Roping the Spoken Word

by Richard Prosch

Recently, a friend of mine who drives a truck for a living asked if my stories were available in audio. Not only did I tell him no, but I had to admit I'd never really given audio books much thought.

As a kid, before falling asleep, I listened to old time radio shows. Gunsmoke, Escape, and Have Gun, Will Travel were my favorites, but I never made the move to audio books.

A quick search at Amazon revealed what I'd been missing. The wide variety of western titles and authors was encouraging, but when I started to plan my own foray into audio, enthusiasm turned to worry.

How much time would it take? How much would it cost? How best to proceed.

I have a friend who works as a voice professional for radio. Friend or not, his style had to fit the bill.

Unlike radio shows, so much has to be conveyed by one voice, the job can be tricky. With westerns, the tenor immediately sets the tone. Close your eyes and imagine the voices. Gabby Hayes or Clint Eastwood? John Wayne or Smiley Burnette? The music: lively or somber? The sound effects? Or lack thereof?

Then, along with all the technicalities of recording (levels and bit rates), the legalities of distribution (music and SFX usage rights) and paying for studio time, we had to crunch some numbers.

I discovered Audible and their extensive help menus and forums were invaluable. I contacted our friend Ken Farmer, who produces his own audio works. Finally, I took the plunge and simply worked through the curve.

"Branham'sDue" may take a while to show a real profit, but it was a real adventure to produce.

Many of us Fictioneers have heard our characters come alive via audio. Whether through Audible's royalty sharing program, our own MP3 files, or a publisher's arrangement, we're reaching for a new audience and additional revenue.

As I wrote, Ken Farmer helped me a lot. Ken has four books in his The Nations series available through Audible/Amazon, and samples are a click away at the link. Ken says the format provides good extra revenue, and I don't doubt it. He narrates the works himself, and with each story weighing in at 8 to 9 hours, there's plenty of entertainment there.

On the other hand, Gordon Rottman's publisher arranged to have The Hardest Ride recorded. The sample proves narrator James Simenc's voice is perfectly matched to the story.  Again, that's something to watch out...er, listen for. In this  case, Simenc needed to read a part of the book that had a lot of Spanish in it. Gordo wrote to me:   

As the POV was a Texas cowpoke, he didn't have to be native-level Spanish, but he needed to pronounce it well enough to be understandable to a Spanish-speaker and not mangle it. He turned out to be able to rattle it off very well. That's an important consideration for a narrator if there are even small bits of another language.

Georgia Woods of Hartwood Publishing has these suggestions if you attempt to go it alone:

In general, if you’ve never listened to audio books, you won’t know what to look for in a narrator or in general when it comes to how it should sound.  Also, you have to understand how the contract works, how the recordings work, and how to tell the narrator what’s wrong as well as being able to sit and listen at the computer and give timestamp information for every error.  It’s quite time-consuming, to be honest, so we don’t do it with books we don’t feel we can profit on, for sure. 

Audible can help.

Mike Long let them pair his novel, No Good Like It Is, with narrator Keith Newbill. Mike and Keith both market the story and have also thought more about getting the book into the hands of professional drivers, maybe on CDs.

Dusty Richards' publisher produced CDs of his Chet Byrnes stories and, unlike the examples above, went all out in old time radio style with multiple actors, music and sound effects.

Finally, Marc Cameron and L.J. Martin worked with Books In Motion to market their books as recordings. Larry says publisher Gary Chandler will accept original manuscripts and non-exclusive work. He adds:

They are a GREAT company, honest, and super to work with.

In this new world of digital publishing, where the western is ubiquitous as ever, yet strangely invisible to the general public, I think audio books offer a good avenue to reach our audience. 

Uniquely able to find markets that movies or television can't, mp3 downloads or CD recordings can get our stories and names in front of new ears --something that just might translate into new eyes and new book revenues in the future.

After growing up on a Nebraska farm, Richard Prosch worked as a professional writer, artist, and teacher in Wyoming, South Carolina, and Missouri. His western crime fiction captures the fleeting history and lonely frontier stories of his youth where characters aren’t always what they seem, and the windburned landscapes are filled with swift, deadly danger. Read more at www.RichardProsch.com

MORE OF THAT WRITING STUFF...by L.J. Martin

More of that 'writing' stuff....

