Push the Button, Max

 Love how editing makes you more confident with your book...but also, you want to set it on fire at the same time.

Kira Hawke

Lead us not into temptation... Yes, I think I've read that, somewhere. 

Kindle Direct Publishing, in an effort to be everything to everyone (because that increases sales, they said) has introduced a beta version of an AI-driven audible feature for qualifying books offered through their service. Wow, that's a lot to digest, huh?

Some readers need no introduction to the vices and virtues of having someone read you a book. I suppose there is something deeply psychological - back to those days when your twenty-something mom read bedtime stories at a time when (for most) life was an easy game. There is also something deeply convenient, of mowing the lawn, walking the dogs or doing laundry (right, dear?) listening to a book. 

The vice is how much the mind wanders in the process. It is an art, to know when to stay focused, when there are permitted lapses... Most of that is related to the ebb and flow of the reader - urgent words or inflections tells me to pay attention. Soft, meandering passages and I can half listen and half tell Joy she's a good girl for staying on the sidewalk.

Paying a professional voice actor seemed prohibitive, so I politely told people that, much as reading my own book into a recording device would cut down on costs, how many wanted to hear me winding my way through the intimate Adam/Karen passages we all know are there? The answer is usually "Eeewwww," which I interpret to mean no one.

Kindle's solution was worthy of a look, maybe a try. I wended my way through the requirements, uploaded a revised version (added a table of contents) of The Fort in the Harbor and waited. And, waited. Finally - I was in!

It seemed a snap. We chose a voice - female. Crisp diction, indistinct accent. There was a provision to review what the book would sound like and...

The first problem that appeared was one of venue. We were on a trip with our 12 year old grandson, sitting in a hotel room. It wasn't long before Karen was offering to rub, well you get the idea. Grandson was playing a game on the TV in his "den" but it is never obvious when kids are actually listening.

The second problem was one of pronunciation. Not all words were pronounced by my computer assistant as I intended. One - the name of an important character - had to be said a certain way for a later plot twist to make sense. My bold voice-in-a-box didn't know that. But, wait!

Never fear - there is a feature that lets me tell Ms. Big Voice how I want her to pronounce words. This is awesome, this is wonderful! I can even ask her to say it the same way ever time she encounters it. I'm in business!

And then, swiping the screen to save my work, and...

"Push the button, Max" is a line from the movie The Great Race. It is uttered almost exclusively by Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) while commanding his assistant Max (Peter Falk) to engage something mechanical - always with disastrous effect. Bombs exploded, periscopes took on a life of their own. A rocket sled with them aboard, meant to cover the "Measured Mile" at extreme speed, flew ballistically...until it didn't.

The last brush of the screen pushed the publish button. "Congratulations!" the screen informed me. "Your Audible book is live."

Well, okay. Apparently nothing kept me from continuing to work my way through the manuscript. It was tedious - I've read this book already, know how it ends - but writing for publication can be tedious. And then...

The Audible book was missing a whole section. Karen sees video of the deceased, in life. Her heart... Well, that part, something I was very happy with, was missing. What the hell?

I'd revised and uploaded the wrong file. Great.

Here's where the wheels really come off. Kindle - this is a feature, not a flaw - lets the owner of a manuscript make revision to it even after publishing. You'd think fixing typos, small gaffs and the like would only help going forward, but in fact if a reader's device is connected to the internet it makes changes to all of them. There are hundreds of copies of Fort out there, and now all of them contain the older version of the story, the one I didn't intend to publish. Fuck.

It was easily fixed, but... Now, the older version is stuck on Audible (they are trying to figure out what to do). All right.

It was an experiment. I'd say, even now, it was 60% successful. One observation - KDP isn't (yet) sophisticated enough to make the fine distinctions between characters that voice actors make, so dialogue can sometimes be confusing. There is a way to write it better - dialogue tags more often in place of structural cues - but that's for later books. 

I'm going to ask you to wait. I'll let you know when it's fixed. It's kind of fun to listen to the story, and if you do it as part of your subscription to Audible I get paid per page. It's just that I pressed the wrong button, and now I'm playing catch up.

At least I didn't blow up the Eiffel Tower.

To The Morning

 I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.

Radio host Bob Edwards.

Noting the passing of radio icon Bob Edwards.

"Morning Edition, I'm Bob Edwards."

