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1/25/21

My Latest, Totally Sporadic Update

 Yeah, I said in a post below that my blog was moribund... and then it was (perhaps) getting a new start... but really, let's stick with moribund. I'm not a writer, or the long file I maintain of story ideas would be filled with stories, instead.


But here I am in 2021, ten months of social isolation behind me, and, despite promises of vaccine within the next month, probably looking at months and months more. So I've spared a thought toward my lovely and faithful LibriVox listeners and want to say "thanks" again for making me an international recording star! At the end of 2020, you've downloaded my 78 major solo works (through LibriVox or our vault, archive.org) 28.5 million times!


Lest the exclamation marks make you fear I'm getting a fat head, I'll note that my commercial works collectively have sold about 5,000 copies. So on average, between my free (FREE!!!) Librivox recordings and my paid work, the value of a book narrated by me is pretty close to nothing. I actually took that hint some years back and stopped doing commercial work after 2015.


Some of you may be confused by my assertion that most of my recordings are free. I know of at least four companies that took selected recordings of mine (and other respectable LV narrators), stripped out the LibriVox statements from each chapter, put a new cover on the books, and sold them on Audible. One of these companies even passed the narrations through a filter to change/disguise the voices, and made up the names of the narrators who supposedly produced them. I hope you didn't get my work through that route.


Why don't we stop these pirates, you wonder? Well, they're not pirates, really. Actually, what they do is within the letter of the law. When we record for LibriVox, we give up ALL rights in the recordings. That's right - even the right to have the work attributed to us. I think it's scurrilous to sell on Audible what we produce for free on LibriVox, but it's certainly legal.


NOT coincidentally, that's why we only read works in the public domain. We can't just choose to read a copyrighted work and post it; that's against copyright law. So, LibriVox titles also are free from pesky legal issues from the writers' point of view, too.


Hey, I got a message some years back from a pair of professors who were trying to build new synthetic voices for people who have lost their voiceboxes through accident or surgery. They said they had used several of my books to feed their algorithms, for they were attempting to teach artificial voices to modulate naturally. They invited me to read scripts for them to create an artificial voice that sounds like me.  I was flattered... but declined. Their organization proposed to sell these artificial voices to patients that needed them, and I didn't feel like doing the work for them so they could make money. LibriVox and retirement both make me inclined to donate my time and experience where needed or wanted. (That organization is still around and doing well; I get occasional updates from them.)


My main blog details that I also have taken up board game design. When I get an idea, I write a 2-3 page design document that lays out what I know already of how it will work. I gravitate to whatever idea draws me most at the time (usually the most recent) and work on fleshing it out. I'll make a paper prototype and test my rules. When I think I have a solid design, I'll work up all the art and send it to a publisher to make a single copy. Then, my family and local game buddies are invited to play. So far, they have put up with 44 different games! I have another in artwork now.


So these board games have been competing with narrating. And so have photography, and image photoshopping, and yes, game playing! But I did restart my LibriVoxing after a couple years of trying to break into the commercial market.  So, the listing below will bring this part of my blog up-to-date.


The Black Arrow, by Robt. L. Stevenson.       I find I like Stevenson's work quite a lot, even the ones like The Ebb Tide, which I narrated some time back, that no one's ever heard of! I've also done Treasure Island and Kidnapped, if you're looking for suggestions you have heard of.

The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas.     LV's first version of this, a collaborative work, had 10 chapters I narrated, and I finally decided I ought to do the complete book!

The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran.      I had always heard great things of this work; they were warranted!

Blake of the "Rattlesnake", by Fred Jane.     I had read an article about books published around 1895-1900 that attempted to kick the British Admiralty into the modern era, by writing about sudden wars with European powers that left the Royal Navy baffled and powerless. (The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, also available on LV, is one such.) Fred Jane's book is one of those. Jane went on to found the magisterial annual review of the world's navies, usually known simply as "Jane's".

When We Were Very Young, by A.A. Milne.      As a great fan of Pooh 'n Piglet 'n friends, I delved into this gentle childrens book... which isn't about Pooh 'n Piglet 'n friends, but does mention a Pooh.

