An Interview with Doug McDonald of Voice Images

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Ed Battistella
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Doug McDonald

Doug McDonald is an independent audiobook producer and narrator in Medford, Oregon. He is a graduate of Knox College in 1970 with degree in Theater Arts and had a career in the computer software industry where, among other things he created instructional videos for customers.

Since 2017, he has been working as an audiobook narrator and producer specializing often working with authors who choose to narrate their own books. You can visit his website at voiceimages.net

Ed Battistella: Welcome, Doug. I’m curious about what an audiobook producer does? What goes into the process of making an audiobook?

Doug McDonald: Essentially an audiobook is produced by having a narrator record the print-version, usually word-for-word to match the print version. The narrator may be a professional or an author who can be engaging and easily understood, or even an amateur who is telling their own life-story. Once recording is finished an audiobook production company or producer such as myself will 1) proof the audio files to ensure they match the print version; 2) edit out mistakes, distracting noises such as mouth-clicks, bumps, thumps, etc.; 3)any sections of audio that can’t be fixed cleanly or misreads, mispronunciations, etc. that were caught in proofing are re-recorded and integrated into the previously recorded audio; 4)after proofing/editing is complete the audio is ‘mastered’ with audio software enhancement tools to even out the volume, pacing and ‘presence’ of the speaker’s voice and ensure the background sound level is not distracting; 5)and lastly, each audio file such as the Credits, Introduction, each Chapter and so on is created to industry production file specs, such as Audible or iTunes or many others require, and then uploaded to a distribution platform.

EB: How did you get into the audiobook business?

DM: In 2016 I was contemplating retiring from my job with Procare Software, where at the time I was creating instructional videos for our customers. I learned that audio quality in producing these videos was as important or more important than the video portion when it came to retention of the content. I studied how to make the audio better, which led me into the software tools that are used in audiobook production. Upon retiring, I started auditioning and got several books almost right away. I’ve been at it now for almost 6 years and love it!

EB: What services do you offer to potential clients?

DM: I offer everything described above – narration (or casting a narrator), editing, proofing, mastering, and uploading the files. I also offer extra tools for authors who want to narrate their own works, such as a memoir or personal-brand business or life-coach approach to a common problem. I have recording equipment I loan out as needed or offer suggestions on what they need to buy. I offer live direction of the author-narrator during recording to ensure consistency and engagement/energy levels, and to proof the text as they record. I then perform the production steps for the finished audio.

EB: Your company, Voice Images, specialize in working with authors who want to narrate their own work. What do they need to know about the narration process? It seems like it would be easy to flub if you are inexperienced.

DM: A great author-narrator is one who can be easily understood, has a clear approach to delivering their message, and most importantly is engaging the listener in their message! Recording technique can be taught pretty easily, but may require them to practice if they are new to it. I have found that authors who do public speaking and lectures for their books usually have the chops for an audiobook – it’s just a matter of teaching them the technical details. One caveat is that narration is physically taxing, so it’s easy to run out of steam. It takes a lot of concentration and effort. This is where live direction helps them know when to take a break and recharge.

EB: Do authors need a sound studio and special equipment?

DM: They need a consistently quiet recording space, with no distractions and good acoustics, and a good-quality microphone and computer audio interface. The recording software I have my clients use is free and I teach them how to use it. If they live in a quiet neighborhood with an isolated section of the house (perhaps a walk-in closet) where they can set up their equipment and the acoustics work, that usually works fine; if not, they can usually record at a local sound studio for a cost of around $60-$75 per hour. If they are local, I can help to set up their equipment in their own space.

EB: Are there some types of books that don’t make good audiobooks? I imagine math would be tough. I listened to a book on cosmology once and it was hard to follow.

DM: Yes! Math and science books with many graphs, charts, or complex ideas are not great candidates. Cookbooks with recipes are challenging as well. For author-narrated works, unless the author is a well-known personality or has great acting chops, I recommend they don’t try to record fiction, action- adventure, suspense/thriller, mysteries and so on that require great acting technique. But personal memoirs or poetry or personal-brand works are usually good candidates for self-narration.

