Satisfying Sounds in Audacity

I've been working rather hard on this audiobook.

Part of the problem is that I apparently make a lot of "mouth sounds." But I am also running into things like a purring cat, strange vibrations, and mispronunciations.

Now, mouth sounds are supposed to be easy to fix. My mouth sounds are not. I get the normal clicks that a "declicker" can catch, sure, but it doesn't get them all. I also get wet smacking sounds and guttural sounds that aren't so easy to fix. 

Yet, I keep learning more about Audacity and either discovering or inventing new tricks to deal with them. Only a few have been able to get through.

A caveat: I am NOT an expert. I watched some of the experts. I am unwilling to spend an hour on less than 5 minutes of audio.

Here are some of the things I do.

Most of the mouth sounds are not actually during words. They're between words, right before or after a word. So if i copy a section of room silence (just record the empty room—you need this at the start and end of files anyway) and then paste it in place of the section between words (no matter HOW small), you'll take care of 90% of the sounds.

There's actually an easier trick I figured out on my own. There's something called a "low-pass filter." All this means is it turns the volume down (or off) on anything above a certain hertz (i.e. higher "notes") and lets the lower ones pass through. If I put the filter on to catch anything about, say, 150 Hz, and I use that only on the parts where I'm not speaking, it neatly eliminates almost every unwanted sound. What makes this easier is that I can then type ctrl-r and repeat it. No deleting for length is needed and if the room sound changes a little, it sounds much more natural.

But sometimes a sound is RIGHT where I'm talking. Chances are, if I do the trick above to either side of the word, my voice drowns out the rest and you can't hear it. And if it's short enough, and I zoom in far enough (and use "z" so it doesn't make artifacts), just deleting that section can usually remove the sound without really affecting my voice. But there are other things to do.

Audacity's "spectral" tools are neat and can be useful, or they can be useless. By right-clicking on the y-axis, I can change the view to "spectrum." This shows where the sounds are in hertz. Then I select the offending part and work up and down the word using "spectral delete" to figure out just WHERE that little bugger is hiding (if it isn't obvious). Once I find it, I undo everything and then use "spectral multi tool" on it. That often hides the sound without disturbing my voice too much. But this only works maybe 30% of the time. For instance, in the case of my purring cat, her purr is at the same hertz as the bulk of my voice, so anything I do to her purr affects my voice as well.

This is where I look for the "noise gate." The noise gate works kinda like the low- or high-pass filter, except instead of blocking a range of notes, it blocks a range of volume. Since her purr is a lot quieter than my voice, I play around with the settings until it blocks out her but doesn't affect me. Voila!

What if i can't find the sound on the spectrum and a filter would kill too much of the sound? Equalizer! Audacity has a variety of them. the graphic equalizer lets you turn up and down different frequency ranges. They say most unwanted sounds are in the 8k+ range, but a lot of mine are close to 3 or 4. Turning down a band or two for a short section usually doesn't affect my voice enough to be noticed by someone just listening to the book, and if it doesn't outright kill the sound, it can turn it down enough that it gets ignored. "Preview" is really good for this. I use it all the time.

If there's a short sound (like a click) that the declicker didn't get, but it's during part of a word where I simply can't mess around with my voice at all (like a "d"), or if I want to do things "the right way," I can use "repair." Right-click on the y-axis and change the view from amp to dB. Then zoom zoom zoom in. Find the offending section. Select just it or part of it (the tool can only fix really small areas) and use repair until it's all gone. When it works, it is freaking awesome. But so far, it is very hit or miss.

If you're having trouble finding just WHERE a sound is, I have a way. When you push play, the end of a selected section is often left off, but the beginning is always precise. So place the cursor before the sound and push play until you hear it. Then pause. Move the cursor further down and try it again. Keep doing that until you hit a section where you don't hear the sound and you know it is just before that part. Granted, there's often a clicky sound when you push play in the middle of the word, so you have to learn to tune that out.

Of course, there's another awesome way to get rid of an errant sound. I was having trouble with a strange vibration that went throughout an "s." It was a broad enough spectrum that if I removed it using the spectrum tools, my voice would sound like I was in a tin can. It was the same volume as my voice. It wasn't small, so repair wouldn't work. I was at a loss! So... I found another place where I used an "s" and copied it, then pasted that over the offending "s." Lo and behold, I couldn't tell I'd done anything and the vibration was gone. I've been able to use that trick for many letters and even entire words, but I have to be careful because the tone and volume of my voice might change between the original and the new sections. I ALWAYS play it back to make sure it sounds smooth.

