Rish 'n Big Take Over The "Journey Into..." Podcast (Part Deux)

Recently, Marshal Latham over at the "Journey Into..." podcast edited and ran "The Gold Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe, and promptly had a nervous breakdown.  Anybody would.

So, he asked others if they would produce an episode of his show, sort of guest-hosting like Joan Rivers, Dave Letterman, and Jay Leno used to do for Johnny Carson.  Dave Thompson, Podcastle Enforcer did a show, and Marshal asked us to do one too, centered around "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.

1948's short story is one of the classics of the 20th Century, and while I don't think the NBC 1951 version we "presented" on the show does it justice, it was still fun to talk about it.

I thought it would be amusing to tie Marshal up and stick him in the basement, and maybe it's only amusing to me, but we're over there, making his controlled, reverent show quite the opposite.

Check it out, if you wanna, at this link: http://www.journeyintopodcast.blogspot.com/2014/03/journey-91-lottery-by-shirley-jackson.html

Also, back in January, we took part in a group poetry reading session scripted by Señor Latham, that should be enjoyable.  It's at this link: http://strewnalongthepath.blogspot.com/2014/03/9-strewn-along-path-impromptu-poe-etry.html

Rish

Rish performs "Dead Men Don't Cry" by Nancy Fulda over at Audible

We've all heard that dead men poop, grow hair, and fingernails . . . but do they cry?

This musical question is answered in a short Science Fiction Mystery story by Nancy Fulda.  I really have no memory of auditioning for this story, or how I came to take this job, except that there was a weekend when I auditioned for a half dozen projects, just because I was bored with what I was currently doing.  I ended up reading Nancy Fulda's short story, and thinking it was pretty well-written, so I was happy to produce it in audio.

The Aldabaran colony has enjoyed independence from Earth, but now the Earthlings have come, like unwelcome landlords, with their list of demands.  When Kimball's old mentor is killed in a seeming attempt to assassinate the Earth ambassador, Kimball has only hours to prove his friend's innocence, and try to prevent retribution by those nasty imperialist Terrans.

I've said before (and I'll stand by it, fists tightly clenched), that the only person who gets closer to a short story or novel than the person producing it for audio is the writer herself, and having read this through again and again in the process of completing my version, I was surprised by how much depth was jammed in here. 

It's gonna sound insulting to any of you who aren't Nancy Fulda (and heck, maybe even to her as well), but this would've been a perfectly acceptable story without the emotion, thought, and subtext that lurks between the lines.  It was short, with a few well-defined characters, and was really tightly-written, but there was a lot going on, with politics between poor colonists and rich, powerful Terran imperialists, with Kimball's internal struggles about his mentor's true intentions, and some great world-building that, frankly, I'm surprised would be in such a short piece.

I like fun, simple Science Fiction stories (or maybe Space Opera is what I like, and eff you for pointing out the difference), and this one has intrigue and shoot-outs, but it also had nuance to it, stuff I didn't notice till I was editing it.  It made me want to seek out Ms. Fulda's other work, maybe hit her up for a story for my nearly-flatlined fullcast podcast.

Later I discovered it was a finalist for the Writers of the Future contest, so it ain't just me.

I don't make money from these short stories, it seems, so I suppose I'm really only doing them for fun.  Regardless, this was the last short story project I've taken on, everything else being either novels or paid works I don't get profit participation in anyway.**

Here's the link: http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Dead-Men-Dont-Cry-Audiobook/B00ID8VLWM/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1395678530&sr=1-1

I've done a bit of audio work for stories that I have problems with, and a couple that just plain suck.  But this one was rock solid, and if I'm not careful, it'll make me look at my own work and say, "Might there be another level to this than simply A plus B equals C?"

Loki forbid that ever happens.

Rish Outfield

*Though the first Kristine Kathryn Rusch story I did, "Killer Advice," was definitely one of them.

**I probably ought to focus on pieces that will make me money in the future, but it's so tempting to take on these projects, since they're similar to what I've been doing for the Dunesteef and others these last six years, and so, foolhardy or not, I doubt this will be my last.

Rish Performs "The Jester At Scar" by E.C. Tubb at Audible.com

"The Jester at Scar" is the latest E.C. Tubb book about Earl Dumarest to become available to purchase.  This was the last book in my five-book contract with Wildside Press.  It was not terribly difficult (the hard ones were the first and fourth, for reasons I believe I've mentioned), but as it came in the month of December, I was distracted and otherwise occupied, and missed my deadline by several days.

