#literary fiction in audio

[rozmorris]

New release: Ever Rest in audiobook!

Very quickly… The audiobook of Ever Rest is available! Immense thanks to my narrator Sandy Spangler, who voiced my text with such care and sensitivity, and to Talitha and Jack whose generous sponsorship made this production possible. I’m incredibly lucky to have you all. The link will take you to a range of audio stores and subscription services. If it’s not yet at your usual store, it’s going…

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#audiobook release #audiobooklove #audiobooks #Ever Rest #literary fiction in audio #new audiobook

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: Graphic Audio – Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

Series: The Murderbot Diaries #6Author: Martha Wells Find it on Goodreads | Graphic Audio | More Murderbot Graphic Audio Review Wow, I can’t believe Graphic Audio is almost caught up with The MurderBot Diaries already! (Side note: what should I listen to next?). Fugitive Telemetry is the sixth novella in the series. It’s also the first one that’s set on Preservation Station. Yeah, it’s…

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#Book #Book Box #Book Review #Books #Fiction #Fugitive Telemetry #Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells #Graphic Audio #Literary #Literature #Martha Wells #Review #Science Fiction #Science Fiction Review #The Murderbot Diarie #The Murderbot Diaries #The Murderbot Diaries 6

[malimaywrite]

i need my redacted audio fixation to hold at least until june so i can distract myself when i start querying literary agents

#like pls the querying trenches are rough #i could also figure out if i actually want to write an interactive fiction story or not too #either way i will seek out all the distractions high and low then #comes out of querying with a literary agent (just claiming it!!) and like 15 redacted audio one shots lmao #talking to myself

[dartumbles]

Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng My rating: 4 of 5 stars Cassandra Campbell (Narrator) did a great job bringing this story to life. The funny thing is I read this long ago and gave it five stars. It was a Kindle version. It was way back when I didn’t bother writing a review, so I don’t know what I fell in love with. The writing was excellent. And it did keep me guessing as to who might…

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#adult-fiction #audio-libby #Cassandra Campbell #Celeste Ng #contemporary #Fiction #literary-fiction #mystery

[whatsheread]

The Year of the Audiobook - Part 2

The Year of the Audiobook – Part 2

Part two of my one-sentence reviews for the many audiobooks I’ve listened to this year. Hang in there! I wanted to love this one so hard because it’s Neil Gaiman, but I found myself nodding off one too many times to say I enjoyed it. We all know that John Scalzi is a master author, but this first book of his Interdependency series is masterful. It seems that all my friends love this series, and…

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#Anthony Ray Hinton #Audible Studios #Audiobook #August 2018 Releases #Beth Macy #Cathleen McCarron #December 2019 Releases #Diana Peterfreund #February 2017 Releases #Gail Honeyman #Hachette Audio #HarperAudio #John Scalzi #Julia Whelan #Kevin R. Free #Kevin Wilson #Khristine Hvam #Literary Fiction #Macmillan Audio #March 2017 Releases #March 2018 Releases #Marin Ireland #Martha Wells #May 2017 Releases #Mystery #Mythology #Neil Gaiman #Nonfiction #October 2017 Releases #October 2018 Releases

[breelandwalker]

Podcasts for Spooky Season

It's that time of year again! The leaves are turning, the pumpkins are ripening, and with the increasing chill in the air comes a craving for chills of a different kind. If you're looking for some great audio horror this season, here are some podcasts you might enjoy. Check them out on your favorite podcast app!

(Please feel free to add your favorites in the notes!)

Fictional Frights

Chilling Tales For Dark Nights

Knifepoint Horror

Pseudopod

Scary Stories Told In The Dark

The No-Sleep Podcast

Real Life Is Terrifying

And That's Why We Drink

Be. Scared

Disturbed

Morbid

Scared To Death

Tales From The Break Room

History & Folklore

A Scary State

Freaky Folklore

Frightful

Lore

One Strange Thing

Southern Gothic

The Cryptid Keeper (back catalog)

Horror Movies

Alone In The Dark

Copulators Die First (back catalog)

Queerdo Babes Trom The Horror Pod-O-Rama

Ruined!

Classic Horror Tales

Horror Hill

Readings by The H.P Lovecraft Literary Podcast

The HorrorBabble Podcast

You can also visit Librivox for free public domain audiobooks, including MANY collections of classic scary stories, including a fantastic rendition of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

#halloween #scary stories #horror #horror movies #podcasts #audiobooks #audio horror #spooky season

[physalian]

Humanizing Your Characters (And Why You Should)

To humanize a character is not to contort an irredeemable villain into the warped funhouse mirror reflection of a hero in the last 30 seconds to gain “narrative subversion” points. To humanize is not to give said villain a tragic backstory that validates every bad choice they make in attempt to provide nuance where it does not deserve to be.

To humanize a character, villain or otherwise, is to make them flawed. Scuff them up, give them narrative birthmarks and scars and imperfections. Whether it’s your hero, their love interest, the comic relief, the mentor, the villain, the rival, these little narrative details serve to make all your literary babies better.

Why should you humanize your characters?

To do this means to write in details beyond those that service the plot, or the themes, or the motifs, morals, foreshadowing, or story. These might be (and usually are) entirely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So, if I wrote lengthy diatribes on pacing and why every detail must matter, and character descriptions and thematic importance, why am I now suggesting go free-for-all on the fluff?