EB: What do you listen to? Do you have some favorite audiobooks?

DM: I listen to all kinds of audiobooks, but usually non-fiction or well-narrated fiction, and I usually listen in the car while driving. At home, I like reading my kindle or regular paperback. In the last six months I’ve listened to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow, The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris, Educated by Tara Westover, and Becoming by Michelle Obama.

EB: How can people get in touch with you?

DM: I can be reached by email at doug@voiceimages.net or by phone at 541-840-2189. My website is voiceimages.net

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

DM: The pleasure was all mine. Thanks so much, Ed!

 

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What I’m reading: Frederick J. Newmeyer’s American Linguistics in Transition

Posted on February 28, 2023 by Ed Battistella
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One of the benefits of retirement–a permanent sabbatical–is more time to more time to read, and I’m hoping to post more reaction to what I’m reading here. Today, a snowy end to February, is American Linguistics in Transition.

When I first started teaching, one of the books that grounded me in the history of my field was Frederick J. Newmeyer’s Linguistic Theory in America: the first Quarter-Century of Generative Linguistics (Academic Press, 1980). In his new history, American Linguistics in Transition: From Post-Bloomfieldian Structuralism to Generative Grammar, (Oxford UP, 2022), he revisits some of the issues from his earlier work and extends his history of linguistic back to the period of the founding of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924 and forward through the 1980s.

The nine chapters of American Linguistics in Transition cover the founding of the Linguistic Society and the ascendancy of a distinct American tradition of methodological structuralism. These were practices and postulate largely associated with Leonard Bloomfield and Edward Sapir articulated in such works the volume Readings in Linguistic I, edited by Martin Joos (1957) and published by the American Council of Learned Society.  In addition, Newmeyer focuses on the European influence on the LSA founders, the evolving contents of the journal Language and the activities of early LSA Summer Institutes.

Newmeyer draws on material from the Linguistic Society at the University of Missouri, published reviews of key works and archives of Bernard Bloch, Charles Hockett, Franz Boas, and others.  In addition, he included personal interviews with structuralist and generativist scholars.

Central to Newmeyer’s exposition are bits of folklore that he explores and dispels, both about structuralist linguistics and about the spread of generative grammar, concluding that “the intellectual success of generative grammar in the 1970s and 1980s was not matched by the ability of its advocates to dominate the fields organs of power or secure a major share of grant funding.” (320).  Reader will find much enlightening commentary here, including Newmeyer’s observations on the extent that the structuralists went to disseminate their ideas, his commentary on the relation of military funding to linguistics research, and his documenting of some of Noam Chomsky’s conflicting comment on the publication history of his early various works.

Notable in this work is Newmeyer’s attention to the international reception of American structuralism (Ch. 2 “American structuralism and European structuralism: How they saw each other,”) and to the reception of generative linguistics (in Ch. 6 “The European reception of early transformational generative grammar,” which goes pretty much country by country.)

There are also vignettes of important historical moment in twentieth century linguistics and portraits of some of its colorful but sometimes forgotten figures. A chapter is devoted to the genesis of Readings in Linguistics I, and two chapters are devoted to the contested presidential election of 1970, and its aftermath.   Along the way are some descriptions of key players and supporting characters. H. L. Menken complains that “the Linguistic Society has given a great deal more attention to Hittite … than to the American spoken by 140,000,000-odd, free, idealistic, and more or less human Americans” (5). Charles Hockett is cited as calling generative grammar “a theory spawned by vipers” whose analyses are “worse than horoscopes.” (287). But my favorite bit of snark concerns structuralist George Trager, of whom it was said that he was “so difficult that he would even be fired from George Trager University.”  You can find out who the quote is attributed to on page 268 of American Linguistics in Transition.

 

 

 

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An Interview with Sharon L. Dean

Posted on February 13, 2023 by Ed Battistella
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Sharon L. Dean grew up immersed in the literature of New England. She taught writing and literature at Rivier University in New Hampshire, where she lived until moving to Oregon.

