Apparently I really love the whole turnpike experience, despite what I said last week. After a few days of rest, we found ourselves (Me and The Mrs), heading back east again. This time it is for a well deserved vacation (for her, she’s the one that works hard) and a trip to visit my family. We’ve had a great time so far visiting with them, going to the Museum of Illusions, shopping, and what not.
The Museum of Illusions was interesting. It features a lot of visual trickery accomplished by lighting, mirrors, and other means. Naturally I went on to pontificate about how some of these tricks are combined in various haunted houses to achieve truly frightening effects.
Listening To: I’m one book away from finishing the Murderbot series. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Yacht Rock, but it isn’t because I selected the radio station. Seriously, last night I dreamt I was doing an angry karaoke version of “You’re So Vain”. And The Pleasure in Pain (see below).
Currently Reading: I knocked out Compulsory: A Murderbot Story and moved right on to Home: Habitat, Range, Nice, Territory both by Martha Wells in my unceasing quest complete everything related to the Murderbot series.
Current Obsession: Obviously the Murderbot series. We also started watching The Pitt on Max thanks to my sister. Unfortunately, we don’t have Max so we are going to have to watch the whole series before we leave for home. Double unfortunately, the series won’t be completed before we leave. Grrr.
Dragon’s Roost Press News
This week has been all about finalizing the work on the audiobook version of The Pleasure in Pain. For more on the process, read on!
Other than that, it has been fairly quiet on the publishing front.
This Week’s Rambling: Reviewing Audio Files
As you have probably noticed, I spend a lot of time reading audiobooks. I do this while driving, while doing housework, and while doing so many other tasks. Of the 80 books I read last year, more than half (56%) were via audio format.
I’m telling you this to point out that I absorb these books while part of my concentration is elsewhere. Focusing everything on the text itself is a little outside of experience at this point. This isn’t to say that I won’t stop what I’m doing to pay super close attention to an important or impactful scene. I’ll also rewind and re-listen to a well written phrase or two.
[This is one of the joys of being someone who works with words. I have a strong appreciation for when words are used well, when they are creatively used, when they invoke a strong reaction, or when they are lyrical. This is something that really comes through when listening to an audiobook.]
This is very different from the process I have been involved in while reviewing The Pleasure in Pain. This time around it is all about paying the closest attention possible to make sure that there are no errors in the reading, nothing has been missed or changed. To do so I had to follow along with a pdf version of the manuscript while listening to the narrated stories. Our narrator, Skye A. did an amazing job. Out of more than 30 files and 200+ pages of text, there were less than 20 changes requested.
The process for me was, well, probably more than it needed to be. I’m sure that there was an easier way to do it, but let me describe what I did for humor’s sake if for no other reason. The audio files were delivered to a shared dropbox in mp3 format. I could have played them directly from the dropbox, but I did not see a way of changing the speed of the playback. I typically listen to audiobooks at 1.7x the usual speed. Listening to them at normal speed drives me nuts.
Instead, I downloaded each one (one at a time because I was afraid of skipping something by accident). As soon as the file hit my download folder, it opened in iTunes (Mac user here) or whatever it’s called now. This wasn’t at all helpful for the same speed of playback reason. I could have disabled the “automatically open audio files in iTunes” function, but I probably would have forgotten to set it back up again so I didn’t. I deleted it from the music folder, then opened each file in Books which does allow one to change the playback speed. I hit play on the short story (each short story was its own mp3 which made it really easy to follow), then switched over to the pdf so I could read along. If there were any errors I would pause the playback, rewind to the point where the mistake was, go back to the pdf and copy/paste the line. I was provided a spreadsheet on which I entered the file name, page number from the pdf, time stamp of the snippet, what the line was in the pdf, and the correction that was needed. Then back to the audio file to start the process again.
It sounds a bit tedious, but to be honest, it was kind of fun to revisit all of the great stories that Roxie Voorhees selected for this anthology. If you haven’t picked it up yet, you have the choice of getting the paperback, the ebook, or waiting a little bit for the audiobook.