WHAT IS GENRE?

GENRE: Genre is defined by my Random House Dictionary as:

  

A class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like.

Romance, science fiction, horror, fantasy, thrillers, historicals, mystery, and westerns are generally considered to be genre novels—and there’re more. And there are sub-genres: adult westerns, fantasy, gothic romance, regency romance, etc., etc.

Who determines genre? The market and a lot of preconceived notions. Editors who buy novels and guide them to finished form, and readers who buy them to consume. Readers expect such a novel, a western for instance, to be written a certain way and, because of those reader expectations, if it isn't written that way, editors generally won't buy it—because they believe it won't sell and their sales department, cast from the same mold, believes they don't know how to sell it. They'll say, "It falls through the slots."

If you want to sell your work to the established publishing houses, the first thing you have to realize is publishing is a business. Like other businesses, publishers want products that sell.

The editor's first obligation to the publishing house is to stock the shelves with the standard product, the proven sellers. Only once in every hundred books they edit will they reach out. And remember, they've probably read or partially read five thousand manuscripts to get those hundred they bought—the reality is that a million manuscripts a year get submitted and 3,500 published in mass-market fiction, numbers that are constantly changing. The odds against a truly unusual book getting to the market are huge. But when they do, they are sometimes the huge sellers. Take Fifty Shades of Grey as an example.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, among the all-time best-selling novels, and the most translated novel, bar none, from the English language (at least when I wrote this, I’m sure this has changed), was turned down twenty-eight times before it found a home. It was a short, unusual story. Now it's a short, unusual story translated into more languages than any other novel ever published.

But if you want to get comfortably published, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Write to the market. Make it easy on the editors. Give them a product they're used to, one they can get on the shelf with little effort on their part or that of the copy editor. One that sells and makes money for the publishing house.

I once spoke at a college seminar on writing where the renowned science fiction writer Ray Bradbury was the featured speaker. After speaking to my small portion of the seminar, I attended Ray's keynote address—and found myself being berated for giving the exact advice above. Write to the market, although it had been related to him in a different manner than I’d represented. “I also said, write from the heart.” And “money isn’t everything.”

Bradbury, who sold his first brilliant novel, Fahrenheit 451, at the ripe old age of 21 or so, believed that all writers should be like him, brilliant, and merely write a brilliant novel and go on to fame and fortune. Thank you, Ray. But some of us have to grind it out the hard way, and would like to make a little money, and get a few pats on the head, along the path. Now that you’re gone, I truly hope you’ve found a place in heaven…which will only be heaven to you if there’s a word processor at hand.

Yes, if possible, write a brilliant unorthodox novel and be rich and famous—but the odds are you'll languor and slip away from writing when you find a pile of rejection slips building window-sill high beside your desk (or toilet). Many who might evolve into brilliant productive writers will go by the wayside if expecting, and being disappointed by, the lack of fame and fortune from a first novel or from not selling a first, or second, or third novel. Many now productive and successful writers did not sell a manuscript until they had written a half-dozen novels. I remember a story about Danielle Steel. It was reported that she sold her first novel, only to receive rejections on her next five. That would be even tougher in many ways than not selling your first.

Editors look forward to receiving their paychecks regularly and if they don't stock the shelves with products that sell, paychecks stop coming because they are looking for another job. They look for product to fill the slots they have open. Tried and true genre product that fits the slot.

But back to genre.

Romances end happily: girl gets boy and vice versa. Mysteries drip clues, and you don't know the solution until the last chapter. Sci-fi is about aliens and outer space, or inner space, including inside the body or the center of the earth. Horror better scare the hell out of you. Since I'm concentrating on the western and the historical, I'll zero in on them—and by the way, what's good for the western is generally good for the western romance, novels of the west, and historicals set in the old West. Most of it, of course, is common to all genres.

If I seem to be stuck on westerns, remember the same basics can be applied to all genres.

WHAT'S A WESTERN? WHAT'S A HISTORICAL? As its eighth definition of the non-capitalized word, Random House defines western as:

A story, movie, or radio or television play about the U.S. West of the nineteenth century.