After giving up writing scholarly books that required footnotes, she became a writer of mysteries. Her first mystery series features retired professor Susan Warner and her second features librarian sleuth Deborah Strong. Between the two series, Dean published a stand-alone novel, Leaving Freedom. In it, thirty-year-old Connie Lewis sees only irony in the name of the town where she grew up, Freedom, Massachusetts. The novel follows Connie from Massachusetts to Florida and Oregon. A sequel, Finding Freedom, will be published by Encircle Publications in June, 2023. It will bring Connie, now eighty years old from Oregon back to Freedom.

Recently, Dean published a collection of short stories titled Six Old Women and Other Stories.

Ed Battistella: I enjoyed reading the stories in Six Old Women which all about about the secrets we keep with us as we age. What prompted you to write about secrets?

Sharon Dean: I remember that when I reached adulthood, my mother told me some of the secrets about people in the small town where I grew up. It’s said that in New England “people don’t air their dirty laundry in public.” That doesn’t mean there isn’t some lurking along with the skeleton in the closet.

EB: You mentioned that the title story, Six Old Women, came from an idea you and your college roommates once had about all living together in a lakeside commune when you were older. Are the characters based on your erstwhile roommates?

SD: Actually, we gathered on the seacoast in Maine. The houses are part of the setting of my Deborah Strong novel, Calderwood Cove. The island in Six Old Women is imagined, but I know the setting of New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee well. I like to visualize houses, so the one in Six Old Women is designed after a house where I vacationed on the Massachusetts seacoast. Characters based on my roommates? Not if I want to keep them as friends. Seriously, the characters are all imagined.

EB: You’ve written both novels and short stories. Do you have a preference for one form over the other? Or does it depend on the story?

SD: I like both. It depends on the story. Even when I was writing papers in college, my feeling was that when it’s done, it’s done. I actually have trouble writing a novel much longer than 65,000 words. I don’t like to pad my fiction.

EB: I’ve always enjoyed your mystery novels. The stories in Six Old Women aren’t mysteries but they are mysterious. Did your experience writing one type of story find its way into these, or is life just mysterious?

SD: I published an article on this in Mystery and Suspense Magazine called “The Classics are Mysteries, too” (March 28, 2022). I also recently posted a guest blog on the subject in Writers Who Kill (January 21, 2023). As different as it is from science, fiction seeks “the answer to the riddle of the universe.” Life is, indeed, mysterious.

EB: I thought of these stories as fast-paced psychological studies. How did you manage pacing as a writer?

SD: I’m glad you read them that way. I’ve always been more interested in the setting and the psychology of a character than in the plot. My wonderful critique group, Monday Mayhem, helps me move the plot along. They remind me not to over-analyze, to avoid “fact dumps,” to use dialogue. Kudos to Carole Beers, Clive Rosengren, Michael Niemann, and Jenn Ashton.

EB: Are the other stories—”Shuffleboard,” “Hardscrabble,” “Pavlov’s Puppies,” “The Man Who Loved Cribbage”–based on real incidents? New Hampshire is starting to seem like a scary place.

SD: No real incidents, but definitely real settings. They indulge my nostalgia for New England. I used to vacation with my cousin at a place where we always played shuffleboard, I skied the Hardscrabble trail on Cannon Mountain many times, and the recluses in “Pavlov Puppies” and “The Man Who Loved Cribbage” live in houses whose exteriors are much like ones in my town. Is New Hampshire scary? Not in my experience, but I confess that I was a child who imagined monsters under my bed.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

SD: Thank you for having me. I’m glad that Literary Ashland lives on this blog even though it’s no longer live on the radio.

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An Interview with John Frohnmayer, author of Blood and Faith

Posted on February 2, 2023 by Ed Battistella
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John Frohnmayer is a lawyer, writer, and arts leader who served as the fifth chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (from 1989-1992) and as the chair of both the Oregon Arts Commission and Oregon Humanities.

