Tag Archives: Book narration

Reading, Uncategorized, Writing

‘Troll Valley’ and Dalebu Jonsson

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Finished reading Chapter 19 of Troll Valley today for the audiobook iteration. Chapter 19 was a bear. It took three days (one-hour sessions) to record, edit, and master the whole thing. I was a little fuzzy on the concept of chapter length back when I wrote the book, and I let that one get out the barn door and off across the pastures into the corn. I start it with Chris, our hero, in the fictional town of Tuscany, Colorado, getting a visit from his brother Fred. Then Fred takes him to the ghost town where their father has settled down for a hermit’s life, and they have quite a lengthy reunion, getting to know each other better than they ever did back home in Minnesota, and revealing some secrets. Then Fred, who’s now an outlaw, has a confrontation with a lawman, after which he must go on the run again. Then Chris says goodbye to his father, has a couple supernatural experiences that change his personality, and gets in a fight in a brothel, in which he is injured. After recovering from his wounds, he heads home to Epsom.

If I were writing it today, I’d make that at least two chapters. Possibly three. But in spite of that, I have to admit that – contrary to my expectations – I think Troll Valley isn’t a bad book at all. I was pretty young when I wrote it, and I’m sure I’m a better artist now, but it’s still a good book. There’s stuff in there I’d completely forgotten about, and it mostly works. If somebody else had written it, and I were reading it for review, I think I’d recommend it.

At one point, when the Anderson boys are gathered with their father, they sing the song posted above, a Norwegian folk song called Dalebu Jonsson. It’s about a man who kidnaps a princess, then singlehandedly fights off 7,000 warriors her father sends to rescue her. Finally the king is so impressed that he agrees to let him marry her – “You can have little Kjersti; you are worthy of her.” (Or words to that effect.)

I know the song from a recording by a male Norwegian group called “Vandrerne,” which no longer exists. They did it in a very rousing style, sort of like an Irish drinking song in spirit. When I got to the part of the text where I include the first verse, in Norwegian, my full intention was to just read the words straight. But as I was reading, I found myself sliding into music, so I ended up singing it. I translated that verse, “Oh, Dalebu’s love was a beautiful maid; he won her with steel and sharp iron blade.” (Which I think is a jolly translation; not literal, but it nails the spirit of the thing.)

The arrangement embedded above is nothing at all like the song as I know it, but I couldn’t find a better one and I thought somebody might be interested.

Religion, Uncategorized

Spittoons, and my day job, plus a heresy at no extra charge

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In my ongoing project of audiobooking Troll Valley this morning (I’m about 80% through it now), I came on a mention of a spittoon, and it got me thinking…

But first, let me tell you about my day job. I’ve already declared that I won’t describe exactly what I’m doing (temporarily), but let me speak in general terms.

Imagine you’re a teacher. In Middle School, say. (The horror! The horror!)

And imagine you’re grading English essays. (I suppose some of you may have experienced this trauma in real life.)

And imagine (implausible as it may sound) that those essays aren’t very good. That the same mistakes are made over and over. You’re not even getting original mistakes.

And imagine the pile of essays is about ten feet high. And it never seems to diminish.

That’s what my temporary, online job is like.

Thank you. Now that’s off my chest.

So, there was a brief appearance by a spittoon in today’s chapter of Troll Valley. And that reminded me of something.

A while back, a pastor I know, who at one time served my home congregation, asked me, “Do you remember anything about spittoons in the back of Hauge Church? Somebody told me they used to have spittoons back there. The ladies let them have them, just in that section, but the men who used them had to clean them out themselves.”

And it seemed to ring a bell (no doubt a brass bell). This would be part of my very earliest memories – and with memories that old, I’ve learned that I’m highly suggestible. So I’m not at all sure here. But I have an idea I may have seen the spittoons back there, in the rear alcove of our church, next to the entryway, where my family always sat when I was little. There were warm air registers in the floor, I’m pretty sure, and I think I recall a spittoon sitting on top of one. I may have asked about it when they disappeared, too.

Or maybe not.

We Haugean Lutherans had a weird (I was tempted to say “fraught,” but I hate the way people use that word these days) relationship with tobacco in the old days. I remember discussing sin with my saintly grandmother one day, confidently asserting that drinking and smoking were both sins, but drinking was worse.

A pastor I knew years ago always used to link Haugeans to cigars. Somebody had told him that all the Haugeans back home had smoked big cigars, and that was all he knew about us, or cared to know. (I suppose it had something to do with the prosperity of some of the Haugean merchants back in Norway.)

