A New Season is just nine weeks away...

Writing life: 34

Yes, we’re in the homestretch to publication day for A New Season, my ninth novel, and much is happening. Here are a few updates:

We’re nearly finished recording the audiobook

We’re close to finishing recording the official audiobook for A New Season. It will be released at the same time as the print and e-book versions.

Listening intently to my wonderful director’s always sage advice before starting 20 hours or so of recording at one of the studios at Penguin Random House.

This is the third time I’ve recorded the official audiobook for Penguin Random House/McClelland & Stewart. (I actually podcast my first six novels, chapter-by-chapter, and gave them away for free on iTunes and most other podcast directories. More about that experience later in this post.)

My first official audiobook experience was recording my seventh novel, Albatross.

My first official audiobook was Albatross in 2019.

After having produced my own audio podcast version of my first six novels, it was an interesting experience recording in a professional studio, in the capable hands of an experienced director and supported by an audio engineer. All I had to do was read. But it was tiring recording in three hour stints over seven to ten days. My podcasting experience stood me in good stead. And it certainly helps to have written the novel I was reading. I knew how I wanted the sentences to sound and what feelings the words were intended to evoke in the listener.

I enjoyed the process of recording my first official audiobook back in 2019, so I knew what I was getting into on my second in 2021 when I recorded Operation Angus, my eighth novel.

My second official audiobook was Operation Angus in 2021.

For A New Season, I’m working with a wonderful director, Susan Roman, and a talented engineer, Christopher Wiens. Both Susan and Chris have really made the recording experience enjoyable and comfortable—now if only there were better air circulation in the studio!

The audiobook has to capture exactly what is on the page. Interestingly—or perhaps annoyingly for my director—I tend to edit subconsciously while I’m recording the audiobook. I’ll change little words on the fly without even knowing, despite having the text right in front of my eyes. So the director will always stop me and point out my unintentional word substitutions to ensure we’re matching the written prose exactly and precisely. This has happened on each of the three official audiobooks I have voiced. It will surely happen this afternoon when I go in for my fifth three hour recording session for A New Season to work with Susan and Chris. (I’m writing these words on Thursday, June 22). It’s fascinating how the brain works. I doubt this is a problem for voice actors who usually record audiobooks. But as the writer, I guess I’m always editing. Interesting, at least to me.

My directors have all been quite amazing. Susan has been giving me great advice on how to read certain sentences for maximum impact, how to handle different characters and accents, and how to manage pacing and volume, not to mention convey emotions. I confess, I’ve learned a great deal in the process of recording my novels as audiobooks.

After we finish the recording—likely the week of June 26, a team in New York will listen very carefully to the entire audiobook recording with their eyes glued to the text of the novel itself. They will undoubtedly find a couple dozen tiny little mistakes that escaped our notice during the recording sessions. So, in a week or two, I’ll be back in the studio doing what are called “pick-ups.” I’ll simply rerecord single sentences or even just a phrase to correct a wrong word or a mispronunciation or even a missed word. Fun stuff, but all for a good cause.

There’s something different in this audiobook

We’re not certain this is a Canadian first, but the team at Penguin Random House/McClelland & Stewart thinks it may well be. I’ve already written in this space about the two original songs that appear in A New Season. Well, the plan is to actually include recordings of the two songs in the audiobook where and how they appear in the story. In other words, early in the novel, when the narrator, Jack McMaster, finishes writing a new song, More than the Game, about his ball hockey league, you’ll actually hear that song as if you’re in the room with him while he strums his guitar. Just guitar and voice—just as it unfolds in the story. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’ll be playing the guitar and singing the song on the recording. So please immediately lower your expectations. In the novel, Jack McMaster makes it clear he’s not a great singer or musician, and he very rarely sings anywhere other than his bathroom. That pretty well describes me, too. But, for the better part of my life—and my narrator’s life, too—I have certainly loved writing songs and playing them in the privacy of my own home.

