Audio books – Page 2 – Craig Spence

The Underwood Blues

Let’s jettison last century’s anchors

Well into retirement age, it’s time for me to ask what I want to achieve in this final phase of my literary career? What it means to be a 21st Century writer? It’s never been an easy vocation; and that truism has never been more applicable than it is on the cusp of this New Year.

I began my working career as a reporter, hammering out stories on an Underwood typewriter; I’m writing this introspective on my laptop, standing up in my dining room, occasionally interrupted by the ‘Ding!’ of another email landing in my in-box; I could just as easily be thumb-writing in ‘Notes’ on my iPhone, in the middle of a busy intersection or at a socially distanced café.

Conclusion: The world has changed. If we writers don’t adapt to the blizzard of social and technological innovation that’s whipping round us, we will lose our vital role as voices in the storm. In a future post I want to go into more detail about just how vital the role of literature is, and how sorry a loss it will be, if we fail to rise to the challenges of the times, but for now I’m going to map out how I want to go about adapting to our new reality, not the why of it.

The cover screen from **The Mural Gazer**, my second D2W novel

I’ll begin with my oft-repeated, favourite saying: Writing isn’t about writing. It’s about delving into meaningful experiences and sharing those adventures with appreciative audiences. And it’s not about ‘books’ in any clearly defined sense of the word, it’s about insinuating our ways into the minds of audiences.

Please note the use of the world ‘audience’ instead of ‘readers’ in that last paragraph. Ultimately literature comes down to books in some form or another, of course. But my minimalist definition of a book is: A code of squiggles and dots on a series of pages or screens; or a vocalization of those squiggles and dots into words and sentences, which any creature other than a human would interpret as the grunting and growling of an animal suffering terminal indigestion.

The allure of literature, its special place in the arts pantheon, is its symbolic delivery. Every reader or listener has to make up the presented story in his or her own imagination. Until then, books are inert lumps of masticated wood and ink on library and bookstore shelves, or confusing assemblages of wires and circuits in peoples briefcases and pockets. Reading and its derivatives are creative acts as much as the art of writing.

Alas, getting people to choose reading over the plethora of other media available to them has become an increasingly hard sell, especially if you define literature as a subset of entertainment. Think about it! A hundred and fifty years ago there were no radios, no televisions, computers, video games, the Internet, virtual realities, movie theatres – and so on. Candle light story-telling, live theatre, and parlour music or pub songs were the free-time activities people turned to, and books the only transportable repositories of thought and entertainment.

That unique portability has long-since been overwhelmed by powerful broadcast media, and I believe authors and publishers are increasingly going to have to seek out niche audiences, and find affordable, widely dispersed channels for sharing literature in this crazed new world. Books are going to have to connect seamlessly to digital media and keep up with the fast paced bursts of attention modern audiences give new ideas.

Learning how to effectively use new media has become part of my creative process, and I hope to share my successes and pratfalls as I go. I don’t see digital technology as a replacement for ‘books’, but as an essential adjunct. My upcoming edition of The Boy From Under is my third run at what I have dubbed Direct-to-Web publishing, the first edition (now offline) was my inaugural run. My second effort is a novel in progress, The Mural Gazer.

I’ll celebrate if, late in life, I can become a crotchety advocate of new media as the neural network for modern fiction and creative writing… Heck! I’ll celebrate even if my only achievement is to get literary types to stop using Underwood typewriters and quill pens as their trademark symbols in this frenetic here-and-now!

CraigSpenceWriter.ca

Connect for more on Books Unbound

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Rote is the past-tense of write

Why write?

Words are such fascinating things! So versatile. So nuanced. So ultimately… meaningless? That thought comes to mind as I attempt a review of my 50-plus years as a writer. I occasionally analyze what has become for me a habit, and as I begin a rewrite of my novel The Boy From Under, I feel it’s time for a look through the microscope and see where this impulse lives in my DNA.

There are two views through this microscope of mine: the pro and the con.