In this one, Dumarest ends up on a planet called Scar, where the seasons are short, and the winters so deadly, the world basically shuts down.  During the spring and summer, though, the planet comes to life, because there are tons of fungi growing out there, and some are incredibly valuable.  Earl and his friend go out looking for The Golden Spore, which is so rare it makes anyone who finds it instantly rich.  He, of course, makes a ton of enemies along the way.

As I've mentioned before, this is simply the fifth book in a thirty-three book series (which I believe might have kept going if not for the death of the author*), but I was doing it at the end of last year, when I was busy, tired, and pretty darn sick of audiobooks.

Now that it's come out, though, and I've taken a bit of vacation from them (although I had to cut my holiday short to fix several errors in the edited recordings), maybe it's time to follow Earl around on another of his adventures.

Here's the link: http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Jester-at-Scar-Audiobook/B00IT62MO4/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1395682109&sr=1-1

Rish Outfield, Audioboy

*Although that never stopped Brian Herbert, Michael Brandman, or Brandon Sanderson.

Babysitter of the Year 2014

I would not make a very good parent.  I can hardly produce a serviceable performance as an uncle.  But I try.

For example, today I picked my nephew up from school, and asked him if he wanted to go to lunch to get some chili fries at Del Taco.  Del Taco is a cheap fast food restaurant that serves the same chili fries the gods ate at Mount Olympus.  There are two within a five minute drive from the boy's school: one with an impressive indoor playland (where my nephew once told me he discovered a dirty diaper crawling around in the upper tubes).*  The other restaurant is right next to the high school, but has no playground attachment, and I don't have to try to cajole the child into coming down if we go to that one.

I guess we were early enough that there were a bunch of teenagers there, just crossing the street from the high school, including a kid with the most ridiculous afro this side of 1974 Harlem (except this boy was white, so I suppose it might qualify as a Jew-fro, if there were any Jews within a hundred miles).  My nephew is six, and in kindergarten, and he saw this teen's head and began to laugh and point.

I guess a normal adult would tell him it was impolite to point, but this kid's head looked like the private parts of the Biblical Goliath, so I just let it go.  Some people wear an "Ask me about my goiter" t-shirt around, and shouldn't be surprised if someone asks them about it.

A moment later, though, also from the high school, a teenage dwarf came into the restaurant, with one of his friends.  This poor kid looked to be about fourteen, but was smaller than my nephew, who isn't tall for his age.  I immediately averted my gaze, whether that's rude or polite, but my nephew zoned directly in on the small person, and said, "Hey, look.  Look at him."

Well, this one was a bit different from the kid with all the hair.  "Hush," I whispered.  "Don't be mean."

I don't think he thought he was being mean, but he gazed on in a sort of amused wonder.  The little student looked over at my nephew then and smiled at him, and I really pitied the dude, and appreciated that he recognized no ill will in the child's attention.

"Some people are small and some people are big," I said, not really sure if I should tell my nephew that because his own mother was born six weeks premature, she was smaller than anyone else she knew.

I bought my nephew a tostada, which is a hard tortilla, covered with beans, cheese, and lettuce (which you already knew).  He grabbed a packet of hot sauce and squirted it onto the tostada, then, before taking a single bite, put TWO MORE packets of hot sauce on it.  "You really like hot sauce, huh?"

"Yeah," he said, "I''m tough."

And the boy is tough.  But he took one bite of the tostada and winced.  "Yuck," he said.

"What?"

"This tastes bad," he said.

"It's fine," said I, since I too had gotten a tostada, and mine was fine.

"No, the sauce makes it yucky," he said, and set down the food, never to pick it up again.  I tried to get him to wipe off some of the hot sauce, or just eat the sections where it was lightly doused, but he pretty much refused.  Sigh.

Loud, obscene, braying laughter drew my attention.  I think you know what I mean by that, and if so, it would come to no surprise to see three teenage boys, dressed in ill-fitting pants and t-shirts, making a lot of noise and grab-assing over at the order counter.  They were the kind of idiot teenagers that know darn well they're being noisy, and delight in the negative glances their way.

These boys (technically, one of them was the victim and the other two were the instigators, but I pronounce them all guilty by association) were teasing one another, trying to irritate the woman at the register, and pushing each other around.  They were the types to somehow think the lady saying, "Twenty-six cents is your change" is either an innuendo or a demonstration that she was mentally retarded, and had to respond in an overloud manner.