His voice silky smooth, his delivery even and measured. He was the morning host of NPR's flagship morning show, a calming and caring presence. He presented news stories without spin, handed off the deets to the person who was reporting from there, and brought everything together neatly. Good news, bad news... You got the gist of it, then you could decide how you felt.

His show was more than just a higher quality Les Nessman. He had a parade of regular guests, two of whom were gems in their own right. Bob made them better.

John Feinstein is a sportswriter and commentator of great heft. He has written definitive books on Bobby Knight, on a memorable baseball season with Hall of Fame pitchers Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine, and a not so memorable season following players in the minors. He's written on boxing, on golf and tennis. He appeared from time to time on Bob Edwards's show to talk sports, always leaving with a droll "Good bye, Bob."

It was their yearly discussion - Feinstein telling Bob about the impending Army-Navy game. It was a discussion about the Xs and Os, but it was about the ending as well. The men on the field toiled for 60 playing minutes, giving no quarter and expecting none, then stood side by side as each team's alma mater was played. Bob would draw details out as only he could - the personal, the inside football - and then would let Feinstein describe how these men, all of whom looked forward to military careers, how some would give their lives in the process, how that moved him not just to tears, but to outright sobbing.

Bob reserved many gentle moments for his weekly interviews of Red Barber, an authentic pioneer of baseball broadcasting. An elder statesman of the days when the men behind the mikes gave you the play by play without any hint of homerism, Red had retired to Tallahassee, FL after leaving full time sportscasting. Every Friday Bob would entertain a couple of minutes of Red's humor, his deep understanding of sports in general and America's Pastime in particular and then... They would chat about the important things in life - how the flowers were blooming in Florida. "In this troubled world of ours, I'm happy to report that the camellias are blooming here in Tallahassee," Red would say. When Red passed away in 1992, a void existed not just in Morning Edition, but in Bob Edwards's life.

It was every Independence Day that Bob's innate sense of the majesty for American history was front and center. The professional, trained voices of the NPR announcers read portions of the Declaration of Independence in turn, with Bob beginning it with "When in the course of human events..." It was his right as host to finish. It was as if the Founders had returned, to read this document, and reaffirm the cause, to which they had pledged their lives, fortune and sacred honor.

NPR moved on from Bob Edwards in the early 2000s, but he didn't move on from the mike. Finding a home on satellite radio, his voice was only stilled when he passed this week. There are a lot of recognizable voices in radio, but not many with a compelling presence.

Perhaps this Friday, it will be Bob's turn to tell Red that the flowers in Florida still bloom, in spite of it all.

 

Got It Covered

 Why would they have book covers if we aren't supposed to judge the book by them? It makes no sense.

Ingrid Weir

Book covers are a tricky business. Promise too much, and the reader feels cheated. Too little, and no one is enthused enough to buy the book. Which, I hasten to add, may not be the whole point of writing for publication, but I had to purchase the photos... But, I digress.

Someone described book covers as a sort of haiku. Since I don't know what that is, and I'd never heard of the source (Chip Kidd - a good Pennsylvania boy who has some chops. I looked him up.) I used the above quote, which is more my style. Here is the caveat.

Aside from the short stint A Miracle of Zeros and Ones spent on the shelves in Tattered Cover - I think I sold a couple there, one purchased by a good friend (you know who you are and I'm eternally grateful) - no one is going to pluck these off a shelf and feel how it would be to take it home. Maybe read a few pages on the light rail "n root." The front of the cover is what people see on Amazon, or in one of the several marketing campaigns in which I might place it.

I'm not convinced... Well, I take that back, even though I didn't offer it. I bought a book called Ahab's Wife because the cover was compelling - a woman in mid 19th Century garb on a beach, staring at the shipwrecked prow of a wooden sailing vessel. It spoke of the lament many left-behind-lovers must have felt when the remnants of their lost love's last ship washed ashore. I took it home.

It was tedious, but eventually worth the effort. Were it not for the excellent cover (which, it turns out, was a metaphor) I may never have had the impulse to buy it.

Fast forward to the 21st Century and a little-known but plucky local writer. I've taken to relying on the immense talents of Aaron Kilbon when it's book cover time. It would have taken me a week to figure out what he put together in 45 minutes. I like it - a lot. It tells me (I've read the book) that Karen Sorenson fulfilled her promise to Trevor Malloy and became a charter pilot. It says that she did not shed her talents as a keen observer of the little, unkempt things around her to do that. It says that someone dies, and implies it has something to do with Karen.

