MultiMind's Blog, page 14

Much Ado About Narrators

I have been having the roughest time getting a decent book narrator. In Search of Amika has had more hiccups than I would like to admit, from the distro to the audiobookin’. It’s going to hold up the next book Dreamer for a while but thankfully not by much since it seems to mainly be coding and finding talents. The book is done, just having issues on the publishing side.

Now to whinge about having a hard time finding a good narrator.

I have come across plenty narrators, some who are really talented but not a good fit and some who have a lot of heart but not really talented. There there are some who are woeful mismatches. I have learned so far with ISoA is the two hiccups are:

-The Southern accents
– The genderless character, who is also one of the main characters, Ipkuni.

I am finding a harder time than I thought I would. It’s both hard and easy to find narrators. There are sites that have them but also you have to sort through a lot of what you don’t want. I basically want, for the current batch of works, a Black female narrator because I mainly write Black female characters. The works that are exceptions to this rule can be substituted with a Black Chicano/Black male narrator. It is a sea of White out there, and it is frustrating. At this point I just pick “Southern accent” and skim by picture to create a selection batch and go from there. Or I post Wanted: Narrator in my writing groups (I’m only in writing groups for Black or PoC people strictly so it helps a bit). Or in the gaming group I’m in (I’m in only one as of right now, Black Girl Gamers). It gets me some people but not too many. And because I don’t mind if someone is new or seasoned – everyone starts somewhere and I have nothing but memories of “need experience to get a job, need a job to get experience” ouroboros bullsh*t so I’m not interested in continuing that cycle –  I get a bevy of people.

It isn’t a clear cut “the pros sound great, the amateurs sound trash” because I’m getting things that dot all over the place. The Southern is supposed to be centered in Atlanta, which is pretty regional. Turns out I am having a hard time with that, not many can do ATL. And if I get the dead on ATL (which I have yet to get but close), it seems to come with the ATL discretion towards queerness as well – which is not so great. I do provide quick and dirty character run downs in the samples to make sure the narrator isn’t pitching in the dark here (which is easy to do, I’m sure most people did not imagine Alan Rickman as Snape – and he makes for a great Snape). But I think I might be running into “what do genderless/agendered people sound like?” because despite the run-downs, I get a lot of … variations. When I get a great Ipkuni, it is discovered the person is not so great with Southern, it will range from “Gone with the Wind” to “The Color Purple” quite commonly. If I get a great Southern accent, I get an Ipkuni that makes me molt in abject sonic cringe and horror.

Usually, I try to keep narrator hunting to the groups I’m in because I can live with a half decent Southern if they can do my character Ipkuni justice. The groups I’m in are super queer-friendly – to the point that one or two may be the mod and/or the admins and none of them really tolerate any bs of any sort.  I’ve seen individuals blipped over the slightest queer-phobic interactions, even if that individual is part of the LGBTQIA spectrum as well. Gay and a firm believer in biphobia? Gone. Ace and transphobic? Out you go, too. It keeps a clean community. But not a lot of narrators because they are groups for writers and gamers. See how this gets tough?

Should anyone think “Well, maybe you should expand your selection pool”, I hear you and I see you. And you couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t want to “minstrel” up my characters a la Fireside publishing (nearly got published by them by the way, everything fell through. I was upset then and now, I very much am not. And they’re the ones that started the Diversity in SF/F yearly studies, #BlackSpecFic!) and everyone else who has worked closely with MMP works are all Black. Since I’m the one that runs things, I’m the one who gets to pick what I want and what I want is a Black narrator. There’s no true shortage of them, I just haven’t found that person yet. Plus, when people of other races emulate Black lingo, that begs the question of why should I get bad copycats when I can always hire the real McCoys? This would be a problem I would definitely be stuck with in traditional publishing and, quite obviously from above, small press publishing.

Part of the goal also is to have one narrator that will be basically doing all my ensuing works. Short, long, doesn’t matter. Unless there needs to be a change, that’s gonna be my narrator. Hopefully I find them eventually.

ISoA is also getting redone, both print and ebook. It just needs a revamp. At least I picked a smaller work as a first try with all of this. Otherwise, I would be super agitated if it were a novella or a novel.

Pre-Order novelette “In Search of Amika”, Out Sept 25th!

Pre-Order fantasy novelette “In Search of Amika”, out on Sept 25th! Available in ebook, print and soon on audiobook everywhere books are sold! Cover illustration by Edge

What the book is about:

“Keyona is a hapless college grad focused on getting her next job. One night, she slipped through her bed and landed in the land of Rulo. Summoned by Ipkuni in search of their dearest friend Amika, Keyona begrudgingly offers to help look for this person in hopes that she can get back to her own world and life.”