Dad recalled how his grandfather was forced, by the two unmarried daughters who kept house for him in his old age, to always go out on the porch to smoke his pipe. (I incorporated this into Troll Valley.) Dad felt that was demeaning to the old man.

I saw a short video recently – think it was by Rory Sutherland – in which he was asked what secret, heretical views he held. And he said he thought tobacco was good for you, and will make a social comeback in time.

I’d almost welcome it. I know, there are lots of people who find the smell revolting, and some even get sick from it.

But I grew up in a world of ubiquitous tobacco smoke. I always kind of liked the smell, myself.

And it is an appetite suppressant. We were all a lot thinner back when we were lighting up rather than munching on chips all the time.

I think my rooting in secret for tobacco, though, mostly rises from my instinctive dislike for everything that’s fashionable.

Just don’t chew it. Spittoons are nasty.

Uncategorized

Dopamine junky

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I’m going to bore you again tonight with another update on my audiobook exertions. Today’s session was okay, but yesterday’s was remarkable. I talked about it on Basefook, but I feel like expanding on the subject here, and I’m between books to review.

What happened yesterday was that I was working on Chapter 3 of Troll Valley. Since I’m sure you’re familiar with that classic work of the imagination, you’ll surely remember how Miss Margit, the fairy godmother, tells Chris the story of The Twelve Wild Ducks.

What I realized as I was reading was that I was having a good time. It was fun.

I don’t have a lot of fun anymore (never did, to be honest). But one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most – and gotten least opportunity to do – is acting. The peculiar convolutions of my psychology have made me one of those natural actors who are naturally shy (there are more of them than you may think. Henry Fonda was terribly shy. Audrey Hepburn was too, and Meryl Streep is, according to a quick internet search). Some of them had (or have) stage fright too, something I have mercifully been spared.

But still, audiobooks may be just the medium for me. I can do them all by myself, and act my little heart out. The Twelve Wild Ducks gave me an opportunity to do both my Scandinavian accent (which is pretty good, I think) and my English accent (passable, at least in small portions).

Anyway, I had a ball yesterday.

And I thought about how I’ve wrestled with this project. Dealing with my crippling fear of the recording software. Working at it doggedly, a little each day, as much as my insecurities permitted. Incremental progress. How long have I been at this?

And now I’m starting to have fun. I took a risk, and now I’ve received a small reward.

Jordan Peterson talks frequently about taking small steps. If you can’t clean your room, clean a drawer. If you can’t do that, dust a shelf. Begin small and escalate. Supposedly, as you do more and more each day, some gland will excrete little shots of dopamine into your system, making you feel happy.

Frankly, this has never been my experience. There was a period in my life when I worked hard at trying to be more social. Smile (very hard for me). Speak to strangers (harder still). I was seeing a counselor at the time, and he cheered my efforts on. I’m pretty sure that helped. But then I moved away, and lost that support. I continued trying to be outgoing in my new environment, but gradually I ran out of gas. The little dopamine shots that were supposed to reward my efforts failed to show up. My emotional bank ran out of funds and I reverted to shyness.

And then there was music. As a kid I took 6 years of piano lessons. I never really got better. I hit a sort of glass ceiling. Later in life I spent about 3 years trying to learn guitar. Smack up against the same ceiling. Steady, incremental work, but no progress. No payoff. I assumed I must have a dopamine blockage.

But at last I’ve achieved a thing. In my seventh decade, I’ve learned a life lesson.

I always was a late bloomer.

I may be ready to marry by the time I’m in my 80s.

Writing

‘Writing’ update: Old dog, new tricks

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This happens to be the exact microphone I am using, a Blue Yeti, a gift from a friend. Photo credit Chris Yang, chrisyangchrisfilm. Unsplash license.

Landmark achieved. Another step climbed. Pardon me for talking myself up tonight, but I actually accomplished something that had daunted me, and I need to try to overcome my reflexive tendency to downplay it.

So this is the situation – I have “mastered” the Audacity recording application. Audacity is a free app that’s probably the most common one used by at-home voiceover artists and narrators. I’ve been wrestling with it for some time now. Has it been months? I’d have to look it up, which seems like a lot of trouble.

In any case, you need to understand my history with recording engineering. (I mentioned this the last time I gave you an update.) I went to radio broadcast school and hold a (entirely undeserved, and I null and void now, I think) Radiotelegraph Engineer’s license. But I always struggled with the technical stuff. Working with Audacity, is of course, very different from what I fumbled around with in radio back in the 1980s, but I find it equally challenging. Audacity (not really a complicated app) combines the challenges of radio with the challenges of digital technology. For a child of the analogue age, a “digital immigrant” as they call us, it was less than comfortable.