Just like real people have quirks and tics and beliefs and pet peeves that serve our no greater purpose, so should fictional people. Your average reader doesn’t have the foggiest idea what literary devices are beyond metaphor, simile foreshadowing, and anecdote, but they can tell when the author is using motif and theme and all the syntactical marvels because it reads that much richer, even if they can’t pinpoint why.

And, for shipping fodder, these tiny little details are what help your audience fall in love with the character. It doesn’t even have to be in a book – Taylor Swift (whether you like her or not) never fills her music with sexual innuendo or going clubbing. She tells stories filled with human details like dancing in the refrigerator light. People can simultaneously relate to these very specific and vivid experiences, and say “not that exactly, but man this reminds me of…” and that’s (part of) the reason her music is so popular.

What kinds of narratives need these details?

All of them. Visual media, audio, written, stage play. Now, to what degree and excess you apply these details depends on your tone, intended audience, and writing style. If your style of writing is introspection heavy, noir character drama, you might go pretty heavy on the character design.

But even if you’re writing a kids book with a scant few paragraphs of setting descriptors and internal narration, or you’re drawing a comic book – if you have characters you want people to care about, do this.

Animators, particularly, are very adept at humanizing non-human characters, because, unlike live acting, every single stroke of the pen is there with intent. They use their own reflections for facial references, record their own movements to draw a dance, and insert little bits of themselves into signature character poses so you know that *that* animator did this one.

How to humanize your characters.

I’m going to break this down into a couple sections: Costume/wardrobe, personality, beliefs/behavior/superstitions, haptics/proxemics/kinesics, and voice. They will all overlap and the sheer variety and possibilities are way too broad for me to capture every facet.

Costumes and Wardrobe

In the film Fellowship of the Ring, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where, after Boromir is slain by the Uruk-Hai, Aragorn takes Boromir’s Gondorian vambraces to wear in his honor, and in honor of their shared country. He wears them the rest of the trilogy. The editing pays no extra attention to them beyond a split second of Aragorn tightening the straps, it never lingers on them, never reminds you that they’re there, but they kept it in nonetheless. His actor also included a hunting bow that didn't exist in the book because he's a roamer, a ranger, and needs to be able to feed himself, along with a couple other survival tools.

Aragorn wears plenty of other symbolic bits of costume – the light of the Evenstar we see constantly from Arwen, the Lothlorien green cloaks shared by the entire Fellowship, his re-forged sword and eventual full Gondorian regalia, but all those are Epic Movie Moments that serve a thematic purpose.

Taking the vambraces is just a small, otherwise insignificant character moment, a choice made for no other reason than that’s what this character would do. That’s what makes him human, not an archetype.

When you’re writing these details and can’t rely on sneaking them into films, you have to work a little harder to remind your audience that they exist, but not too often. A detail shifts from “human” to “plot point” when it starts to serve a purpose to the themes and story.

Inconsequentiality might be how a character ties, or doesn’t tie their shoelaces, because they just can’t be bothered so they remain permanent knots and tripping hazards. It might be a throw-away line about how they refuse to wear shorts and strictly stick to long pants because they don’t like showing off their legs. It might be perpetually greasy hair from constantly running their fingers through it with stress, or self-soothing. A necklace they fidget with, or a ring, a belt they never bother to replace even though they should, a pair of lucky socks.

Resist the urge to make it more meaningful than “this is just how they are”. If I’m using the untied shoelaces example – in Spiderverse, this became a part of the story’s themes, motifs, and foreshadowing, and doesn’t count. Which isn’t bad! It’s just not what I’m talking about.

Personality

In How to Train Your Dragon, Toothless does not speak. All his personality comes from how he moves, the noises he makes, and the expressions on his face. There’s moments, like in the finale, when his prosthetic has burned off and Hiccup tells him to hold on for a little bit longer, and you can clearly see on his face that he’s deeply uncertain about his ability to do so. It’s almost off the screen, another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Or the beat of hesitation before he lets Hiccup touch him in the Forbidden Friendship scene. Or the irritated noise he makes when he’s impatiently waiting for Hiccup to stop chatting with his dad because they have a giant dragon to murder. Or when he slaps Hiccup with his ear fin for flying them into a rock spire.

None of those details *needed* to exist to endear you to his character or to serve the scenes they’re in. The scenes would carry on just fine without them. He’s a fictional dragon, yes, but these details make him real.

Other personality tics you could include might be a character who gets frustrated with tedious things very quickly and starts making little inteligible curses under their breath. Or how they giggle when they’re excited and start bouncing on their toes. Maybe they have a tic where they snap their fingers when they’re concentrating, trying to will an idea into existence. Or they stick their tongue out while they work and get embarrassed when another character calls them on it. They roll around in their sleep, steal blankets, drool, leave dishes in the sink or are neurotic with how things must be organized. They have one CD in their car, and actually use that CD player instead of the phone jack or Bluetooth. They sing in the shower, while they cook, or while they do homework, no matter how grating their voice.

They like the smell of new shoes or Sharpies. They hate the texture of suede or velvet or sticky residues. They never pick their socks up. They hate the overhead light in their room and use 50 lamps instead. They hate turning into oncoming traffic or don’t trust their backup camera. They collect Funko Pops and insist there’s always room for more.

And about a million others.