What if I realize I left off a bit of a word (like a "d" or "s")? Copy paste from another! But that doesn't work for everything. Sometimes, I slur my words together. I rush. Rushing is bad. "Hehad toooze" instead of "He had to ooze" (don't judge me, it's an example) sounds awful. I have a couple options.

The first is to take some (TINY bit) of the room noise and paste it between the words. However, that will sound terrible. So I use "fade out" and "fade in" on the ends of the two words. Often, that is enough to make it sound like a natural flow. 

The second is a bit harder but sounds even better. Find where the two words should separate. Then make a divot between them. Turning down the volume a little and in increments can work but is time consuming and doesn't sound the best. There's a way to do it with one of the fade tools, but I haven't figured it all out yet (I believe it uses "adjustable fade"). But there's a cheat. I add room noise between the two words, then I fade either end like before. But instead of leaving some of the room noise there, I actually select the very tips of the two sections and delete them WITH the room noise. I gotta use "z" and I need to make sure both parts are at the same volume level (zoom in a lot), but what I end up with is a smooth divot between the words. It's enough that you'll easily differentiate the two words while listening to the book.

Hopefully this will help someone who is in a similar situation.

Sus Sounds

 As you may be aware, I have been recording the audiobook of A Sinister Love and I’ve been learning a lot of things about audio editing and recording, especially about Audacity, which is the free software I’m using.

But there have been a few kinda creepy things that happened. 

I use a Scarlet interface between my mic (which uses phantom power) and my computer. Now I was having trouble connecting my headphones to it (I needed.a 3.5 adapter). The day I got the adapter I needed, I was watching a clip from The Tonight Show on my iPad (which I use to read the book while I’m recording) while doing some chores first. Then I tried to hook up my headphones to the Scarlet, but I couldn’t figure out how to get sound. I still haven’t figured it out. But to appreciate what happened, I need to give my setup.

I use a Scarlet connected via USB to my Windows laptop. My headphones are connected via bluetooth to the laptop most of the time, but this time I had them connected to the Scarlet. The iPad is not part of this setup at all.

So I plugged the headphones in and couldn’t hear anything. I turned the volume up all the way… and suddenly I could hear, faintly and muffled, the clip from the Tonight Show that I’d been watching. I checked the iPad… it was no longer on that video or playing anything. My phone wasn’t playing anything. My computer didn’t even have that website open. If I plugged it into the computer, nothing. But I plugged it back into the Scarlet and I could hear it again.

It was a little freaky, but mostly a mystery.

However, after I had finished recording, I had to sit down and listen intently to every track to get rid of extraneous sounds and make it all sound good. I turned it up LOUD for this. There are a lot of mouth sounds to get rid of. I heard a conversation in the background of one of the tracks, but I’m always alone in the house when I record. I chalked it up to someone talking outside.

But late last night, as I was listening in where I heard some mouth sounds, I noticed a strange hum. I turned it up all the way.

It was a girl humming a song. She sounded young, 8 or less. There weren’t any words. But it was so quiet, it couldn’t have been from outside, not to mention there are no little girls on our street. It stopped a couple seconds after I noticed it (my voice would have masked any more of it before then), but I went back and listened three times.

I should have saved that bit of audio. I deleted it because that part of the recording was extraneous… and also because it freaked me the hell out.

It’s enough to make a guy believe in ghosts.

Scrooge: A Christmas Carol review

 Last year, Netflix released an animated remake of a 1970 film called Scrooge: A Christmas Carol. It has not received very high ratings, but I am going to give my unpopular opinion right now and say it is actually SUPERIOR to the original story by Dickens.

Scandal! How dare he say that!

Let's start with the fact that A Christmas Carol was written in the 1840s and that Dickens is extremely overrated. If you read the story, it lacks punch or bite, at least compared to today's tales. the foreshadowing of Scrooge's death was meant to evoke mystery or fear, when all it does is scream, "IT'S EBENEZER! HE SNUFFED IT!"

The Netflix version keeps up a modern pacing. It's a musical (and the music has grown on me quite a bit). It removes some scenes and combines things to make the story more efficient without losing any of the meaning. The acting in it is actually very good (I was flabbergasted to see that Jacob Marley was played by Jonathan Price!). Of course everyone knows what happens, but the interesting thing is watching Scrooge change.