As a pro, I have achieved states of being I would never have experienced otherwise. I have surprised myself with inspired moments, and done my best to share emotional and intellectual highs and lows with readers. I’ve felt the verbal pyromaniac’s joy at igniting imaginations. I have made words work for me, pulling long trains of philosophical reasoning up steep hills and down dangerous grades. I have had meaningful fun.

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As a con, I have dragged my reluctant carcass to its work station, as if I had a ball and chain attached to my ankle. The urgent clatter of my keyboard has drowned out any real sense of celebration, as I hurried to file another story, making sure the facts fit whoever’s case I was trying to make. I have become lost in wildernesses of uninspired words drivelling toward ‘The End’ or, in forgotten journalistic jargon, -30-.

What I’m getting at, here, is writing for me as a way of life. Whether I’m up or down, I have no choice, I have to write, and in my more introspective moments, I do what I’m doing now: write about writing. I hope you won’t hurt yourself laughing, but the following image is a partial visualization of what I’m writing this moment. I sometimes sketch my thoughts before setting them to words, a reminder of why I chose literature rather than the visual arts as my goto discipline…

The point I’m trying to make, sharing that ‘idea map’, is: There should be way more spinning round in my head as I’m writing than I can possibly include in a story or article. My choices should be excruciatingly and wonderfully difficult. There should be plenty left over for future instalments!

CraigSpenceWriter.ca

Believing is Seeing

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Some people walk right by Gwen’s place, and don’t even notice. They might be thinking about mortgages, or family problems, or jobs… or the latest national fixation, COVID-19. But Kirsten and friends weren’t distracted by any of that. The cold bright air made them happy, and the flutter of dark-eyed juncos at a feeder across the street… Until they were startled by the great, big, green Grinch nailed to the post under Gwen’s balcony. “Won’t steal my Christmas,” Kirsten pouted angrily, and everyone on the line agreed, even though Mrs. P, their daycare teacher, had to laugh. Snowmen, elves, and Santa himself crowded Gwen’s yard, too, fastened to sticks in the surrounding brick planter and tacked to the clapboard siding of her house. So Kirsten felt pretty sure that – as always – the Grinch would come to be a believer, too. It was Mrs. P who pointed to the painted rocks nestled in the grass along the planter wall. Kirsten figured they must be nice rocks, judging by their colours and shapes. “Life is short, eat dessert first,” Mrs. P read one. Kirsten agreed! “Less todos; more todays!” advised another. Kirsten’s favourite, though, was the one with the angel on it that said, “Believing is seeing!” Even though Mrs. P said “whoever wrote it got it wrong way round.”

About this Moment

Our neighbour, Gwen, loves Christmas, and goes all-out with decorations every year. This Moment was inspired when a gaggle of daycare kids all hanging onto a cord, with their daycare teacher in the lead, stopped to wonder at Gwen’s display. All I had to hand was my iPhone, so I took some pictures with that, and got one or two that were good enough to use. This is a fictional rendition. None of the names are real, and actual events have been interpreted to fit. Hope you enjoy.

CraigSpenceWriter
More Moments

The Dive

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He’d never dived off Prospect Rock before, only jumped, legs and arms flailing, yelling like a banshee, anticipating the cold slap of the lake’s surface, and that alarming transition between this world and that… the world of summer sky, filled with clouds and birds and planes, and vastnesses; into that startling nether world of cold water pressing in, stifling your voice, forcing your limbs to straighten out, and your body into the shape of a dagger, plunged into an unknown. He’d never taken that shape, mid-air, hands clasped above – or, rather below – his head, feet pointed up into the sky, mind focused on the precise moment when he’d enter the water, not with a splash, but with a surgical penetration of the translucence between now and then, past and future tenses. Diving is a conscious act; jumping a wild, screeching, childish enthusiasm. You prepare to dive, imagine yourself arcing through space like a cormorant, parting the waters as if your steepled fingers could find the interstices between molecules, then point your flexing body into its precise curve through the fluidity of its new medium gracefully, missing the jagged formations imagined beyond the phenomenon revealed by light.