Updates and snippets of the book will be coming soon!

Updates! Book cover of “In Search of Amika”

Woo, updates. I don’t post much but I work aplenty. Especially during these current events.

To announce, fantasy novelette In Search of Amika finally has a title and a publication date.

The art is made by Edge. I am always astonished by her works and am thrilled to have her works on my books. I have been looking at her art for years.

The publication date is September 25, 2020. Preorders will be available soon, mid/early August!

The blurb:

Nothing is going right for Keyona. Hapless and jobless with a fresh college degree, all Keyona wants is to find decent work. 

One night, something pulls Keyona through her bed and brings her to the distant lands of Rulo, thrown into the sandy pit of her summoner, Ipkuni.

Ipkuni is desperate to find their long lost friend, Amika. One way or another, Ipkuni is determined to find her. Though bemused to receive Keyona instead, a thought struck Ipkuni – perhaps Keyona could be of some good use. She had to arrive for a reason. 

 

I am glad that this is finally done, it took a while. The book will be in print, ebook and audiobook form, available everywhere such forms are sold.

Though a bit early to say, the next book following up after In Search of Amika will be the contemporary fantasy novella Dreamer.

Not Dead, Just Working

Gosh, have I done work, even in the middle of a plague.

Things have halted but, yay, having an editor and artist.

So, things are happening, I just suck at updating.

Year end stuff

Woo. Year end stuff. Yup.

Yeeeeeeeap.

Things.

Gah, I don’t know what to say. Things are pretty quiet so far. I got a story officially published this year, “Null (Void)”, by Nightlight Podcast. It is in dramatic audio form so that means sound effects and suches. That was an experience and a half.

Did PitMad and DivPit, hated both experiences. All this did was cement my dislike for pitch contests, particularly social media ones. And one of my pitches was jacked by a no-name company that really needed to learn how to read before hijacking. Really disliked that.

Besides that, not much has changed. I am not so sure about going traditional anymore because reasons I have already written about at length. That and a lot of the contracts I have seen so far, as well as the antics, strongly remind me of the music industry – where I have a good bulk of experience in. Especially enough that if someone told me they want to sign to a major*, I would have told them they have lost their minds and maybe they should just get a Soundcloud and CD Baby account instead. That way, they keep their royalties, keep their rights and it won’t be a War Of The Gods to get their masters and licenses back. My source: Literally everyone I know in the music industry that has ever made music.

I will always remark again and again that though I am not new to writing by a long shot, I am new to the publishing industry. Especially in its modern form. If it were the music industry, I already know how to navigate it and I already know what to do, who to talk to and whose stuff I should threaten to break if contractual conversations and obligations gets murky over the mathematics. Picked up all these fun facts over the years of reading contracts to pass the time back when I worked at the Library of Congress, listening to vent stories from roadies and musicians alike, and overhearing thunderous arguments while trying to figure out the maze that is backstage (some venues are designed by the very same people who put together the stairs at Hogwarts). On top of that, I watched biopics and documentaries. Oh, and literally watched friends of mine go through these troubles firsthand.

So when it comes to music and business, I think I know, at minimum, a tick more than the average person with a Spotify or Pandora account.

But, I didn’t want to bring that “I know everything” ego into publishing because I wanted to learn how the publishing business worked. There is already the stark difference that writing is a solitary act, music isn’t. Then you have the act of getting stories out there vs getting music out there. Someone puts out an EP? Great, you might give it a curious listen. Someone puts out a short story? It might be passed up because of the bs lofty idea of “reading is for the intellectual – I just want to have fun”. Heck, I still have to pull teeth with my music friends to listen to “Null(Void)” because of that very notion. And I have sat through (and bought) albums where I have gone, “Man, I am super glad we are friends – because hearing my cat screech for water in the sixth hour is better than what I’m listening to.” Even when I bring that up, they go, “But … like, I might not get it.” As if I am writing with the ink of Alexander Dumas’ soul or something. They like the idea of kill fees**, though. A million times better than getting shelved for the rest of eternity or chained to an options contract with an indecisive record company.

Music is depicted as inherently enjoyable. Reading is not.

Music is depicted as inherently cool. Reading is not.

So, yes, there are stark differences between music and publishing. I have one friend who is in publishing, I ask them lots. I try to read lots. Some of it still eludes me but the more and more I look at – particularly, the contracts – the more and more some parts are very similar to the record industry. Especially the parts that make it so the work makes the most money possible while the author is paid the least money possible. Just like in music. That’s a problem. I don’t like that.