His change starts when he sees Belle again. Dickens doesn't even mention Belle until she is leaving him. There was no build-up, no foreshadowing, nothing. Her leaving him is tantamount to introducing a character just to kill them in the same scene and hope the audience gets a reaction out of it. The new version, however, shows him lighting up when he sees her face. It shows him as a young man with virtue, someone worthy of being loved. There's a song about how deeply in love the two of them were. throughout the movie, we see his pocketwatch, and here we learn it was a gift from her. Adding this all makes the next scene SO much more poignant.
In the original tale, Belle "releases him" of their engagement because he has changed; in his desire to prevent the vagaries of life from ruining him, he turned all his focus on greed. She hopes he feels some pain in this but knows it will be brief. Then Scrooge cries out for it to stop. But we don't really get any sense of what was going on as he watched the scene, there's no explanation as to WHY he wanted the scene to stop—was he tortured over losing her, over what he became, over how she saw him? Indeed, the last would have more merit than the others because the next scene we see Belle with a husband and kids being told how lonely Scrooge became and Scrooge does not like how they see him.  We will get back to this bit later.
In the animated version, he *very* clearly regrets his actions. Scrooge attempted to distract the Spirit of Christmas Past (who is a fabulous character, by the way) because he didn't want her to bring him to that moment. BUT we also see how Jacob Marley was corrupting him. He was the reason Cratchit's family is poor (putting Bob Cratchit's father into debtor's prison)—another detail I adore—and in the same scene he discovers that Belle witnessed the entire thing. Now we can SEE he changed and how much it affected her. During the breakup song (possibly my favorite in the soundtrack), time freezes and he gets a moment without the Spirit to express how he *truly* felt, and begs his younger self to go with her. You can see that he had fallen in love with her all over again.

But more than that, we see WHY he hated Christmas so much. He had to work on Christmas (or study in the book), but in this version, his beloved sister also died in childbirth on Christmas (which resulted him despising his nephew whom he blames), he fell in love with Isabelle around Christmas, she broke up with him on Christmas... After we see just how much he wants his younger self to go with her, it's easy to believe the breakup hurt him deeply but he had to hide it all, harden himself.

Do you see yet why I prefer this newer version? Well, there's one more really major reason I've hinted at, but we'll get there.

Next is Christmas Present. Now, I will give the devil his due. I love how his own words are thrown back at him in the original tale when he shows concern for Tiny Tim, and I like the 2 children, Ignorance and Want (even though they were entirely unnecessary). Likewise, a great deal of time was spent showing that Scrooge would actually enjoy company and loved playing games, even when he wasn't seen nor heard.
But in the original tale, he is mostly distraught over what they all think of him. His nephew isn't quite as kind as he might be. This is in sharp contrast to the new version, where his nephew reminds him that he, too, loved Scrooge's sister, even though he didn't get to know her, that they were family, and that somewhere inside was the good person his mother adored. It's a much kinder Fred, but also shifts the focus from Scrooge to their relationship.
When we see the Cratchits, Scrooge shows concern over Tiny Tim. In the book, Tiny Tim is seen as frail, support by a crutch and "iron frame." Apparently that was enough for Scrooge to suddenly be worried about the child's welfare. In the movie, Tiny Tim is small and has a crutch, but also has coughing fits—the same ones his sister had but which she recovered from once their father paid for medicine. Again, in the original story we see little of Scrooge's reactions to what is going on when compared to pretty much ANY modern retelling. In this version, Tiny Tim busks for money with his sister and is a lovely singer, making Tiny Tim more than just "crutch-boy." And Scrooge turns away with tears in his eyes as he realizes HE could actually be helping the child, that Bob wasn't just giving him a line when he said his son needed medicine.