More Moments

The Speed of Light

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A theory of special relativity for the soul

Surely there’s enough room in the universe for everyone who has died.

That’s a relief, I suppose. It means there might… just might… be a heaven out there, even a god, who only need occupy a tiny corner of the 13 billion light year breadth of measured space and time… and who knows what lies beyond the known, how far we’d have to travel in our transcendental spaceships to reach the ever expanding membrane of infinity.

Language can say things it’s impossible to comprehend. Thirteen billion light years, for example. Uncle Franklin tried to describe the speed of light for me once. “If I flicked on a light switch, here in Chemainus, say at the tip of Bare Point, you’d see the beam – it’s a wave, actually, but for the sake of argument, let’s say you’d see that beam in just over a second, if you were standing on the moon, say in the Sea of Tranquility… one-point-two-five-five seconds to be exact, that’s how long it would take.”

Uncky Frank couldn’t have understood that most nine year olds wouldn’t have a clue what the heck he was talking about, of course. Or what the speed of light had to do with my father’s coffin, making its slow progress down the centre aisle of our church, borne on the shoulders of six strong friends and relatives. He was just trying to describe, after the fact, the theoretical speed a soul could fly according to his own theory of special relativity.

Mum and Dad used to laugh at Uncky Frank and his ‘weirdo theories’. “He should leave the science to Einstein, and stick to building houses,” Dad said. “He’s good at that.”

“His inquiring mind takes him to strange places,” Mum agreed, as if Uncky Frank’s brain was a poorly trained Pitt bull yanking him around on its leash.

They loved him, though. He was everybody’s favourite uncle.

“Your dad isn’t very far away, once you know ‘C’,” he said, sitting beside me at the wake. “That’s the constant that stands for the speed of light in a vacuum,” he added, when I gave him a puzzled, pleading look. “Three hundred thousand kilometres per second.” He smiled benignly.

“How far is it from your head to your heart?” he persisted. “Show me.” I put my left hand over my heart; my right on top of my head. “That’s how far away your dad is from you, always,” Uncle Franklin said. “He’ll never leave, and – at the speed of light – he’ll be with you in an instant, whenever you need him.”

Uncky Frank had a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, on a special shelf next to his favourite armchair. He’d read it every evening, as if it was the world’s longest novel, from A to Z with occasional side-steps to look up an incomprehensible word in another article, then another word in the explanatory article, and another, and another, and so on.

“Unless someone’s reading it, these are just lumps of masticated wood, glue and fake leather, gathering dust,” he told me once. “Knowledge doesn’t reside in books. Squiggles on a page don’t mean anything until someone reads them.”

To his dying day Uncky Frank claimed to be an atheist. I visited him near the end. Gaunt, pallid, and weak as he was, he still smiled and gazed at me with his pale blue eyes. He could tell what I was thinking, and put his left hand over his heart; his right on top of his head. “That’s how far away from you I’ll be, if you ever need me,” he said.

I tried not to show it, but he laughed. “Just cause I’m what you call an atheist, doesn’t mean I don’t believe something. A few more days, and I’ll be gone, but I’ll live on in your memory,” he smiled benignly.

“And when I die?”

“You’ll live on in the memories of your friends, your colleagues, your family. And I’ll be a smidgen of that, which is enough for me.”

Uncky Frank bequeathed me his set Encyclopedia Britannica. I browse them from time to time, but there’s no reference to any history of mine in there, just antecedents. The speed of light hasn’t changed, though, and the time it takes a beam to get from Bare Point to the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.

End Note:

Writing is rarely a linear process. For example, this video has a typical pedigree. Yesterday I was working on Episode 43 of The Mural Gazer. In this scene Buddy paddles out onto Cowichan Lake, teetering on the brink of suicide. There, he encounters the spirit of Hong Hing, the Chinese merchant, bootlegger and gambling den operator, depicted in Chemainus Mural #4, who is tying to dissuade him. Although he’s alive and talking, Hong Hing is decked out as a deceased, oriental patriarch, and he’s floating to the forever-after on the mirror-calm surface of the moonlit lake.

