After 20+ years of narrating books written by others, I’m thrilled to announce that I am writing my first book!
I’ll share more as I continue with this project.
Authors
Change Starts With Your Thoughts and Words
I can vividly remember feeling discouraged, angry, and upset about things — especially career objectives — that didn’t happen when or how I hoped they would, or even at all. I know I wasted incredible time and energy during my IRS years of desperately wanting the life I now have and feeling extremely frustrated about not having it.
Rather than making New Year’s resolutions that were quickly abandoned, I’ve absorbed and applied a few guiding principles and actions over many years. Changing my thoughts and words have made a dramatic positive difference in my overall happiness and throughout my life.
[Read more…] about Change Starts With Your Thoughts and Words
Living with No Regrets
A few days ago, I happened to see this tweet from @CeliaBedelia:
My daughter asked, “Do you ever have any regrets, Mom?” And while I know she was asking this question on a philosophical level, my mind immediately went to this puffin sweater I saw in Iceland. It’s been 3 years since I saw it in a shop there, & I still regret not buying it.
Her comment struck a chord with the Twitterverse. Her post received hundreds of replies about similar missed shopping opportunities and garnered thousands of likes.
I have my own story about the same sort of regret, along with some ideas about living with no regrets.
Revoked Findaway’s License to Apple for Machine Learning
Last updated 10/7/23
Update 4 added 10/7/23:
Earlier this week, Findaway finally removed the Machine Language clause from the Distribution Agreement.
As I wrote in 2021, taking steps to remove the human voice and replace it with a synthesized one destroys the art form.
I certainly do not want or intend to participate in any attempt to create artificial voices meant to replace human narrators.
However, I unknowingly may have done that very thing by choosing to distribute audiobooks through FindawayVoices.com. Today, I took action to revoke Findaway’s license to Apple to use my audiobooks for machine learning.
[Read more…] about Revoked Findaway’s License to Apple for Machine Learning
How to Download Clubhouse Replays
Last updated 10/10/23
I’ve recently enjoyed participating in several Clubhouse chats. In fact, I held an Ask Me Anything on the site on 9/16/22 to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of NarratorsRoadmap.com.
If you click the link above, you’ll see it goes to an Evernote page that has the Clubhouse graphic and audio recording of the chat, as well as an AI-generated transcript from Sonix.ai. (Please see the additional comments about the transcript in the notes below.)
When creating an open Clubhouse room, you can choose to turn on Replays. The Replay is created automatically once you open the room and will be available on Clubhouse until you delete it. Replays let your audience hear the discussion at a later time, share the link to the chat on and off Clubhouse, skip to the next speaker, and make 30-second clips.
Just as — perhaps even more — importantly, Replays can be re-purposed in other ways, such as in part or whole on other social media sites. You know I LOVE to re-purpose content! For instance, I could transcribe one or more recordings and copy my words to a blog article. I’ve also extracted clips to make audiograms to promote the replay in between live events. I’m thrilled to announce that my Clubhouse shows are available on NarratorsRoadmap.com with AI-generated transcripts and on podcast platforms like Apple and Amazon/Audible!
Much More Than “Just Reading”
An author wrote to me this week because her publisher sent her a list of items to be done before they could produce the audiobook. She wanted to know if these requests were typical. She complained that the publisher is only uploading the audiobook files and taking her royalties, but she had to design the cover and market the audiobook. She concluded, “I feel I’m doing all the work for someone to just read my book out loud.”
I’ll answer her question, but, more importantly, I also want to address the erroneous statement that the narrator is “just reading the book out loud.”