Americans All - Immigrants All, by The U.S. Department of the Interior.     Listening to all the talk about the US-Mexico Wall made me want to hear another perspective on immigration. Actually, one of my commercial readings, No One Is Illegal, by Davis & Chacon, had already given me a background in Mexican immigration; the Dept. of Interior's book looked at immigration from around the world.

The Mark of Zorro, by Johnston McCulley.     I was a fan of the Disney TV series Zorro many decades ago, and this was a popular part of the source material. McCulley wrote a number of other books on Zorro, largely not yet in public domain.

From the Earth to the Moon, by Jules Verne.      This was one of my first exposures to science fiction, and the idea of shooting men to the Moon with a gigantic cannon really captured my young interest. So, unlike most of my narrations, I had already read the book before narrating it, albeit almost 60 years before!

Round the Moon, by Jules Verne.      As of this date, this is in progress and half done. It's the sequel to the previous book and describes what happens when you miss the Moon with your gigantic cannon!


Although it's not yet started, I have firmly decided my next book will be The Lost Horizon, by James Hilton. This book was widely acclaimed in  the 30's and has just hit the public domain. Heard of Shangri-La? It's from this book!

After that, I have a yen to do the Federalist Papers so I can get a broader perspective on the Founding Fathers and what they hoped they were creating when they created our Republic.

UPDATE: It turned out The Lost Horizon is not yet PD, so I regretfully gave up on it. The Federalist Papers are complete - running to about 24 hours!

2/14/16

New Book Out

My latest solo audiobook has now been published - it's "Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost Hunter" by Elliott O'Donnell.

I have to admit that this is quite a departure for me. I'm a skeptic, and the one ghost tour I took (in Savannah, GA) was far from convincing to me.  But I recognize there are many folks who are eager for news of the supernatural... so have at it!

9/1/15

A New Start

This page has been essentially moribund for a while.
1) I'm not motivated to tend to a blog frequently.
2) I was testing the waters on the professional side.
3) I took a year off from narrating anything, while my family made an extended transition from one residence to another.  (Also, I admit I'm really enjoying my newest hobby of designing board games!)

But matters are conspiring to bring me back to the fold!
1) Tending the blog is one thing, but the narrations are the thing, right?
2) There's no money in audiobook narration (unless you're Scott Brick).
3) I'm back! I finally set up a studio in my new house, and I did 2 Andre Norton books for Bee Audio.  But I'm not as isolated from neighborhood noise as I'd like, having been interrupted during recording by everything from sanitation trucks to rain on the roof. So I'm eyeing a small interior closet and planning how to kit it out.

You, my LibriVox listeners, have now amassed TEN MILLION downloads of my solo books ( http://techsmiths.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-long-time-coming.html )!
THANK YOU!

I have always enjoyed comments from the thank-a-reader feature on LibriVox. I'm sure I speak for all LV narrators in saying that positive feedback is a great motivator to keep working. I want more, and I'm planning to earn them.

So I'm gonna make a new start. Back to LibriVox! Stay tuned...

8/28/14

Most Recently Published

Updated Aug 28, 2014

In April I completed "The Burial of the Guns" by Thomas Nelson Page. This was a collection of six short stories (well, maybe not so short: two ran an hour each, and one was two hours) that were pitch-perfect cameos of certain people during and immediately after the American Civil War. "Burial" had spent a long time on my "titles I'd like to record someday" list, and I finally crossed it off. I enjoyed it, and I hope you will too.

More recently. I've been participating more in the poetry side of LibriVox, in collaborative works. And... have you listened to our crazy 9th Anniversary Song??  Ruth Golding rewrote the words to "Funiculi, Funicula" by Luigi Denza to explain our mission in a salute called, "LibriVox is Nine!" Then she accepted recordings from all & sundry, piecing them together to get the semi-coherent, certainly funny version you can hear here:

http://ia902303.us.archive.org/17/items/librivox_9thanniversary_1408_librivox/9anni_99_librivoxis9_128kb.mp3

We even had some canines weigh in at important points! I can hear my voice at several points; can you? (Hint: NOT the dogs!)

I also recently did some English as a Second Language (ESL) work for a group of Asian students in Australia. I believe this was the third time I was requested to record ESL selections for people outside the States.
My summary of LibriVox work to date.

