You can listen to the whole story at EP296: For Want of a Nail : Escape Pod.

EP285 Jaiden’s Weaver : Escape Pod.

An ambitious young policeman with a dangerous secret. A scandalous woman who also happens to be a Crown Investigator. A series of gruesome murders in the benighted rookeries of a 19th-century London not quite our own….

You can hear the whole thing at Subterranean Press: The Tricks of London by Elizabeth Bear.

The provocative sequel to the Hugo and Audie Award-nominated METAtropolis features interconnected stories by today’s top speculative fiction writers, performed by a galaxy of Star Trek ® stars.

As the mid-21st century approaches, the Pacific Northwest has been transformed — politically, economically, and ecologically — into the new reality of Cascadia. Conspiracies and secrets threaten the tenuous threads of society. The End of Days seems nearer than ever. And the legend of the mysterious Tygre Tygre looms large.

METAtropolis: Cascadia is the creation of Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee Jay Lake; Mary Robinette Kowal, winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; New York Times best-selling author Tobias S. Buckell; Hugo Award winner Elizabeth Bear; Aurora Award winner Karl Schroeder; and critically-acclaimed author Ken Scholes.

The team of narrators is any sci-fi fan’s dream: Star Trek’s Rene Auberjonois (“Odo”), Kate Mulgrew (“Capt. Kathryn Janeway”), Wil Wheaton (“Wesley Crusher”), Gates McFadden (“Dr. Beverly Crusher”), Jonathan Frakes (“Cmdr. William Riker”), and LeVar Burton (“Geordi La Forge”). Jay Lake, who also served as Project Editor, introduces this stunning sequel, written and produced exclusively for digital audio.

You can check it out at METAtropolis: CASCADIA | audible.com AND they have really nifty extras, like the cast talking about the recording process.

One thinks of shiny as being a visual thing but lo! it can refer to audio as well.  For instance: I have the first five minutes of Kate Mulgrew reading my my audio novelette, “Water to Wine.”

“Water To Wine” by Mary Robinette Kowal. Read by Kate Mulgrew

The full story is part of the audio anthology METAtropolis: Cascadia from Audible. It comes out on November 16th, but in the meantime. Shiny!  I’m sooooooo very happy with her reading.

As an added bonus, Tobias Buckell also has an audio sample of Wil Wheaton reading his story.

Shades of Milk and Honey

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

Matt McHugh and M. M. De Voe were both very good readers and hearing their stories out loud added a lot to both.

Best of all, Matt hooked set up his mic and recorded the evening. I present to you my story, The Shocking Affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland.

For me, one of the most annoying things is that I’ve been recording so much lately that I’ve developed some bad live reading habits. I’ve trained myself to listen for minor stumbles — things that no one would notice live, but which are unacceptable in recorded form — and to pause, then restart the line, which is totally wrong when reading live. In any case, it should be interesting for you to hear the difference between me reading live after hearing me read for recordings.

I used toy theater technique to create moving illustrations for an audio story.  If it were a true puppet show, I’d have cut the narration and shown with action rather than words.  Still, it’s the closest thing I’ve got recorded.

I’ve written for stage, but always adapting someone else’s work.  My only original script was for Willamette Radio Workshop‘s Murder of Crows.  Huh. I just remembered that Shades of Milk and Honey started as a radio script for a serial.

The other puppet show from my fiction is a monologue by a talking dinosaur, which was a short I wrote in first person, so it was kind of a no brainer about adapting it for stage. Most of my short fiction is ill-suited to puppetry either because it’s an all human cast or because there are too many scenic locations to work for stage. Hm… Evil Robot Monkey and Clockwork Chickadee are the only ones that I can think of that might make the transition. Everything else? Too many people and very little reason to need puppets.

By lucky chance, Subterranean Press had asked me to record “After the Siege” for them. They’ve just put it up live on their website.

Congratulations, Cory! It was a pleasure to read.

