Voice matters #1: setting up to record audio books

Having spent lockdown refreshing and republishing three novels and also writing and publishing the fundraiser ‘Born to be a Life Changer: A Guide Dog Puppy’s First Year’, I decided I needed to look into the world of audio books. Many, many people love audio books so they are an excellent way to expand a writer’s audience. However, the first thing I learned is that production is expensive if you commission a professional outfit to do it for you. That is no surprise, because there are technicians, narrators and production staff to pay for, and it’s a time-consuming job – narrators have to read and familiarise themselves with the book, and then an average novel can take up to two hours of recording to get one hour of usable material. A quote I got for ‘Flight of the Kingfisher’ was for £260.00 (+VAT) per finished hour with an estimated final duration to be between 9.5 to 10.5 hours, dependent on the narrator’s natural pace of speech and how the story is constructed. There are four novels I’d like recorded, and at an estimated cost of around £3,000 per novel that’s quite an upfront investment for an author to make.

My next avenue of research was looking into how authors can narrate and produce their own audio books, and whether it’s a worthwhile project to attempt. On the plus side no-one knows the story lines and characters as intimately as the person who created and wrote them and, with the right equipment, it can be done in the author’s home if there’s a suitable space. BUT, the right equipment and software needs to be researched, sourced and purchased (another upfront investment), and then comes the task of setting it all up and getting to grips with the sophisticated technology. Also, that suitable space has to be set up as close as possible to an acoustic chamber to deaden both outside and reflected noise. Beyond all of those practicalities, there is still a very important aspect to consider: YOU, the author. The questions you must consider and answer honestly, are (1) do you have a pleasing voice; (2) can you read aloud really, really well in an appropriately entertaining fashion; (3) can you invest the time and effort? If a professional outfit takes around two hours to produce one hour of audio, then an amateur will surely take much, much longer, at least until they’re used to the demands of narrating 100,000 word novels.

So, though it’s hard to imagine recording my books for hours on end and then using unfamiliar programmes to edit and do what’s necessary to end up with a professional, saleable audio book, I decided I’d like to try. After all, you get nowhere by putting up barriers before you’ve even tried, right?

I began by recording snippets on my mobile, then listening closely and critically to how I sound – am I reading too fast or too slow? Is my voice a monotone or too excitable? Will my reading style hold a listener for a couple of hours? It’s quite hard to be objective because we don’t like the sound of our own voices when we hear them on a machine, but I’ve put some clips on social media and so far the response has been positive. Here’s my makeshift recording area, using a microphone stand and muffler (unfortunately the microphone that came with it is rubbish) and free software:

As you can see, the microphone stand is perched on two filing trays on top of a box file. The mobile phone is supported by a glass ornament so the microphone part is right behind the muffler. When I’m recording I place the laptop at the far end of the desk as its fan is quite noisy, and what I’m reading is placed on my left. It’s about as amateur as you can get, but it’s fine for rehearsing. I’ve got used to hearing my voice now in playback, and I really enjoy narrating, so that’s a good start.

But there’s so much more to it than simply sitting in a chair in front of a microphone and reading out loud to yourself. You have to imagine there’s an audience listening to you. It’s tiring and bloops are inevitable, so I’ve been recording short pieces and splicing them together. If I’ve made a mistake I’ve started again… and again… and again, until I’ve managed to do the piece in one take. My husband took a look at what I was doing and said that if I was serious about producing audio books I needed to get serious about how I recorded them. He researched home studio equipment, ordered it, and it arrived as I was writing this blog!

The next job was to set everything up in my writing studio in the garden. We can’t create an acoustic booth without more expense, so we hung curtains around the desk to deaden voice reflection and outside noise. It’s quite cosy in there!

I’ve yet to read the manuals for the equipment and software, and when I’m ready I’ll start with ‘Born to be a Life Changer’ as I’ve had requests for it from quite a few Guide Dog owners. I plan also to narrate my humorous fantasy ‘Orders From Above’, the paperback and ebooks of which are being launched on 1st June.

I’m both excited and apprehensive, and in my next blogs I’ll let you know how I’m getting on!

Jane, May 2021

Writing Matters #8: from puppy dogs to angels

My fundraising book ‘Born to be a Life Changer’ is patiently waiting for the cover and the e-versions to be done, but this is no time to relax. As the title of this blog says, I need to move on from puppy dogs to angels!

My next novel is a new edition of my humorous fantasy ‘Orders From Above’, first published in 2012. It received terrific reviews, but the publisher wasn’t doing much with it so I took back the rights in 2018 to bring it under my own imprint, just as I’ve done with ‘Flight of the Kingfisher’ and ‘Walk in the Afterlight’. Rachel Lawston of Lawston Design, who designed the gorgeous covers for my previously mentioned books, has created yet another fabulous work of art.