Here it is - a very polished rough draft of the cover for An Intrusion of Trifles. We'll talk more, but this book should be available in early March. The writing part is finished, the plot a lot of fun. You'll love it.     

Long Walks on the Beach

Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow. 

Henry David Thoreau

 

It has been since we left San Juan on a cruise ship in 2020 and returned to a very different world that we'd had a beach vacation. I suppose that doesn't count the times we've taken the trailer to lakeside campsites and walked the dogs along the shore. But, this isn't exactly about beaches.

Karen 4 - An Intrusion of Trifles - will release in March. I'm happy with... I guess a lukewarm way to say this is I'm happy with how the story has evolved. In point of fact, I'm really excited about this release. Karen is a great character to write. This novel demonstrates many of her strengths, explores her frailties and has some fun along the way. By fun, I mean... Karen has a warrior soul that she flexes from time to time. Why would this book be any different?

Of course, we subscribe to the "Jed Bartlett School" of linear task engagement. Why wouldn't we - we named one of our dogs after him. There is a question that always pops up as the end of one task looms.

What's next?

There we were, on a fabulous beach in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. This is a part of the world near and dear to us, a refuge from winter Denver weather in a part of the world that is both warm and welcoming. Sunshine, 80 degree weather - we grab bottles of water and walk on the beach for a couple of miles.

The conversation turned to (as it often does) what was next, now that Trifles had entered the final stages before release. My super supportive wife, used to these kinds of conversations, had a ready suggestion.

Amy 3.

For anyone who has read A Guardian's Promise, it comes as no surprise that I started Amy 3 - working title Body Man - in the immediate aftermath of finishing the rough draft of Amy 2 - at the time called But Always Me. When I say immediate aftermath...

I was deeply disturbed with the ending of Amy 2. I'd also committed a cardinal sin, in that I'd finished the rough first draft at night, then tried to sleep. It didn't work. I got back up at around midnight, and wrote the first chapter of Amy 3. Reassured that she was okay, I went back to bed. 

Strange behavior? Probably. It's what it is. Then...

Pat had a particularly difficult parting with one of her employers. Mostly, it was associated with a gathering of egos - theirs, not hers. Amy 3 became a way to write angry about the way she'd been treated, how the minor players with visions of grandeur had conspired to "go in a different direction." It just flowed out, all of the spite, all of the dyspepsia, the overarching agida ("The Otch") as my friend would call it, that I got over the way she was treated. When she landed on her feet, as she always does, I set Amy aside and wrote other books, with other characters.

"What about Amy?" Pat asked as we walked. "What kind of things could she get into if...?"

One of the glories of 2024 is that my laptop was back at the room. I didn't write a lot, but I booted up Amy 3 and decided that, yes, we would finish Amy 3. Title?

For now...Amy 3.

A Bad Good-Bye

 Is this the face of how our laws protect Americans from violations of our laws?

Several days ago, two New York police officers were assaulted by half a dozen men in Times Square. Watching the video, it appears that the officers were attempting to detain someone, and the rest of the group descended upon them, knocking them down and striking them until the cops, in an effort to defend themselves, relinquished their detainee. The crowd then hastens away from the scene.

NYPD was able to identify the...suspects...and successfully arrest them. It turns out they are in the United States after crossing our southern border, probably alleging grounds for asylum (most of the border crossers are told what to say if they encounter members of law enforcement) and now they are in New York awaiting a immigration hearing date.

New York, like some other states in our republic, has modified their laws on pre-trial detention. That is, these (now) defendants were released without posting any kind of security, to await trial. They assaulted two police officers who were doing their jobs, and the New York criminal justice system released them back into the community.

Set aside the obvious questions - do we even know who they really are, what their criminal history was back in their native Venezuela? Are these truly people seeking a better life in the US, or are they gang members looking for greener pastures? Do we really have any way of knowing that before they were returned to the community?

But, wait! Did these men accept that they'd been spared the inside of a jail cell by the lenient laws of New York State and humbly go back to their families? No. They demonstrated their feelings for their new country with an international sign of contempt. And, well they should.

These fellows should be in jail pending their trial. They should, upon any verdict of guilt, be removed from the United States and barred from ever again alleging they are seeking asylum.

Now comes the headline - "Suspects in police assault may be on the run." New York Post.

Really...