And when the rain beats against my window pane, I’ll think of summer days again
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniLast Wednesday, we left home early, having been promised thunderstorms and construction to slow our journey to Albany. Needless to say, the day was bright and sunny and the construction was all scheduled for night.
Last night, we returned home, riding one great, long thunderstorm from the Maine line to our dooryard.
In between those two travel events, there was a con! If you ever get a chance to go to ConQuesT — do it! Really. We had such a good time. The con was welcoming and friendly; we had work, but not too much work, and — it was just lovely. All that and a fruit and cheese plate in our room to welcome us, too! *Sigh* I love me some fruit and cheese plates.
Today was spent sleeping late, doing grocery shopping, resurrecting Steve’s suddenly and senselessly dead computer, catching up on bidness email. I am, yes, behind on all my email, including bidness email, which goes to the top of the to-do list for tomorrow.
I will tell y’all that, while we are away, the news came down that Audible will be publishing in audiobook format, all fifteen Liaden Universe® novels, from Agent of Change through Dragon Ship. We’re going to be putting those Weird Word Lists into immediate use!
To recap, this is the state of the Do It Now List:
1. Bidness email
2. Do laundry (started!)
3. Write short story
4. Check in with Madame the Agent re missing paperwork
5. Edit short story
6. Get proposals in shape and send to Madame the Agent
7. Pay quarterly taxes
8. Record weird words
9. Finalize Carousel Tides t-shirt details
10. Start already with writing Carousel Sun
11. Blog post re why SF isn’t about “the future”
12. Write another short story, wotthehell
13. Sign the 1,000 sheets of paper that arrived while we were away
14. Make hotel reservations for Boskone
15. Do not buy this
Oh. And somewhere in there, the existing bathtub will be removed from the bathroom, and a shiny new shower will be installed.
So! Did y’all do anything exciting while I was away?
Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.
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no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 12:07 am (UTC)audible books
Date: 2012-05-31 12:48 am (UTC)choli
Date: 2012-05-31 12:52 am (UTC)Welcome home. You've been missed.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 02:30 am (UTC)Glad you had a good con.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 03:00 am (UTC)Oh that choli is wonderful. Thank you for the link, I spent 20 minutes oohing and aahing around the site. If you like Saris and Salwar Kameez, you may like, http://www.sanginionline.com/ and http://www.exoticindiaart.com/textiles/LehengaCholi/. Enjoy!
Oh, hooray!
Date: 2012-05-31 05:52 am (UTC)Audible News
Date: 2012-05-31 01:06 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, hooray!
Date: 2012-05-31 01:18 pm (UTC)Re: Audible News
Date: 2012-05-31 01:21 pm (UTC)Re: Audible News
Date: 2012-05-31 03:18 pm (UTC)http://webpages.charter.net/grovergardner/
Re: Oh, hooray!
Date: 2012-05-31 03:30 pm (UTC)Sian Phillips is ok, but I have to say I didn't think any of the unabridged Heyers were done by excellent narrators.
Re: Audible News
Date: 2012-05-31 03:36 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, hooray!
Date: 2012-05-31 04:07 pm (UTC)1) I'm listening to my first Heyer audiobook, just recently having discovered that there were Heyer novels on there. It is narrated by Phyllida Nash. I'm enjoying it and her narration, but...
2) I'm not a very discriminating judge of narrators. In fact, there are a very few things that annoy me: extreme flatness, extreme breathiness, mispronunciation of words, and complete misreading of the author's tone. For this last reason, I did not enjoy the Marguerite Gavin version of Bujold's Hallowed Hunt. It didn't end up sounding like Bujold, which is...annoying. (It sounded a lot more like EPIC fantasy, which genre I generally equate to BORING, other than Tolkien.)
So, I'm not so helpful here. Perhaps others have additional opinions.
Still, I'm excited!
Re: Oh, hooray!
Date: 2012-05-31 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 05:14 pm (UTC)The librarian made the system do its magic, said "We do not, but this (Saltation) says it's part of a series. Do you know what the rest are? We like to have complete series here."
I have promised a list in a couple weeks when the books are due. Are the Baen multibooks the correct thing to offer the librarian for the older titles?
no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 05:19 pm (UTC)At this point, the Baen omnibus editions are The way to get the backlist in paper, so yes.
And thank you, you subversive reader, you!
Audible. Gah.
Date: 2012-05-31 07:07 pm (UTC)Its DRM is much too onerous (e.g. I can't listen to Audible books on the car stereo system - AA files are not supported there). And the real pity is that there is zero competition in this field, so AA is pretty much the only way to get audiobooks except some fringe publishers who stick to paleolithic technology (MP3 CDs).
Not that ranting ever helped any.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 07:18 pm (UTC)I really liked the narration that Khristine Hvam provided on all of Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra novels. I'm currently listening to Eileen Stevens narrate Lisa Shearin's Raine Benares stories, not bad just sometimes a bit young sounding.
Will have to start saving credits or hope that audible has one of those buy 3 credits for the price of 2 specials when your stories are released.
Reorder the list
Date: 2012-05-31 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 09:39 pm (UTC)I'm happy to influence the library's purchasing decisions, and I hope other people will like what I like, too.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 11:22 pm (UTC)I especially adore Daniel Philpot's reading of The Unknown Ajax by Heyer. He has clear voices for each character, and a range of expression for each as well. The book is also very funny and he brings that out.
Re: Oh, hooray!
Date: 2012-06-01 04:13 am (UTC)Re: Audible News
Date: 2012-06-01 04:29 am (UTC)Con
Date: 2012-06-01 06:42 am (UTC)Welcome back to your home base.
As for audio books. I don't do long car drives so I stick....as I always say....to paper. I think the authors mostly intended for us to read their work. Not listen to it. But then a very good reader/actor...it would be interesting.
Re: Audible News
Date: 2012-06-01 01:39 pm (UTC)An excellent reader who does primarily SF is Steven Rudnicki. A link to his reading of Ender's Game here: http://www.audible.com/pd/?asin=B002V5A12Y
Another excellent reader who does SF is Simon Vance. His Dune reading is here: http://www.audible.com/pd/?asin=B002V1OF70. That also includes Scott Brick who is a good reader as well.
Hope these help. Most important thing is to actually LISTEN to anyone they propose. It's easy enough to do with the previews on Audible. You can quickly get a feel for how well they do.
Re: Audible News
Date: 2012-06-01 07:33 pm (UTC)IOW, quite a few. But the bad ones are awful.