cannot remember that name of that book.  Already, either my mind is going or I'm doing too darn many of these.  I was downstairs, recording on the couch (I mistakenly thought the sound would be better in the little room I use as a workshop, and I could plug a microphone directly into my brother's laptop), when my head started to sag.  I'd awaken, continue, doze, then try to rouse myself and keep reading to the end of the chapter at least.

This was repeated in similar fashion on one chapter of "Kalin," and it's not until the editing process that I realize just how asleep I had fallen.  Looooong spaces appear between sentences, and then between words, and then the words themselves become mumbles. 

Luckily, I caught myself on this one and said, "Man, I'm too tired to keep going.  I'm gonna stop."  On the other book, whatever it was, I had no choice but to edit around the sleepy bits, since . . . either it was too difficult to match my voice in recordings made days apart, or I was too lazy to go downstairs and record those lines again.  Maybe I'm not the world's best audiobook narrator after all.

So, what else?

In "Kalin," there were, after all was said and done, many named characters that didn't show up again.  I had a scene where there were three men on a hunting trip, and I gave them all different voices to differentiate them, including giving one a Hispanic accent.  A couple of chapters later, I discovered that all three men were brothers, and that the odd man with the accent shouldn't have one.  But I had already edited that chapter, and had absolutely no desire to do the thing over again.

So, I just decided that it was possible for one brother to be adopted, or a half-brother, or, hell, I don't know, have been brought up somewhere else, and have a different accent from his other two brothers.  As the character reappeared, again and again, I kept thinking, "Dammit, this character with this accent again.  What should I do?"  But I had made my choice, and I stuck with it.  I do worry, though, that someone listening will be bothered by that.  I hope not, but as long as it's not the publisher, I will continue to live with my mistake.

But that brings us to the weirdest part of the book, the part that I still don't know what to do about, even though the deadline is looming, and at the time of this writing (which I'm doing instead of editing, of course), is minutes away.  It's all about accents again.

The main female character has an accent, from the very first chapter.  I had read an overview of the book, trying to avoid the kinds of mistakes I made with the Hispanic accent mentioned above.  In it, it was explained that Kalin is not who she claims to be, exactly, but is actually someone else, sort of body-switched.  The girl Kalin used to be is on her world, very ill, and--

Oh man.  This is way too convoluted to write about here.  I'm gonna have to do an entire blog post to do it justice.  Sigh.

Rish Outfield, Audiobeast

Paul Walker R.I.P.

So, actor Paul Walker died in a car accident yesterday.  He was one of the stars of one of my least-favorite film franchises.  My sister despised him with a fury beyond how I feel toward Dane Cook.

But I quite liked Paul Walker myself.  My best experience being an extra was working on Clint Eastwood's FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, in which I got to play a U.S. soldier on a Liberty ship.  We'd arrive at the docks pre-dawn, get our hair cut, get in our uniforms, take our belts and firearms, and load about the vessel, shooting out in the ocean until the sun went down.  One of the days of the shoot, while Ryan Phillipe hung out with women who were not Reese Witherspoon, I ended up talking to Paul Walker and Adam Beach, who were other actors in the picture.

I asked Walker about INTO THE BLUE and making out with Jessica Alba, and he was surprisingly cool and forthcoming, reminding me of the coolest guy in my hometown, who was always friendly and accessible, even to social gimps like me.  Tall, handsome, blond and blue-eyed, Walker basically looked like a Ken doll, and yet he was down-to-earth and not above chatting with extras.  It made me a fan of Paul Walker.

There are a lot of d'bags in the world, and even more in Hollywood.  It was nice to be able to say that he was not one of them. 

I'd have cast him as Captain America, had the brother-in-law on "Chuck" not been available.

He died at age forty, and I don't really know if his star was setting or on the rise.  We won't know now.  As it stands, I guess he'll be remembered for the damned FAST & FURIOUS movies, but it's a shame DC or Marvel couldn't have made a superhero out of him before the end.

Rish Outfield

Audiobook Adventures: Chapter 29

As the year winds down, and the holidays take up more and more of my time, I imagine I'll long for this period, when I record or edit a three or four times a week with practically no deadline pressure.

