Petri Dish
The 77,000 people under one roof at NY Comic Con last week formed a human petri dish to challenge even the strongest immune system, especially for me, since I was gladhanding all over the showroom floor. I had hand sanitizer with me (like any new parent), but I didn’t want to go all Howard Hughes and use it after every handshake. Now I wonder if maybe I should have, as I continue to fight (and lose) against a relentless cold.
Word to the wise, if you every have a cold and feel generally crappy and nauseous, don’t eat even a “Fun sized” bag of Fritos. Big mistake. Huge.
But whatever. It was a fantastic weekend and worth any stupid cold, even though it makes caring for the baby (Dani is sick, too) and finishing The Desert Spear that much tougher.
Lots of Warded Man excitement to report on. First up, the rights to produce unabridged audio books for The Warded Man, The Desert Spear, and The Daylight War, were won today in auction by Recorded Books. I am very excited about this, and lobbying hard to do the reading myself. There are a lot of things in this world that make me nervous, but reading is not one of them, and I think I can do a bang-up job. My mom had me up on the lectern at church reading letters from Paul to the Corinthians when I was like 12, so I’m pretty sure I can handle reading my own book.
I also now have a Wikipedia page! I generally think it’s crass to write your own wiki entry, so I swore to wait until someone else did it. That was a tough decision, especially when the ComicCon name badges came out, but I held fast, and it worked out as an amateur biographer I’ve never met took a stab at it. Thanks, dude!
Couple of new reviews, as well, including a GREAT one at Static Multimedia, a good one from Reading in Trees, and a a bump in the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore newsletter.
Also, the second half of The Painted Man, AKA Malowany Czloweik, has come out in Poland, from publisher Fabryka Slow. Check out their website for some sweet samples of the book illustrations, including a burning wood demon and a picture of old Malowany Czloweik himself.
Here are a couple of Polish reviews, horribly translated by google: Ksiazki on why part I makes them hate me, and Click! on part II.
Also, my buddy Craig took some short videos at my NY ComicCon signing on Feb. 7. They are pretty random, but if you’re interested in seeing what it was like, you can see them here.
So who do I blame my cold on, Wells or Comic Con?
If you read for the audio you must do different voices and EVERYTHING!!! I know for a fact that audio books fly off library shelves like crazy…so make it worth it for those listeners.
Once again…Poland rocks more than One Arm. Those drawings are killer.
Blame ComicCon. What the hell.
I don’t know if I can do all the different voices consistently, but I think I can manage a solid Bruna cackle. I’m reluctant to do a cheap falsetto for Leesha and Elissa, though.
What I’m mainly interested in is conveying the EMOTION of the text, which is something most audio books are sorely lacking. A lot of the industry pros put perfect diction and pronunciation of every single syllable in rhythmic cadence over the actual pacing and emphasis of natural speech, making it sound like they don’t even understand what they’re reading. I HATE listening to what amounts to a robot reading text. This is why no one except the blind will ever use the new “read aloud” feature on the Kindle 2.
Aww, I swear whenever I watch a video of yours that features Cassie I melt inside.
Looking forward to reading the Amazon.com reviews when they start appearing 🙂
My whole life is just the opening act for Cassie. She is the headline performer.
I officially volunteer, too, for the audio. 😉 Jokes aside, that’sll be great, Peat; I’m really chuffed that they’re not cutting anything out! 🙂