Shades of Milk and Honey is available through Audible.com as a digital download. Since they knew I narrated audio books, MacMillan asked me if I would be interested in recording my own book.  Yes, very much so.

Here is an excerpt from the Shades of Milk and Honey audio book.

I’m sitting at the Portland Airport (yay free wifi!) waiting for a redeye to Michigan where I will record An Artificial Night, the third book in (Campbell nominee) Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Series.  (She’s written a weeper, I’ll tell you that right now. When you get a copy, have kleenex handy.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking that I’ll get home Saturday night and get to see Rob. Only I forgot that he’s going to IPNC this week and it will be Monday night, at the earliest, that I get to see him. Given how much I’ve been gone recently, this shouldn’t see like an unbearable separation but I am surprisingly melancholy right now.

Otherwise, all is well. I’m looking forward to sleeping on the plane.

I was supposed to fly out of town tomorrow to to go Michigan and record Seanan McGuire’s An Artificial Night. May I say that a major perk of this job is that I get to read books like this before you do? You just wait until you see what Toby is up to next.

Meanwhile, we just rescheduled because I came down with a head cold yesterday.

One of the problems with recording audio is that things like this show up as changes in my voice. Besides needing to pause more often for sneezing and nose blowing, my voice is sitting lower than it normally does and a little more gravelly. For a short term project, I could get around this but for an audio book I record for eight hours a day over the course of several days.  Now, there’s a fair chance that my voice would give out faster while ill, it is a muscle after all.  But even if that weren’t the case, the sound of my voice won’t match the previous books and will change over the course of the week as I heal.

As timing goes, this would have been worse if it hit while I was there, since that would lead to me being sick in a hotel room. As it is we just bumped the schedule back so that I’ll fly on Tuesday and record Wednesday through Sunday.

I spent another 4 hours locked in the box last night, recording Shades of Milk and Honey. When I came out of the booth, my voice was morphing between my natural voice and my British narrator voice.  It was very odd.

Even odder, and frankly disconcerting is that, as I am writing this, my voice in my head is stuck in British mode. I haven’t spoken yet today and wonder what will come out of my mouth. Curious.

I’ve not had this experience before but then, I’ve never spent this long speaking with another voice before either.  This is not to say that I don’t still need a dialect coach in the room, but by the end of the evening Roz was needing to stop me less.  The bath-trap split still gives me trouble occasionally, but is starting to become a bit more instinctive.

Overall, this is going slower than previous books largely due to dialect corrections. I am hopeful that as I settle into the voice the pace will pick up.

Good heavens. I think even my syntax in writing is shifting. Odd.

I should probably go write some witty banter in a detective novel while I’m stuck like this.

One of the other odd things about recording one’s own work is that I can’t blame my stumbles on anyone other than me.  Why are some of these sentences so long? Did I really have to choose words that I have never said aloud? Why are there so many characters in some of these scenes? I dread the straw-berrying picking party already… Ten characters? Really? What was I thinking?

Edited to add: I just greeted Rob and sound mostly normal, although perhaps my voice is placed slightly farther to the front of my mouth. Slight vowel shifts but overall, I still sound American.

Want to know something that makes me very happy?

There’s going to be an audio book of Shades of Milk and Honey from MacMillan Audio.

Want to know something that makes me giggle with delight?

I’ll be the narrator for the audio book.

It’s set for simultaneous release with the hardcover of Shades of Milk and Honey on August 3rd. I’ll be recording it in June here in Portland and we’ll be offering sneak previews, bloopers, and some behind the scenes video of the recording sessions.

The last couple of days have been really good ones. I’ve been recording Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue, which I’m having a great time doing.  I really like October Daye, the main character, and since the book is first person it’s fun to “be” her for a couple of days.

Yesterday evening, I went out with M– one of the fine folks at Brilliance, who also turns out to be a writer. She and I hung out a Jumpin Java and wrote for a couple of hours. It was a very nice break from the routine.

After work today, I went out to dinner with J– at Kirby’s and it was so nice to just hang out and shoot the breeze. It helps with the whole mental fatigue that comes from reading for hours.

It is surprisingly tiring. I mean, on the face of it, all I’m doing is sitting in a chair and talking, but I have to be word perfect and that requires a weird sort of concentration. I’ll do a post at some point about what that focus is like.

For the moment, I’m heading to bed. We’ll wrap up the book tomorrow.

We put these up on a private page for Jay Lake as a get well present, but he’s asked me to share the readings.

What readings, you ask? Why full-cast recordings of two of Jay Lake’s Nebula eligible stories, read by Jeff Soesbe, M. K. Hobbson, Dave Goldman, David D. Levine, Camille Alexa, and me in front of a live audience at Orycon..