Beliefs, Behaviors, and Superstitions

*If you happen to be writing a story where superstitions have merit, maybe skip this one.* Usually, inevitably, these evolve into character centerpieces and I can’t actually think of one off the top of my head that doesn’t become this beyond the ones we all know. A few comedic examples do come to mind:

The Magic Conch in “Club Spongebob” and the sea-bear-proof dirt circle in “The Camping Episode”

Dean Winchester’s fear and panic-driven actions in “Yellow Fever” and “Sam, Interrupted”

The references to the trolls that steal left-foot socks in How to Train Your Dragon

I’m not a fan of wasting time writing a religious character doing their religious thing when Plot Is Happening, but smaller things are what I’m talking about. Like them wearing a cross/rosary and touching it when they’re nervous. Having a specific off-beat prayer, saying, or expression because they don’t believe in cursing.

The classic ones like black cats, ladders, broken mirrors, salt, sidewalk cracks can all be funny. Athletes have plenty, too, and some of them, particularly in baseball culture, are a bit ridiculous. Not washing socks or uniforms, having a team idol they donate Double Bubble to and also rub their toes. A specific workout routine, diet, team morale dance.

Other things, too. A character who’s afraid to go back downstairs once the lights are off, or fear the basement or the backyard shed. Or they’re really put-off by this old family photo for no reason other than how glassy their eyes look and it’s creepy. They like crystals, dreamcatchers, star signs, tarot, or they absolutely do not under any circumstances.

They believe in all the tried and true ways of predicting the weather like a grizzled old sailor. They believe in ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, skinwalkers, doppelgangers, fairies. They talk to the cat statue in their kitchen and named it Fudge Pop. They whisper to the spirit that possessed the fridge so it stops making all that racket, and half the time, it works every time. They wear yellow for good luck or carry a rabbit’s foot. They’re not religious at all but still throw prayers out to whoever’s listening because, you know, just in case. They sit by their window sill and talk to the moon and the stars and pretend like they’re in a music video when they’re driving through the city in the rain.

Haptics, Proxemics, and Kinesics

These are, for all you non-communication and psych majors out there, touch and physical contact, how they move, and how they move around other people.

Behold, your shipping fodder.

Two shining examples of proxemics in action are the famous “close talker” episode of Seinfeld (of which every communication major has been subjected to) and Castiel’s not understanding of personal space (and human chronemic habits) in Supernatural.

These are how a character walks, if they’re flat-footed, clumsy, or tip-toers. If they make a racket or constantly spook the other characters. If they fidget or can’t sit still in a seat for five seconds, if they like to sit backwards or upside down. How they touch themselves, if they do a lot of self-soothing maneuvers (hugging themselves, rubbing their arms, touching their face, drawing their knees up, holding their neck, etc) or if they don’t do any self-soothing at all.

This is how they shake hands, if they dance while they cook or work. It’s how much space they let themselves take up, if they man-spread or keep their limbs in closer. How close they stand to others or how far. If they let themselves be touched at all, or if they always have their skin covered. If they always have their back to a wall,  or are always making sure they know where the nearest exit is. If they make grand gestures when they talk and give directions. If they flinch from pats on the back or raised hands. If they lean away from loud voices or project their own. If they use their height to their advantage when arguing, puff their chest, square their shoulders, put their hands on their hips, or point fingers in accusation.

If they touch other characters as they pass by. If they’re huggers or victims of falling asleep on or near their comrades. If they must sleep facing the door, or with something solid behind them. If they can sleep in the middle of a party wholly uncaring. If they sleepwalk, sleeptalk, migrate across the bed to cuddle whoever’s nearest with no idea they’re doing it.

If they like to be held or like to hold others. If they hate being picked up and slung around or are touch-starved for it. If they like their space and stick to it or are more than happy to share.

Do they walk with grace, head held high and back straight? Or are they hunched over, head hung, watching their feet? Are they meanderers or speed-walkers? Do they cross their arms in front or lace their hands behind them? Do they bow to authority or meet that gaze head on?

I have heard that Prince Zuko, in Last Airbender, is usually drawn sleeping with his bad ear down when he doesn’t feel safe, like on his warship or anywhere in the Fire Nation, or on the road. He’s drawn on his other side once he joins the Gaang. In Dead Man’s Chest, just before Davy Jones drives the Flying Dutchman under the waves, two tentacles curl up and around the brim of his hat to keep it from blowing off in the water.

When they fight, do they attack first, or defend first? Do they touch other characters’ hair? Share makeup, share clothes? Touch their faces with boops or bonks or nuzzles and eskimo kisses? Do they crack their knuckles and necks and knees?

Do they stare in baffled curiosity at all the other characters wholly comfortable in each other's spaces because they can’t, won’t, or don’t see the point in all this nonsense? Do they say they’re happy on the outside, but are betrayed by their body language?

Voice

Whether or not to write an accent is entirely up to you. Books like Their Eyes Were Watching God writes dialogue in a vernacular specific to its characters. Westerners and southerners tend to be written with the southern drawl or dialect, ripe with stereotypical contractions. Be advised, however, that in attempt to write an accent to give your character depth, you could be instead turning off your audience who doesn’t have energy to decipher what they’re saying, or you went and wrote a racist stereotype.

Voice isn’t just accent and dialect, nor is it how it sounds, which falls more solidly under useful character descriptions. Voice for the sake of humanizing your characters concerns how they talk, how they convey their thoughts, and how they become distinct from other characters in dialogue and narration.

If you’re writing a narrative that hops heads and don’t want to include a big banner to indicate who’s talking at any given time, this is where voice matters. It is, I think, the least appreciated of all the possible traits to pay attention to.

First person narrators have the most flexibility here because the audience is zero degrees removed from their first-hand experiences. Their personality comes through sharply in how they describe things and what they pay attention to.