I’m on aqua incognito for this description, so I started researching Chinese funerary traditions online, a fascinating glimpse into the rites of an ancient culture.

At the same time, I have been trying to get my head around Immanuel Kant’s metaphysical theory of Transcendental Ideals. Although that’s not the kind of subject matter you can throw undiluted into a novel, as a thematic undercurrent, I believe speculative philosophy enriches stories. And the rites I was learning about the Chinese belief in an afterlife, particularly the burning of Joss Paper and representations of things the deceased need to be happy in their new world, evoked by association Kantian proofs of god, heaven and immortality.

There’s no logic to the sequence that lead to The Speed of Light, but its origins do trace back to The Mural Gazer.

What Sense Reveals

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I’m not a poet, but in this instance, a novelist composing a sonnet, taken from the mind of the protagonist in my current work-in-progress, The Mural Gazer. Buddy Hope has decided to take the final, life defining step of ending his life. But he’s not approaching this ‘task’ from the usual anguished trajectory. Instead, he sees it as a logical conclusion, a job that needs doing, almost as if it were a household chore.

I’ve been trying to figure out how he came to this conclusion. Many of us have contemplated the act of suicide, not as something we would actually do, but as a way of getting underneath, or behind, or into the meaning of life. That’s not where Buddy’s head is at. He’s simply tired, and doesn’t look forward to another thirty or so years dragging himself through a world that has no purpose, no sustainable joy.

To paraphrase someone very close to me, who chose Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID), Buddy isn’t living anymore, he’s just existing. He’s depressed at the prospect of carrying on, when every moment takes him farther from that time in life when he believed in his purpose as a father, a reporter, an armchair philosopher.

The question hanging in the air at this point in the novel is: Will Buddy’s recollections and contemplation heading toward his final act change his mind. He’s composed his parting letter, and left it on the dining nook table of the camper he’s been living in as his home-away-from-estranged-home. He’s saying his veiled goodbyes to family and friends, and is about to drive out of cell range to his chosen spot. Nothing he’s considered so far has dissuaded him from deploying EEK, his Emergency Exit Kit.

What Sense Reveals isn’t written to a particular person; it’s written to all the people he has known and loved.

The Mural Gazer: My Direct-to-Web experiment

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TheMuralGazer.ca

Direct-to-Web is more than just a digital format that allows me to distribute and share books cost-effectively and in an environmentally sensible manner, it’s also a way of opening up the boundaries of literature to new possibilities.

I’ve written 35 episodes of the The Mural Gazer, now, and have developed a format that works. But I’m only just beginning to appreciate some of the possibilities D2W offers. The most immediate pluses for readers and authors:

A D2W book can be read on a mobile, a laptop or a desktop computer. No special devices or programs necessary, other than access to the internet and the web.
Audio readings of a D2W story can be bundled with the print edition, so audiences can read or listen depending on their situations or preferences.
The cost of a getting a D2W book into readers hands is a fraction of print or eBook editions because there are hardly any distribution and printing expenses.
A D2W novel can be the modern equivalent of a serial, published episode by episode on the fly.
Graphic elements can be incorporated into the Direct-to-Web experience.
For those who want to lessen the environmental impacts of producing and distributing books, Direct-to-Web offers a much more sensible format than conventional publishing.

Those are immediate benefits of Direct-to-Web. Some of the possibilities that go beyond what is normally expected of literature, and which I haven’t even begun to explore:

Audience interaction. An author can communicate with his audience while he’s writing a book, and remain in contact after a book is published.
Side-stories. Links can be included in a book that will take readers off on side journeys. The possibilities of this feature for subplots, or excursions to actual settings, or… are enticing.
Collaborative opportunities. Musicians, visual artists, photographers, actors, all kinds of arts disciplines can be brought to bear on a plot or theme. Again, the possibilities are limitless and fascinating.