With what I have encountered, this does concern me. I don’t want to be roped into some literary publishing version of a 360 deal***. I want to be able to own my works, my intellectual property and have, at minimum, some kind of say in the productions of my works. I have seen these contracts go so royally wrong a metric ton more than I have ever seen a cordial relationship between artist and company. If I see the same in publishing, I have zero reason to believe that it’s going to be magically better simply because there are books and not rockstars involved. One of my goals is to not be curled up on the floor of a tour bus squeaking about miserably with my crumpled, marked up contract in hand over how screwed over I got, despite my best efforts and my best research.

And speaking of rockstars. I have heard writers describe themselves as “rockstar authors”. I have never heard rockstars call themselves “successful authors” or some similar phrase. This means I learned quickly that I probably am not going to fit in with other writers because the statement baffled me. I have been around Head from Korn. He has written a book. This is an appropriate definition of “rockstar author”. If someone is not this intersection, they are just a regular, probably-a-hermit-with-a-pen author. It does not help that I work in libraries so I hear this more times than one ever should. Heck, it’s cool to have visited Whiskey A Go Go and The Viper Room or Madison Square Garden, not the Library of Congress (and reminder, I previously worked at the Library of Congress).

Back to trad pub and its concerns.

So things are in limbo. I like the idea of the validation you get from getting picked up by traditional publishing buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut then there’s literally everything else that is wrong with the picture. You feel validation when you’re picked up by a record company, too. Then you’re sitting on your second album and your sixth grammy, wondering how the heck you’re going to eat that month because you have barely seen a dime. And your alternative option is pretty much nothing at all/start over again because you somehow got sussed out of owning the music you made.

Nah.

 

 

*Major record company (Atlantic, Warner Brothers, Columbia, etc)

** Kill Fee – A fee paid to the author if the work picked for publication is not published for whatever reason. The author can then shop their rejected work elsewhere

*** 360 degree deals are music contracts that own and picks money from literally every little thing you do. Make music? Company gets a cut. Go on tour? Company gets a cut. Star in a movie? Company gets a cut. Slap your face on the side of a cereal box? Company gets a cut. No matter what, the company gets a cut. Doesn’t matter if it didn’t involve them or even your music career, the company gets a cut. Want out? Get cut, death by a thousand lawyers.

Copyright registration – Just do it yourself

I recently registered “Null(Void)” with the copyright office. This simply means that it is on official, federal record that I own my work, in the case of copyright infringement or other unsavory things that could turn litigious.

Full disclaimer: I used to work in the Library of Congress, which houses the Copyright Division. (The only division in the Library of Congress I never successfully procured office snackies from. They protected their Twix and Dum-Dum pops like Fort Knox.) I worked in the Acquisitions Department, namely the Catalog-In-Print (CIP) Division. A friend of mine works in the Copyright Division. All this means is that I will literally drift to sleep if someone tries to explain the basics of CIP and Copyright to me.

Here’s the kit and kaboodle: Your creative works are yours the second you make it. Automatic copyright, woo. All copyright registration does is ensure the right to defend this fact in court, where you will need a registration of some sort to get to the bottom of “Who owns what – and who pays who”. No registration certificate, no case.

This means you don’t need to register unpublished works. You totally can! But if it is not going to see the light of day outside your bedstand, then it is a pointless exercise because you already own and have automatic copyright of your work. If you are about to publish your work within a year or so (as in, book is done, edits are done, cover art is some degree of finalized, etc etc), then, yes, you definitely should register your work because it will be out in the public sphere. No, it may not hit like Children of Blood and Bone but that does not halt the possibility of infringement or things of that matter. And if infringement does happen, you can actually do something about it.

For works made and registered in the US, it is $35 for a single work. Upload electronically, it takes about three or so months to get your certificate. By mail, ten or so months. If you want to speed up the whole process because you’re already embroiled in some legal dispute, slap on an extra $800. The fine is steep because the Copyright office is already swamped (CIP always processed books before Copyright gets them, they are swamped) and to work on your claim, this means someone has to drop what they are doing and work on that. File timely (i.e., before crap hits the fan) and avoid the near-stack fee.

By the by … the Poor Man Copyright doesn’t work. The process of mailing the work to yourself and keeping it sealed does nothing to protect your legal rights in the matter. Because the courts are going to go by the Copyright office files. If there is nothing in the file, there is nothing for them to go on. Besides, what if you move? What if you change your name somehow? There are so many ways that can go south. What if it gets lost in the mail? How would courts know it is yours if it isn’t signed or something? Again, an official registration clears all that up and gives you some sort of leg to stand on. In the courts where you can file suit without the registration, not having the registration puts all the baggage (burden of proof) on you to prove that you did indeed make the original document. Might be some degree of easy if you write and date every little thing and are good at scraping up your metadata from the files the digital versions sit on but that’s a big might. If you are the super planner type, this could go well (maaaaaaaaaaaybe) because you can break down every little thing that exists and happens in your book. But again, the burden is on you. With an official registration, the burden is on the person you are accusing of infringement. As in, they have to prove that they did not infringe/steal and that it is actually their work, not yours.