But – and this is what gives me a small amount of satisfaction – I went to work at it systematically. During my morning writing session each day (except that I skip Sundays) I would set up my recording space (like many home voice artists, I employ my closet) and worked at learning Audacity. I watched a lot of how-to videos on YouTube. I studied the instruction book I bought. And I practiced. Cautiously, and with trepidation.

I decided that, due to the considerable stress unfamiliar technology causes me (I actually woke up from a dream one night, my heart pounding), I needed to take it in small steps. I tackled one challenge at a time, researching and practicing one single operation, one skill, at a time. Once I’d gotten the new thing down, I stopped. The Voices in my Head called me lazy. Said I should do something more now, not waste time. But I had decided that sufficient unto the day was the stress of that one step.

I repeated this program day after day. Some days I got nothing done. I hadn’t yet solved the problem. But I figured I’d accumulated sufficient stress for the present.

And gradually, I figured stuff out. The last step stumped me for a couple days – the operation of cutting and pasting, to make corrections on a track already recorded. My instruction book was unclear, and so were several videos I viewed.

This morning I sat down and just played with the app. Viewed a new video, which helped a little. Finally, I tried something that worked. I had it. I’m not a master of Audacity by any means, but I understand the basic operations, I think, that I need.

Of course, now I’m going to drop it completely for a while. It’s time to get back to The Baldur Game, my work in progress. That’s part of the overall plan.  Now that I’ve heard back from my beta readers, I need to evaluate their suggestions and get the book into final shape.

Then there’ll be the process of publishing the thing through Amazon, another technical challenge I’m uncomfortable with, but I imagine I can figure it out.

And when that’s done, the plan is to start recording The Year of the Warrior.

I do not lack things to occupy me, for the immediate future.

Something else happened today too. I was messing with another piece of new software, a publishing program I have to use for a side gig. And I figured something out on that too.

And I had another (fleeting) moment of satisfaction.

I then had an odd, unusual (for me) thought. I thought, “It’s kind of nice that I’m poor in my old age. If I were rich right now, I’d be vegetating, sitting on a lounge chair somewhere where it’s warm, letting my body run down. I know myself. I never move too far out of my comfort zone unless I’m forced to.”

Instead, in my 70s, I’m learning new stuff, expanding my skills. Keeping young (in a sense), in spite of myself.

God, the Author, seems to be at work plotting again. And plotting, as I’ve often said, means torturing your characters.

So be it.

Uncategorized

Spring achieved, and a ‘writing’ update

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Photo credit: Matt Botsford. Unsplash license.

Before I get to my tale of angst, I feel I ought to note that today was beautiful in terms of weather. Nearly 70 degrees. It was the first day of the year I slid the screens down in a couple windows and opened them for fresh air. I always feel an easing of the soul when this happens. The dark time is ended. We’ve made it through alive.

I have another ‘writing’ update – and the collective holds its collective breath. (No breath for you! Your social credit score has fallen below permissible levels!)

As I’ve told you before, I’ve been plugging along, trying to learn Audacity, the free recording software that most aspiring book narrators seem to start with. Audacity is quite sophisticated, really, which is part of what scares me.

Thinking back to radio school (Brown Institute, Minneapolis, 1980), I enjoyed a peculiar place in my class. Aside from being one of the oldest students, I was generally considered (or so I remember it) the best copy reader and the worst engineer. A popular, oft-repeated story told of how I panicked in the control room one day, reached desperately for some dial or other, and went over backward in my chair (it had casters), so that I presented the spectacle, through the control booth window, of my feet waving in the air.

This story was completely true.

The disconnect I seem to have with my hands – sort of like a seven-second delay – has always prevented me from handling any mechanical device with confidence, from a can opener to an automobile. Also, I seem to lack the common male aptitude for spatial visualization. So I’m clumsy with any kind of equipment. Typing is a repetitive and minimalistic task, so I can handle that. I’m not much good for anything more demanding.

But today, my drilling with Audacity – just recording and playing and editing a little, throwing my work away at the end of each session – seems to have begun to bear fruit. I’m feeling a little more confident with it. Not a master, but not a stranger in town anymore. That’s gratifying.

One of my major regrets in my life comes from those radio school days. One of my instructors, a professional broadcaster who taught as a side gig, offered to help me get into voiceover work. He considered me talented enough to make it in that business. I was flattered, and made a preliminary demo reel, just for his critique.

