Emma Newman's Blog, page 12

Something I wanted to tell you

I wish this was an April Fool’s day joke but for one thing, I’m not a fan of tricking people and secondly, it’s true. Tomorrow I’m going into hospital for some fairly major surgery so I won’t be around for a while. So today I am frantically finishing off some loose ends and trying not to freak out totally.

I feel that the nature of the surgery and related details fall behind my personal privacy line but I will say that it’s not cancer-related and that whilst pretty awful and frankly terrifying for me, I should make a full recovery and not suffer any long term problems. In fact, this surgery should end some long term problems that have been worsening over the last 18 months.

However, as I have no idea how long it will take me to recover enough to be back online and getting up to mischief here, I thought I should let you know the reason why. I will try to send some sort of “I’m still alive” update through Twitter and FB but I will be in hospital for anything between 2-5 days so don’t worry if it’s not for a while.

I have prepared the next Tea and Jeopardy episode to go live next Monday, no matter what state I’m in, so at least that won’t be disrupted too much.

Whilst I’m away

There are all of the other Tea and Jeopardy episodes to enjoy of course, and if you haven’t seen it, the new Patreon page with a very silly video.

If you happen to visit somewhere with a local Waterstones, I’d be so grateful if you could check out their SFF displays and see if anything has actually improved on the gender parity and increased diversity of authors front. I haven’t seen any evidence so far, other than in the Leeds branch, but I understand they were pretty damn cool already. If you have the time and means, pictures of display tables would be fantastic (please make a note of the branch and date you visited).

If you’re in need of a good book to read, for the love of all that is good in this world, buy and read the Predator Cities series by Philip Reeve if you haven’t already. I’m reading The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell at the moment and it is so good it makes me feel all needy and insecure about my own writing (perfectly natural). There’s the Copper Promise by Jennifer Williams too, anything by China Mieville (of course) and my husband is currently devouring the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie (I haven’t read them yet).

I have no idea why I’m burbling about this. Nerves I suppose. All being well, next week I’ll be back at home, binging on Adventure Time and Black Books and re-watching HBO’s Rome (OMFG so good!) and the worst will be behind me.

But now I am scared and just want to stay and home and write more books. Life, eh?

Patrons, pledges and rewards, oh my!

The intersection between money and doing something we love is a tricky place to navigate, but I’m going to just jump straight in and say that we’ve launched a Patreon page for Tea and Jeopardy.

If you know what Patreon is all about already and would like to see a very silly video and the rewards etc, go straight to the Tea and Jeopardy Patreon page here.

What the hell is Patreon?

Whilst it sounds a bit like a superhero, Patreon is a website that enables people to become patrons of something that’s made on a regular basis, like comics, videos etc – and in our case, podcasts. It’s a little bit like Kickstarter, in that there are rewards at different pledge levels, but instead of pledging once for a big one-off project, patrons can chip in a little each month to support an ongoing project that produces regular content.

The idea is that monthly patronage will ultimately enable us to do more with the show than we currently can, and that people who pledge get rewards whilst the podcast remains free for everyone. People who pledge become members of the Order of the Sacred Teacup too and I have some secret plans for the Order in the future…

The first milestone has been achieved

Yes it is a bit dark, but I like it that way…

And here is a picture of me with the celebratory cake as described in the milestone. At the time of writing this we’re almost halfway to the second milestone which would reveal a secret from Latimer’s past to members of the Order of the Sacred Teacup.

So, if you enjoy Tea and Jeopardy and want to join the Order, pop over to the Patreon page and see just how silly the video we made for it is…

Tea and Jeopardy 17 – A Chat with Adam Christopher

The seventeenth episode of Tea and Jeopardy is now live and you can find it here.

In this episode, the quietly splendid Adam Christopher is invited into the secret lair for cake and tea. We talk about Roobarb and Custard, New York and the prohibition era, the writing life and what it’s really like to work with Chuck Wendig. Warning: features chickens and mild peril.

If you’ve listened and got an answer for the question I asked at the end, be a bless-poppet and leave your answer in the comments below.

Credits for sound effects can be found here.

Some good news about Waterstones

On February 20th (2014) I wrote a post on wanting a level playing field as a writer of science fiction and fantasy (who happens to be female).

The response to it was pretty amazing.