That's not to say that I don't have multiple commitments and deadlines looming--I do, but they're all pretty much doable.  As usual, the major projects are the two remaining Dumarest books, but I've got a handful of short stories I've also taken on, not because I need the money (what money?), but because I wanted to do them.  If I actually made a living doing this, that would probably be the ideal situation for me.

So far, the fourth Dumarest book has been pretty smooth sailing.  It's still got the long chapters to deal with, but it does seem pretty straightforward, with fewer characters (so far) that show up once and never again.  I am, however, really struggling with one of the character voices.  I decided to cowboy up and try an accent I'm not very confident with, and in the editing, it sounds awful. 

Like, Mila Kunis in OZ, THE GREAT AND POWERFUL awful.

But I am committed to it, and unless the publisher says, "Holy Narnia, Rish, that one voice is just too terrible to allow out to listeners; I'm gonna have to ask you to re-voice," that's the one I'm going with.  There was a Voice & Dialects course in college that I really wanted to take, figuring it would help me with my acting, but it was scheduled opposite a film class that was also only offered at that time, and I was already leaning toward Film instead of Theater, so I never took it.  Sometimes I wish I had, though, since that might've helped me out with my voicework.

So, I finished the third E.C. Tubb book, and submitted it the day before the deadline, only to find out a couple of days later that I had only uploaded part of the first chapter.  I'm not entirely sure how that happens (we're required to submit the first fifteen minutes of every project and wait for notes before proceeding, so it's possible I used the wrong file when compiling the whole book), but the omitted section was familiar to me, so I had to go through my files (luckily, I hadn't deleted any yet*) and find the rest of the reading to edit in.  Technically, I did miss my deadline because of that, but I'm not counting it.

These books are sort of keeping me from my solo podcasts, The Rish Outcast and the Podcast That Dares Not Speak Its Name, both of which have episodes recorded but not edited.  I also hoped to do a Christmas episode of TPTDNSIN, and with work, Dunesteef, and the other stuff, that's looking less and less likely. 

Too bad.  It was a really lousy story too.

I think I mentioned in the last post that one of the projects by a famous SF author fell through, after I had auditioned and won the part/gig, didn't I?  That was a bit sad, but I am happy to mention here that I did get the job to do the Ray Bradbury story, and that has to be the highest-profile author I've done since starting this hobby, head and shoulders above the other writers, at least as far as recognizability.  I have a little under a week to get started on that one, so by the time this sees print (virtual print, at least), I should have recorded it.

Then I'll press on with the fourth Dumarest book, and see if I can't get the others done as well.

Rish Outfield, Audiobook Boy

*Actually, I HAD deleted all these files, but as I hadn't emptied my Recycle Bin, they were still sitting there.

Rish Performs "Toyman" (Dumarest 3) on Audible

Somehow, "Toyman" is already available to purchase, despite me having finished it only a couple of weeks ago.  At this rate, book five will be for sale before I've finished recording it.

So, after the events of "Derai," Earl Dumarest should be on his own again, but he isn't.  In between books, he had another adventure, and has found himself stuck on the world of Toy, where the wealthy elite, or Stockholders, struggle for power against the Toymaster, the ruler of the planet, and the holder of the most stock.  Earl has encountered an ally in Legrain, another combatant in the Toymaster's war games, and has found himself on the losing side.  The rules say that all the combatants must win . . . or die.

That's how the book starts, and I'll not complain about that now, except to say that E.C. Tubb is good at writing action sequences and fights, and it would've been nice to start with that.  Instead, poor Earl finds himself on the bottom of the heap once again, finding a lot of new enemies on the planet Toy, and very few friends. 

Like the other books in the series so far, there's a lot of political intrigue, with Stockholders conspiring against the Toymaster, hoping to unseat him, and put someone a bit more decent and responsible in his place.  One of the Stockholders, Leon, allies himself with Quara, the Toymaster's sister, and eventually, Earl Dumarest gets wrapped up in it as well.

Here you go.  Toyman Link.

These are enjoyable books, and there are instances of great writing in every one, but on the other hand, there are repeated uses of the word "iritably," which my mouth is not capable of speaking.  So there's that.