So, much as I like to see The Mural Gazer as a direction literature needs to go in, I’m pretty sure my vision is dwarfed by the reality of the medium I’m so excited about! Of course print editions of books are going to be the mainstay of most readers for some time. But I’d be surprised if mid-21st Century readers are toting paper and hardcover editions around with them; in fact, I’d be surprised if literature occupies anything other more than a shrinking niche in public consciousness if authors and publishers don’t develop the potential of Direct-to-Web books.

Online readings & trailers – How to begin?

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I’m not going to be able to pack everything we need to know about setting up to produce video readings and trailers into a single blog post, so if there are topics within this topic you’d like me to explore and expand on, get in touch and let me know.

And if you’re really interested in the subject, don’t take my word for it, go online and get other perspectives. My take on what makes an effective video reading or trailer for websites and social media is unique; there are plenty of other variations on the theme you’ll be able to find, conferring with Dr. Google.

That said, let’s get underway. Before you actually do anything in the physical realm, play and replay an imaginary version of your video in your head, and view each showing from a different seat in your mind’s-eye theatre.

Take one: an artist’s POV. Ask what you want people to take away from your video? And what you want them to do? Buy your book? Attend a reading? Absorb a philosophical perspective and share it? Change their attitude about something? Know who your viewer is, and what you want to say to him before you set out producing your video.

Take two: put yourself in the ‘average viewer’s’ seat. What’s going keep her there? What is it about your story you want to emphasize? Do you want to make her laugh? Arouse her sense of curiosity? Send chills up and down her spine? Disgust her? Get her to like you? Wax philosophical? Wonder what comes next?

Take three: now you’re sitting in the producer/director’s chair. You have to figure out what’s possible and how to make what’s possible happen in the final cut. As you play through the video, ask yourself what kind of equipment you’ll need to make each scene happen? What skills you might have to acquire? How long it’s going to take to produce your masterpiece? Who you’ll need to involve in the production?

Take four: You’re the Production Manager. Your job is to figure out who and what you will need to bring together, when and where in order to get the video trailer or reading done. Once your assessment is finished, you should have a pretty detailed, step-by-step chart of how to get from scene-one to your finished video.

Now you know what you want to do, it’s time to set your ‘system’ up so you can keep track of how you’re doing. Even a simple video project can generate dozens of files, sticky notes, emails, and so on. Having all that data stored in accessible, navigable locations is absolutely essential.

I use three Adobe programs to generate elements of a video production: Photoshop (composite photos and slides), Premier Pro (assembling the video), and Audition (sound production). I also use stock sound and image services to get material I can’t photograph or record myself. Most productions require dozens of photos, videos and sound clips. All those elements have to be organized and coordinated, if you don’t to lose your way.

Typically, I open a folder for the entire project in File Manager on my Mac. It will contain sub-folders, the Premier Pro project file; and the final MP4 video. The sub-folders will be labelled: Photos-Images, Video, Audio, Slides, Elements, Correspondence, Text, and so on. You get the idea.

Once I start assembling and editing the video in Premier Pro, I will create a similar set of folders for Photos-Images, Video, Slides, Elements and Audio. As I need materials, I import them into the mirrored Premier Pro project folders, and when they are placed in the video, I colour code them, so I’ll know what’s been used and what’s on deck.

Although Premier Pro lets you import whole folders from File Manager into a project, I don’t do that. I prefer to transfer them one at a time. If it’s a larger production, I will also colour code imported files in my Mac’s File Manager, so I can ignore them when I’m looking for materials later.

All this may sound bureaucratic and tedious, and if you’re among those who can keep a dozen balls in the air at the same time and grab them on the fly, you may be able to do without the bother. I’m not. I find a structured process for gathering, storing and retrieving materials during a video production allows me to focus on the aspects of a project I really enjoy, the creative activity of transcribing a vision from my imagination into the mind-space of an audience.