Publication date is 1st June, by which time the paperbacks will be available to order from Amazon and all retail outlets, and e-versions will be available from Amazon and Smashwords to cover all e-readers. LiterallyPR, who did such wonderful things for the first edition of ‘Flight of the Kingfisher’, will once again be doing wonderful things with ‘Orders From Above’.

I spent most of the lockdown time last year editing and publishing the new editions of work already written, which is relatively easy because the hard work is done, but now it’s time to turn to a brand new work, the sequel to ‘Orders From Above’ which is called ‘Trouble From Below’. I very much admire all the prolific authors out there, and wonder how they manage to write so many books, because at this stage, when I’m embarking on a new story, I always think I’ll never be able to do it. Write another 100,000 words with coherent plot lines that flow and weave together to their conclusion, believable characters who use realistic dialogue, then go through interminable revisions and edits, while throughout the process my mood flips between pleased-with-myself and doubting-myself. Impossible! But not impossible, of course.

So there will be another book about mischievous angels Gabe and Nick wreaking havoc by the end of this year, and there will be a third paranormal drama featuring psychic medium Alex Kelburn after that. But ‘Trouble From Below’ is first in the queue, because having delved so deeply into the story lines and characters of ‘Orders From Above’ in the past few weeks, it’s all fresh in my mind. Added to that, the characters are furiously nagging me to carry on telling their stories in this sequel! As of today, I know the beginning, I know the end. I know bits of the filling in the middle. And I know that the rest will come to me over the coming weeks during long dog walks with my dog, frantic typing at my laptop, and frequent sleepless nights. The sleepless nights have already started, in fact, for last night I just could not shut my mind down and get to sleep – the characters were having a party in my head! Not only that, when I did eventually fall asleep around 4am, I dreamt they were partying on my driveway and I came wide awake again at 4.30am knowing I had to get up and fetch my notebook to scribble everything down. Deciphering my scrawl is going to be challenging.

I look forward to being able to tell you about the PR campaign for ‘Orders From Above’ as it rolls out, about how the fundraiser ‘Born to be a Life Changer’ is doing once it’s released for sale, and my progress with ‘Orders From Below’.

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Writing Matters #5: communication with the dead

Last week I watched a Netflix documentary called ‘Surviving Death’, covering subjects that are extremely hard to believe unless they are experienced first-hand. There were five episodes: Near Death Experience (NDE); Mediumship; Signs From The Dead; Seeing Dead People; Reincarnation. It’s well worth seeing, because they illustrate reasons for belief and scepticism for each subject. I found every episode fascinating, especially as I’ve drawn on elements from all the subjects bar reincarnation in my novels ‘Flight of the Kingfisher’ and ‘Walk in the Afterlight’. The hero of my books, Alex Kelburn, is a psychic medium who sees and hears dead people, and he has a Near Death Experience in ‘Flight of the Kingfisher’. I haven’t had a NDE, but I have had signs and I’ve seen and heard some people who have passed over.

For instance, I have heard the voices of my late brother and father. In each case it was very brief, but the few words were deeply meaningful. My brother, who passed in 1984, often communicated with me through mediums – in fact it was Stephen that started me on my quest for information and evidence of the afterlife – but he spoke to me directly just once, and that was about eight or nine years after his death. He said, “I have to go now, sis, but you will know me when you see me again.” I had no idea what that meant, but wondered if he was going to reincarnate, something I didn’t and still don’t understand. Whatever it was, I had no communication from him for many years after that, but then, not long after my father passed, he came back through a medium friend. Even before she’d spoken his name I had known he was there, so it was just as he’d said: he wouldn’t be around for quite a while, but I would recognise him once he returned. I never thought to ask what he’d been doing in the intervening years.

When my father died not long after Stephen’s reappearance, I assumed he had returned to help Dad cross over. (I was later to find out I was wrong about this, but that’s another story!)

Dad passed when his life support was switched off following a catastrophic heart attack. The decision had been mine, as his next of kin, and although most of my heart knew it was what he had wanted me to do, there was a small part that still wondered if I had done the right thing. Only thinking that he and my brother were together again gave me some cheer (I was later to find out this wasn’t true, but that’s another story). Not long after his funeral I was out walking in the fields with my dog, my thoughts churning about his death and desperately wanting to know if he was OK. Then I heard his voice. A man of very few words, I almost laughed out loud that he could impart such an important message to me in just one short statement: “I’m OK, kid”.

So that was hearing dead people. What about seeing them as well?