But it’s also in what similes and metaphors they use. I read a book that had an average (allegedly straight) male narrator going off and describing colors with types of flowers, some I had to look up because I just don’t know those off the top of my head. My immediate thought was either this character is a poorly written gay, or he’s a florist. Neither (allegedly), the writer was just being too specific.

Do they have crutch words they use? like, um, actually, so…, uh

Or repeat exclamations specific to them? yikes, yowzers, jeepers, jinkies, zoinks, balls, beans, d’oh!

Or idioms they’re fond of? Like a bat out of hell. Snowball’s chance.

Do they stutter when they’re nervous? Do they lose their train of thought and bounce around, losing other characters in the process? Do they have a non-Christian god they pray to and say something other than “thank God”? Are they from another country, culture, time period, realm, or planet with their own gods, beliefs, and idioms?

When they describe settings, how flowery is the language? Would this grizzled war hero use flowery language? How would he or she describe the color pink, versus a PTA mom? Do they use only a generic “blue, green, red” or do they really pay attention with “aquamarine, teal, emerald, viridian, vermillion, rose, ruby”?

How do this character’s hobbies affect how well they can describe dance moves, painting styles, car models, music genres?

This mostly matters when you’re head-hopping and the voice of the narrator serves to be more distinct, otherwise, what’s the point of head-hopping? Just use third-person omniscient.

If you really want to go wild, give a specific narrator unique syntax. Maybe one character is the ghost of Oscar Wild with never-ending run-on sentences. Just be sure to not go too overboard and compromise the integrity of your story.

In the book A Lesson Before Dying, a somewhat illiterate, underprivileged and undereducated minor has been given a mentor, a teacher, before they face the death penalty. At the end of the book, you read all of the letters they wrote to their teacher. There’s misspellings everywhere, almost no punctuation, and long, rambling sentences.

It’s heartbreaking. The subject matter is heavy and horrible, yes, but it’s the choice to write with such poor English that has a much bigger impact than perfect MLA format.

How to implement these details

Most of these, in the written medium, need only show up once or twice before your audience notices and wonders why they’re there. Most fall squarely under character design, which falls under exposition, and should follow all the exposition guidelines.

These details exist to be random and fluffy, but they can’t exist randomly within the narrative. If you want to have your character be superstitious, pick a relevant time to include that superstition.

Others, like ongoing speech habits or movements, still don’t overuse, especially if they’re unique. A character might like to sit backwards in a chair, but if you mention that they’re doing it every single time they sit down, your audience will wonder what’s so important and if the character is unwell.

And, of course, you can let these traits become thematically important, like a superstition being central to their personality or backstory or motivation. These all serve the same purpose of making your character feel like a real person instead of just a “character”.

Just think about tossing in a few random details every now and then and see what happens. One tiny sentence can take a background character and make them candidates for the eventual fandom’s fan favorite. Details like these turn your work from “This a story, and these are the characters who tell it” into “these are my characters, and this is their story.”

#writing advice #character design #writing tips #writing resources #exposition #writing tools #writing a book

[opencharacters]

Copyright Smuggling: Doctor Who

I've talked in the past about how The Doctor not having a name or permanent appearance is very easily molded to be put into your own derivative fiction.

Even so, perhaps you want to incorporate more whovian elements into your story. While things like the Daleks are obviously off the table, there are characters and enemies that are public domain in the whoniverse that are ripe for the picking.

I'm linking pages to the public domain versions of these characters. But have listed here where they show up in the Doctor Who expanded universe.

Cernunnos - Leader of the Original Mammoths (proposed identity of "the Enemy" from the War in Heaven) appeared first in the Faction Paradox books The Book of the War.

Doctor Omega - 1906 novel about a scientist who builds a machine that can travel through time and space. He's similar enough to be able to be molded into the role of the Doctor.

Dorian Gray - Character from the Bernice Summerfield audio drama "Shades of Gray" that has similar abilities of eternal youth as the literary character we know. He eventually got his own Big Finish audio drama series The Confessions of Dorian Gray

Ganieda - Said to be Merlin's sister in the short story A Honeycomb of Souls.

Hastur the Unspeakable - Fenric according to the novel All-Consuming Fire

Merlin - From various accounts is suggested to be an incarnation of the doctor, including the aforementioned A Honeycomb of Souls

Nyarlathotep - Suggested to be the doctor in the novel The Death of Art

Sherlock Holmes - According to The Book of the Enemy during the War in Heaven although he was a real person in the whoniverse his life got erased and turned into fiction

Thomas Carnacki - Has met the second doctor as well as Vastra, Jenny Flint, and Strax according to The Screaming Ceiling audio and the Foreign Devils novel

Yog-Sothoth - The Great Intelligence according to the book Millennial Rites

In addition to this there's also the Land of Fiction which is a realm canon to the doctor who series filled with public domain characters

Go forth and write your Doctor Who pastiches, nothing is stopping ya!

#doctor who #copyright #dweu #public domain #writing #writing tips #the doctor #sherlock holmes #cthulhu mythos

[re-dracula]

Bonus 2: Victorian Class and Gender

Hannah sits down with Dr. Jen Sudgen to discuss the ideals Victorian Class and Gender, and how they come across in Dracula. This interview contains spoilers for Dracula (and we're talking last-page-of-the-book spoilers!), so if that's something you care about you should save this bonus for later. This episode was hosted by Hannah Wright and edited by Tal Minear. The transcript was done by Rook Mogavero.