Updated August 28, 2014


Solo Books (in order of completion):
- The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
- The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)
- Uncle Remus (Joel Chandler Harris)
- The Lost Princess of Oz (Baum)
- Little Wars (Wells)
- The Mysterious Island (Verne)
- How to Live On Twenty-Four Hours a Day (Bennett)
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
- New Discoveries at Jamestown (Cotter & Hudson)
- Tarzan of the Apes (Burroughs)
- Star Born (Norton)
- Greylorn (Laumer)
- The First Men in the Moon (Wells)
- The Lost World (Doyle)
- Hans Brinker (Dodge)
- The Master of the World (Verne)
- The Lone Star Ranger (Grey)
- Sense and Sensibility (Austen)
- Diary of a U-Boat Commander (King-Hall)
- Around the World in 80 Days (Verne)
- Captains Courageous (Kipling)
- The Memoirs of Col. John S. Mosby (Mosby)
- The Point of Honor (Conrad)
- This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald)
- Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (various)
- Kidnapped (Stevenson)
- Green Mansions (Hudson)
- Tom Swift and His War Tank (Appleton)
- The Pathfinder (Cooper)
- The Poison Belt (Doyle)
- Great Expectations (Dickens)
- Over the Top (Empey)
- The Man in the Iron Mask (Dumas)
- The House of the Seven Gables (Hawthorne)
- Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ (Wallace)
- Triplanetary (Smith)
- The Magnificent Ambersons (Tarkington)
- Nightmare Abbey (Peacock)
- Sons and Lovers (Lawrence)
- The Young Railroaders (Coombs)
-
Mate of the Ship "Pirate" (Hains)
- The Blockade Runners (Verne)
- Beasts, Men and Gods (Ossendowski)

- William Tell Told Again (Wodehouse)
The River War (Churchill) 
- The Battle of Life (Dickens)
- The Royal Book of Oz (Thompson)
- Conquest Over Time (Shaara)
- Robinson Crusoe (DeFoe)
- This World is Taboo (Leinster) (Number Fifty)
- Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung (Appleton II)
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
- The Kama Sutra (Vatsyayana)
- The White Feather (Wodehouse)
- White Fang (London)
- The Call of the Wild (London)
- Nights With Uncle Remus (Harris)
- Reminiscences of Forts Moultrie and Sumter (Doubleday)
- Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (Doubleday)
- The Time Machine (Wells)  (Number Sixty)
- The Communist Manifesto (Marx)
- The Ebb-Tide (Stevenson)
- The Adventures of Pinocchio (Collodi)
- The Calico Cat (Thompson)
- Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard (Garis)
- Treasure Island (Stevenson)
- The Burial of the Guns (Page)

Solo Shorter (non-chapter) Books:
- More Goops, And How Not To Be Them (Burgess)

- The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame)
- Floor Games (Wells)

Plays:
-
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare), voice of Theseus
- As You Like It (Shakespeare), voice of Touchstone
- The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare), voice of The Prince of Morocco
- Richard II (Shakespeare), voice of Mowbray
- The Tragedy of Macbeth, voice of Macbeth
- 1 Henry IV (Shakespeare), voice of
King Henry IV and Earl of Douglas (electronically altered)
- 2 Henry IV (Shakespeare), voice of King Henry IV
- The Taming of the Shrew, voice of Vincentio
- The Dutchess of Malfi (Webster), voice of Malatesti, 4th Officer, & 4th Madman
- Richard III (Shakespeare), voice of Henry, Earl of Richmond and voice of Lord Mayor
- Arms and the Man (Shaw), voice of Sergius Saranoff

- The New York Idea (Mitchell), voice of Phillip Phillimore
- Othello (Shakespeare), voice of Cassio 
- The Winter's Tale (Shakespeare), voice of Florizel
- Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles), voice of Theseus, King of Athens
- Henry VI, Part 1 (Shakespeare), voice of Earl of Warwick
- Mary Stuart (Schiller), voice of Earl of Kent 
- Cymbeline (Shakespeare), voice of Caius Lucius 
- The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare), voice of Falstaff

Dramatic Readings:
- 1601 (Twain), voice of Sir Walter Raleigh
- 2BR02B (Vonnegut), voice of Hospital Orderly
- The Perils of Pauline (Goddard), voice of Ben Summers
- Rinkitink in Oz (Baum), voice of Narrator for Chapter 19
- The Scarecrow of Oz (Baum), voices of The Bumpy Man and Googly-Goo
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum), voice of The Scarecrow
- Ozma of Oz (Baum), Narrator (chapter 21), voice of Tik Tok, voice of General 1
- Once On a Time (Milne), voice of King Merriwig  