When I was a very small child I used to see and hear an elderly gentlemen. I only ever saw his head and shoulders, which seemed very high above me as I lay in my cot. He was bearded, had a sparse covering of hair on his head, and he spoke with a deep voice with a distinctive timbre. If I ever knew his name I’ve forgotten it, nor can I remember what he said, but I’m sure I’d recognise that voice if I heard it today, some sixty years later!

I was at a mediumship demonstration in a town about ten miles away from my home. I went alone and, not recognising anyone else in the audience, I took a seat at the front. Within a few minutes two women, who looked like sisters, took the chairs to my right, and the rest of the row soon filled up with excited and expectant people. As you do in these circumstances, we smiled at each other, but there was no time for introductions or chit-chat as the medium came onto the stage as soon as everyone had settled.

From the reactions of those to whom she gave readings she seemed to be doing very well with her accuracy and evidence. She was entertaining too, managing to keep the atmosphere light and happy even when people cried when they got messages. During the interval we all gathered at the back of the hall for some refreshments and I spotted someone I knew. She said she had a spare seat next to her near the back, but as I’d left my coat on the chair at the front and we were being asked to sit down again so the medium could continue, I said I would go back there.

When the medium came to the end of her demonstration she invited questions from the audience. There were many! As I’ve researched mediumship for a few decades I was content to listen, but then I became distracted by a little girl to my left. She was softly humming a tune, skipping and dancing in in front of the two women sitting next to me. She was about eight years old. Her blond hair was long and braided into plaits. She wore a pretty blue dress with ribbons on the sleeves and black patent shoes, the kind of outfit a girl of her age would wear to a party. Because she was in front of the two woman nearest me I assumed that one of them was her mother, and as I hadn’t seen her until then, I thought she had probably been brought along by her dad to collect her mum at the end of the evening.

But something about this little girl didn’t seem right to me. If I looked at her head-on she seemed to fade a little, it was only by looking at her through the corner of my eye that I could make out the detail of what she looked like. I went hot and cold. I felt my skin tighten and tingle. And I knew, I can’t explain how or why, but I absolutely knew that neither the two women nor anyone else in the hall were even aware of her.

I put my hand up to attract the attention of the medium, and when she came to me I nervously said, “I want to tell you that there’s a fair-haired little girl in a party dress dancing around just to my right here. I’m not a medium, but I think perhaps she has a message for one of these two women?”

The woman furthest from me from gasped as the medium turned her gaze to where I was indicating and confirmed that she could see the girl too. The hall went absolutely silent as medium and child had a short conversation that no-one else could hear, then the medium said the little girl’s name and gave many details, including her age, how and when she’d died, that she was wearing her party dress because her birthday had been just two days before. By now the woman was crying, both with sadness and with joy, because this was her daughter and all the details given by the medium were correct. The little girl had come that evening to let her mum know that she was happy, she didn’t feel ill any more and she was being taken care of. It clearly gave the mother great relief, which is what these messages are all about.

I was stunned by the whole event, and it wasn’t until I was back home that I realised how fortunate (or fated) it was that I did not change seats, otherwise that lovely reunion of mother and daughter might not have happened.

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Writing Matters #1: starting over

It’s a hard decision to rebrand a novel and republish it under a different ISBN, perhaps even rename it, but sometimes it’s the best thing to do for both author and reader. I have so far written and published two novels featuring psychic medium Alex Kelburn, covering life, death, afterlife and in-between: Flight of the Kingfisher and its sequel The Waiting Gate. The first was self-published, the second was not, and the paperbacks were a different size and printed with different fonts. I hadn’t thought about this before signing up with the publisher (yes, I know I should have!), and I just wasn’t happy every time I saw images of the books side by side on social media. I also wasn’t satisfied with one of the plot lines in The Waiting Gate, feeling I could truly improve it and, in fact, refine the whole story if given the chance. As the third novel in the series is now underway, I decided I had to bite the bullet, and get to work making the Alex Kelburn books the best that they could be.

Firstly I took back the rights to The Waiting Gate and engaged talented cover artist Rachel Lawston of Lawston Designs to create two themed covers immediately, and a third in due course, and also a new logo for my imprint, The Moon Tiger. I gave Flight of the Kingfisher a thorough edit, then I rewrote that troublesome plot line of The Waiting Gate, thoroughly revised the whole story and retitled it Walk in the Afterlight.

For more information go to author website https://jmerrillforrest.com/

At the time of writing, Flight of the Kingfisher is available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon and will be on wider release from 10th October. Walk in the Afterlight is available on kindle and will also be on wider release around mid-October. The third novel, as yet untitled, is in the initial writing stages and I hope to have it ready for publication by January 2021.

Jane, 28 September 2020