Finally, we come to Christmas Future and the biggest reason I think this version is superior to any other I've ever seen (sorry Muppets).
In the original story, Scrooge there are a bunch of scenes that are either completely useless or basically get summed up into one scene in the movie (along with a catchy tune, "Thank you very much."). Here I would like to point something out.
Dickens throws so much foreshadowing that Scrooge had to have been an absolute idiot if he didn't realize that he was the one who had died. That is a character flaw of Scrooge, likely willful disbelief. But what we get in the movie is called dramatic irony. That is when the audience knows something important that the characters don't know. Scrooge had NO WAY of knowing that the reason everyone was praising his name was because he had died, but the audience gets to see one of the characters literally dancing on his coffin. Scrooge is put in a GOOD mood.
The end, though, is the most important bit. The movie takes two scenes and combines them—learning of Tiny Tim's death and seeing his own grave. In the book, Scrooge has 0 reaction to learning of Tiny Tim's death. Seriously, after the little spark of worry he had earlier, he doesn't say a word about it. Instead he is more preoccupied with who the dead man was. He is led to his own grave where he immediately and rather anticlimactically embraces Christmas and Goodness and all that jazz. 
In the movie, he follows the group of cheering townsfolk to the graveyard, but sees Bob Cratchit at Tiny Tim's grave. This makes him distraught more than anything else. This is where he asks if this is the vision of things that will come or things that may. He has pretty much made up his mind at that point to be a good person, because he knows he can actually *help* others. Then he is led to his grave (which also has a lovely scene of him seeing his own spirit in the same fashion as Jacob Marley's... and the gold coins on the eyes, such a delicious touch). But even AFTER seeing this, he says, "If I am doomed, so be it, but at least give me a chance to help the boy first!"

Did you see that? Let me spell it out. In Dicken's version, Scrooge was selfish and remained so. The entire reason he repented was over how people saw him. A- He didn't like how Belle's husband described him as lonely and wretched. B- He didn't like people stealing his stuff after he died. C- He didn't like that people were happy he was dead. D- He didn't like how his nephew and their friends talked about him.

For years I wondered if I was the only one who saw this. In all the other versions, it's the same. He wants to wipe his own name from the grave. But in this version? A- He accepts his death but pleads for a chance to help Tiny Tim. Tiny Tim's death—from a condition he saw his sister recover from—was the real impetus he had in changing his ways. B- He wants a chance to show his nephew Fred that person his sister had loved, to accept him as part of the family finally. C- When he looks down at his watch, he says, "I'm happy Isabelle found her happiness. I only hope I'm not too late to find my own." It shows he's moving on and finally letting go, that he's returning to the person she had fallen for in the first place.
It ties together all the people he started helping in a better way. I hope you agree with me that this is just superior. Scrooge: A Christmas Carol has pretty much ruined all other iterations of the story for me. 

A Look Forward to 2024

 Hello everyone!

It's that time of year again... when none of us really know what time or year it is.

That's right! Tomorrow is New Year's Eve!  Woot! Goodbye 2023, hello 2024!

It seems a lot of my friends have had a bad 2023. It's not secret that I had a pretty good 2023 (despite losing my dad). So I thought it would be good to look forward to 2024! I want to split it into goals (things I have some control over), hopes (things I have little control over), and resolutions (ongoing behavior).

Goals:

Although I wanted to get published in 2023, it looks like I will get my book out in early 2024. So my biggest goals revolve around promoting myself and my book and driving up sales. I want to get my website running, get merch set up for it, get ads set up for it, promotional material, etc. etc. etc.

I have been working on an audiobook. My goal is to have it ready to go before mid-January. I may have to rerecord a couple chapters, though.

I have a second novel I'm working on. I want it published by July.

I have a children's book I'm working on. I would love for it to be finished and released in 2024.

I have a third novel I'm working on that I want published next year. 

I want to have the fourth and fifth novels well on their ways so they can hit the market in 2025.

I would like to start working with a group I know on the audiobooks for numbers 2 and 3.

Hopes:

Of course my biggest hope next year is for A Sinister Love to be successful. But even if it isn't, I'm not going to stop writing novels any time soon.

I want the Board Game Rundown to at least double its subscribers. Getting a salary from it would be incredible.

Resolutions:

I have two main resolutions for 2024. The first is to read at least 12 books. I haven't been reading enough, especially for a serious novelist.

The second is to write 2 articles for the BGR a month.

This all is a LOT of work. 2 years ago, his would have been an absolute pipedream. Hell, if you told me back in January that I would be poised to publish three books in 2024, I'd have thought you were lying. I am determined to make 2024 MY year.

TV and Book List

 I previously stated that I do not watch a lot of TV.

But I thought it would be good to talk about what I do watch and read.

Let’s start with the TV.