I wanted to let you know about what’s been going on since then.

After I wrote that post I wrote a private letter to Waterstones. It felt like the courteous thing to do. They responded and we’ve discussed the matter in calm and polite correspondence, which delights me in this age of internet rage.

After some discussion between us I’m delighted to let you know that the issue has been discussed at length with the SF & F buyer at Waterstones and they are going to raise internal awareness of the visibility of underrepresented authors and will ask booksellers to bear these issues in mind when choosing displays.

A positive step forward

I am delighted that Waterstones has acknowledged that action needs to be taken and are taking steps to raise awareness internally. I’m looking forward to seeing the impact of this in stores over the next few months.

Unconscious discrimination needs to be actively challenged and at the start of this process, it’s likely to feel forced and imperfect. I’m hoping that if Waterstones raise awareness and local stores make a conscious effort to create more balanced displays, eventually it won’t need to be a conscious process. It will become the norm that it should be. It will end the “but women / people of colour don’t write sci-fi/epic fantasy” crap that lingers on in some corners of the industry. I’m pretty certain it will increase the number of submissions to publishers from a wider range of people. It will mean authors who are routinely overlooked will have just as much chance to be discovered as anyone else.

Can you help me to support and encourage this change?

If your local Waterstones is putting together more balanced displays – or you yourself are putting those displays together – please, for the love of all that is fair in this world, take a picture and tell everyone if you possibly can. Let’s take photos and share them and cheer it on. Either share the pics or send a link to me on Twitter (@emapocalyptic) or drop a link in the comments below. When a store makes a conscious effort to redress the balance, I want us all to stand up and applaud a positive change. Goodness knows we need some good news in this world.

Tea and Jeopardy 16 – A Chat with Seanan McGuire

The sixteenth episode of Tea and Jeopardy is now live and you can find it here.

In this episode, the very talented Seanan McGuire is invited into the secret lair for cake and tea. She tells a story about a cobra that I will never forget, then we move on to discussing Disneyland and filking, among other things.

If you’ve listened and got an answer for the question I asked at the end, be a bless-poppet and leave your answer in the comments below.

Credits for sound effects can be found here.

A true story

I’m going to tell you a story, a true one, this time. Are you sitting comfortably? Cup of tea, maybe? Then I shall begin.

I discovered sci-fi in the Camborne library when I was about 8 years old. It was a book called Trillions by Nicholas Fisk and discovering that book and others like it changed my life.

But that’s not what this story is about. That’s a mini-prologue.

Let’s spool on a few years to when I was a teenager. I wasn’t particularly girly, I was in love with Harrison Ford whilst everyone else loved Bros and already feeling like the world did not have a place for girls like me. Then I discovered Back to the Future around the time that BTTF II came out. Doc Brown became (and still is) my hero. I adored him. Indiana Jones, whilst still loved (even now), disappeared from my walls and they were plastered with pictures of a young man and a scientist and a time machine.

But that’s not what this story is about. Let’s say that bit is…. An early chapter.

After my passionate devotion to Back to the Future had run its natural course, the next all-consuming passion in my life was for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This is where the real story begins by the way. And you’d think that, as a novelist, I’d know where to start a damn story, right? But all of this is important. Bear with me.

Data was my favourite. I adored Picard. Troi irritated me and the rest I was happy to watch but didn’t obsess over. It was shown every week (I think on a Wednesday?) at 6pm and this was before the days of clever boxes that recorded stuff for you automatically. I had to be there, physically, to set the VHS to record and watch it at the same time and then watch it again afterwards.

It drove my Dad crazy sometimes. He wanted to watch the news and when he really, really wanted to watch the news he would try to compromise and ask if he could just watch the headlines and I would spiral into a crazed fidgeting bundle of stress with the remote control in my hand as the newsreader said boring real world stuff so fucking slowly, worrying that I would miss the teaser by the time I could switch over.

I must have been such a pain in the arse to live with.

But that time, every week, was the most important forty-five minutes of those seven days. It didn’t matter that I was taping it. I had to absorb it, totally, as quickly as possible.

Because it fed me.

It’s easy to dismiss intense fandom. I could easily look back on that time in my life and with a gentle eye roll say something about hormonal teenagers or geekery or something equally shallow. Instead, I look back on that time and I know – know - that my obsession with ST:TNG was the best way I could cope with my life at the time.