It is astonishing how many places are out there to register your copyright for you – all at exorbitant prices. It’s like paying someone to make you your facebook account, something you can do for free. Just do it yourself. The form is easy, the form is $35, just do it yourself. Don’t waste your money on a person who wants to dupe the stupid for extra cash. Anyone who offers that to you is practically a scammer.

Let’s Talk Content Warnings

I made a “content warning” mock up a long while ago (sticky note) and just recently, I put it into an actual work.

This is in the Beta Reader copies of novella Kinetics. I slapped that in there because, well, the story gets really, really dark. If it were a small smack of both contents, I wouldn’t add it but since it is throughout the book, I wanted to add it. I’m not interested in losing beta readers simply because I wanted to be a douche. This doesn’t tell the plot, the twists, what’s going to happen in the book, nothing. Just stuff to be wary of. Actually, I tell my beta readers if a book is filled with sordid content so they can chose whether or not to pass. I see “Content Warnings” as no different as what they use on movies. And sometimes, that stuff is super useful, they are there for a reason, ignore at your own peril – such as when not-too-bright parents took their children to see Deadpool (an R-Rated movie) and The Watchmen (another R-Rated) movie. Why? Because they ignored the content warnings and became upset the movies were at least 60% murder, 25% sex and the remainder was whatever writers could get away with that wouldn’t count as NC-17. These content warnings are useful.

“Oh, people shouldn’t be so sensitive,” is usually said by people who really don’t get it. But also tend to be the same people who clutch their pearls when someone throws a Christianity-Sucks/Prejudice-Sucks joke out there. Here’s the thing: it’s okay if someone is bothered by blood or abuse. Actually, of all the folks I interacted with who said “yeah, I don’t want to read in-depth abuse stuff”, a strong majority had personal experience being on the business end of such behavior. There’s a time and a place to stand on a table and scream “For ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT. I am an ARTISTE!” and a time and a place to go, “Ah, buckets o’ blood is not your thing, cool. Good to know.”

It doesn’t make people “soft” for having boundaries of what they can and can’t stand. For example, I have a trauma disorder (technically two but that’s a different thing), thus I am well served by content warnings and such. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if I have morbid interests because of the disorder. I can stomach staring at pictures, footage and extremely graphic re-enactments of mass shootings. It’s what my brain is used to so, hey, it’s whatever. The average person doesn’t hop on the internet and go “I’m bored, let’s google everything that ever happened at Columbine in horrific detail and then compare/contrast with Santa Monica.” Though that is a (morbid, probably trauma disorder induced*) interest of mine, I’m not going to just wheel that in front of others and go “Look at what I found!” (which I have done to people who said “trigger warnings are for snowflakes” – turns out they’re really bothered by content like this. Especially when prefaced with, “Dude, wanna see this weird picture I found? It’s gnarly. It even got a sound clip with it.” I wonder why.) Nah, if others don’t want to see it, it makes sense. All a “Content Warning” is, is exactly that, a warning about the content. It is not a removal of content. Actually, it is a bit ridiculous when I hear people go “Nothing needs content warnings” but get really upset when they hear a spoiler for a movie/book. That will always baffle me. Then again, I like spoilers.

I find “Content Warning” useful because it helps me decide a) Do I want to see/read the media? b) Should I save it for a day when I’m better ready to handle whatever I am going to experience? c) Should I steer clear altogether? And if this helps me, it’s far beyond reasonable doubt it would help others.

 

*Good time to point out – Most people with mental illnesses don’t go on to become violent members of society or there would be a greater diversity of mass shooters, in opposed to:

usually Whiteusually Maleusually Straight (with a good helping of homophobia/toxic masculinity),usually Cisusually with Noted (and ignored) History of Violence/Aggression Towards:WomenAnimalsPoC/Historically Marginalized Groupsusually Middle Class or greaterusually has Access to Firearms (especially rapid-fire varieties)

Folks who fit this group are more likely to become mass murderers than me and others bereft with mental illness. And another way you can tell the mentally ill don’t become mass murderers automatically? Only the United States has this mass-killing problem but the United States is not the only nation on the face of the planet that has citizens that suffer mental illness. It’s not mental illness, everyone.