1) I recorded a story (not mine and I promise it’s good) and I need to listen to it to make sure that we didn’t leave any of my stumbles in it. I’m tuning out my own voice. The story is two and a half hours long, but the section in question is just in the first half hour.

2) I have to turn in a list of books that one of my novel length manuscripts resembles. I’ve got one name to offer and then I blank. Is anyone willing to read this puppy and offer suggestions? You don’t even have to read the whole thing! Just enough to say, “This reminds me of [blank].” The only catch is that I’d like to turn in the list on Monday. It’s Urban Fantasy.

Edited to Add: Many thanks to Julia and Scott for responding so quickly!

And now, I’ll go back to doing the layout which is paying the bills.

The teaser:

The clockwork chickadee was not as pretty as the nightingale. But she did not mind. She pecked the floor when she was wound, looking for invisible bugs. And when she was not wound, she cocked her head and glared at the sparrow, whom she loathed with every tooth on every gear in her pressed-tin body.

The sparrow could fly.

The story is available in two flavors, written or read aloud. Clarkesworld is offering audio fiction now, and my story kicks that off.

They’ve got a comment thread, so do let them know what you think.

I’ll start by saying that our recording setup is far, far, far from ideal, especially after working at Willamette Radio Workshop.But, it’s New York and one makes compromises. In this case, trying to get my schedule to coincide with an affordable studio was challenging. So I’m recording in the hallway at home. The sound, as you might imagine is very bright. The Japanese screen mostly holds the microphone and does almost nothing to dampen the sound.

I’m using one of Rob’s microphones, specifically a Schoeps CMC-41S. The note next to it reminds me to turn the refrigerator off before I start recording and to turn it back on when I finish. Last week, before we implemented the note, I came home to find the contents of our freezer melted. The microphone is sensitive enough that it picks up the hum of the fridge, even though it is in another room. Granted, there’s no door on the room, but still.

In the living room, behind a closed door, we’ve got my computer and a Shure FP-33 portable mixer. The mixer functions mainly as a power supply for the microphone but also boosts the signal some to provide cleaner sound. Or, at least, I think that’s what Rob said when I asked.

Celebrating its 10-year anniversary, the literary magazine “The First Line” — where all stories in an issue begin with same opening line — presents an evening with some of its favorite writers. Three authors will read select work from the new anthology, “The Best of The First Line: Editors’ Picks 2002-2006,” and share some insights on writing for this unique quarterly.

Pass the word and come hear us on July 24th at 7pm.

“You came with the Princess Alia, didn’t you?” says a tall man with an understeward’s chain. “They must have low standards up north if you’re the sort of thing she brings along.”

I shake my head; the world slides in and out of focus. “I didn’t come here for that. I’m not — help.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Oh, so you’re not with the help? You must be one of the nobility, then?” He tweaks my skirts, and a ragged hem tears. “So what did you come here for, if you’re not with the princess?”

The words sound wrong even as I think them, but I say them nonetheless. “To be married.”

He bursts out laughing. “Poor girl,” a woman at the back of the servants’ hall says. “She’s simple. Can’t tell between herself and the princess.”

Rated PG. Contains sorcery, blood, and theft of memory.

Actually, that’s not completely true. The reason we had to stop a lot is because we weren’t recording in a studio. We were in an office building, with Rob’s sound equipment set up as an impromptu studio. The sound-proofing was inadequate, so periodic sirens would force a halt. At that, it was quieter than our apartment. As Rob says, any sound you can hear while recording will be picked up by the microphone and seem louder than in real life.

Which meant that we had to turn off the overhead lights, because the florescent light ballast hummed. It meant that, since the room was very “live” that every lip smack, swallow, or shuffle of paper turned up on the recording. It meant that I had to stand completely still, because the floor creaked and that turned up.

But, we got the recording. Clearly, I have to come up with a different recording space before my next assignment is due.