Let me fill in a few other details.

Some very traumatic family stuff happened between BTTF and ST:TNG which resulted in me moving from East Anglia back to Cornwall to live with my father instead of my mother and stepfather. Out of respect for my family, I’m not going to go into any more detail than that. But it’s important.

After living outside of Cornwall for a total of two years since I was born, I was considered an outsider – an emmet, in fact – and was not welcomed. At times I was actively bullied. I also found wonderful friends who changed my life, but on the whole, my school life was appalling.

I was dealing with that on top of the family shitstorm. I had no confidence, self-esteem lower than the depths of the Mariana Trench and I was the only person in the school who thought that time travel and space exploration were amazing. That I knew of, anyway.

Then my Dad got drafted away and I mostly took care of myself for a year. We had a lodger who in no sense was ever expected to be responsible for me – rightly so – and Dad came home to visit as much as he could at weekends.

It was… suboptimal.

This was when ST:TNG and my obsession with it deepened even further. It wasn’t just a sci-fi show. It became my sanctuary. Now I look back and know that the crew became my surrogate family when my real family life was being put through the mill. Of course I loved Data; I wanted to be him, I wanted to be free of emotions and in love with the idea of being human again. And he didn’t fuck people up with emotions either. He was safe. And Picard? Picard was always there. When I couldn’t sleep at night because the house was empty and scary I used to put on a tape of ST:TNG episodes and drown out the silence with the characters I loved and needed so much.

But this is only one part of the story.

During that heady time where I spent the majority of my waking moments writing fan fic or making scale models of the Enterprise and other ships, I used to have conversations with a dear friend of mine about how cool Melinda Snodgrass was. The legend was that she was wrote a script that the show loved so much they brought her onto the staff. And I used to see her name in the credits, in the stream of male names and think “She did it. She writes Star Trek.”

She was my hero. Not only because she was a woman writing the show that meant so much to me, but because of one episode in particular: “Measure of a Man”. In case you’re unfamiliar with the title, it’s the one where Picard has to help Data prove he is sentient so he has the right to exist and not be declared the property of Starfleet and then dissembled for science.

It is, in my opinion, a beautiful example of science-fiction. It considers the nature of sentience, the human condition, personal freedom, the pursuit of science, duty over friendship, slavery and the future ramifications of single critical decisions. In space. It gave Picard and Riker more depth and it was a Data episode, so obviously, a favourite.

More than that, it was the first episode on that VHS tape that I heard whilst trying to fall asleep. It comforted me, deeply. I knew it off by heart. I used to play it in my head when hiding somewhere in school so I wouldn’t have to deal with other people.

And then last year, I met Melinda Snodgrass properly. I got to shake her hand and thank her, very briefly, in Chicago at the 2012 Worldcon, but last year I got a chance to really talk to her.

It was at CONvergence in Minneapolis and I knew she was one of the highest profile guests there and I knew I would never be able to go and seek her out and strike up a conversation with her, because awkward British fangirl attack times ten. But it so happened we ran into each other in the bar and I was too drunk to dissolve into a puddle of my own insecurity.

We talked. More than that, we connected. I met my hero and she lived up to the ideal I had of her – no, more than that; she became a real person instead of a distant ideal and that real person is simply fabulous.

It took the encouragement of my friend and editor Lee Harris to summon up the courage to tell Melinda how important she was to me as a teenager, specifically Measure of a Man. It was over breakfast on the last day of the convention and we both cried and it was one of the most important moments in my life as a fan and as a professional writer. We are friends now. We correspond.

I correspond with my hero and that only happened because of fandom and a convention and science-fiction.

This is from the Fantasy Faction website which is brilliant and you should go there if you haven’t already.

So why did I have to sit down today and write this out? Why have you read this to the end?

Because I love science-fiction. And I really needed to remember that today.

A level playing field

Last year I had three novels published in quick succession. The Split Worlds series found fans. This made me happy. I did all I could to promote them without turning into some sort of horrific promo-beast. I did the usual; interviews, competitions, book launch events, readings, went to ten conventions in the UK and US, the kind of thing most SFF authors do these days. I wrote over fifty short stories set in the world of the novels and gave them away online for free. I run an email subscription service so people can get them delivered to their inbox if they prefer.