He critiqued it. Suggested some improvements.

I was embarrassed that it wasn’t perfect, and I gave up.

This was stupid. I had a chance to get into a field where I could have prospered. But that never-silenced Voice In My Head argued me out of trying any more. My whole life could have been different if I’d accepted the criticism, made improvements, and kept at it until I made the thing work.

The Voice In My Head, I realized recently, doesn’t really hate me. It’s just terrified of failure. It’s trying to protect me from getting hurt. It fails proactively, because it’s less painful to just surrender at the start, rather than trying and falling on my face.

This book narration thing, it seems to me, is a second chance. This time I’m going to try. This time I’m going to take the risk.

Honestly, what do I have to lose?

Music, Religion, Writing

‘Now the Green Blade Riseth’, and a ‘writing’ update

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Above, the King’s College Choir with what I must confess is the only Easter hymn I really like. And it’s not one that’s commonly sung in the churches of my own religious body.

And even this one, lovely as it (it shares a melody with the Christmas hymn, “Sing We Now of Christmas”), doesn’t entirely satisfy me. What Easter merits is a good, rousing, triumphal hymn, something on the lines of “A Mighty Fortress” or “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” We do have triumphal Easter hymns – there’s “Up From the Grave He Arose!” and “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today!” But personally I find them kind of clunky. They don’t sing well, to my mind. I want one I can throw my head back and bellow, as I used to do at Christmas, before my singing voice gave out.

I should probably write a text myself, and see if somebody can come up with a melody.

Better yet would be if somebody wrote a rousing melody and I could put words to it.

It’s been 2,000 years. Somebody should have taken care of this by now.

Want a writing update? I’m not writing at all right now, in the strictest sense of the term. I’ve got my beta readers reading The Baldur Game, and I’m using the time for the necessary procedural stage of forgetting everything about it. So I can come back to it with my mental palate cleansed.

Therefore, I have turned to the business of book narration. Some generous friends have given me a decent microphone and other equipment, and I’ve carved out a makeshift studio space in my bedroom. I’m playing with the system – especially the Audacity recording software. I have a certain level of technophobia, not unusual, I suppose, in people of a certain age. Right now I’m just doing drills. Self-assigned exercises. The plan is that, once I’ve got The Baldur Game published, I can devote a chunk of time to getting The Year of the Warrior recorded, so I can release it on Audible. I was always considered a good copy reader when I was in radio. Maybe audio books will be my ticket to the big time.

It could happen.

Music, Uncategorized, Writing

Chronicling my decline

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Not having a book to review tonight, busy as I am with non-paying work, I post the video above. Sadly it’s not a live performance video (there doesn’t seem to be one), but I discovered it and thought it rather nice. This is a song I’ve posted before in its original Swedish version, but there seems to be this English version too. As an expert, I pronounce it a successful translation, since with songs, subjective impressions are more important than accuracy. I realize it’s the wrong time of year for a Christmas song, but who knows if I’ll need it at Christmas?

A day in the life of an obscure author:

In accordance with my recently adopted custom of getting up to write in the morning, instead of lying in bed trying to get back to sleep, I rose at 6:30 a.m. to work on The Baldur Game, my work in progress. What I’d done yesterday was to take a block of text I’d written, which I realized was out of historical sequence, and move it back into its proper year. So today I commenced a review of the whole text written thus far, to see if there were any anachronisms left that I need to fix. I think the work is good so far.

At lunch I went to The 50s Grill, one of my favorite local places, and tried something new — the grilled walleye. It was good, as expected, and I topped it off with a piece of their French Silk pie. They do pie extremely well.

This afternoon, I worked on my book narration. This is the cause of considerable fear and trembling for me right now. Friends have generously provided me equipment to begin doing narration on my own. My first project will be The Year of the Warrior. I am confident — nay, a little arrogant — about my ability to do narration with the best of ’em. But the technical aspects — the software and specifications, etc. — scare me to death. (Back in radio broadcast school, I was the best copy reader in my class and the worst engineer.) This delays my progress, but I press on heroically.

Tonight, after I post this, I propose to work on a PowerPoint presentation I’ll be doing later this month in Iowa for the Georg Sverdup Society. Not Vikings this time, but the background of the Lutheran Free Church movement in America.

These things matter in my world.

Oh yes. I’ve committed to attending the Midwest Viking Festival in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Oct. 6 and 7 (used to be in Moorhead, MN). An opportunity to sell books, and my experience is that venues where I have not yet flogged my wares are the most fruitful.