Audio Adventures Week 12

Just have three projects right now, as I may have mentioned, and I continue working on the one whose deadline just passed.  I think I will treat myself to some kind of meal when I finish that one.  Something with pepperoni or chili on it.

Do they make chili pizza?

I nearly auditioned for another book yesterday, despite having vowed not to audition for anything until these three were over.  It was a book of five short Horror stories, and it seemed like my kind of thing, but when I went to audition, I saw that the author/rights-holder wants us to read an entire story from the collection as our audition.  I'd seen that before, two or three other times, and always felt like it was way too much to ask a prospective narrator to do.  Technically, we're only supposed to provide a five minute sample as our auditions, and I've seen twenty minute chapters requested by rights-holders before (but granted, never an entire story).

The way I see it, I'd be willing to waste that much time if I knew it wasn't going to be a waste of time.  If I knew I'd get the job just by recording the story, I'd be happy to do it (I read the story through before even considering auditioning, and it's not bad, and seems to be something I'd excel at), but it does seem like auditioning an actress for an adult film by saying, "You see that dude over there?  Go have sex with him while I watch."

Maybe that's not unrealistic when it comes to adult film.  Maybe it's more akin to auditioning a stunt man by saying, "Hey, you see that stepladder there?  Climb to the top of it and jump off, landing on your back on the VCR boxes in the corner there."

Okay, maybe that's not the perfect example either, but I'm getting close.

I have had a couple little tiny projects go up in the last week (short stories that I recorded as an experiment to see if doing several short pieces could end up as profitable as a handful of long pieces), but it's too soon to see if they'll be making me money.  A few people have bought copies of "Dead End Street," which makes me (and hopefully the author) smile, though we'll see what kind of numbers that translates to. I'm not really a money-centric guy, though I really ought to make a spreadsheet or something keeping track of the money I make for each project, versus how much work each one was.  If a short story I produced in, let's say, five hours made me fifty dollars (just to keep the math easy), and a book I produced in twenty hours made me a hundred dollars, then I'd be a fool to keep doing books instead of short stories.

A little voice keeps telling me that I should be posting my own short stories on Amazon, and recording those as well, when I get some down time, since splitting royalties with the author of those would be way more pleasurable.  That's the next thing I need to be focusing on, rather than taking on new projects.

I spent last Saturday alone in the house all day and all night, recording, watching TV, editing, looking things up on the internet, editing more, watching more TV, and it occurred to me that I wished I had a Twitter account, so I could say all the worthless things that come into my head with no one to share them with (just like every other worthless person on Twitter).  Stuff like "Does the fact that my old black guy voice sounds a bit like Bill Cosby make me more racist or LESS racist?" and "I'm thinking of doing a Barbie parody where Barbie tries to track down the infamous Osama Ken Laden.  That's right, it's ZERO DARK BARBIE."

I really shouldn't be left alone anymore, folks.  It's possible that my sister's monstrous kids keep me grounded.  When they finally came home after the long weekend, I instantly regretted saying that, because the precious silence was shattered and I've gotten almost no recording done since then, but I did miss having them around.

I am getting closer and closer to being done with the novel, and if it weren't so mentally draining to edit more than, say, a chapter a day (each one takes around two hours), I'd have burned through it and been done long ago.  Not quite by the deadline, but still long ago.

My goal is to be completely done and moved on by the next one of these unamusing blogposts.  Wish me luck.

How about auditioning a guy to build your house by saying, "Go ahead and assemble, say, a bedroom and the first floor bath, and depending on how you do, we'll consider hiring you."  Better?

Rish Outfield, Book Boy