- The Picture of Dorian Grey (Wilde), voices of Sir Jeffrey Clouston and The Old Gentleman
- Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival, The Belle of the Delaware (Percival), voice of Horace
- Crucial Instances (Wharton), voice of Paul Ventnor 
- Treasure Island (Stevenson), voice of Israel Hands, the coxswain

Songs:
- Hymns of the Christian Church,  My Faith Looks Up to Thee (Sung with Karen Savage)
- Hymn Collection 001, Blessed Assurance (Sung with Laurie Anne Walden) 
- Christmas Carol Collection 2009, Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming (Sung with Laurie Anne Walden)
- Christmas Carol Collection 2010, What Child Is This? (Sung with Laurie Anne Walden)
- LibriVox is Nine! (Sung with willing LV members, plus pets!)


Group Projects:
- Aesop's Fables, Collection 6 Numbers 2 & 5
- An Arthurian Miscellany, Merlin & Vivien (Sections 9 & 10)
- The Phantom of the Opera (Leroux), Chapters 24, 25, 26, Epilogue
- Around the World in Eighty Days (Verne), Chapter 13
- At the Back of the North Wind (McDonald), Chapte
rs 6, 7, 27, 28
- The Merrie Adventures of Robin Hood (Pyle), Chapters 18, 19
- The Three Musketeers (Dumas), Chapters 1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 27, 28, 41, 42, 67
- Legend Lands (Lyonesse), "The Old Woman Who Fooled the Devil"
- Le Morte D'Arthur (Malory), Book 3 Chapters 1-8
- The Iliad (Homer), Chapter 8
- Rewards and Fairies (Kipling), Section 4 "The Wrong Thing" and Section 12 "The Tree of Justice"
- The Go
lden Age (Grahame), Chapter 12
- Peter Pan (Barrie), Chapters 5, 13
- The Blue Fairy Book (Lang), "Hansel & Gretel"
- The Lilac Fairy Book (Lang), "The Stones of Plouhinec" and "The Castle of Kerglas"
- The Yellow Fairy Book (Lang), "The Witch and Her Servants" and "The Story of King Frost"
- The Red Fairy Book (Lang), "Princess Rosette" and "Jack and the Beanstalk"

- The Green Fairy Book (Lang), "The Snuff-Box" and "The Golden Blackbird"
- Tik-Tok of Oz (Baum), Chapters 12, 13, 14
- Glinda of Oz (Baum), Chapters 21, 22, 23, 24
- Tom Jones (Fielding), Chapters 12 & 13
- Tristram Shandy (Sterne), Chapter 11
- The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle, Chapters 46, 47, 48, 49
- Robin Hood (Pyle), Chapters 18 & 19
- Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts (Stockton), Chapters 5, 6, 23
- Hymns of the Christian Church, The Day is Past and Over
- Science and Hypothesis (Poincare), Chapter 9 (Relative & Absolute Motion), Chapter 13 (The Calculus of Probabilities)

- Pioneers of Science (Lodge), Chapter 10 (Roemer & Bradley and The Velocity of Light)
- Le Morte D'Arthur (Malory), Chapter 42
- In Search of the Castaways (Verne), Chapters 25 & 26
- Nostromo (Conrad), Chapter 2
- Ivanhoe (Scott), Chapter 31

- Waverley, Vol.1 (Scott), Sections 6 & 7
- Famous Sea Fights (Hale), Chapter 14 Part 3
- Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Fox), Chapters 2,5
- The Wars of the Jews (Josephus), Book 6, Ch1
- Through the Looking Glass (Carroll), Chapters 1,4
- Grimm Tales Made Gay (Carryl), Chapters 15-20
- The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Raspe), Chapters 9-14
- Steep Trails (Muir), Chapters 8, 20

- Travels in Alaska (Muir), Chapter 12
- Topsy-Turvy (Verne), Chapters 4, 5
- Amadis of Gaul (de Lobeira), Chapter 6