Born in Medford, where he now lives, Frohnmayer attended Stanford University, the Union Theological Seminary in New York and then the University of Chicago, where he studied Christian ethics. He also earned a law degree from the University of Oregon, serving as editor-in-chief of the Oregon Law Review.

His books include a memoir, Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior, a series of essays titled Out of Tune: Listening to the First Amendment, a musical comedy called SPIN! about his experiences at the NEA, and a trilogy of books on sport.

Blood and Faith, published in 2022, is his first novel.  

Ed Battistella:  How did you come up with the idea for Blood and Faith?

John Frohnmayer:  I have always been interested in the interplay between politics and religion.  As the famous theologian Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out, it is an uncomfortable interaction because religion is about absolutes and politics is about compromise (at least it is supposed to be).  Article Six of the Constitution prohibits any religious test as a qualification for any office or position of public trust.  Yet, during my tenure as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, I got a snootful of drivel from conservative religious leaders about art they perceived as being blasphemous, so I thought I would explore this issue in fiction and see what happened.

EB: I have to admit that I did not know about the Vladimir Mother of God icon.  I had to look it up and found that it was a real 12th century icon now in a Moscow museum.  It never occurred to me that such a work might be an object of fundamentalist protests.

JF:  Symbolism is the stock and trade of both art and religion.  Likewise, both religion and art go through periods of reductionism—stripping away the baggage and getting back to the fundamental essence. As examples that might prove either too much or too little, consider the Renaissance and the impressionist movements.

So in Blood and Faith, the main religious character is preaching religion as being of the word and the word alone.  As he and his followers perceive the Mother of God Icon, it is a graven image like the Biblical golden calf and, wrapping themselves in the First Amendment, they see its presence as a governmental endorsement of religion.

EB: I especially enjoyed the history of Eastern Orthodoxy and discussion of the role of icons. As a writer, how did you work through the exposition of history and the story-telling?  Other writers have told me that can be a challenge.

JF: Trying to explain or deconstruct the power of an artwork, let alone a religious artwork, is a fool’s errand (for example, one can’t say in words why a Bach chorale is inspirational).  But I have always loved both history and research.  What I found most interesting about Icons is that they play a role similar to sacraments in western religion whereby the icon is an intercessor—a window—to help the believer communicate with God. The Icon thus becomes extraordinarily powerful and I wanted to put that power in the political realm and see what happened. The results proved to be explosive.

EB: You’ve written memoir, nonfiction about the First Amendment, and books about the philosophy of rowing, ethics in golf, and the poetry of skiing, but this was your first novel.  What was the experience like for you?  Was it much different from your other literary efforts?

JF: The irony of all this is that I wrote this novel 30 years ago, just after I had written Leaving Town Alive. I showed a draft to a writer friend and he suggested that I put it in a drawer which I did for the next decade and a half.  Then I almost threw it away, but realized the conflict between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States made it more relevant today that when I was making it up.

But the short answer to your question is that I love making up the story and playing with history and life experiences such as doubt and faith.  I have already drafted a sequel to get my protagonist, Lara Cole, in some more trouble.

EB: You had a robust cast of characters: politicians, fundamentalists, lawyers, museum staff, art experts, FBI agents, assorted scoundrels, most with.  Did you base any of them on real people or simply imagineer their backstories?

JF:  All of the characters are composites of people I have known or known about, so all are thoroughly fictional, but the Judge in the trial scene is based on the Honorable Gus Solomon who sat on the Federal Bench in Oregon for 40 years and scared the pants off the lawyers who appeared before him.

EB: Blood and Faith has prompted me to want to read more about the history of Ukraine and its relation with Russian.  Any books you’d recommend?

JF:  The Art of the Icon by Paul Evdokimov is a thorough exposition of both iconography and the history of the Eastern Church.  While Rome fell in the early fifth century, not a crash bang fall, but a slow dissolution leading to the dark ages in western Europe, Constantinople soldiered on with orthodoxy until the fifteenth century and was a fascinating center of art and learning.

EB:  What are your plans for a further novel?

JF: Stay tuned.  Thanks for the interview.

 

 

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