It defines an historical novel as:

A narrative in novel form, characterized chiefly by an imaginative reconstruction of historical events and personages.

Let's look at those definitions as they apply to western/historical novels. And remember that a western romance may have different guidelines than those for a straight western or straight historical.

As appears on the paperback racks in thousands of book stores, truck stops, supermarkets, and drug stores, and now online, a western is a fictional story of forty five to sixty five thousand words. This is a rule. Rules are made to be broken, and the word-limit rule, like all rules in publishing as well as most other businesses, is broken often. One of the finest western novels ever written (in my opinion, and the only Pulitzer Prize winning western novel ever written) is much longer. We'll talk more about Lonesome Dove a little later.

Again, so much for rules.

The point I'm trying to make is, nothing is hard and fast. But if you want to sell your novel, it's the accepted beginning, accepted length, accepted subject matter, accepted time frame, accepted style, and accepted ending that will sell quickest. Don't fight city hall.

Get one sold, get famous (or at least established), then you can break the rules.

Stephen King wrote a three word chapter in Misery. Thomas Wolfe wrote a four hundred word sentence in Bonfire of the Vanities. Both were (silently or at least in low tones) chastised by New York editors for "grandstanding." But they can pull this kind of stuff because they are Stephen King and Thomas Wolfe.

Consistently put a few novels on the top of the NYT or the PW lists, and you can grandstand.

In the meantime, write fifty to sixty thousand words for your short genre or one hundred thirty thousand for your long one—or better yet, follow the guide lines of the publisher to whom you wish to sell.

Later, I'll tell you how to count words in the old and new ways so you know how long your work is.

But any work of fifty to eighty thousand words does not a western make. What makes the western a western?  Stay tuned....

To see the whole manual on writing compelling fiction, and to blow $.99, go here:

http://www.amazon.com/Write-Compelling-Fiction-L-Martin-ebook/dp/B006PVYN10/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394628303&sr=8-1&keywords=write+compelling+fiction+l.+j.+martin

http://www.amazon.com/Write-Compelling-Fiction-L-Martin-ebook/dp/B006PVYN10/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394653219&sr=8-1&keywords=Write+Compelling+Fiction+by+L.J.+Martin

COOKING WILD AND WONDERFUL by L.J. Martin

DEEP PIT'n

Kern County, California, where I was born, the first prune picker in my family who hauled out of the dust bowl in 1936, is the Oklahoma and Texas of California. She lays in the south end of the world's most productive agricultural valley which provides ½ the country's fruits and vegetables, and Kern is the state's number one producer of cattle and sheep. She also, at least until the Bakken field in Montana and No. Dakota was developed, harbored four of the ten most productive oil fields in the U.S.

When I would travel a hundred miles south to Los(t) Angeles, usually in cowboy boots, I would often be asked "Where in the south do you come from, country boy?" A funny question coming from a city which a century and a half before enlisted 3,000 in the Confederacy including one general and six colonels, and only 3 in the Union. My, how times have changed.

A fellow I wrote about, Edward Fitzgerald Beale (see Rush to Destiny), was instrumental in keeping California from going with the south during the "recent unpleasentries," when he convinced Lincoln that if he imposed the draft (conscription) in California that she would bolt and join the south. He didn't, she didn't. Consequently California was the ONLY Union state not to have conscription. Beale was the most unsung hero from the Manifest Destiny period…but I digress. However, if you'd like to learn more about a fellow about whom Kit Carson said, "I can't believe this guy Ned Beale," take a look here: http://amzn.to/RAnz1G

This blog is about cooking, however no cooking is more indigenous to the south than deep pit, and probably none is more delicious.

Kern County has some of the great BBQ traditions which came via Model A's, along with lots of displaced folks, directly from the south during that dust bowl. It vies with Santa Maria in Santa Barbara County for great BBQ and deep pit tradition, so I grew up with it, and am damn glad I did.

That said, how many of us have the time to dig a pit in the back yard, build an oak fire and let it burn down to coals, season then wrap,wrap, wrap a chunk of beef (or whatever) in wet burlap, and drop it in the pit, cover it up, and let it cook overnight…then dig it up, unwrap it, try to keep the ashes, dirt, and rock chips out of it, and only then serve it up.