- Robbery Under Arms (Boldrewood), Chapter 12
- The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol 1a (Davis), Section 11
- The Scouts of Stonewall (Altsheler), Sections 25 & 26
- The Guards Came Through, and Other Poems, (Doyle) Sec. 7, 10, 12

Short Stories:
- The Hoard of the Gibbelins (Dunsany)
- The War Prayer (Twain)
- Bread Overhead! (Leiber)
- The Wogglebug Book (Baum)
- And All the Earth a Grave (MacApp)
- Gambler World (Laumer)
- Blessed Are the Meek (Edmondson)
- A List to Starboard (F H Smith)
- The Thin Santa Claus (Butler)
- Pigs Is Pigs (Butler)

- Her Lover (Gorky)
- Mother of Five (Harte) 
- Last Revel in Printz Hall (Skinner), in PD Goth
- Edward Randolph's Portrait (Skinner), in PD Goth
- Headless Skeleton (Skinner), in PD Goth
- Werewolves of Detroit (Skinner), in PD Goth
- The Treasure Ship (Munro)

Essays, Histories, Other Nonfiction:
- Yes, Virginia, There IS a Santa Claus (Church)
- The First Battle of Bull Run (Beauregard)
- Different Degrees of Enjoyment Presented by the Contemplation of Nature (Humboldt)
- The United States Bill of Rights
- Prohibition (Swinnerton)
- Body-Painting of the Orinoco Indians (Humboldt)

- The Death of Napoleon (de Bourrienne)

Speeches:
- The Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln)
- Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death! (Patrick Henry)
- Report on the Battle of Balaclava (Earl of Lucan)
- Tariffs or Taxation (Abraham Lincoln)
- We Shall Fight on the Beaches... (Winston Churchill)

Poetry:
- A Birthday (Rossetti)

- Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (Lindsay)
- A Channel Passage (Brooke)
- Against Indifference (Webb)

- Angler, The (Read)
- Anthem for Doomed Youth (Owen)
- A Nautical Ballad (Carryl)

- A Pinch of Salt (Graves)

- A Sad Case (Fawcett)
- At Broad Ripple (Riley)
- A Visit From St. Nicholas (Moore)
- Baby (MacDonald)

- Ballad of the Tempest (Fields)
- Beautiful Soup (Carroll)
- Betsey and I Are Out (Carleton)

- Birches (Frost)
- Briefless Barrister, The (Saxe)
- Business (Bierce)
- Catawba Wine (Longfellow)

- Chanson Automne (Verlaine) in French
- Chaos, The (Trenite)
- Choosing a Mast (Campbell)
- Concord Hymn (Emerson)
- Desert, The (Blind)

- Disagreeable Man, The (Gilbert)
- Dover Beach (Arnold)
- Down the Bayou (Townsend)
- Dulce et Decorum Est (Owen)
- Epigramme (French) (Maynard)
- Face on the Barroom Floor, The (D'Arcy)

- Faults (Teasdale)
- Fetch, The (Shorter)

- Flatting-Mill, The (Cowper)
- Foreign Lands (Stevenson)
- Garden Fairies (Marston)

- Going Down Hill on a Bicycle (Beeching)
- Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The (Wallace)
- Heaven (Brooke)

- Hidden Gems (Wilcox)
- High Waving Heather (Bronte)
- History of a Life (Cornwall)
- Home (Bronte)
- House on the Hill, The (Robinson)
- House Where We Wed, The (Carleton)
- How Betsey and I Made Up (Carleton)
- In a Garden (Lowell)
- Incontrovertible Facts (anonymous)

- In the Long Run (Wilcox)
- In the Morning of Life (Moore)
- In the Rain (Story)
- I Saw the Sun at Midnight, Rising Red (Plunkett)

- It Couldn't Be Done (Guest)
- Jabberwocky (Carroll)
- Jazz Fantasia (Sandburg)
- Je Ne Scai Quoi (Whitehead)
- Jumblies, The (Lear)
- Kitty McCrae - A Galloping Rhyme (Boake)
- Kraken, The (Tennyson)
- Kubla Khan (Coleridge)
- Last Buccaneer, The (Macauley)
- Life (Bronte)

- Life (Raleigh)
- Lines on the Mermaid Tavern (Keats)
- Lines Written in Early Spring (Wordsworth)

- Little Homer's Slate (Field)
- Love (Coleridge)