Transcript here.

Here are links to the various papers, articles, and media Dr. Sugden referenced:

"The Angel in the House" by Coventry Patmore

The Royal Family in 1846 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Dracula and Women" by Carol Senf in the Cambridge Companion to Dracula

"The New Aspect of the Woman Question" by Sarah Grand

"What It Will Soon Come To" in Punch Magazine

"The New Woman" in Punch Magazine

"Passionate Female Literary Types" in Punch Magazine

Dr. Sugden's underrated Victorian fiction list: the works of Anthony Trollope, the works of Wilkie Collins, and Lady Audley's Secret

Here are audio dramas you should listen to:

Check out Victoriocity, a detective comedy podcast! It's set in even Greater London, 1887. In this vast metropolis, Inspector Archibald Fleet and journalist Clara Entwhistle investigate a murder, only to find themselves at the centre of a conspiracy of impossible proportions. You'll hear our beloved Jonathan Harker (Ben Galpin) in it!

Check out Fawx & Stallion, a comedy podcast about rivalry, friendship, fame, and occasionally about solving mysteries! It's set in London, 1889. When the residents of 221B Baker Street leave town for the weekend to solve one of their most famous cases, no one is left to clear a poor housekeeper’s name of a crime she didn’t commit. Well, no one except for their neighbors at 224B…

#re: dracula #bonus episode

[theinquisitxor]

April 2024 Reading Wrap Up

I read 6 books in April, which is honestly more than I thought I would get to at the beginning of this month. April's are historically slow reading months for me, and while this was another slower month, I'm happy with what I read. Audiobooks really saved me this month! I read 2 fantasy books, 3 nonfiction (who am I?) and 1 literary fiction.

1.The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown (3.5/5 stars) This was an anticipated new release for me, and I was very intrigued by the premise. This was enjoyable, but there were some things I didn't really care for. This was engaging and easy to read, and if you liked The Cartographers or The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, I think you'd like this. Adult low fantasy

2.The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann (4/5 stars) I really enjoy survival stories and seafaring stories, so I knew I was going to like this. The audiobook was great, and I liked how this was a shorter nonfiction. I'm not sure how much I like the narrative nonfiction that Grann writes in. Either way, this was a super engaging and entertaining read. Nonfiction audiobook

3.Atomic Habits by James Clear. I was not planning on reading this book in April, but I randomly go interested in it. Overall enjoyable, and interesting to see how we structure our lives around habits.

4.Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women's History of the World by Rosalind Miles (4/5 stars) I read this 80s feminist nonfiction on audio, and while this could get pessimistic and difficult, I found it to be an engaging read with flashes of humor throughout. I would be interested to see what this book would be like published in the 2020s vs the 1980s. Nonfiction audiobook

5.The Bloody Throne (Hostage of Empire 3) by SC Emmett (5/5 stars) This was the fantastic conclusion to one of my favorite new series. Everything came together in this book and delivered an ending well worth the series. I wasn't sure how the series would end, but it was satisfying and bittersweet. I'm going to be talking about this series for a while. Adult fantasy

6. The Wall by Marlen Haushofer (4.5/5 stars) This is a translated dystopian fiction book about a women who is stuck behind a wall while the rest of the world as ended. She only has a cat, dog, and cow as her companions. She must learn to survive and cope with loneliness. I deeply enjoyed this novel, and found many passages that really stuck with me. Parts of this book got me very emotional.

That's it for April! I'm hoping for a strong reading month this May and summer!

May TBR:

The Familiar by Lehigh Bardugo

The Winners (Beartown 3) by Fredrik Backman

The Language of Trees: A rewilding of literature and landscape

Desert Solitare by Edward Abby

Brave the Wild River (nonfiction audiobook)

The Hedgewitch of Fox Hall by Ana Bright

Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland

The Witch Collector by Charissa Weaks (my Random TBR Pick for May)

#reading wrap up #april 2024 reading wrap up #the book of doors #gareth brown #the wager #who cooked the last supper #rosalind miles #the bloody throne #hostage of empire #SC Emmett #the wall marlen haushofer #my post

[weaselandfriends]

Web Original, Recently Witnessed

In a previous post, I mentioned some web fiction I'd recently read. This time, I'll highlight some web original content outside of the literary sphere. While I have some experience with literature, I'm completely untalented in other mediums, so my assessment of this content is no better than a layman's. However, I still thought it worth highlighting.

1. Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History by Kevin Perjurer (Defunctland)

Perjurer has been putting out excellent documentary-style content on theme parks and their rides for years now, but while his production quality is consistently high, his videos often live or die based on the core level of interest his subject engenders. For instance, his video on notoriously awful ride Superstar Limo (with a general focus on notoriously awful theme park California Adventure) is an incredible watch, while his video on a random assortment of small, local Santa Claus theme parks across America isn't quite so compelling. He's no Jon Bois (of 17776 fame), a documentarian capable of rendering extraordinary seemingly the most banal of subjects.

Journey to EPCOT Center, however, is unlike anything Perjurer has ever put out before. It completely eschews Perjurer's typical voiceover narration style of documentary, instead stitching together music, audio of news reports and press releases, and dramatizations of Disney boardroom meetings to create a seamless narrative. Beyond the unique style and presentation of the piece, however, is the incredible artistry on display in several of the segments. Some of the biggest highlights:

12:00 to 16:14: A neon light animation detailing the vision and plan of EPCOT, which gradually transforms into a 3D map that the camera travels through

16:52 to 21:03: An impressively animated series of newspaper articles detailing Disney's struggles finding signatories for its world showcase; the video comments indicate some shots of the moving newspapers were created practically, with Lego conveyer belts

38:46 to 44:27: A puppet show dramatizing Disney's efforts to seek international sponsors

There are numerous other impressive, inventive, and creative segments as well, with unique animation and visual styles. The video rarely repeats the same trick twice.