Listen to Reading Aloud: The Common Cold

You’ve probably noticed that when you are sick your voice tends to get lower, right? Basically, what’s going on is this: the pitch of your voice depends on the length and thickness of your vocal cords (folds really, but that’s a tangent) Men have big thick manly vocal cords, while ladies and kids have thinner more delicate ones. When you’re sick, your throat gets inflamed, which thickens your vocal cords. They vibrate more slowly and voila, lower voice.

Let’s pause for a moment to listen to some audio, shall we? I’ll let you hear a recording of me reading Rampion with my normal voice, and then switch to one with my voice the way it sounds right now.

This is the full text of Rampion, but only listen to the first 30 seconds or so of it.

Now, this is me, today, sick. I’m trying to deliver the same read, but I’m not making corrections for the effects of illness.

Sounds like a different person, eh?

Since the cold is lowering my voice, I can raise my pitch and try to compensate somewhat. For me, it feels like I’m speaking incredibly high, but to someone who doesn’t know me, this will do a lot to bring my voice into the range of normal. I wouldn’t want to do this for long, but it’s gotten me through many performances.

So, same text but with me trying to correct.

It’s passable, but there’s a danger here. I have a smaller vocal range when sick already, and by moving my voice up in pitch, I cut off the bottom end of my range. When ill, I mostly have bottom end and then nothing until the very top end. Your mileage may vary, but try humming through your vocal range next time you are sick.

And if you are feeling frisky, take advantage of that suddenly deep voice. Everything can sound sexy with your new range. For example:

Mostly though, the answer to being sick is to rest your voice and to drink plenty of fluids. Stay away from the citrus, dairy and caffeine. But if you have to use your voice, at least you’ll know why it’s misbehaving.

Except that Chattanooga apparently has a thing against sidewalks. There were none.

Strangely, one of the lights had a pedestrian crossing button, to get the traffic light to change color, but no crosswalk, no crossing signal, no sidewalk on either side. Just who were they expecting to hit the button? Drivers just didn’t know what to do with us. I felt far less safe walking than I did driving. I’d forgotten just how intense the car culture is after living in NYC and Portland.

Meanwhile, I’m probably not going to be online much the next couple of days, so may I offer you some old-time Christmas Radio. This includes such gems as the original cast recording of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Spent day shopping for props for show. Will tell you more, but it is “not safe for work.”

The recording is of a live show — all the sound effects, all the dialogue, everything happen live in front of an audience with no stopping for mistakes. I hope you’ll understand that I’m quite proud of working with WRW.

Incidentally, this is the show I was working on when I got the idea for “Death Comes but Twice.”

Can you guess which other characters I’m playing?

We also recorded the last of the pickup lines for Subterranean Press. I’m uploading the audio book now, but it’s giant so I’ll go to bed before it finishes.

On the other hand, the vocal fatigue probably helped my male characters sound a little deeper.

Actually, the voice lesson was interesting today. We were working on “Summertime” and at the end of it I’m supposed to shoot up to a B and then float there before glissandoing back down. When I’m in shape, it works, but it’s been well over a year since I’ve sung this and I told my voice teacher, Sue, that I thought I sounded more like a whistling teakettle.

She was trying to come up shows where producing a whistling teakettle sound would be useful. I said, “Actually, I was in the Teakettle of Good Fortune.” As we’ve discussed in previous entries, I can’t whistle, at least not the conventional way. So I demonstrated the whistling teakettle sound that I used in the show, which involves saying “Woo!” on a rising scale, and then my voice suddenly pops up to this impossibly high note.

Sue starts laughing and tries to find it on the piano. It’s an A. The one that’s two and a half octaves above middle C. Which is ridiculous. Apparently I’m using what’s called “whistle voice,” to make this sound. It’s when the vocal folds come together down to a little hole and one essentially whistles through them. It’s nice to know what I’ve been doing.

Also, don’t ask me to do this for you at a con (you know who you are) because it’s full volume or nothing.

Edited to add: I realized that I had recorded my voice lesson, so you can listen to the whistling teakettle sound, here.