At this point in time, I have two more books left on my contract, and then we'll see what happens.  Book Four is due in a few days, and Book Five is due at the end of next month.  Once those are done, I've no idea what kind of projects I'll take on, or if I'll be offered more Dumarest of Terra books.

Rish

Have a Little Pride

I got an email today that vexed me.  It wasn't a huge deal, but with my personality, I could easily have made it a big deal.  After all, a single negative feedback on an eBay transaction can ruin my whole day.*

A month or two back, I did a search for books that were looking for auditions, and a familiar title came up.  It was for a book by a three-named author that I had heard about a couple of years ago, one on the way up, and I had even read a story or two by him in my travels.  This was one of those writers that I've complained about before that require, if you audition to get his narrating gig, that you perform an entire chapter as your audition, which ends up being way too much work for most narrators (and for Audible's rules, by the way, not that they'll do anything about it), and I was hesitant.

Big Anklevich had actually read the book in question, though, so I asked him for his advice.  Should I should audition or not for this thing, and whether the book was even worth the work I'd put into it.  He told me something pretty wonderful: "I think you'd really like it.  It's the sort of book you would write yourself."

So I auditioned.  That entails reading, recording, editing, and cleaning the sound, then sending it to the author or rights holder, and waiting.  I've auditioned for a ton of projects, and while I've certainly gotten more rejections lately than I did when I first started (since I was so much less discriminating in those days, and even auditioned for a couple of textbooks I shudder at the very memory of now), I don't wait with baited breath hoping I nail every part I try out for.**

So today, when I got an email from the writer, it did not surprise me that I didn't get the gig.  Most times, I just get an automatic rejection email that says the part went to someone else.  Every once in a while, the writer or agent will tell me they went in another direction, but thanked me for my audition, and both of those are fine, really.

But this one was different.  This was the first time I've ever got a personalized rejection from a writer that explained why I wasn't good enough to do his or her book.  This was the first time I've ever had a writer insult me in their rejection.

He described the way I deliver all my lines, and I won't copy it here word-for-word, because . . . well, I have no real reason not to, but I will say that he compared my narration voice to a Disney animated character well-known for having a terrible, enjoyment-shattering voice.

That he prefaced it with "I realize you spent a long time creating your audition" was all the worse somehow, because I don't think a lot of the writers out there understand that asking potential narrators to do a fifteen minute sample (or the one from six months ago that actually required the auditioner to record the whole story) is a great deal of work.

In the man's defense, he did add that my voice might be perfect for some other writer's book, just not for his.

So, for about two minutes, my feelings were hurt.  I started to ask myself if he wasn't right, and if I had been delusional to think anybody would want to hear me perform a book or short story, and if maybe I shouldn't consider . . .

But then, an interesting thought went into my head.  A magical phrase, it sounded a little bit like "Buck sim," and it made my shame and disappointment all but disappear.

I have worked hard, since I was eight or nine years old, to do the best readings I can, giving every narration my all, to the best of my ability, even if I'm not fond of the material I've been given.  And I've been doing it for so long, I think I've gotten pretty good.  Oh, eff it, better than good.

Somehow, I've developed a healthy (and out of character) pride in the audiobook work I do, to the point where I try to elevate the material in front of me, if not simply to do it justice.  I'd like to be up there on the short list of the people you'd want performing your story or novel, and wouldn't mind doing voicework here or there for the rest of my life.  It doesn't make any sense, but it's far easier for me to objectively stamp my narrating work as High Grade, than it is to do the same for my writing.  Must be a different portion of my brain or something.

And I think, were he alive, Ray Bradbury would get a kick out of the work I did on his alien invasion short story.  So, there's that.

In the end, I think I actually dodged a bullet.  Regardless of the quality of the man's novel, would I really want to dedicate twenty to forty hours of editing and recording to a book written by a douchebag?

Maybe this is progress.

Rish Outfield, Audiobook Guy

*Since writing this, I discovered that my little sister is very much like me in this regar.  If someone says something unkind to her, or she makes a mistake, or a person in her care dies, she carries it around for a long time, dwelling on it, replaying it in her head, blaming herself or regretting what she did or said or may have contributed to the situation.  That makes me feel for her, since it's no damned fun living your life like that.

**With the exception of the Ray Bradbury story I went after.  Because, hey, that was Ray Bradbury.