The funniest part is that all of this is in service to a topic I would personally consider quite boring. EPCOT is such a Disney-buffs-only type of subject, neither Disney's greatest success nor its greatest failure. The incredible skill on display is all aimed toward depicting a fairly corporate, backroom-style story about men in suits trying to secure handshakes. There's an almost propagandistic feel to it, an extolling of capitalist bigwigs that feels completely at odds with Perjurer's visionary style.

In a way, it's reminiscent of United Passions, a FIFA propaganda film meant to make its executives look good in the wake of real-life controversy. On the other hand, though, Perjurer's exceedingly loving depiction is appropriate for Walt Disney's final passion project, Disney himself being a man who, for better or for worse, was as much of a dreamer and visionary as he was a cutthroat businessman. EPCOT, as the video tells you, was designed as an optimistic reaffirmation of the American free enterprise project, and as a complement to that vision Perjurer's video could not be more accurate. Unlike United Passions, this video was also made independently, not financed by Disney to make itself look good in the eyes of the public. Metatextually, it poses a fascinating question: Is there value to corporate art? Can a corporation create something of true beauty? Perjurer's video suggests it can.

2. The Mind Electric Animation - Lonely-Man's Lazarus by Daisy

Perjurer is probably familiar to many of my readers, so this next entry is more obscure, something I stumbled on almost by chance.

A friend of mine is big into animatics, which as far as YouTube is concerned is about setting music (usually Broadway or Disney musical numbers) to sketchy, storyboard-style art. I'm not a major Broadway fan in general, so these have never appealed to me much, although I've been shown several.

This one, though, rather generically titled "The Mind Electric Animation" (after the song it features), caught me entirely off guard. The first notable element is that the animation is monstrously more fluid than a typical animatic, though it retains the sketchy/storyboard art style and traditional animatic sensibilities toward character design (very "Tumblr," if I had to put a word on it). Secondly, the music, rather than being from Hamilton or Heathers or some other popular musical, is from the itself rather arcane album Hawaii: Part II by Joe Hawley (under the name ミラクルミュージカル). Hawaii: Part II is, as far as I can tell, a concept album detailing the story of a man who goes insane after his girlfriend is murdered (possibly by himself), with a strange secondary subtext of possibly being metaphorical for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The lyrics are certainly open to interpretation.

The animatic combines these elements with heavy inspiration from a different concept album, potentially the most famous one ever made: Pink Floyd's The Wall, with specific nods to the film adaptation's animations for The Trial and Empty Spaces. There is no skimping on detail, with some sequences absolutely bursting with bizarre visuals. The ultimate result is absolutely trippy, abstract, and surreal, which are some of my favorite things for something to be.

Regardless, it's an impressive work of animation for a single person to make; the video description states it took 15 months, which is more time than I've spent on any one of even my longest works. The creator themselves is somewhat enigmatic from what I could tell, despite having a whole host of social media platforms. They seem to be working on a web comic, but trying to find any concrete information on what it is actually about was difficult. Nonetheless, whoever made this certainly has an abundance of creative vision and talent. Though I've seen skilled artists sit down to create something narrative before and flub it utterly (an example that comes to mind is Ava's Demon), so who knows if what is on display in this animation will make it into that web comic. Even if it doesn't, the animation by itself is incredible, so check it out.

3. The Skibidi Toilet podcast guys are for real by Mikhail Klimentov / Built By Gamers in general

Built By Gamers has been on my radar for some time (ever since seeing this video) as an absolute masterclass of performance art. The voice, the emphasis, the little oddities here and there, the way the two hosts so often ignore direct questions posed by one another, it creates something inimitably uncanny. This interview by Mikhail Klimentov, who I am familiar with primarily through his esports journalism, only adds new layers to what was already a convoluted question of irony and sincerity.

There are a few concrete insights, most shockingly to me that the creators of Built By Gamers (Todd Searle and Peter Armendariz) got their start in esports. But despite the title that seems to clearly suggest their videos are sincere, the actual interview is far less conclusive. For instance, this exchange:

It's evident to me that you guys take this very seriously. You feel as though there's a lot of craft behind these videos. Tell me about the stuff that a viewer won't see: the behind-the-scenes stuff that you're thinking about as you're working on these videos. Armendariz: A lot of people think it's ChatGPT. That's a big thing that people think that we do. But a lot of it is actually well crafted, through hours — like we'll spend hours on one script and really thinking about how we can get someone to react. It doesn't matter if it's them laughing, if it's them feeling sad, or them hating on one of us, our main goal in our videos is to get someone to feel something. The hard truth is that people don't realize how many hours we spend on one video to get that one line. I think that's what people don't really understand. We’ll spend like two hours on one line. Searle: Our tone, like how we talk — it’s on purpose. I have to get into character for it. Armendariz: Todd has a voice, bro! He didn't think he'd be good at telling stories, and I have him tell every single story because he has this campfire story voice. And sometimes he'll hit a line and I'm like, “No, no, you’ve got to hit it harder.” And we'll spend like 30 minutes trying to hit the line, or hitting the hook just the right way.