I felt it was my responsibility. Responsibility for my own career, responsibility for the success of my books. I knew my efforts couldn’t guarantee that, but I wanted to know that I had done all I could to give my books some decent modifiers on each roll. I love my publisher, and they have done a huge amount to support my efforts and my books were promoted through their channels too. I felt so lucky. So privileged. And I was and I still am.

Then I saw this. Foz Meadows drew attention to a leaflet produced by Waterstones and still in circulation in the store she went into last year, designed to point people discovering fantasy via the Game of Thrones phenomenon towards more books they might like.

Out of 113 authors there were, wait for it, 9 women.

Nine. Women. And you won’t be surprised, I fear, to learn that all of the men they suggest are white. This is what Foz details:

“So, to be clear: of the one hundred and thirteen authors listed in the genre-specific sections, there are a grand total of nine women and, as far as I can tell, zero POC. In the final two pages – the “If you like this, you’ll love-” section, things are little better: of the ten authors with suggestions after their names, two are women; but of the 101 authors recommended as comparisons, only twelve are women – and, tellingly, of those twelve, a whopping eight are listed as being similar to another female author. As far as this list is concerned, women have essentially become a speciality category, almost exclusively recommended because their work resembles that of another female author, and not because of their contributions to various other genres. As for POC authors, as far I can tell, there’s not a single one on any of the lists.”

There’s been a tonne of sexism in SFF scandal online over the last week. I didn’t feel the need to add my noise to it all. But then I started to think about all the times over the past few years that I have been so furious about the way women are treated – not just in SFF but all over the fucking world. Last week I sobbed at my husband that I was part of the problem because I was too scared to speak up. Too scared I’d lose my quiet life behind my computer keyboard. Too scared that confrontation would find me. I have an anxiety disorder. I am terrified of any kind of conflict and confrontation. But the longer I stay silent, the longer I am part of the problem and the longer the noisiest, most bigoted, ignorant, sexist and quite frankly, disgusting specimens take centre stage.

I did an interview last year in which I said that writing Cathy, one of the main characters in the Split Worlds series, was almost like having a dialogue with myself. She is flawed and at times, deeply annoying, but in the end, she stands up and fights this sort of bullshit, at great personal risk.

And what do I do? I write novels. I cry in private, I shout at my computer and I confide my self-loathing to my husband for not standing up.

Even writing this is hard. Just writing one word after another in my safe, privileged life, is making me feel scared. And that is exactly why I have to do this.

What I want to see

And what is the first thing I thought as I typed that? “Who gives a fuck what you want to see, Emma?” I have internalised all of the behaviours society demands from me as a woman.

Well, this is my space, it says so at the top and everything, and so I believe I can write what I like here.

I don’t want to ask my readers to go into Waterstones and tell them they loved my books in an effort to battle this sort of promotional bias. I don’t want to ask those same readers, again and again, to shout about my books, to leave reviews and star ratings and all that stuff. If they want to, I am so delighted I could weep. All I want is for them to enjoy them and I have no right to ask anyone who has given up their time and money to read my work to do any more for me.

I don’t want to see a women’s prize in speculative fiction. I understand the arguments in favour, but fundamentally, if there are any prizes going I want everyone who is eligible to be so because of what they’ve written and not the gender they identify as and certainly not anything to do with their reproductive organs. I did not, at any point, consult my ovaries or breasts in the writing of my novels, therefore I do not want them to be a variable in relation to anything they might be eligible for.

What I do want to see is is TOP-DOWN change.

I want Waterstones to publicly commit to promoting male and female writers equally in all promotional materials written from now on. I don’t want all of them to be white. I want national newspapers and magazines and journals and major reviewing outlets to commit to reviewing male and female writers equally. I want libraries to commit to compiling recommendation lists with equal male and female representation. (I know that a friend of mine in America who is a librarian says this is a core policy of theirs. It should be the same everywhere.)

I’m not talking about book bloggers; people who give up their time for the love of books. I’m talking about organisations and companies who pride themselves on being ‘authorities’ and leading mainstream readerships to discovering new authors. I am especially directing this to those amongst them who make money from selling books.

You know what I want?

A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

This affects my livelihood and countless other authors

People have asked if there will be more Split Worlds novels. I have two more in my head that are getting louder by the day, but the simple answer is that my publisher would be delighted to commission more if the sales of the first three justify it. They published three books back to back. It was a huge up-front investment. I understand this.

