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We’re Making An Audiobook!

We were writing Chapter 2 when we stopped to work on the audio book for Book 1.

What an interesting process. First, we had to determine the parameters for the voice we’d like, then what we were willing to pay per hour. We submitted our requirements on Audible.com and got two responses, each with a demo attached. We listened, debated, and rejected them. So, we listened to other narrators on the board. Then one stood out in the field as perfect: Chris Lang. We LOVED his demo, but he was wayyy out of our price range. When we contacted him and he read our blurb, he signed on to our project anyway, because he believed in our book. His goal is to do the audible versions of all the sequels. Oh, and Orion had to add a new sheet on our spreadsheet: a pronunciation guide.

We have the proof recording now, so we have to listen to it, all 13+ hours of it, then work with Chris on changes. You’re gonna love this audiobook. Chris has such a good grasp of our characters that we find ourselves wrapped up in listening that we’re anxious to see how a scene or chapter ends, even though we wrote it!

 

Writing A Sequel

We never realized how much harder it is to write a sequel. When you’re writing book 1, you can make things up as you go, but when you get to book 2, you have to make sure you don’t contradict anything from book 1, tell the story for book 2, and also drop hints and pieces for book 3. So many moving parts! Thankfully we have huge spreadsheets full of information so we don’t have to rely on just our feeble memories. And there’s always the search function in Scrivener.

We also use the spreadsheets for the layouts of buildings/apartments/offices, so we can visualize what our characters are doing. Each new setting needs a new diagram.

We have a page for forum characters, which we’ve found very useful. If we need a new character for a short story or Book 2, we have a pool of ready-made people to choose from. (We had a great time creating over one hundred forum characters in the first place.)

Perhaps the richest spreadsheet is the links page. It’s where we keep links from our internet explorations. Here’s an interesting one on how to disappear completely: http://www.wikihow.com/Disappear-Completely.

 

GLAWS Writers Conference

Wow, did we have a good time at our first writers conference! Orion flew to San Francisco to join Kyros (and see his new house), then drove down to Los Angeles for GLAWS, the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society Conference. Panels were mixed for us. Some were on things we already knew. Others had us furiously taking notes. One had us write from a prompt, then read it out loud. We both enjoyed that one, since we write stories from prompts every week. (Some of them are the short stories we’ve posted here on the blog.) The speakers at lunch-time were interesting and we made some new contacts. The only problem arose on Saturday and Sunday, when the air conditioning went out. It was in the 90s all weekend and the windows were painted shut! We all suffered together.

All in all, it was a very interesting experience. We’ll probably do GLAWS again next year. With us living in two different states, it’s hard to coordinate our schedules to attend one.