Online Readings & Trailers – What you need?

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This episode from The Mural Gazer, is an example a reading video production.

Part 1: Equipment & Training

Why might you, as a writer, want to consider posting online readings and book trailers? The obvious answer: the Internet is where more and more people are going these days to browse and buy. One need only mention Amazon.com to appreciate how book sales and distribution have been affected by the global transition to eCommerce.

Still, many are reluctant to give up the Underwood typewriter and weighty, leather-bound volumes as iconic symbols of true literature; and many more are prepared to blame technology – and especially the Internet – for the serious declines in writers’ incomes over the last couple of decades.

Are they right?

Yes and no, I think. But as a writer I can’t afford to overlook online options for getting my stories into the hands and minds of readers. So online readings and book trailers, as part of a self and direct-to-web publishing strategy, are approaches whose time has come. The conventional route of finding a publisher, who will get my book printed, then distributed to to bookstores, is still appealing, but exploring other possibilities makes sense.

And even if I do get my manuscript accepted by a publishing house, I still have to promote it on my own, and sell as many copies as I can, if I hope to supplement my income in any meaningful way. So ipso facto, I need to feature my books on my own web site or Facebook page. An online presence is essential for writers – especially little known writers – and it has to be done-up in genres a tech-savvy population demands: which translates into easy, quick, graphic, and catchy, which narrows down to video readings and book trailers.

The secret to producing a good online reading or book trailer is inspiration. You have to see it as a creative work in its own right – as art.

What equipment and skills do you need to do video promo of your books? A mobile phone and Rick Mercer demeanour are all you really need. But since most of us don’t have Mercer’s gift for gabbing; and jiggly, poorly lit, echoey recordings of halting speakers aren’t likely to impress audiences; an investment in equipment and training might pay off.

I do almost all my production on Adobe’s integrated photo, video and audio suite (costs about $50 per month). I use my iPhone quite a bit – and its video quality is more than adequate for most web and social media productions – but I also use a Cannon T7i, digital camera, and have an inexpensive studio set up that includes diffused lighting, green screen, tripods and so on. I’d say the whole kit and caboodle cost me under $3,000.

That’s a significant expense in my case, but the ability to create readings and trailers that are a cut above jiggly, poorly lit and echoey makes the investment worthwhile.

Training is another matter. Some younger, tech-savvy authors will also have the skills and equipment needed to do catchy video trailers and readings. Most will not. I’ve acquired my skills haphazardly, during a 30 year career as a journalist and communications manager. I’m not saying it’s an impossible undertaking, but the learning curve for most writers would be awfully steep, and would only be surmountable if they were energized by a passion for the process.

So for most the only realistic option would be to hire someone to produce their readings and book trailers, these days in a manner that observes all the COVID-19 protocols required. Professional video production can be prohibitively expensive, but quality video for authors’ web sites and social media channels can be reasonably priced, especially if some aspects of the production can be done by the authors themselves. A price of $100 per minute is possible, and three to four minutes is usually plenty of time to capture and deliver the essence of your message.

Another option could be a recorded reading workshop or circle – conducted totally online in the COVID-19 era. As well as ending up with a video reading or trailer that could be used to promote your books, you would get the support and encouragement of a group of like minded participants, who want to improve their story-reading skills and delivery. A three session workshop, with five participants, might cost $200 per person.

Thanks for joining me in this blog post. Next up: Online Readings & Trailers – Creative Steps

Sound studio to go

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For authors who want to accompany their online stories with reasonably good quality audio, but who don’t want to go through the expense or bother of building an in-home sound studio, or learning the intricacies of complicated recording equipment and programs, this simple, very portable sound studio can be a workable alternative.

All you need is: a mobile phone that can display text and and do audio recordings at the same time; a blanket, and a comfy chair.

For most, this idea will cost nothing to implement, and will only take a few minutes to learn. So Click the play button above, and watch this six minute how-to video. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me.