Now I have done all I can, and of course, I still try to promote them without being ridiculous (it’s so much harder when they are not new and shiny). The thought that Waterstones and so many other sales and/or promotion outlets are this heavily biased towards men makes me feel like there’s no fucking point. It makes me fear that my books didn’t get the same crack at the whip beyond the areas I can reach directly.

And this isn’t restricted to my tiny niche in this world. Sexism is real and damaging in all levels of society, in all walks of life. Even now, I am annoyed at myself for being upset about this when there are women being beaten, raped, abused, sold, tortured, oppressed. It’s everywhere.

It has to stop.

The refractory period

I’ve been quiet of late. Usually I’m merrily chatting away on Twitter and sharing and liking all manner of silliness on Facebook but not over the past few weeks. There have been occasional flurries of activity (I mean, come on, how could I not share the apologetic cat?), but nothing consistent.

As an author, there are many voices in my head vying for attention. Being an author with an anxiety disorder it can get pretty crowded. There are not only ideas for stories and books, characters, potential lines of dialogue or descriptions, there are all the endless doubts and insecurities and just plain fictional bullshit my brain spews out every day to keep me terrified.

Thanks brain.

One of those voices has been mithering about me not being around. It’s convinced that if I’m not there, titting about, people will forget I exist and not buy my books and I’ll never get another book deal again. It also draws that conclusion from me not blogging as much as I used to and blah, blah, blah. It’s too boring to describe. It’s not like I even talk about my books that much anyway, but there you go, anxiety starts at point A and leaps to point X before you can say “now just wait a moment”. It’s from the lizard part of my brain and not very bright.

So I’m here, blogging about it. Partly to poke it in the eye, partly to explain something that helps me when I feel this way.

Oh. Yeah, I forgot to mention why I haven’t been around as much. Let’s get that out of the way first. (Feel free to skip this part, it isn’t very interesting).

We moved house in November after several weeks of extreme stress (which seems to be an obligatory part of the house selling and buying process in the UK). The house we bought and love needs a lot of TLC. We have spent weeks since we moved in getting as much as our budget allows done. We hosted Christmas and some other, private stressors occurred. My son started a new school, we had builders in for a month, on and off, making the office I am now typing in (ZOMG I am so in love with this room I cannot tell you). The builders were wonderful but my temporary office was above the garage being converted and the noise, the noise! Hammering and drilling and 80s power ballards… not great for working. I recorded an audio book in the studio, finished the book I was writing and started (not very successfully) on the next projects. We recently had our first house guests, which involved painting and all many of house tessellations to get it all ready before they arrived.*

The tl;dr? A metric fucktonne of stuff has been going on in the last three months and almost all of it involved other people, whether it was being with them or having to deal with them, and lots of real world domestic and DIY stuff. In short: not at my computer, alone, for several hours a day.

Okay, back to the important stuff.

If you are a fellow introvert, you know how it feels when you just haven’t got anything left in the social tank. And if you’re a writer too, you know how it feels when you can’t write as much as you need to.

I got rather frayed around the edges. This week was the first since we moved in which I was in my own space (not temporary and slightly chaotic) with no other demands on my time, no crazy decorating or building stuff going on and nothing looming on the horizon.

I have written about 10,000 words and my God, I needed to.

But the return to social media is slow. And the thing I wanted to talk about (bloody hell I ramble) is something I learned about in university called the refractory period.

There was a lot of neurophysiology in the psychology course that I studied and this was in the first term. It stayed with me ever since. The horribly simplified version is that when a synapse fires in your brain to propagate an electrical impulse from one neuron to another, it has a short period afterwards when it cannot fire. It takes a little bit of time for it to get back to the correct chemical state to be able to fire again.

The thing I like about using this as a metaphor for my energy levels – particularly social energy levels – is that this period of just not being able to fire again is totally normal. It’s part of the system. It doesn’t mean that the synapse will never do its thing again.

When I get tired on deep levels, and can’t be alone and write to recharge, I think of my need to withdraw like my own refractory period. I can’t fire at full tilt indefinitely. It felt like I was firing for most of last year. Even before we moved house I had 3 books published, launched a new podcast, went to 10 (I think) conventions, edited books, wrote one and a half new ones – in short, it was… mental.