I am an anime fan and have been for as long as I can remember (the early 80s). In recent years, though, I’ve become much more discerning in the anime I watch. It sort of exploded, and with that came a host of crap anime simply not worth my time (many of which are quite popular). One anime I am currently watching is Spy X Family. Not sure if that “x” is pronounced, I usually skip it. It’s about a fake family consisting of a spy husband from a neighboring country, an assassin wife of incredible strength, and a telepathic little girl that may be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen (sorry kids). Of course, none of them can let the others know the truth. The spy is wanted and his current assignment requires him to infiltrate the social circle of a certain politician, which is best done by having a child join a specific school and excel in their studies. So he adopts a girl who was experimented on (he doesn’t know that) and can read minds (and she’s deathly afraid that if anyone finds out, they’ll give her up and experiment on her again) to enroll her in the school. But the school requires a complete family, so he had to get a wife. The wife is worried that her solo lifestyle will become suspicious and she’ll get turned into the secret police. She was one of the best candidates on the spy’s list of potential wives, so when she showed interest, he asked if she’d help him make a fake family (she thinks it’s just to get the girl into school). And, of course, her brother clandestinely works for the secret police. The entire thing is wonderfully contrived and hilarious. One thing I noticed while watching it was that I would think “If I wrote this, I’d have such-and-such happen” and then THAT HAPPENED. So of course I want to see more.

I’m also watching One-Punch Man, an anime about a bald superhero who is a hero “for fun” but wants some sort of recognition… and challenge. The problem is, he’s so incredibly powerful that no one can hurt him and he can defeat any opponent with a single punch. I was worried this would suffer from some sort of power creep (as I call it, Dragonball Z syndrome), but, in reality, it makes fun of the power creep, as well as a bunch of famous stories and animes. It’s funny and worth checking out.

Beyond anime, I finally started watching Good Omens on Amazon Prime. The story, based on the novel by the same name, is about an angel and demon who are attempting to stop the end of the world because they both LIKE it here. But Neil Gaiman (who wrote the novel with Terry Pratchett) is taking it further than the book. I must see this. Plus David Tennant is one of my favorite actors.

It would be remiss of me to leave out the show I probably “watch” most often: Bob Ross’ Joy of Painting. Of course it is mesmerizing to watch a splash of color suddenly become a mountain. But I don’t really watch it as much as leave it on in the background while I am working. It’s not intrusive and provides enough background noise to distract the ADHD part of my brain.

There are several shows that I cannot recommend enough, but as I am not currently watching, I will talk about them later.

As for what I am reading…

I am pleased to say I finally finished The Hunchback of Notre Dame (unabridged) by Victor Hugo. It only took me 30 years. Granted, I stopped halfway and only came back to it recently.

I’ve been reading some light novels, Spice & Wolf by Isuna Hasekura. There are 24 or so as of this writing. They are short, easy reads, but I enjoy them. The premise is that a wolf “goddess” of harvest, Holo the Wisewolf, left her village and began traveling with a 25-year old merchant, Kraft Lawrence, to her homeland far in the north. Of course there’s a romance angle, but mostly Holo just loves teasing him. The reason I particularly like this series, though, is that it tackles something I’ve never seen in a novel before: economics. It’s almost entirely about business and economics and how they would work in a fantasy world and the ways people might try to work the system. Sounds boring, but it’s quite fascinating. There is an anime, but that only covers the first 4 or so books. 

The next thing on my reading list is Her Unwelcome Inheritance by J. Aleksandr Wooton. This is the first book that my publisher released, and I know the author so I owe it a good reading. I will let you all know my impressions. (Of course, if I get the 10 or so Spice & Wolf books that I asked for for Christmas, it will be hard resisting their temptation.

My New Years Resolution this year will be to read at least one novel a month. I might adjust this goal depending on how it goes.

Getting Things Done

 Well it has been a busy time, as per the norm around here. And this is of course made all the busier with the advent of Advent/Christmas.

And yet, I managed to finish the penultimate round of edits (I think) of Novel #2. How do I do it?

Neglect!

No, really, it requires putting things into a priority list and being willing to either cut corners or leave something undone for a while. I’ve posted before about how much work I have ahead of me (through every fault of my own), so I won’t go into the details. But in order to do these things, I’ve hired a maid to clean the house (and the basement remains a mess more or less… for now), I find quick and easy recipes for dinner (fall-back recipes and crockpot recipes are great, as well as frozen food), and I set aside a time for specific things (having a time limit helps me with doing the essentials first). This last one I am still working on.