So please, give a listen to “Golden Pepper” and “The Future by Degrees” plus audio that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the entire audience is wearing Hawaiian shirts in his honor.

Charlie Jane Anders has given my audio recording of Evil Robot Monkey a gloooooowing review at io9.

It’s a great examination of art and the creative process, and what it feels like to be an artist who’s looked at merely as a curiosity or as a momentary amusement for child barbarians. And art as a containment device for impotent rage.

Also, you have to check out the illustration that goes with the review.

via Afternoon Listening: The Evil Robot Monkey Just Wants To Create.

• 12:30 Finished recording the latest project, now I just have to edit out the icky bits. #
• 18:08 Finished recording and editing, but dang, the upload is taking forever. #
• 23:43 Weird. I didn’t have to go to the theater today. I’m actually starting to catch up on things. Next thing you know I’ll clean my office. #

Actually, it turns out that John Nichols posted all of the stories we read in neatly discrete chunks. Very exciting!

My stories:
Nails in my Feet
Trip, Trap, Tripping
http://ljsummit.com/wordpress/evil-robot-monkey-by-mary-robinette-kowal

Things we read together:
Denise Jones, Super Booker by John Scalzi
The State of Super Villiany by John Scalzi

Scalzi, solo:
Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternative History Search Results

This week’s Escape Pod episode is my story “Chrysalis” which came out in Aoife’s Kiss.  Cunning Minx gives it an evocative reading.

People ask me if I ever get involved with the subjects of my documentaries. I have a difficult time imagining that they would ask my male colleagues the same question, but they seem to expect women to be more emotional. In response, I tend to grit my teeth and answer very patiently with another question. How could I do my job if I were part of the story? Only by maintaining a sacred distance could I have any hope of understanding someone’s life. A documentarian records, but does not participate.

Visit Escape Pod » EP186: Chrysalis and give it a listen.

I read this month’s audio fiction for Clarkesworld Magazine, “A Woman’s Best Friend” by Robert Reed. I think the story is utterly charming and that it’s the perfect speculative fiction treat for December.

I read this weeks Escape Pod, Reparations by Merrie Haskell. To paraphrase Steve Eley, this isn’t a 9/11 story, but it was the right day to run it. The story is beautifully, painfully written. The text was easy to read, the content was not. I encourage you to listen to it.

I just swab my arm and administer the cocktail, a booster for my radiation immunization. The taste of brass fills my mouth in seconds, and I know that the cocktail has flooded my system. With this stuff burbling inside, I can stare down three sieverts without blinking, or, more importantly, losing my immune system, teeth, hair, and intestines.

When I finish with my dose, I grab the skin on the newbie’s arm, swab her and shoot her up, too. “Ow!” She jumps and rubs her arm. I watch carefully to see her smack her lips at the taste. “You could’ve warned me.”

“No time,” I say, doctoring Ken and the others just as abruptly. We’re pressed, and they know it.

We’re all nice and anodized on the inside at 8:12. We’re waiting for 8:16, or thereabouts. There aren’t any atomic clocks in 1945, so all times are approximate, internally speaking. And from here on in, there’s no point speaking any other way.

Rated PG. Contains mass destruction and graphic descriptions of the wounded.

Yay!  I’ve been wanting to break into Escape Pod forever, because, man, do I love that podcast. 

Chrysalis

People ask me if I ever get involved with the subjects of my documentaries. I have a difficult time imagining that they would ask my male colleagues the same question, but they seem to expect women to be more emotional. In response, I tend to grit my teeth and answer very patiently with another question. How could I do my job if I were part of the story? Only by maintaining a sacred distance could I have any hope of understanding someone’s life. A documentarian records, but does not participate.

That mantra was the only thing keeping me from gnawing my arm off with frustration while Geroth and Iliath had their latest spat. Iliath wanted Geroth to undergo Chrysalis. Geroth wanted to stave it off until he finished his mathematical treatise. Geroth and his betrothed brayed their points like sea-lions mating.

I’m pulling an all-nighter and listening to EscapePod, as is my wont, and I have to point you towardHow I Mounted Goldie, Saved My Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out The People’s Justice by Jonathon Sullivan. This story and the reading by Stephen Eley and Jennifer Bowie totally rocks. Go have fun.

Q: What happened when you arrived at the address in question?

A: My Partner Lori opened my door and I jumped out. I arrested a suspect!

Q: Yes, Officer Bull. But I would like you to tell me exactly what happened, in detail, from the time you got out of the car.

A: Okay. My skulltop showed me which house, and I ran toward it. A man and three dogs ran out the door. One of them was a bitch with pretty haunches. She was in heat, and I really really really liked the way she smelled. I wanted to run after her, but I knew I should go after the man. So I did. Even though I liked the way she smelled!

Of course, I might have just liked it because dogs are on my mind right now.