For two years, Subterranean magazine has brought you the absolute finest in science fiction, fantasy and horror, from names like Harlan Ellison, Joe R. Lansdale, Elizabeth Bear, Joe Hill and Cherie Priest. Now Subterranean magazine is moving online — and continuing to bring you the best new fiction as it moves from print to pixels.

Here’s what you can expect from Subterranean Online in the near future:

* An entire novella by Hugo and Nebula Award winner Lucius Shepard

* A full-length original audio-book by Kage Baker

* New and original short fiction from Subterranean Press authors Poppy Z. Brite, Joe Hill, Joe R. Lansdale and John Scalzi

* Columns and opinion from Elizabeth Bear, Norman Partridge and Scott Lynch

* Weekly reviews of the best new fiction from Dorman T. Shindler.

All new, all compelling, all right there on your screen. It’s what you expect from Subterranean magazine — and a taste of what you can expect in the future.

I’ll be recording through next week. Basically, for each hour of listening pleasure, you can figure about five man hours of working time; that’s counting my work and the engineer’s work together. He has to do things like edit out the places where I try to say “Mazaltlan” and come out with “Mazeltlof.”

Now aren’t you wondering how Midsummer Night’s Dream and Mazaltlan both occur in one story? Just you wait. I will tell you, though, that this is a really fun read. I love Kage Baker’s work and this is a hoot.

John Scalzi pointed out this clip, which provides the most beautiful example of speaking handwavium with confidence. Watch it and then we’ll discuss.

Okay, first of all, it’s very, very, funny. Second, although this goes way over the line into absurdity, the fact is that even though his words make no sense, at all, by using tricks of pacing and emphasis, he creates the illusion of meaning. The actor’s name is Mike Kraft and he writes and performs industrial training videos. If he used just one of those phrases in an SF story, you’d totally buy it. So let’s see if we can apply what he’s doing to an SF story.

For instance, he’s giving the made-up words no more weight or emphasis than the real things. Look at your sf story. The technobabble words in it are everyday words to your characters so you should treat them as such. At the same time, Mr. Kraft is also using hand gestures, sign-posting and phrasing, to give clues to what words mean.

Hand gestures aren’t an option for audio fiction, but some of his other tricks are.

Signposting, at its simplest, means that he changes the direction in which he is looking when he changes direction of the speech. You can also do similar thing by pausing before beginning a new thought.

Which is really part of phrasing. Notice how he’s using a pause for emphasis here, “Such an instrument, comprised of Dodge gears and bearings, Reliance electric Motors, Allen Bradley controls, and all monitored by Rockwell software is [pause]Rockwell Automation’s retro-incabulator.” It lets you know that what’s coming next is important. He pauses again in the next sentence before each of the “significant” parts of the encabulator.

He also uses emphasis, (which means that he gives a slight punch to certain words by using speed or volume) such as “panendermic simi-boloid slots of the stator. Every seventh conductor being connected by a non-reversable tremi pipe to the differential gurdel spring on the up end of the grammeters.”

Back in Reading Aloud 1: The Basics we talked about twisting words that had an almost onomatopoeic quality to them. Mr. Kraft does some of that, but not a whole lot because it would be inappropriate for his character.

He’s also using good old-fashioned stage presence to pull this off. As the character, he believes that each of these words makes perfect sense because they are all part of his character’s world. Watch his hands; his character knows what each item does.

Your exercise for today is to try and read the transcription of this clip. Then I want you to find the most convoluted handwavium in your own fiction and see how real you can make it sound.

Shimmer Magazine, the quarterly speculative fiction magazine, is offering “Action Team-Ups Number Thirty-Seven”, a story by Ken Scholes as a free MP3 download.

It’s a fun story and was recorded at Willamette Radio Workshop. Click here to listen

There are points in my day when I want a treat, a small snack or a little bit of delight. Ian Creasey has a collection of audio bon-bons on his website which brought a smile to my face.