But it’s hard. I have a supportive wife (who works long hours but also helps with chores), and honestly, if I was single, I would likely be living in squalor. I am lucky that I don’t have to worry too much about money, while so many writers out there struggle to make a living.

I also have given some things up. TV has become rare. I don’t watch TV to unwind… I write or work on other projects. The closest thing I get to TV is watching youtube channels (science, late night comedians, or history typically) while I cook or do dishes. I used to roleplay online, but I’ve stopped that (and, if you are someone I RPed with, I apologize for disappearing). Once upon a time, I had a ton of hobbies and groups I partook in, but most of those have been put on an indeterminate hiatus.

And why have I given all these things up? I normally would never condone surrendering hobbies.

But being able to craft a novel, getting it ready for publication, improving a story through feedback and editing, working with artists…

It not only makes me happy, but it is deeply fulfilling.

I’ve always wanted to be a novelist. When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a substitute (everything, substitute everything) and a writer. When I got a bit older, I wanted to be a paleontologist and a writer (and when I say “older” I mean that one of the biggest reasons I’m not currently a paleontologist is because the university that had the program I was interested in never responded to my application). In college, I wanted to be an engineer and writer, then a technical writer and fiction writer.

So it shouldn’t be surprising how excited I am to be on the cusp of achieving my lifelong dream.

At the moment, I am working with the same artist on some supplementary art and eagerly awaiting my publisher to finalize the contract (hopefully in the next few days). I’m also recruiting my brother (a rather accomplished computer graphic artist) to help me with ads and promotional material.

Seriously, I’m so excited about this I’m showing random strangers I run into my cover art! If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to hold a physical copy of my book by Christmas. I might cry a little. Or a lot.

I think the next thing I am going to tackle is finishing the audiobook. I have the initial recordings done, but I need to make sure it is all satisfactory (no random cat meowing in the background, for instance), free of artifacts (pops and the like), and then meets the requirements of Audible (my low and high ranges are good, not the mid, and they require a certain amount of “silent room noise” before and after every track).

One thing I *could* use is a beta reader or two to go over the second novel for me. If you happen to be interested, leave a comment (no one is going to leave a comment).

Now I must go. My time limit for blog-writing is nearly up.

Rest

 I am sad to say that my father has passed away.

He left us on November 21st.

https://www.egan-ryan.com/obituary/David-Hixon

Transitioning

 This is a very strange and important time in my life.

I certainly had not anticipated being in Ohio this past weekend.

My plan had been to have my book just about ready to publish at this point so I could release it on Black Friday. That’s now 5 days away and I’m still waiting on things that are out of my hands. It may well be that I don’t make this deadline, but I won’t worry about something I have little control over. Plus, I am still riding the high of getting the final render of my art, finishing the rough draft of book #3, finishing the audio for the audiobook, having finished the plotting of book #4… For the first time in my life I feel like I could actually be something. This, writing, is what I was born to do, what I want to do. 

But life is more than writing.

And it doesn’t last forever.

When I got a call from the hospice telling me my dad is in the final stages of his “transition,” I dropped everything (almost literally—I was helping a friend move) and made the 5-hour drive here. He hadn’t opened his eyes in a week, his body had started shutting down, and he hadn’t responded to anyone in days. They told me the end was “imminent.” When I arrived, he was only taking about 5 breaths a minute and his oxygen levels were very low. But he did open up his eyes and look at me. For about 3 minutes I could have believed that he was about to get up and ask what we were all standing around for. Now he is resting, the “little death” of sleep. 

They call it “transitioning” and I can see why. It is comforting, for us and for our departing loved ones. For those of us who are religious, it reminds us of the hereafter. And it evokes a feeling of change. The change in the transitioner is obvious, but it is also a change for those left behind. We must take the lessons their life taught us and forge ahead, bringing their good with us. It is a time to think back on all the ways they changed us and vice versa.

There comes a point when there are more memories made than to be made—none of us really want to think about that and so we don’t, not until it is near the end. I may well be there now. Thinking back, dad has lived a good life. He was a good man, a good role model. At times, his was a lesson on what not to do, but even when he failed, he didn’t give up. When I pass, I want those made memories to be good ones, for me and for my loved ones.

So, it is not a bad thing that I will likely miss this deadline of mine. Even if I had total control over it, life events like this one are more important. But I will remember the lessons he taught me. I will not give up. This roller coaster of emotions is temporary and will pass. And perhaps the high of getting published is in some way negating the feeling of loss. I like to think, however, that it is the good memories doing that. As my dad continues his transition, and I continue my own, I will keep those good memories in mind.