I gave my nephew a soft taco, telling him not to put any hot sauce in it until he'd tasted it first, then commanding he eat the whole thing without complaining.  In the back of my mind, I worried for the undersized boy sitting a couple of tables away from us, since the trio of loudmouths probably harassed him wherever they found him.

Instead, they continued taunting each other, and when they got their food, one of them actually slapped the bag out of the third kid's hands, knocking a churro onto the floor.  While this teen bent to clean it up, the other two congratulated themselves on the hilarity of their prank.  Then they headed to the door, where all three piled into a beat-up Jeep with the stereo blasting.

I looked at my nephew, all anger about the tostada forgotten.  "Those, my friend, were a bunch of fucking douchebags," I said, patting him on the back.

Unca Rish Outfield

*The boy was crawling around in the tubes, not the diaper.

**This story is 100% true.  Except that there's probably a jew or two in town, somewhere, not calling attention to themselves.  Sorry.

Rish Outcast 6: a little more conversation

There's no story in this one.  Actually, there used to be, but since I didn't get to it until the twenty-two minute mark, I figured I ought to split it in two.  If you don't want to know my thoughts on writing, rewriting, and podcasting, you can skip this one.

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

Audiobook Adventures: "Love . . . Exciting And New"

Cum aboard, we're expecting you.

Guess I'm gonna go ahead and finish this post, since it's been two months since I started it.

A year ago, when I first started trying to do audiobooks, I thought about maybe doing a couple of pieces of Erotica.  It seemed like someone who was a casual reader (or not a reader at all) might enjoy listening to sexual exploits rather than just watching them on the internet, so I figured I'd give it a try.

Oh, maybe we should define Erotica here.  I suppose we're talking about depictions of physical love, instead of just romantic love, flirting, newly-developed feelings, etc..  Porn, I guess.  Just so there's no confusion.

The thing is, porn is, at least to me, a form of fantasy, of male wish fulfillment.  The way a perfect world would work.  Your mileage may vary, of course.

And the Romance genre (at least the traditional, Harlequin-style Romance) is much the same, a form of fantasy, of female wish fulfillment.  The kind of life one dreams of having.

The project I'm currently working on (nearly done, now) is a Romance book, written by a woman, and ostensibly intended for women.  But it's not exactly a paperback with Fabio on the cover.  I think the author would describe it as Erotic Romance, or there may be another, better term for this subgenre.

It has a different feel from the other Romance I've performed in the past year.  And it feels different from Erotica as well.  The writer has at least five of these out there, with handsome, wealthy, clever protagonists* and meet-cute scenarios with women who spread their arms (and legs) for them.

This one is written much like a typical romantic scenario, where a man and a woman meet, feel attraction for one another, get together, then obstacles arise and they go their separate ways, only to come back together at the end.  It shifts between the point of view of the male character and the female one, but it's pretty emotionally exaggerated, and feels like the female POV outweighs the male one.  Which is fine . . .

. . .  except that there is an enormous amount of full-on, descriptive, explicit sex.  Literally the first moment the male and female characters meet (this is in Chapter One, mind you), they create the beast with two backs.  And it's not just a quick paragraph of how "Carly's eyes closed as their bodies became one, the joy of their intimacy filling her from top to bottom.  No more was she a young, innocent girl of forty-three . . . she was now a woman."  It really buries not the lead, giving us a Vivid Entertainment's eye view of every well-lit detail.

Narratively, I would not have imagined a story would work that way.  As author, you'd want to do what you can to keep the couple apart, undermining the audience's expectations but forcing them to keep hoping things will work out, all the while inserting new obstacles so foreign and unnatural, you'd think "Dawson's Creek" went on for eighteen seasons.  But porn has different logic, different rules than regular storytelling, I suppose.

And I don't know if it works or not.  Which is a humble way of saying that it totally doesn't work.  It's so incongruous that it's like one of those movies where somebody has gone in afterwards and added explicit stuff (like HALLOWEEN 2 for gore or CALIGULA for sex), or that story the pastor used to tell about how the sex scene in TOP GUN was such an afterthought that Kelly McGillis's hair isn't even the right color anymore.

