TALKING ABOUT AUDIO BOOKS

There are so many other elements that go into making a good audio book besides the writing. As my audio publisher said at the Las Vegas Writers Conference, "a good narrator can make a bad book sound good and a bad narrator can kill a good one."

I'm going to take that one step farther. You can have a decent narrator whose voice is not suited to the project. That also does not work because it lacks credibility.

I recently finished an audio book written by an author I really like who has so many books in print it makes my head spin and it was published by a big-name audio publisher. So I expected nothing but the best. I found glitches in the story, but as an author I'm more aware of looking for them. I probably could have dealt with that, but the protagonist is a divorced woman private eye who wants to strike out on her own with no assistance from her tough ex-husband and cop father.

All well and good. The problem is the narrator's voice sounds like a very young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, although I know she's a grown woman. Somehow this "teenescent" voice does not lend itself to you picturing her acting like a badass. It sounds more like a little girl playing make believe. Maybe I'm too critical. Maybe it's just me. But I want my characters to at least have a ring of reality in an audio book.

I've heard this narrator before and the minute I remembered the voice I remembered that my reaction was the same. What's this little kid doing telling the story?

Once I met a woman in her forties who did voiceover and was astounded when she opened her mouth to speak. She sounded like a five year old and that's what she was cast as for her voiceover work. She said directors loved working with her because although she sounded like a little kid she was a grown woman who took direction in an adult way.

Another thing that bothered me and interrupted the flow of the story was an inordinate number of "he said," "she said," "I said." Hey, I know who's supposed to be saying it. Particularly in the audio edition, I should be able to tell by the voice. After a while you try to blank all the "saids" out. But there should be a policy of reducing the amount of those tags in an audio book. It is REALLY annoying.

Arliss

Okay, okay, I've been really quiet for a while, but I'm back on the scene. A DREAM LOST is now entitled DEVIL'S DANCE but the second book is still THE DEVIL'S DUE.

In the middle of moving from one townhouse to another, the first edit for BOTH books came in. There I sat, surrounded by movers, boxes, more movers, more boxes, trying to work through the first half of DEVIL'S DANCE, when the second half came in.

And so it went for almost ten days. Unpack another box, crawl over one, curse not being able to find what I needed, read another of the editor's chapters, then start all over again. The first half was followed by the second half, which was followed by the second edit of both...and about forty unpacked boxes!

Okay, time for an exhale? Not on your life. THE DEVIL'S DUE came right on the heels of DEVIL'S DANCE. Latest report...all edits gone through, changes made and manuscript approved for galley for both books and only about twenty-five more boxes to go.

Today's good news...the contracts for the audio books came in, so 2010 should be an exciting year for me.

More later.

ARLISS

ARE YOU EVER DONE EDITING?

Here's the thing about today's post--Are you ever done editing? -- I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the answer is a resounding NO.

It was with great pleasure that I sent off what I thought was a final submission manuscript for THE DEVIL'S DUE. I'd been working on read-throughs, critiques and edits with an author friend so it had to be ready. In turn, I do the same for his manuscripts when he asks me to.

Well, we went through THE DEVIL'S DUE with what we thought was the proverbial "fine tooth comb", but I guess there were gaps in the teeth, because after the manuscript was on it's way, my friend decided to skate through the first few chapters again. Maybe it was for old times sake. Or, maybe to see what a great job we'd done by finding glitches and errors and fixing them before submission.

Instead, he found more things that we missed. One thing led to another, and before you knew it we were making our way through the manuscript again, with changes or corrections in almost every chapter. Well, since he really liked the story and didn't mind going through it again, it was sort of fun. This time we were really careful. We were going to catch every errant comma, every typographical transposition, and anything else that dared slip past our astute eyes the first time. There. It was done! I resubmitted the manuscript to my publisher, confident that every single thing had been ferreted out.

But no--now my friend was suffering withdrawal symptoms. He needed to look for commas. He missed the story. Begin round three. It was bound to be boring, because there was nothing left to find--or was there?

You guessed it. Things we'd sailed right past now were painfully obvious. We've become THE DEVIL'S DUE junkies, making our way through it for the third time--needing our fix for the day. Gotta find commas--don't care if they're ones that are missing or ones that shouldn't be there. Quick, I need to find a glitch in the timeline. Can't find any. Oh no. Are timeline faux pax off the radar now? Okay, give me a reference that could be clearer, right name in the wrong place. Anything. As my friend e-mailed me recently, "Gotta...edit."

Seriously, this manuscript has reinforced the already proven concept that many times our eyes read what we think we see, not what is actually there. That's how those pesky errors might sneak past us. One readthrough is not enough, two might do it, but three are better, I guess. However, when three is complete, the rest will be left to my publisher's editor. That is unless my friend needs another fix of THE DEVIL'S DUE.

--ARLISS ADAMS

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO "HANG IN THERE"?

Lots of determination and belief in yourself, that's what it takes.

I got to thinking about why and how I kept the faith that it was going to happen. Someday these books would be published. I think it was because I knew I had a good story to tell that would grab people's hearts, and I was determined to do what it took to get it published.

Part of what it took turned out to be really studying how to write fiction, for one thing.I attended many conferences and workshops, joined writer's organizations and absorbed information from everything I got my hands on. I kept an open mind. Critiques were not an attack on me or my writing. They were an effort to help me reach my goal, and if I wasn't ready to listen and evaluate the suggestions other writers were willing to give me, well, then I wasn't sincere about getting this published. And, let me tell you, I WAS SINCERE.

Sure, I'd put it down and pick it up again. Once I let it rest on a shelf for two years. But I always went back. And, each time I did, I brought something new to the manuscript, be it experience, technique or a great new scene I'd thought of.

Also, as I said, many of the characters in these two books are modeled on people I knew, or composites of people I knew and things that I really experienced myself. Thank goodness, not the awful stuff, but little memories, like picking all of the neighbor's flowers as a child so I could bring my mother a bouquet. I envisioning myself as a Nancy Drew, and along with four girlfriends, investigated the neighbors, hoping to find them guilty of some dastardly crime. Where were the clues?

These are the fabrics of our fiction, and we weave them into a tapestry that eventually becomes a book or a story. If you're a writer, do you reach into your memories to craft situations, give attributes to your characters that you loved or hated in someone you knew? In a way, that's what drives the completion and polishing of a book. If you can't get it good enough, no one else will ever read about all of these things.

So, I kept at it...edit after edit...wonderful writer friends helping me along the way. After so many years it clicked. I was ready and now it was time to get really serious. What would it take to get this book to print? The first thing, as it turned out, was to hone it down into two books. No publisher was going to take a 600 page tome unless it was from a J.K. Rowling or a Stephen King. But around 300 pages...that was a workable book.

So, those are my thoughts for tonight.

--Arliss