Adventures in audio

I thought it would be fun to record myself reading from my book. Then I could put the file on my website and people could listen to my dulcet tones and  think “Wow! She’s so sophisticated! I must buy that book straight away!”

I could even work out how to make it into a podcast, as the cool kids are calling it. Then bookshop managers would flock to invite me to do readings, and the standing-room-only audiences would be so impressed that they’d all buy copies for everyone they’d ever met in the whole world.

So, once my tiny tot went for his nap, I rooted out the cheapo microphone I bought off eBay, plugged it in to my laptop, cleared my throat and fired up Microsoft Sound Recorder…

“Hello everyone!”
Everyone? Yeah right – all of the three people who will ever listen to this. Try again. And sound less gormless and more literary this time.

 “This is an excerpt from Chapter Four…”
The dog wants to go out.

“This is an excerpt from Chapter Four…”
The dog scratches to come in.

“This is an excerpt from…”
The dog wants a biscuit.

“This is…”
Post clatters through the door – five hundred glossy pieces of crap trying to make me feel guilty that lonely elderly people’s disabled cats will be eaten by starving orphans with bilharzia unless I donate a million pounds.

“This is an excerpt from Chapter Five… “
No it isn’t – it’s Chapter f*$*£!* Four, you moron.

“This is an excerpt from Chapter Four of Kill-Grief…” (blah blah blah, it’s going really well this time, hooray hooray, nearly at the end, just two more paragraphs…)
The phone rings: “Hello! Just thought I’d wake up the baby and RUIN YOUR RECORDING in order to ask you to take on some stupid commitment that I’m trying to palm off on to someone, because you’re only a mum and haven’t got anything to do all day.”

“This is an excerpt…”

At long last the whole three-minute segment is done and saved, and I tentatively play it back.

First go: there’s nothing there because the recording volume wasn’t turned up. Repeat the above, three million times.

Next go: nothing interrupted me, the volume was set to the right level, and… I discover that my voice is how the Queen would sound if she was messing about with a helium balloon. I want to go and curl up under a stone, except even the worms and slugs and creepy crawlies would laugh at me.

But I didn’t get where I am today (i.e. nowhere) by giving up! I will conquer this audio lark somehow – oh yes, I will!

Bah humbug!

I can’t be doing with Mother’s Day. I find it at best corny and at worst painful.

There are so many reasons why people find Mother’s Day difficult to deal with – it’s not exactly fun for those who have lost children or were never able to have them, for those whose mum has died, for those who have a difficult or non-existent relationship with a mother who has hurt or abandoned them, for mums whose children never contact them or for women who are happily child-free and don’t need to be pitied.

I’ve had several miscarriages in the past and during those years I found the day upsetting because it reminded me of all the babies who might have been, but even now that I have a son I would still rather ignore Mother’s Day. If it were purely about the tradition of going back to one’s mother church, then fine, but I cringe at all the saccharine crap about kids bringing breakfast in bed and being forced to appreciate how much their poor, downtrodden mums have sacrificed for them. Not to mention celebrating – for one day only – what a wonderful job mums do cooking, cleaning, and ironing (yeah, right – my baby was terrified of the noise of the iron on the one and only time I’ve got it out in the last two years.)

No one asks to be brought into the world and if I expected my son to be grateful it would be like turning up uninvited at someone’s house with a huge, expensive Christmas present, and then, after a pause, saying “OK, so where’s mine, then?”

If, when my child is older, he chooses to make me a card or bring me a bunch of daffodils, then I’m hardly going to tell him to get lost, but I don’t want him to feel he is obliged to thank me for being his mum. I don’t want a medal just for giving him the care he deserves. I’m grateful to him for being born and for bringing me so much happiness.

‘Twas ever thus

I stumbled across this in a 1924 edition of The Indianapolis Star, while looking for something completely unrelated (which turned out not to be much use anyway). Some things never change:

 

The Author’s Chances

There is a short story epidemic. All the world, it seems, is writing down its own experience, or those of father, mother, brother or neighbor. And those who have no experiences of their own are making them up out of clear blue air in an effort to break into print.
One publishing company reported a short time ago that as many manuscripts are received a day as can be used in its ten publications in a month. The average day brings from 150 to 200 stories. Sometimes from 50 to 75 stories come in one day for a single magazine of the group.
“The surprising thing about it,” said the reader recently. “Is that so many are really good stories. Yet out of 100 stories submitted to editorial offices, not more than ten are bought and published.”

The Indianapolis Star, 8 June 1924

Kill-Grief: Book Video

I’ve been saying for months that I was going to do this, ever since I was thinking about the advantages and disadvantages, but at last I have got round to it … ta da!
.

Fascinating Vintage Photographs

These wonderful photos come from a CD I bought off eBay. My work in progress is set in the late 1850s and starts off in Liverpool before the main characters move to London, so I was looking out for some old Liverpool pictures for research and inspiration.

The CD only cost a couple of quid and contains hundreds of images, which the seller assured me are all in the public domain. There aren’t many 19th century ones – most are from the first half of the 20th century, with a few going up to the late 60s, and there is no accompanying info so I don’t know the exact dates or the identity of any of the people shown. Here are some of my favourites, but there are plenty more where these came from so I’ll post some others at some point.

 

 

 

 

 

Getting the hang of this self-promotion stuff

Right, I’m trying to be a proper author, so I’ve put up an extract of Kill-Grief on my website. I’m also doing a couple of later scenes as sound files, and will add those soon if I can record them without sounding like I’m 12 years old and without the dog bursting in and shaking her ears in the middle of it.

Over the weekend I made this advertising banner, so this is a good opportunity to give it its first outing – you can click on it to go straight to the excerpt:

It says Chapter 1, but it’s actually only about half the chapter. Hope you enjoy it!