Followed immediately by:

People really don't know what to make of you guys. They don't have a sense of whether you're serious, whether you're in on the joke, whether there's a joke at all. I'm curious if you can clear that up. Searle: We want it to be everything you just said. We want people to think we're serious. We want camps of people who don't think we're serious. People who think that we're A.I. We kind of want to keep it, I guess, vague in that regard. Like we want you to believe… what we are — and that's OK. Armendariz: I think sometimes we'll play into different communities. So, like, some people will say, ‘You guys sound like you got brain surgery.’ So then we’ll make the most cringey video that's like super brain-rot, you know? We just kind of mess around and have fun.

So are they just messing around and having fun, or are they spending hours trying to nail specific lines just right? Are they sincerely trying to tell a story that gets an emotional reaction or are they just trolling, which also gets an emotional reaction? The biggest troll of the interview, targeted specifically at me, was this response:

Can you tell me what those writing principles are? Armendariz: I think a big writing principle that everyone should follow is, it's really important to show, don't tell.

People who have talked to me elsewhere know I am a massive enthusiast of the ubiquitous Mr. Beast, not necessarily because I like his content (though I do think he puts together some strong game show/Wipeout-style videos), but because of the story behind him: That he is an extreme, almost insufferable perfectionist, who analyzes video success and failure to a scientific degree, doing experiments with thumbnails, video lengths, et cetera, all to take detailed assessments of the results and perfectly calibrate his videos in mathematical fashion. It's a type of rigor that flies in the face of the casual, wastefully generous persona he cultivates in his videos proper.

I think many people have this innate idea that a work of art's quality is somehow tied to the effort expended to produce it. (Even I have it. Notice how for both of the first two entries in this post I mention the effort or time or craftsmanship of the work in question.) This is the kind of sensibility that causes a layman, who knows nothing about painting, to prefer a Caravaggio to a Rothko. But this sensibility is both conceptually and often practically wrong; Rothko, for instance, engineered his own paints, creating custom blends of materials (including non-paint material, like egg) to form paints of a perfectly specific color or gloss or sheen, a process often completely unseen by a casual glance at the finished work.

Subsequently, there's a reason they're called writer's workshops, that writing is so often described as a craft: It's an attempt to imbue writing with a sense of effort that makes it more palatable. The stereotype extends to the artist who sneers at quote-unquote "low" art, thinking "If I was willing to lower myself, I could create that slop and make millions too." In my experience, though, the people creating this "low" art are often expending absurd amounts of effort and exhibiting incredible skill to create something perfectly engineered for success. I, certainly, have found zero success in attempting to broaden my own audience, even when I make attempts at it; it's not something that's easier to do if you're just willing to try.

I also increasingly fail to believe in the stereotype of the miserable cynic artist who creates something they think is garbage because they know that'll be most popular. Those people don't last long; those who succeed in the popular sphere are people who are genuinely passionate about what they create, even if it looks like dreck to everyone else (including the millions who consume it).

I've been kicking around an idea for a story about Mr. Beast for some time now, exploring these concepts in even greater depth. That won't happen in the immediate future, but it's something to look out for.

#defunctland #kevin perjurer #lonely-man's lazarus #hawaii part ii #built by gamers #mr beast #web original

[rozmorris]

Audiobook lovers, lend me your ears

Audiobook lovers, lend me your ears

Very quickly… the audiobooks of my first two novels are now available again – My Memories of a Future Life and Lifeform Three. The links above will take you to a range of audio stores and subscription services. If they’re not yet at your usual store, they’re going through the back channels and should be visible shortly. And did you know you can get audiobooks at libraries? If you can’t see them…

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#audiobook release #audiobooklove #audiobooks #literary fiction in audio #new audiobook

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: Graphic Audio – Network Effect by Martha Wells

Series: MurderBot Diaries #5Author: Martha Wells Find it on Goodreads | Graphic Audio | More MurderBot Graphic Audio Review: I’m impressed by how quickly Graphic Audio is getting through The MurderBot Diaries. Admittedly, I still don’t love all the choices for the voices, but I am thrilled with yet another version of MurderBot to dive into. Network Effect marks the fifth adventure in the…

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#Book #Book Box #Book Review #Books #Fiction #Graphic Audio #Literary #Literature #Martha Wells #Murderbot Diaries #Murderbot Diaries 5 #Network Effect #Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries) #Network Effect by Martha Wells #Review #Science Fiction #Science Fiction Review

[pilcrowtudinous]

Contrary to popular belief, current English/writing teachers who are also former indie booksellers don't exclusively read fancy ~literary~ books (although literary fiction versus genre fiction is also a whole complex convoluted conversation), nor do semi-reformed children's and YA book experts only read stuff for The Youth™.

My new(ish)found Trek enthusiasm had already wormed its way into audio drama (I'm a Saffi girlie - obviously No Man's Land was a no-brainer) and books by one of my faves (Kate Mulgrew memoirs, obviously) – but taking the step into good old fashioned books took a little longer.

And yet in the past month-ish I've eagerly taken in three Una McCormack novels. 'The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway', 'The Way To The Stars' (Tilly is maybe my launching point into Trek character adoration?? Better examine that later...) and most recently, 'Second Self'.

I knew most of the key plot points already (like I said, Saffi girlie) BUT it was such a delight to read and what a way to fill in some of the missing pieces from on-screen storytelling.

And it helped to finally have context for the I ❤️ Paris shirt references.