A Milestone

 BEHOLD Hixonites. I HAVE RETURNED from my cave of hyperfocus. And I bring tidings of joy!

I have finished the rough draft of my third book! At the moment it is a little over 50k words long. I was getting a bit worried there, but I’m sure it will get longer once I go through it again.

That means in 2023 I have written and mostly edited a book (my second, “Fate & Fortune”), written a children’s book (working with the author, my good friend Monica Marier, on the pictures for it, “Brian Buys a Brachiosaurus”), recorded an audiobook, written several small “bathroom reader” type books (rough drafts), and finished the rough draft of another book (Book #3, “A Date with Destiny”)! And it’s only mid-November!

As soon as my cover artist finishes and the formatting is completed, I will also be able to say that I published my first book! I’ll be a published novelist!

I cannot express how pumped I am about this, not to mention how proud I am of myself.

So, I have a month and a half until 2024. What shall I accomplish?

Here’s a list of things I could tackle:

• finish editing Book #2 and send it off to an editor
• hire a cover artist for Book #2
• get my website up and running
• make ads for Book #1 and figure out how to get them out there
• look into events where I can sell (probably author signings and the like—getting a table will have to wait until I have more products to sell)
• “master” the audio for my audiobook and figure out how to get it set up
• record audio for Book #2 OR look into Forteller and see how that process works and its cost
• figure out this whole “social media” thing to start getting my name out there more
• get some short stories into some publications to start getting my name out there more
• look into ARC readers (do I need them?)
• start writing Book #4 (which I’ve already outlined and am SUPER stoked about writing—it continues the story of Scribble and Paul from Book #1. It will be titled “A Sinister Hope”)
• start writing Book #4 (a creative nonfiction piece I’ve been trying to write for years. obviously whichever one I decide to write first will be #4)
• figure out how to link ads to Amazon in such a way that it increases my profits
• edit, format, and finish the bathroom readers
• write more bathroom readers (I’m planning a series of them that, who knows, might become a compendium)
• write and record music to play at the start and end of the audiobook

I clearly will not be able to do all, or even most, of these things in the next month and a half, so I will need to prioritize. And I have several other novels in mind that I want to get to after these, so from the look of things, I have my work cut out for me.

Oh yeah, there’s also Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Board Game Rundown, and family obligations. In addition, my father has Lewy Body Dementia (and probably Alzheimer’s). He’s currently in hospice and we do not know how long he has. For all the wonderful things happening right now, there are some pretty unpleasant ones, too.

Until next time, keep reading, keep creating, and have a happy Thanksgiving!

What I’m up to

For the longest time, year after year, I felt useless. There’s a Christmas song that asks what you’ve done this year, and I hated hearing it because my answer was always the same—nothing. I’d always have some excuse. To be perfectly frank, the reason came down to undiagnosed/medicated depression and unmedicated AHD.

At the beginning of this year, I took care of both of those problems.

So I thought it would be nice, on a personal level, to go over what I’ve accomplished this year.

• I wrote a book in 4-5 months.
• I was in charge of my lodge
• I played music at church every week
• I went to GenCon and Origins as part of the Board Game Rundown
• I hired an editor and cover artist and am now weeks away from having my first book published
• I recorded an audiobook
• I write a kid’s book
• I wrote 2 booklets about serial killers
• I traveled to California AND France
• I helped finally move my parents (an ongoing and massive affair)

I certainly can’t say I have done nothing. But the year isn’t over. So here’s a look at what I am currently doing and planning.

• I’m halfway-ish through writing a sequel to the book I wrote earlier this year
• I am remastering the audiobook
• I am working with an artist on the children’s book
• I am editing book #2
• I am working on a creative nonfiction book
• I just finished outlining the sequel to my first book.
• I’m working on an animation project with my brother and sister
• I’m getting my website up and running
• I have been training at the gym and have made many personal records

My therapist says I bite off more than I can chew. I have to agree with her.

At the start of this year, I was determined to make 2023 my year. And I think I have. For the first time, I feel like I can actually do something, be something, like my dreams are really achievable.

With the book so close to be done and the outline to its sequel finally figured out, I feel like every day is Christmas. I haven’t felt like this in a long time. I’m so excited I can hardly sleep!