- Lydia is Gone (Reese)
- Merlin and Vivien (Tennyson)
- Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, The (Longfellow)

- Mid-Ocean in War-Time (Kilmer)
- Midsummer (Bryant)
- My Madonna (Service)
- Moon Is a Painter, The (Lindsay)

- Moth Terror (Casseres)
- Music on Christmas Morning (Bronte)

- My Heart and Lute (Moore)
- My Prime of Youth is but a Frost of Cares (Tichborne)

- Mystery, The (Dunbar)
- Nephelidia (Swinburne)
- Nippon (Noyes)
- October (Dunbar)

- Old Ireland (Whitman)
- Oh, No! Not Even When First We Loved (Moore)
- O, Southland! (Johnson)
- Phantom Wooer, The (Beddoes)
- Psalm 5 (Bible)
- Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay, The (McGonagall)

- Recuerdo (Millay)
- Remembrance (Bronte)
- Retort (Dunbar)
- Richard Cory (Robinson)
- Robinson Crusoe's Story (Carryl)
- Santa Fe Trail, The (Lindsay)
- Sea Fever (Masefield)
- Secret, The (Monkhouse)
- Snow Song (Teasdale)
- Song (Behn)

-Song of the Kicking Horse (Fort)
- Song of the Shingle-Splitters (Kendall)
- Sonnet 43 (Browning)
- Sonnet 73 (Shakespeare)
- Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare)
- Spell of the Yukon, The (Service)
- Sympathy (Dunbar)
- Through the Wood (Nesbitt)
- Ulysses (Tennyson)

- Up the Line (Carleton)
- Unconquered Dead, The (McCrae)

- Vanished Country, The (Rice)
- Village Blacksmith, The (Longfellow)
- Velvet Shoes (Wylie)
- War Is Kind (Crane)
- Wasteland, The (Eliot)
- When Stars Are in the Quiet Skies (Bulwer-Lytton)
- When We Two Parted (Byron)
- When You Are Old (Yeats)
- Who Loves the Rain (Shaw)
- You Are Old, Father William (Carroll)






5/1/14

Chalk Up Another!

Sometime in April, my audiobook "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain) became the third of mine to break the million-download mark!

Considering that mine was the second LibriVox recording of this classic, and the first one (by my colleague Annie Coleman Rothenburg) passed a million some time ago - can we infer that Mark Twain's stuff is popular?! 

2/8/14

Over the Top!

Attentive & dedicated audiobook mavens will know I published a LibriVox edition of "Over the Top" by Arthur Guy Empey about his experiences in WWI. That, however, is not what this post is about.

I keep periodic tabs on downloads of my solo audiobooks from Archive.org. My check-ins got a little more frequent as I neared a big double milestone.  Now, it's official -  My audiobooks "Great Expectations" (Dickens) and "Swiss Family Robinson" (Wyss) became the 11th and 12th LibriVox titles to reach 1,000,000 downloads at Archive.org!

9/10/13

Further Reading

We're talking your reading here, not mine.

I constructed this page as a primary link from my main page (www.techsmiths.blogspot.com) but Google traffic reports say that more people are now coming here from a direct Google search for me than are linking in from my blog.

So this post is just to let you know there's more to me than this page, if you have the interest!
My Reading Plans (updated September 10, 2013)


Recently Published:

"Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, on LibriVox.  Yes, it's the fourth version on LV (and I'm already in the version that was done as a dramatic reading), but I wanted to "talk pirate" again.  Great fun! And, of course, as I had never read the whole book before, it exposed me to Stevenson's best-known work.

Coming Up Next:

I'm at work on a read for Mike Vendetti Audiobooks: "The Red Battle Flyer" by Captain Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen. I was fascinated to discover that the legendary Red Baron had had the opportunity to write down his wartime experiences while convalescing from a serious wound. Of course, he was later shot down and killed - though, by whom has still not been determined.

This book will book-end an earlier one I produced for the same publisher: "High Adventure" by James Norman Hall, an American flyer from the same war.

I'm also in the process of qualifying for narrating at Bee Audio. Their casting department immediately accepted me, but their chief engineer is unhappy with my sound quality. I'm testing a Shure PG42 USB microphone at present - he having rejected output from a Zoom H2, a Samson CO1U, and a Blue Spark Digital.