General Discussion: Hear Ye, Hear Ye!
Athena dog, princess that she is, has an extremely shrill, loud bark. She rarely barked when we had the Murph – apparently she didn’t feel like it was necessary, and she mostly just howled in her adorable little roo-roo “inside” voice.
She barks now. A lot. And the other day, she barked that high-pitched staccato at full volume less than an inch from my left ear. My ear went numb and started ringing at the same time, and the pain was…well, it was incredibly uncomfortable for a good while there. It’s still mildly painful several days later. I’m pretty sure I have a ruptured eardrum now, all because she was impatient to go on her walk.
It’s interesting that this happened now, as I was just thinking about podcasts and audio books the day before. More to the point, I was listening to a podcast about Google Play’s new AI audio book narration, and the potential, possibilities and pitfalls with these new kinds of services popping up.
And the potential for doing my own audio readings/recordings.
Processing audio is not natural for me. I’m an “in my head” sort of person, so parsing information I hear requires far more time and focus for me than parsing information I read. I’ve only just discovered podcasts I like, and it’s taken me around two years of listening to shorter podcasts in order to have the stamina and attention for the longer ones. Even then, I have to be very interested in what I’m listening to, and if I’m doing something else at the same time, it has to be something I can do pretty much in my sleep, or I miss a lot of the podcast info.
I can listen to very short (fifteen minutes or less) audio stories, but anything longer than that and my mind will start to wander, and I miss whole chunks of the story.
I do like listening to poetry, as it’s short and I like both reading it and hearing it to compare how the inflections sound when the author reads it verses when I’m silently reading it.
I do have some books available in audio (professionally done, not read by me) for both of my alter-egos and a simple paranormal romance under my own name. I think they turned out really well, if I do say so myself. If you’re interested in checking them out, you’ll find links on the BSB site here (horror), here (erotica), and here (paranormal romance), or just click the Audible link in the footer. In the future, I may play with the AI narration…or I may see about reading my own books. I think it would be a good experience as an author, and potentially give me some further insights into my stories.
For now though, the only audio I’m playing with is figuring out a workflow for using dictation/transcription to write first drafts faster. And that’s what the lapel mic at the top of this post is for. Wish me luck!
Currently Reading
In Defense of Plants by Matt Candeias, PhD (non-fic)
The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (Mystery)
Currently Watching
Outer Range (Amazon)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount)
The Equalizer (Paramount/CBS)
NCIS (Paramount/CBS)
Currently Listening To
Writing Excuses
The Creative Penn
Pop Quiz!
Are you an audio-book listener? If so, do you prefer books read by the author, or a professional voice artist (generally speaking, and assuming the author isn’t reading in monotone)?
I actually tend to prefer listening to the author themselves read their books. Even if it’s not as polished as a voice artist, I tend to like knowing that the person who wrote it is the person reading it.
Post Round-up
The Writer’s Desk (last updated: Saturday, May 14, 2022)
Alex Westhaven (last updated: Friday, May 13, 2022)
Support your author:
This House of Books (my local bookstore!) | Bookshop.org
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks | Audible