Renegade A to Z: A is for …

… audio books, Audacity, agents and anxiety dreams.

Myself and three other people got talking on Twitter t'other day (as you do) about how we regretted missing the A to Z challenge that has been playing out on blogs over April. The challenge is to write a post a day for each letter of the alphabet.

Realising that we aren't slaves to memes, we three (actually, now four) decided to do our own, and that's what May will be all about here. Not so long ago I was bemoaning the fact that I've become a book launch bore, and I'm hoping this will freshen things up around here. Also, I quite like the idea of alphabetising what's on my mind at the moment, and it means I can talk about the things people requested when I asked what you wanted me to write about.

First up is one of those requests: Audio books, and specifically my work as an audio book narrator.

I fell into this by accident. Actually, almost everything I most love in my life has been started by accident, my son being the only exception! I was inspired to start podcasting 20 Years Later by Joely Black – one of my fellow renegades and someone you'll be meeting very soon – before I had a publishing deal for it. I've never considered my voice to be nice to listen to, I'd never read professionally before, and all of a sudden, people started listening and sending me lovely notes and comments about how much they were enjoying my book and how much they were enjoying listening to my voice!

Well, that was a pleasant shock.

I podcasted the entire novel with a crappy Skype headset mic and my laptop, and realised that I really wanted to do more, bought a professional mic (Shure Legendary), my step-dad made me a brilliant recording booth and the rest is history. I've now recorded two full audio books written by other people, which will be available to buy soon hopefully, a steampunk novella, a selection of stories and flashes, and also an audio book version of From Dark Places which I have almost finished.

I love it, for so many reasons. I love the challenge, the technical aspects and the fact that it's very different to all the other creative work I do, i.e. not in front of a computer. But what I love best about it is that when I record a novel, it's like climbing inside it. I have to really examine the characters and think about how they sound, what little voice quirks they should have – to make them realistic but also distinctive for the listener. There is also a strange intimacy, even though I obviously record alone, I am always imagining the listener, like I am in the room with them. I hope that the people who listen to my work feel that too.

The next A is for Audacity

Audacity is the software I use to record and edit my voice work. It was recommended to me, and I found it immediately intuitive and easy to use. It's absolutely brilliant, and free, which is an added boon for fellow struggling creatives.

And the next A is for…

… agent (sorry, I couldn't pick just one, there's a lot floating about in my brain at the moment). Recently, an author friend whom I admire (he wrote that steampunk novella) called Adam Christopher landed an agent at a prestigious New York agency and it brought the question back to my mind again about whether I should go back on the hunt for one too. Oh – he's another A too!

Back when I was looking for a home for 20 Years Later I submitted to agents as well as publishers, but none took me up and I ended up landing a publisher without one. I dithered at the time about hurriedly finding one to help me negotiate the contract, but when I discovered that the marvellous Society of Authors offers a free contract vetting service, I joined them and benefited from their advice.

Since then I managed to land a contract for my short story anthology too, so on the face of it, it could be argued that I don't need an agent. But I'm not sure. You see, I'm in this for the long game. 20 Years Later is the first in a trilogy, and there's another trilogy nagging to be written once that one is finished. There's volume 2 of From Dark Places brewing in the basement too, and I aim to make a career of my writing. I have a suspicion that in order to do this in the best way possible, a good agent would help me a great deal.

But I simply can't bear the thought of going through that awful querying process again. Yuk. Maybe it's like childbirth, maybe after enough years I'll forget how awful that process was and try again. Four years later however I still remember childbirth with astonishing detail, so it doesn't bode well for the agent hunt. It's on my mind, that's all.

And last up is: Anxiety dreams

I had one last night, the first of many I will no doubt have this week in the lead up to the Shepton Mallet and London book launches.

Unsurprisingly, I have a lot of anxiety dreams, being the scaredy cat that I am, but last night's was pretty epic. I won't go into lots of detail, here are some of the mishaps that happened in the dream realm version of my Shepton launch: They hired a 90 year old woman to read one of my stories instead of me – and half way through it she decided she didn't like it and started making stuff up as she went along. I forgot the pen I have chosen (in the real world) to do the next signings, and ended up borrowing a ball point pen that (of course) ran out mid signing. But the pièce de résistance was that when I reached into the box to get out a copy to sign, the cover was absolutely awful – a crappy Word doc creation that the event organisers had printed specially, and looked nothing like the proper cover.

I mean that really is textbook isn't it? But there's more! My unconscious mind didn't think it was enough to usurp me as reader, destroy my reputation as a writer, take away my means of signing my name to it and butcher the books themselves, it also created an apocalyptic fire storm sweeping across the country that caught up to the venue just as I was trying to leave. Honestly, that entire dream was worthy of the Syfy channel.

I'm laughing as I remember it now, but let me tell you, at three o'clock in the morning it was awful.

So, there you have all the A's currently most on my mind. And tomorrow, the post will be brought to you by the letter B.