Killers and a DIY Audiobook Sample
- gmdavegeorge
- Jul 7, 2024
- 3 min read
July 7, 2024
Rooting for the Killer
I just finished watching Ripley, a really dark, suspenseful Netflix series featuring a truly awful character, Tom Ripley. The opening scene has him dragging a body down a flight of stairs, so no real spoilers there: we know pretty much immediately he's not a good person. But—and this is the weird thing—I found myself rooting for him. Okay, maybe rooting is not the right word. But I did feel for him, anxious that he might get caught. Which is odd; you can’t watch the series without understanding that Tom Ripley is a sociopath who should absolutely be removed from civil society. Like, immediately. So it was strange, worrying that his criminal plans might somehow be thwarted. And isn’t that weird, that disconnect? My wife, Julie, who was watching along with me, felt that way too. So, of all the people I scientifically polled, both of them—a full 100%!—were rooting for the killer.
I consoled myself that that’s what good writing and good acting do: they engender empathy, even when a character is really not so great. The storytelling becomes so much richer when the bad girl or guy is somehow, against our better judgement, kinda likeable.
The bad guy in my upcoming book, a demon named Mander, also turns out to be one of my favorite characters from the novel. He’s not the main character in The Last Wrathwitch; in fact his main goal in life is to torment the poor girl. And he’s really not a good person. Okay, he’s more of a creature than a person, but still: not a good creature. And I hope that I’ve written him well enough that you’ll both like and loathe him too. And maybe feel just the tiniest bit uncomfortable about that.
DIY Golden Age, Audiobook Version
A while back I recorded an album with my band, The Devil Shakes, and in the process acquired a bunch of recording gear. But since then, I've been viciously bitten by the writing bug, and all that gear has been gathering dust, neglected. The sounds I’ve been producing lately mostly involve the clattering of my really noisy computer keyboard.
However: You may have heard that a lot of people listen to books now. Heck, you may even do this yourself. Audiobooks, I believe they’re called? Realizing I could make my own audiobook, I've suddenly once again found a use for my recording gear! The only thing I was missing in order to proceed was a reasonable sounding place to record. And that of course meant I'd need to build a sleeping bag fort in order to dampen the sound (see pic above). Which, who doesn’t want to build a sleeping bag fort? I was ready to roll!
Well, not quite. My recorded voice sounded terrible. Voice acting, it turns out, was a skill that I just didn’t have yet. This was going to take some work. So I’ve been doing that. Working at it. Practicing reading aloud, listening to pro voice actors, learning the whole recording/editing process. I’ve also been doing a lot of vocal exercises, some of them quite funny-sounding in a never-do-that-in-public sort of way.
And I gotta say, I love that all this DIY stuff is possible. Barring apocalypse, The Last Wrathwitch will be coming out in in October, and the fact that I can write the book, record the audio for it, and release it, all do-it-yourself, is amazing to me. And a good reminder that, for all its imperfections, we're living in a golden age.
You can listen to a sample of The Last Wrathwitch below. It'll get one more round of editing before release, so this isn't the final recording, but it'll give you an idea what I'm up to. I’d love to hear your feedback!
Finally...
That's it for this month. Next month, the final edit of my book should be finished. If all goes well, I'll be showing you all the first couple of chapters of The Last Wrathwitch. See you then!
~Dave