So when this stupid voice says “You’re not doing enough. You should be out there, doing stuff and being visible (holy crap, I hate that word)” I’m saying “No, I can’t right now. I’m in a refractory period.” When another demon says “Is this depression? Is this the start of breaking down again? What if you can’t handle this?” I’m saying “No, this is just a refractory period. It’s all going to be okay.” It helps combat the fear that this is something more devastating, which as anyone who has ever suffered depression or crippling anxiety knows, is never far away.

It’s all going to be okay. So, I’m sorry I’m slow to get Tea and Jeopardy out the door and I’m sorry I’m not being around as much. I just need to hunker down and write at the moment. Normal service will be resumed. In fact, this post is probably my first steps towards that.

*I apologise for sounding like a moaning git. I hasten to add that it has been glorious to move and we love the house and I am immensely grateful – every day – to have the life I do. I just got tired.

Storms, conditioning and eligibility – oh my!

As my Twitter stream devolves into arguments about whether a creator should mention what they made in 2013 so that people know whether they can vote for it in various award nomination rounds, I’m here having a freak out about what to do.

You see, many people have said they need to be reminded. I myself have been grateful of not only reminders, but clarity on which category something I loved is eligible for, or if it even falls within viable dates – sometimes it’s not clear.

However, I’m British and I’m female. The first has bred a horror of self-promotion into me. The second has conditioned me to not draw attention to myself and to value – perhaps too highly – the opinions other people hold of me. The likeable character debates that rage about female characters stem from somewhere real, after all.

In a couple of weeks this will all blow over and the storm system will continue with its usual rhythm, resurging when shortlists are announced, then how the awards ceremonies are done, then who the winners and losers were.

And I’m standing here on the edge of it, thinking for the first time in my life, that I have done something – several things in fact – that are actually eligible for the awards I’ve paid attention to for so many years. That’s thrilling and terrifying. I want to go and play Minecraft instead of thinking about this because of the scary.

But ultimately, what you decide to do after reading this is up to you. I’m just going to list the relevant works and then go and have a cup of tea whilst the storm rages on.

Novels

As 2013 was really rather crazy, I have three novels that are eligible for the BSFA Awards, British Fantasy Society and Hugos. However, as they are all in the same series, let’s just say Between Two Thorns, published by Angry Robot Books.

Tea and Jeopardy, the podcast I co-write with Peter Newman, host and produce myself is eligible for the best fancast category of the Hugos.

I’m also eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. It’s my first year of eligibility. There’s more info on that here.

Whilst I’m here, may I humbly suggest Sarah J. Coleman for best artist / best cover awards? Look at the gorgeous covers she drew for the Split Worlds series over there on the upper right hand side of this page. She is insanely talented (@inkymole on Twitter) and I would love to see her work applauded more often.

I’d also like to mention that Lee Harris, Senior Editor at Angry Robot Books and the fine chap who edited the Split Worlds series, is also eligible for a best editor award in the Hugos.

There are so many other wonderful books and artists and podcasts out there that I am going to take a leaf out of Adam Christopher’s book and list other people’s eligibility posts below as and when I stumble across them. I am so lucky to know such an amazing range of talented people. Even if you don’t intend to vote in any of these awards, these posts are a great way to discover the fantastic things people have been creating over the past year.

Right. That’s that then. Here is a link to more info about the BSFA Awards , the British Fantasy Awards and the Hugo Awards, should you need them.

And now, a nice cup of tea.

Other Eligibility Posts for your reading pleasure (please point me towards others in the comments!)

Angry Robot’s mega list of eligible books

Adam Christopher

Paul Cornell

Chuck Wendig

Tea and Jeopardy 15 – A Chat with Myke Cole

The fifteenth episode of Tea and Jeopardy is now live and you can find it here.

In this episode, the rather splendid author and US Coast Guard Myke Cole is invited into the secret lair for cake and tea. We discuss transferable skills between the military and creative life and also romance novels, all the while seeking to improve bilateral relations between our countries. That really isn’t as saucy as it might sound… (maybe that’s just me).

If you’ve listened and got an answer for the question I asked at the end, be a bless-poppet and leave your answer in the comments below.

Credits for sound effects can be found here.