Later in the novel, audiobook listeners will hear a second song, Until the New Year, again just guitar and voice and nothing else, as it is in the book. My son, Calder, helped produce the recordings along with the talented audio engineer he and his band have been working with on an album. I got a kick out of how Calder labeled the early raw tracks.

My son, Calder’s file naming protocol for the early raw original tracks.

My younger son, Ben, also lends his voice to a line in the song, just as it happens in the novel. Perhaps I’ll share the recordings when they’re finished… but let’s wait to see how they turn out, shall we?

For a little more context around the songs, the following note will appear at the end of the novel:

Lifted from the officials galleys for A New Season.

So be gentle when you hear the songs in the audiobook. They’re meant to capture and reflect my narrator, Jack McMaster, as an amateur musician who just likes writing songs for his own enjoyment, nothing more. I feel the same way. But it is kind of neat to have original compositions in an audiobook.

Looking back at podcasting my first six novels.

I started podcasting in my day job back in April of 2006. If we believe podcasting is in its infancy now, back in the spring of 2006, it was positively embryonic. I created and cohosted a show with a colleague called Inside PR. It was a weekly half-hour show about the public relations/communications profession. And we did it for more than 200 episodes over the course of four years without missing a week. The upshot was that I learned how to podcast. When I could not find any interest from publishers and agents in my first novel, The Best Laid Plans, I decided to self-publish it. (That’s a whole other story that you can read about in some of my early Substack posts.) In January of 2007, fully nine months before the novel became a printed book, I podcast the novel, chapter-by-chapter. Somehow, listeners found it, and seemed to like it.

Here I am, probably back in 2010 recording the chapter-by-chapter podcast of The High Road, my second novel. If you look closely, you’ll see my laptop on the shelf in front of me, an my digital recorder on the shelf beside me.

The original listing of The Best Laid Plans podcast on iTunes back in 2007.

When that same (initially) self-published novel miraculously won the 2008 Leacock Medal—which immediately led to landing a literary agent and a publishing deal with McClelland & Stewart, still my happy publishing home—the podcast took a big jump in the iTunes ratings. In fact it went to #1 ahead of the New York Times Book Review podcast.

The iTunes podcast charts just after The Best Laid Plans won the Leacock Medal in 2008.

I had so much fun podcasting my first novel, that I kept it up for my first six. They’re all still available for free on many podcast directories, including Apple Podcasts. Click here or on the graphic below to find them:

Bookmanager’s list of most anticipated future releases

I’ve been following Bookmanager ever since McClelland & Stewart released my first novel back in 2008. When your novel is out in the world, it tracks how it’s doing. You can use the Browse function to develop ranked lists of books in various categories based on sales. Bookmanager is responsible for supplying many publications and media outlets, including the CBC, with their weekly Bestsellers lists.

Anyway, you can also generate a list of the most anticipated future releases to see how much buzz there might be gathering around certain upcoming books—I believe it’s based on pre-orders from bookstores though I don’t know for sure. When I filter all books for “Future releases, Canadian author, Fiction” the list totals 383 new works of Canadian fiction to be released over the coming months. I’ve been checking now and then and have been heartened to see A New Season climbing the list. When I checked this morning (Saturday, June 24), A New Season had nudged against the top 10 sitting in the 11th spot, with still more than two months to go before the novel is released. I’m hoping we’ll keep moving up at least a few more places on the list in the coming weeks. Who knows what it all really means, but in an ideal world, it suggests that just maybe A New Season will get out of the gate fast and strong on August 29.

The ranking of upcoming Canadian fiction releases as of June 24. Grateful.

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Many thanks to all of you who have already preordered your copy. I think that’s one of the reasons that out of 381 new Canadian fiction books, we’re currently sitting at #17. I’m grateful. (Just in case you haven’t yet pre-ordered A New Season, I’ve made it very easy by providing links to your favourite online retailers in this earlier post. Just click on this link and scroll down a bit.

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