I’m not in a position to review a book for you tonight. Instead, I am reduced to talking about what I’ve been doing. I used to do this all the time, but personal blogging doesn’t seem to be “a thing” anymore. (And with good reason, no doubt, considering the world we live in. I’ll try to avoid specifics.)

I can announce to you that I was accepted, last Thursday (as I recall) as a book narrator on Amazon ACX. ACX is a sort of hub, where authors and narrators can find one another, make deals, and launch projects. I read a book on how to get involved with ACX, and I watched hours of videos on how to work with it. Then I jumped through some procedural hoops to finally qualify for my space in the system.

I had already poked around in ACX from the author side, looking idly to see if I could find a genuine Irishman to narrate my Erling books. One of the options for payment is percentage of royalties, and I figured if I could find one who’d take that, it might be worth doing.

That didn’t work out. Turns out (as I should have guessed) that you actually need prospects of earning some kind of decent royalties before you can ask anybody to spend hours in a sound booth in hopes of a piece of the action.

But now I’m in as a narrator. The skills I learned narrating Troll Valley can now (I hope) start paying off. (TV has, I’ll admit, certain flaws. I think I’ve learned something from my mistakes.)

There’s a database in which you can search for projects where Rights Holders (RH’s, as we professionals call them) have posted openings for auditions. You download a short printed excerpt, record your best performance of it, and upload the file for review.

I have posted 4 auditions so far. One a day, more or less. I intend to continue that strategy until somebody bites or I have a stroke.

My subtle strategy is to start at the bottom. Low paying, short books, so I can get my feet wet. Dull topics that nobody else wants. My concern at this point is not to get rich, but to get started, and to supplement my retirement income. I don’t need a lot. I didn’t make a lot doing translations, but it made all the difference in my income.

(Political note: The state of Minnesota is now extracting a larger deduction from my miniscule [well south of $500] monthly IRA distribution. Way to go, stickin’ it to the rich, Governor Tim!)

Most of the projects I’ve auditioned for have been sitting open for weeks or months. I suspect most of the RH’s have lost interest altogether, and I’m shouting into the wind. But you’ve got to start somewhere.

And that’s where I am.