Excellent Books-On-Tape on a shoestring. Making a Book on Tape by RaymondJohn After a lousy time with the Editor for my last posting, please don't review on misprints. I would appreciate your pointing them out to me, but I am more interested in your reaction to the story.

Category:  Biographical Non-Fiction   Posted:  July 18, 2008      Views: 481

RAYMONDJOHN  IN PRINT   ABOUT RAYMONDJOHN  Raymond John is a hopeless FanStory addict who has at times spent as many as twelve hours in a single day reading, reviewing and writing for the site. His three purposes are based on three "Es" which are Explain, Enlighten and Entertain. His greatest fear is to take himself too seriously. He may not always smile, but he always has a twinkle in his eye. Knock his socks off with a fantastic write and he'll be your best cheerleader and give you a banner award, to boot. He has written two novels and numerous short works. His first book, The Cellini Masterpiece, has sold nearly 3,000 copies and received an Honorable Mention in the 2006 IPPY awards. It is now available in a Kindle edition from Amazon.com. An audio version (ISBN 9780615268125) is now available read by the renown actor, James Cada. MP3 edition, downloadable for IPOD, is 14.95. Order at www.raymondjohnbooks.com. His second mystery, Mix and Match Murder, which was originally scheduled for release in September of 2008 is now in print and available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and North Star Press. A scholar born in the golden age of radio, Raymond always appreciates hearing a well-told story, especially one with action and believable dialogue in a historical setting. I have written and received many reviews. I have a thick skin, so if constructive criticism is forthcoming, bring it on. He has won several contests. The contest submission Mousie, Kittie and Booger was the first place winner in the contest Tales of the Weird.. Gold In Them Thar Words was the first place winner in the contest Tales of the Weird.. Lot 386 was the first place winner in the contest Tales of the Weird.. He is a top ranked author and is currently holding the #22 position. Portfolio | Become A Fan The last three days I have done very little reviewing, reading or writing with FanStory. I have been too busy. The Cellini Masterpiece will be coming out as a book on tape--actually CD. I spent three exciting days as sound engineer for a fantastic reading of my novel. Imagine Patrick Stewart with a slightly deeper voice and you can get an idea of what my narrator sounds like. My wife and I went to see Sherlock Holmes' Last Case at a local theater. The minute I heard the voice of the man playing Moriarty, I knew I had to get him read my book. I looked the actor up on Google and found out the telephone number for the local agency handling his bookings and called them. "I'm sure Jim will be delighted. He's down in Iowa helping his mother clean up after the flood." Three hours later I got a call back. "He says he really likes the idea. When do you want him to do it?" I hadn't even given it any thought. "As soon as I can make the arrangements." "He's a member of AFTRA. You'll have to work through them. You can work through XXXX Sound Studio." "Um. Okay." I gave the Studio a call. A woman with a friendly voice list listened to me, and answered my questions. She ended with, "Oh yes. His hourly rate is..." I caught my breath when I heard it. "And the studio rate is the same," the woman continued. I saw my talking book flying out the window. "My Internet provider says I don't really need to use a studio. Is that part of the contract?" "No. But we can't be responsible for the product if you don't use a studio." Whew. "I'll take my chances." After a few more phone calls, I had a tentative time and place. My bank has a quiet conference room that isn't in use, and I inspected it. It was quiet enough, but did have a rather loud air-conditioner in the background. When I talked to my computer techie, he said, "Don't worry. I have a computer program that will filter out all continuous background noise. Unless a car backfires, or someone breaks down the door, the program will filter out everything else. I'll have a computer set up for you, but you'll have to buy a Snowball microphone." My heart dropped to the floor. "How much?" I asked, expecting to hear a thousand dollars. "It'll set you back a little more than a hundred bucks." "Sold! How does this computer program filter out the background noise?" "Actually, pretty easily. Human voices are generally between 500 HZ and 3000 HZ, with an occasional 10,000. The program will ignore sounds outside these ranges, unless you specifically tell it to pick them up." "The Crime Scene Investigators are gonna hate this," I said. "What are they going to do about all the clues they get from background noise?" "Good question." Now all I had to do is to figure out how many hours it would take to read the book. It took me about ten hours to read it myself, but I read especially fast. So I took samples from five different parts of the book and timed them reading aloud. It averaged out to about three minutes a page. By my