"So here's your beard, and here's your suit, and here's each shiny, tiny boot. You mustn't sneeze, and don't you cough. Just put them on and we'll be off!" --- by Micheal Brown My favorite when I was a kid, what's your favorite Christmas story?
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“As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.” ― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games Got a favorite Hunger Games quote? Please share! What I learned while performing 100 days - 100 voices : 100 days is a long time, having a planned format for my website was fun, and stretching your abilities is a good thing. I also had some voices that I enjoyed more than others; some were easy to do Junie B. Jones, Dory, cockney accent, and anything singing, some were just plain fun Groot, Jamaican accent, and The Shadow, some I was really happy with how they sounded old man, Mae West and Cookie Monster.
First of all 100 days is a LONG time! Three months and ten days to be exact. Around the 75th day I was running out of things to do, that's when I did a whole week of if Sheldon were... which turned out to be pretty fun. It was also around that time that the impressions were not quite as good as some of the first voices. For example, I know my Fred Flintstone only sounded like him because I used his recognizable Yabba Dabba Doo! Second thing I learned was having a set thing to post to the website was fun and it made actually posting quite a bit easier. I don't know about anyone else in the blogosphere but intend to post things way more often than I actually do. I usually have to force myself to have a typing date to get anything published. So having planned content was a big plus for me. Learning and stretching your talents is always a good thing! Even though some of my voices were not the best impressions, overall as a piece of work I am very pleased with my 100 days - 100 voices. Hopefully everyone enjoyed listening! Here is the top ten voices from my experiment (no particular order): 1) Cockney accent 2) Mae West 3) Dory 4) Groot 5) Jamaican man 6) Cookie Monster 7) The Shadow 8) Junie B. Jones 9) Old Man and 10) A farewell ditty About the Book: Learning to Swim by Annie Cosby Genre: YA Contemporary/Fantasy The ebook is free until Oct. 16! Amazon And make sure to add the second book Learning to Live, coming Nov. 30, to your Goodreads TBR! When Cora’s mother whisks the family away for the summer, Cora must decide between forging her future in the glimmering world of second homes where her parents belong, or getting lost in the bewitching world of the locals and the mystery surrounding a lonely old woman who claims to be a selkie creature—and who probably needs Cora more than anyone else. Through the fantastical tales and anguished stories of the batty Mrs. O’Leary, as well as the company of a particularly gorgeous local boy called Ronan, Cora finds an escape from the reality of planning her life after high school. But will it come at the cost of alienating Cora’s mother, who struggles with her own tragic memories? As the summer wanes, it becomes apparent that Ronan just may hold the answer to Mrs. O’Leary’s tragic past—and Cora’s future. About the Author: Annie Cosby reads and writes in Galway, Ireland, where she lives with her boyfriend and a whole lot of seagulls. Learning to Swim is the first book in her USA Today-recommended Hearts Out of Water series, and the second book releases Nov. 30. When she’s not writing, she’s usually editing for awesome clients like Anna Katmore and Month9Books/Swoon Romance. And she loves to hear from you! Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads Excerpt: “Do you know about the Merrow, dearie?”“I don’t think so,” I said. She nodded and seemed to deliberate whether to go on. I knew she would. She always did. “The Irish told each other stories about a sea creature much like the mermaid. Only she’s called the Merrow.” She readjusted the scarf on her head as she nodded knowingly. “They’re sweet, sweet creatures. Capable of real love. Well, human love—if that can be said to be real love.” “Do you believe in them?” I asked skeptically. The old woman’s eyes remained fixed on a spot on the horizon. I followed her gaze. There was nothing but boats and seagulls, the normal fare of the ocean. She finally seemed to find herself and her eyes continued to rove. “They say that love cannot overcome nature,” she finally said. “Supposedly the nature of the Merrow always overcomes whatever love they held for their human man. She will always go back to her people under the sea.” Sounded to me like a cruel comment on female nature made by a bitter man. “And the merman, oh, there are stories of mermen. Terrible stories. The mermen have cages at the bottom of the ocean in which they keep the souls of our drowned sailors and fishermen.” A chill ran through me despite my unwillingness to become involved in the story. The pale, bloated body at the pier drifted to the forefront of my mind. Souls, chained to the bottom of the ocean, fighting uselessly, perpetually against