The Spoken Word

I've been off this past week, and one of my main tasks has been to catch up on narrating audio episodes of the Dark InSpectre. Paul Cole, who runs the radio show in Rockland, Maine, that broadcasts my episodes, has been nice enough to agree to make them radio-ready after I narrate them. So it's up to me to keep sending them. It's helpful to understand the numbers here. There are a total of 76 episodes of the latest story arc of the Dark InSpectre. This past week, I narrated 19 new episodes, ending with episode 41. So, yeah, I've still got a ways to go. But I did bite off a nice chunk, which felt good.

Doing the audio recording reminded me how tedious the work is, but it's also a very good exercise. Reading each of these older episodes helps keep the story fresh in my mind, and also brings to the surface minor errors in the text that can be corrected. What's also interesting is that there are little nuances that are apparent when reading the text that can be lost when the words are spoken, like who's talking, and when passages are thought vs. spoken aloud. So I occasionally have to throw in an extra word or phrase to make these things clear.

What really has me curious is what's going to happen when my publisher gets back to me regarding the whole Dark InSpectre series. If they pick it up in some form, will they also pick up the audio episodes? What would happen after the series undergoes editing? Which will surely happen. Would I then have to re-record every episode? That would suck. Out of about 90 episodes between the two story arcs, I've narrated about half. Doing them over again would, well, be a lot.

But I'd certainly do it. I'd do whatever it takes cuz an audio book for the Dark InSpectre would just be so cool. Of course, I still have to hear back from my publisher about all this, so until then it's all just idle speculation. In the mean time, I'll just keep on working in my makeshift recording studio, which consists of a 15-dollar baffle I got from Wal Mart, a digital audio recorder I use for work, and my computer. Pretty advanced stuff, I know.