estimate, the entire book would take about sixteen hours. Pricey, but I had committed to the idea." After a few more phone calls, we agreed to start recording on Tuesday morning. Jim wanted a manuscript to work with, so I had one printed with large type. It ran more than a thousand pages! My techie friend had the computer and microphone waiting when I picked it up before heading to the bank. He showed me what to do. "It's simple," he said. Uh, oh. Nothing is ever simple with me. I had the champion land navigator as my partner on the navigation course when I was in the Army Reserves. He got lost. I wrote down everything the techie said as he walked me through the various menus. I left with a full page of instructions. But still dubious. I hauled the computer and mic to the car and stowed it in my trunk with the crate holding the manuscript. I arrived at the bank first. Jim showed up ten minutes after I did, and the man with the key for the room a few minutes later still. When he opened the door, the first glitch of the day showed up. "I need a table and two chairs." "I thought you were going to provide that," the manager said. "No problem, I'll have Bill set them up for you." After a short delay, we had the snowball microphone sitting next to the computer on the table, and the computer set up between us. After Jim sorted through and arranged the manuscript, we were ready to start. Only I couldn't get the program to work. I didn't have my cell phone or the techies number with me. It wasn't listed. Luckily, my personal banker was computer literate, and we were off to the races. It was easy to get lost listening to my narrator's golden baritone. Yellow sparks blossomed on the blue background of the computer screen, stopping only when I corrected pronunciation or changes of emphasis. We finished the first day or recording having covered about sixty pages of a four-hundred-seventeen page book. My calculations were all wrong. At this rate, the book would take twice as long as I had figured. Jim wasn't worried, though I was ready to call off the rest of the session and cut my losses. Then I noticed that the program showed how much recording time was left. At the beginning it showed twenty-four hours. Now it read nineteen hours and thirty minutes. We had only used four and a half hours recording time. Whew! Next morning session we went back to work. When we broke for lunch, I couldn't find the chapters we had recorded for the day!I had saved every chapter as a new file, but they weren't showing up in the saved menu! After a bit of searching, I realized the program had an automatic save function. My missing files were embedded on top of each other in the menu at the top of the screen. I saved each of them and we picked up where we left off. When we finished at the end of the second day, we only had 160 pages to go and we had used up slightly more than fifteen hours of recording time. I tried to play back some of our work, but what I came up with was a screen full of twenty-second sound bites for each chapter. I knew the sparks had kept flying on my computer screen, so I just prayed that everything would be fine when it got done. The third day, we ran into a construction crew in the hallway. "We're working on the duct work," they told me. We started to record, and I sat with my heart in my throat that the noise would start. It did, but it was buzzing sounds. Nothing sharp. I kept a worried eye on the computer monitor to see if the line ever moved to the sounds. Luckily I never saw anything other than the changes made by the words as Jim spoke them. At four o'clock, Jim read the last page. "I hope we have everything okay," he said as we finished. "I'm going back to Iowa again." I hoped so, too. I could just see the techie playing the files and saying, "Sorry. We can't use this." My heart pounded as loudly as my kicks on the door at the techie's shop. I had my hands full. He opened the door for me. "Let's hear it," he said, rubbing his hands together. I told him I had no idea what it would sound like. He finally got the play function to work. Jim's voice came out of the computer sounding like a shout from Whoville. "Oh, no," I groaned. "Don't worry," the techie said. "That's just the speaker in the computer. The file sounds great. I'll start on the editing over the weekend. You marked up the manuscript, didn't you?" Jim had made a pen mark on the page every time he had to repeat something. I showed the Techie the marks. "Great. We need them. We've got a lot of noise to clear up." My mouth dropped open. "I thought you said the program and mic filtered out noise." "It does. I mean the places where he stops and restarts. His voice is fine." I danced out of the office and to my car. When I got home, I opened a twenty-two ounce bottle of Fat Tire Beer and put my feet up in the recliner chair. I barely did before I was dead to the world. The book on tape should be ready by September. Recognized Share your own writing! - Information on our membership for writers. Author Notes Don't try this at home! Pays one point and 2 member cents.

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