I am here, riding to your rescue.

In this recipe your oven becomes that deep pit…no shovel required.

8 lb chuck roast
½ cup liquid smoke
1 tblsp ground pepper
1 tblsp sea salt (or any old salt)
1 tblsp mixed spices (I like to use Italian)
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 cups your favorite BBQ sauce

Mix all the dry seasonings together. Mix the liquid seasonings together. Apply dry seasonings and place seasoned meat atop the first of a generous piece of aluminum foil large enough to wrap the meat. Pour on the liquid seasonings. Wrap, then wrap again in another generous piece of aluminum foil. Then wrap in a brown paper bag, or more than one if one won't cover. Wrap in two more pieces of aluminum foil. You should now have a minimum two layers of foil, a layer of brown paper bag, and two more layers of foil. Here's the deep pit ready for the oven:
< Place on a rack over a tray or pan in the center of a 200 degree oven and slow cook for 12 hours. I've had folks—men, women, and children—average over a pound of meat apiece when they dig into his succulent, fall-apart, deep pit chuck. Don't plan on leftovers. I serve with beans, crusty bread, and a green salad.
See you soon for more from The Kitchen at Wolfpack Ranch and Cooking Wild & Wonderful.

Here's a link to my cookbook: http://amzn.to/VusuAW

COOKING WILD AND WONDERFUL by L.J. Martin

What's better for dessert, or better for you, than fresh berries.. The trick here is not to overcook them. I long tried to make phyllo cups and to tell the truth, never perfected them. I'm no pastry chef and to be truthful, have no desire to be. I discovered the pre-made, pre-packaged phyllo cups at the market in the frozen food section, and what do you know, suddenly my phyllo cups were PERFECT. Don't fight city hall, if you can buy something that's just as good as you can make, or better, and will save you hours in the kitchen, then go for it is my kitchen philosophy. Phyllo cups are one of those "they make it better" items.

Here's a continuation of that gourmet supper, dessert course:

Gourmet Supper for Eight

Appetizers:

Served with Champagne
Crab artichoke dip or tapanade
Crunchy Parmesan Onion Squares
Bruchettas:
Mushroom
Tomato
Zucchini

Soup:

Shellfish in clear bullion

Salad:

Lobster, avocado, fresh grapefruit on butter lettuce

Fish Course:

Salmon and asparagus in parchment (en pappette)

Citrus Sorbet

Beef Course:

Tenderloin strip basted in simple sauce (see recipe)
Mushroom Gravy
Port wine reduction
Red & Yukon Gold potatoes, boiled and braised

Dessert:

Berry mélange in phyllo cups with Cointreau whipped cream

After dinner: Coffee, liquors, and a great single malt


Dessert

Berries in phyllo cups:

• 2 packages (12 cups by count) phyllo cups (buy at market pre-made) or package of flat phyllo dough or pie dough
• 1 carton strawberries (approximately 2 cups)
• 1 carton blackberries or raspberries (approximately 1 cup)
• 1 carton blueberries (approximately 1 cup)
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 pint whipping cream
• ¾ cup water
• powdered sugar
• Cointreau if you like

In lieu of phyllo cups (sometimes hard to find) you can use phyllo dough and cook in flat six inch squares, or in lieu of that, bake plain pie dough in six inch squares. Sprinkle sugar on phyllo or pie dough squares if you use them.

While phyllo or pie dough is baking per recipe on box, clean berries. Place a cup of strawberries, ¾ cup water, and ½ cup granulated sugar in blender and buzz until it’s a liquid. Place in sauce pan large enough to hold liquid and the rest of the berries. Heat liquid until slightly thickened, add berries just to heat—don’t cook berries, just warm them up. Beat whipping cream and add sugar to taste. Add ½ oz Cointreau if you like.

If you use phyllo cups place each of them in the center of a serving plate and fill with berry mixture. Overflow if extra mixture, and there should be. Top with whipped cream. If you use flat phyllo or pie dough spoon mixture into plates and top with dough square, then dress plate with whipped cream.

Serve with Guerwitzterminer or Reisling

Coffee and/or after dinner liquors

See you soon for more from The Kitchen at Wolfpack Ranch and Cooking Wild & Wonderful.