Anyway this is just your little reminder that 'tie-in' books to your favourite franchises can be not just fun but REALLY GOOD.

#star trek picard #raffi musiker #saffi #raffi x seven #star trek #second self #una mccormack #star trek books

[skippyv20]

Authors who lie = Fraud = Liability = Litigation

Hi Skippy & Friends-Pilgrim checking in on this crisp, sunny Sunday morning with a few factoids to help us understand JH and ILBW’s new legal mess. Penguin Random House is continuing to sell Spare advertising"…For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.“ Oh Ohhhh…It even says about the audio book, "Written by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex …” The fawning by literary critics and TV shows when it came out is laughable now.

Here is a solid legal note from Sidebar Saturdays, “where the practice of law meets the profession of writing. We are a group of attorneys with a wide range of legal experience who write thrillers, mysteries, and works of non-fiction.” This next quote from them applies to writing an autobiography which is what JH did. No wonder the top ghost writer threw in the towel knowing the rules and legal ramifications of the industry, refusing to get caught up in their relentle$$ need for revenge.

“Consumer Fraud and Breach of Warranty -Fake memoirs and fraudulent autobiographies happen. Just check out this long list on Wikipedia if you need examples. A writer who lies about stories or events which are later discovered to be false runs a high risk of being sued, usually in a class action lawsuit by readers claiming to have been deceived and possibly by the publisher for breach of warranty in the publishing agreement, as well as suffering public disgrace.While most cases of fraud due to authors falsify accounts of their own lives are settled or withdrawn before ever making it to court, no one needs that sort of hassle. Granted, most memoirs and autobiographies have numerous falsehoods and inaccuracies. Memory is a sketchy thing sometimes. But willfully lying about one’s life has legal consequences. Avoid fabrication. You do not want to endure the litigation nightmare that James Frey did, nor do you want to subject your publisher to such liability either (or be on the hook for your publisher’s damages and legal fees because you breached your promise to tell the truth).”

One of the examples in the Wikipedia list is fascinating, involving none other than Oprah! “James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, Doubleday Books (a division of Random House) (2003) is a bestselling memoir in which the author created and exaggerated significant details of his drug addiction and recovery. The author appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in September 2005, the book became an Oprah’s Book Club selection. However, when the book’s authenticity was called into question, the author and publisher Nan Talese were invited back and publicly scolded by Winfrey in a live face-to-face confrontation. The media feasted over the televised showdown. David Carr of the New York Times wrote, "Both Mr. Frey and Ms. Talese were snapped in two like dry winter twigs.”[37] “Oprah annihilates Frey,” proclaimed Larry King.[38] New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote, “It was a huge relief, after our long national slide into untruth and no consequences, into Swift boating and swift bucks, into W.’s delusion and denial, to see the Empress of Empathy icily hold someone accountable for lying,”[39] and the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen was so impressed by the confrontation that he crowned Winfrey “Mensch of the Year.”[40]“

Will she do the same thing now? LOL. Over and out for now…

Fantastic post dear Pilgrim!  Thank you so much!😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[parallel-awhite]

Bluebeard's Castle / a novel by Anna Biller

I first encountered polymath auteur/cinéaste Anna Biller when she screened her Cal Arts thesis film Three Examples of Myself as a Queen (1994) at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice, California. The film was a tour-de-force - a straight-faced hilarious surreal camp fantasy musical that Biller wrote, starred in, directed, costumed, composed and set-designed. Around that time I was also lucky enough to catch her live stage production, The Lady Cat, in which she starred as a be-whiskered furred sexy feline. Those glorious offerings have since been followed by films such as The Hypnotist (2001), A Visit from the Incubus (2001), Viva (2007) and The Love Witch (2016), each of which has been a gleaming iconic/iconoclastic constellation in the Anna Biller firmament.

Now, years later, I've just finished the audio version of Biller's debut novel, Bluebeard's Castle (Verso Fiction, 2023). Fascinating, complex and interwoven with stealth historic, cinematic and literary hat-tips, the novel absolutely felt like an Anna Biller production. Biller's indelible mise en scène over the years has been so gloriously signature with its unapologetic embrace of nostalgic high fashion and cinematic kitsch that the novel unspooled in my head as a dazzling film punctuated by bits of quintessential Biller-esque theatrical side-business: naked men painted white posing as statues; costumed dancers performing a sensual pas-de-deux between a caterpillar and a butterfly.

The book is a true-to-form romance novel that follows the erotic evolution of romance novelist Judith as she is drawn ever deeper into the gravitational pull of a devilishly handsome cad. But Biller subverts the genre by confronting the reader with the nightmarish horror of the narcissistic demonic, all the while seducing us with inescapable eroticism, daring us not to turn the page (or keep listening to the audio - convincingly read with Gothic intensity by Samantha Hydeson).

The juxtaposition of romance novel genre and rigorous razor-sharp psychological insight of Bluebeard's Castle made my head spin. In vivid Biller-esque fashion, the dark momentum of the work made me feel like I was being strangled with a gold satin cord and lowered into a red velvet lined coffin in a symbolic death. This is a filmmaker's novel with big dreamlike technicolor impact and Hitchcock-like precision.

I read somewhere that Biller had originally pitched Bluebeard's Castle as a film and, rather than wait for the capricious wheels of cinematic fate to spin in her favor, took to the novel form and made it happen.

Here's holding out hope that this scintillating work gets a green light. Would be epic.

#novel #literature #anna biller #cinema #film #subversive #fiction #genre #feminist