There are genuine characters in the book, and interactions that feel pretty real, and some emotion that feels earned.  There is also some silly Hallmark Channel/Lifetime Television For Women And Gay Men melodrama too, but I figured that was par for the course.  When the happy ending comes in the last chapter, I felt pretty good about it, but then there came one more "happy ending" in the massage sense that made me shake my head with discomfort.**

I talked to Big about it, and it was difficult to convey my problem with the narrative without simply spelling out in no uncertain terms what went on in the story's coda.  It made me feel like a prude, one who resorted to spelling certain objectionable words and shuddering after I did it.  And Big could understand reading a book like that himself (with the doors locked and the curtains drawn), but not finding his wife reading.

I really don't know who this kind of book is for, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate it when it works.  The author has made a name for herself writing this sort of thing, and her Amazon pages are overflowing with gushing five-star reviews, written (assumedly) by women who devoured her books and can't wait for the next one.*** 

I'd really like to talk to a woman like this, one who hasn't been beaten down by puritanical society to see intercourse as an evil somehow equal to the taking of human life.  Just to gauge her thoughts on this. 

Most Erotica on Audible is performed by women, and I totally get that.  If I wanted to listen to explicit tale of a girl's first foray into Sapphic Summer Camp, I'd totally want it narrated by a woman.  There are several Gay-themed stories and books looking for narrators every time I look at the list, and those are naturally to be recorded by men. 

I felt a bit awkward during this one, but haven't gotten any complaints from the author.  I was a bit embarrassed to be delivering the lines--and performance, since I'm acting out the female parts as well--but I hope that doesn't show.  It's still good work if you can get it, and I gave it my all nevertheless.

In the meantime, I am happy to spend the money I was paid to narrate this particular book, and I hope several people who are looking for this sort of thing find exactly what they were after in my performance.  If so, maybe I'll get to narrate one or two more of these puzzling tales of Modern Erotic Romance.

Rish Outfield, Smut Reader

*Apparently the wish fulfilment of many, according to user comments.

**I figured when I began this project that I'd have to record the audiobook under a pseudonym, which is sad since I ought to be promoting my work any way I can.  But then there would be a chapter that just felt like a typical book, a book my mom might be reading, and I'd think, "No, this is fine; I'm gonna re-record the intro using my own name."  But then there'd be another three or four page play-by-play of the two lovers gettin' it on, and I'd think, "Oh.  Oh yeah.  Now I remember."

***They can't all be plants, can they?  Not when a hundred illiterate assholes can bash J.K. Rowling's latest book while admitting that they haven't read it themselves, and those reviews don't get taken down.

Ghostbusters . . . Minus One

When I was living in Los Angeles, I was driving home from work one evening when I saw a man walking alone along the sidewalk toward the Fox lot.  As I drove past, I thought, "Hey, I know that guy."  I did a U-turn when I could, then slowed as I passed him.  I called out my window, "Mister Ramis, do you need a ride somewhere?"  He smiled and said "No thanks, I'm fine."  And I drove on.

That was my one experience with Harold Ramis, besides the ones everybody else shares.  It occurred to me then, and many times afterward, that if he had agreed to my help (I assumed his car was broken down and he was headed to Century City, though he could well have just been taking a walk*), that would have made for a really cool story.  Eventually, I combined it with an experience I had had earlier with a former "Saturday Night Live" cast member, who was either drunk or tripping out, and wrote it into a story I believe I called "Hero Worship," about a kid like me who gives his movie idol a drive home.

Harold Ramis died this week.  He was sixty-nine, and though most people know him from playing Doctor Egon Spengler, he did direct GROUNDHOG DAY and ANALYZE THIS and CADDYSHACK and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION (which surprised the heck out of me).  Even so, when he died, I couldn't help but think of him saying, "I collect spores, mold, and fungus."  Not much of an obituary, I know.

Still, as I get older, it's gonna be more and more likely that the celebrities who die are going to be the ones who were important to me in my formative years.  When I was a kid, the only people who died were old folks and the occasional rock musician.  Now, though, people are dying that don't seem elderly to me, often not much older than I have become. 

I really ought to say something more about Ramis, but now I'm just generally sad.

Actually, I just got something.  Somebody on Facebook today posted a quote from Ramis (he got it from his rabbi, but he was the one who told it in a speech), and I really dug it.  He said, "You should start each day with a note in each pocket.  One note says, 'The world was created just for me' and the other says, 'I'm a speck of dust in a meaningless universe.'  Keep them both, because neither are true and both are true."  Nice.

Rish Outfield

*This is doubtful, though, because as everyone knows, nobody walks in L.A..