their chains, appeared in my imagination. The soul had long been gone from that bloated body when I found it. I only then became aware of the old woman looking at me. Her eyes were narrowed and she looked at me with an intensity that I had previously only seen her use on the ocean. I felt my cheeks redden. “They play music, too,” she said. “Do you ever hear music under the water?” I’ve never been under the water. I shook my head. The old woman sighed. “I suppose one must listen for it, then. I haven’t listened in a very long time. A very, very … very long time.” The Audiobook: Narrated by Wendy Pitts Learning to Swim The Giveaway: paperback copy of Learning to Swim + some swag. Open internationally. Now on to my favorite part of the job, reading the manuscript! I read the entire book before I do any of my recording. This way I know what character motivations are and this helps me create the character voices. For example in my first book, The Lake Quilt Mystery, one of the characters used a fake accent in the beginning of the book. Things like this are helpful to know before I start recording. As part of the reading process I create character voices and figure out how many different voices I need to have. In The Hot Mess I had 46 different characters (yes I counted) to create. Now to be fair this does include the narrator and all the characters who just had one line, like the gardener who found a body and said "Dios Mio!" One more thing I have to do before I start the recording process is to make sure that I know how to pronounce all the words. Before I started this job I had no idea how many words that I know the meaning of, that I have no clue how to say. Words like autumnal, lasciviously, and obeisance. Another challenge is if the words are in another language. In Learning How to Swim, the chapter titles and a few scattered words were in Gaelic. In this case the author of the book, Annie Cosby, helped me out and sent an MP3 of someone saying all the chapter titles in Gaelic correctly. All I had to do was listen and copy what they said. Up next recording... Short disclaimer: This series is speaking to my experience in creating audiobooks, I don't pretend that this is the only way, just the way I do it. To this point I have worked exclusively through Audiobook Creation Exchange, a website meant to create a place for authors and narrators to meet. The first part to creating an audiobook is to get the contract, in order to get the contract you have to audition. To do this I go to the ACX website and search through titles accepting auditions, since there are hundreds of titles to search I filter my results by voice age (I have been told on numerous occasions that I have a very young voice) so I generally search through tween, teen, and young adult first. At this point in my narration career I accept all types of contracts royalty share or pay up front. I then read about the various books title, author, date posted, and a short synopsis of the book. After reading this information if I am intrigued I will download the audition script and read more about the book on Amazon. If readers are giving the book good reviews and I like the writing in the audition script, which is an excerpt from the book, I will continue with the process, if not I start again. The next step is to read the script and decide how the various characters should sound, then it's recording time! I record myself reading the script, edit out any repeats (more on this later), listen and make sure I have followed the script, master the copy, and convert to an MP3. Now my audition is ready to upload. Excerpts from the books, the audition scripts, are usually from 5 to 15 minutes in length and take approximately an hour to produce. Now comes the least favorite part of my job..... the waiting. So if any of authors are reading this, stop reading now and pick me to narrate your book! I was discussing with a colleague the other day if she reviewed the books she narrated for audio. She said that it was a gray area ethically and she did not review the books that she narrated. So I ruminated about this awhile and decided that while I could appreciate her viewpoint I did not share it. Here's why. Although giving a positive review to a book I narrate can be seen as self serving, I prefer to think of it as sharing my opinion about a book I like. I only audition for books that I find interesting and so far my initial interest has been well founded and after reading, if I enjoyed the book I will go give it a positive review. The other reason I think it's ethical, for me, to review books I read (aloud or otherwise) is that the reason I LOVE my job is that it gives me an opportunity to share books with others, book reviews is just another avenue to do so. SO..... I will now have an additional page on my website that includes book reviews, please stop by. |
AuthorI love books! I love reading books! I love reading them aloud so others can hear the characters I imagine when I read. Archives
October 2015
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