Rish's story "The Gold Bug" on the "Journey Into" podcast

Our buddy Marshal Latham has a contest every year on his show, "The Journey Into..." podcast, in honor of Edgar Allan Poe.  The rule of the contest (the only rule, other than length) is that it has to take the title of a Poe story or poem, and has to . . . I don't know, be in his style or milieu.

I considered entering the contest last time, thinking immediately of a time when our family traveled to California, and I saw the same car (with a copy of Hustler magazine in its window) both in Redlands and Santa Monica, California (despite the two cities being two hours distant from one another).  I didn't know what story I could make out of that, except that I could make the car a VW beetle, and call the story "The Gold Bug."

I missed it that year, but went ahead and wrote a story with that title for the next one, and it's available over there in audio form right now.  It tells the tale of an eleven year old boy encountering a mysterious car on a family vacation, and is narrated by Pat Krane of the "That TV Show" and "Convert To Raid" podcasts.

Writing is a funny thing.  As a would-be screenwriter, I often had premises or ideas for fantastic scenes that I knew would work (or make great movies or sequences in them), but the challenge was creating a framework around the scenes, or a narrative from the premise itself.  That is much harder, and most of the time (if I had to guess, I'd say 65% to 75% of the time), I realize that the work it's going to take to make a script out of an idea, or to come up with a series of events leading up to those brilliant scenes would not be worth it, not on spec, anyway.

I still hold to the theory that there is a bang-up story in the car with the dirty magazine in the window, but I'm not sure if "The Gold Bug" is that story.  Regardless, it was one of the winners of the contest (and Marshal swears he did not see the authors' names when he judged it), so it's conceivable that someone out there will like it.  Check it out here: http://www.journeyintopodcast.blogspot.com/2014/02/journey-88-gold-bug-by-rish-outfield.html

Rish Outfield, Goldbugger

Happy(?) Valentine's Day From Fake Sean Connery

On this, the worst day of the year, Sir Fake Sean Connery pays Rish a visit . . . ostensibly to cheer him up.

Rish Outcast 5: All Night Gas

Rish brings his short story "All Night Gas" to somewhat life in this episode.  Afterward, he ruminates on superheroes and saviors, the need for them, the need to be rescued.  Sigh.



Music was "Colorless Aura" and "Return of Lazarus" by Kevin McLeod, courtesy of Incompetech.com.

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

Audiobook Adventures: Chapter 35

Well, it has come time to decide whether I want to do more of the Dumarest books or not.  And I can't decide.

A few months back, I spoke to someone who heard from another audiobook producer that they were doing books in this series, and I felt disappointed and a bit betrayed.  But then, the end of 2013 came, and it was really, really hard for me to get the last two books done.  And there were a ton of questionable revisions that came due in the fourth book, which further put me off.*

I missed my deadline on "Kalin" by a week or so, and my deadline on "The Jester At Scar" by three weeks.  Within a couple of days, I got a message regarding the next five books in the series.  I haven't responded yet.

I took on a couple of other projects at the start of the new year.  One of them is a sequel to a book I did when I first started this whole thing, and the author was kind enough to suggest ACX pay me a stipend for this one.  I am excited to start on that one, and I'm sure I can do a better job with Book Two than I did with Book One.**

Before that, though, I have to finish a project I took on, for pay, but with only two weeks before the deadline.  I had very little trouble recording the book (though I was surprised by how long it was, despite the word count), but the editing is slow going.  I know I say it a lot, but wow, the editing on these things is a bear.  I have edited hundreds of Dunesteefs and That Gets My Goats, and almost without exception, those are a pleasure to work on.  But audiobooks are different, and require a higher level of concentration, and another mindset from podcast editing.  It may be that it uses another part of my brain, but it always takes so unaccountably long to do, and almost always puts me to sleep. 

It still beats digging ditches, don't get me wrong.

I think, for my next post, I'll talk a bit about the paid project I just mentioned . . . erotica.

Rish Outfield, Audioboy

*Did I mention that in an earlier post?  There are sometimes typos or word-substitutions in these paperbacks, and I tend to try to fix them if I find them.  But then I was actually asked (only in Book Four) to change them back to the incorrect texts.  Ultimately, I emailed the publisher and asked her advice, and ended up only changing the things that were legitimate mistakes on my part.

**This is simply from doing this for a while, figuring out the best way to record and edit, and the fact that I have a microphone set up that sounds better than the one I did the first book on.  Hopefully, it'll be easier to edit than the last one too . . . since I know there's a paycheck involved.