Luzula

This and that

2023-06-24T10:34:52Z

1) I got some lovely feedback on Librivox, which I treasure all the more since it's a site which is not set up for easily giving feedback: Just wanted to send a note saying how much I have enjoyed listening to you read D.K. Broster's works. I have stuck with them solely for the last few weeks and these fine stories have made my summer so enjoyable. Please please consider recording, Ships in the Bay also. Thanks!! Aww, I'm sure the listener will be happy that Gleam in the North is almost completed, then! I won't be recording Ships in the Bay!, but I might at some point record Sir Isumbras at the Ford and The Yellow Poppy.

2) I have bound a volume of all my stories which are not in due South and adjacent fandoms, nor in Flight of the Heron and adjacent fandoms, and rereading one story a day at bedtime. I am so happy to be able to enjoy my own stories! Considering that they are written to my own taste, perhaps that isn't strange, but I can't relisten to my own podfic the same way. Of course, there are also occasional old stories that I regret. The main one is a due South casefic I once wrote that had migrant workers as victims with little agency, where we never even found out what their fates were. /o\ Since I am now active in a union where I regularly interact with migrant workers and help out with negotiations, I could never have written that today. But I don't write in that fandom anymore and doubt I can find the inspiration to rewrite it. Ah well, you live and learn, and hopefully I’ve paid back. I've put a note on the story to that effect.

3) I haven't been engaging much with all the OTW stuff, though I will be voting in the election. I just have too much stuff going on in my environmental organization, where I am on the board, to engage in conflicts and problems in other organizations.

4) I was talking with garonne about wingfic and my impression that this trope is out of fashion and not common anymore. Then I went to AO3 and looked at the 7,370 fics tagged with "Wingfic". If I sort by date posted, and go to the middle page, I see that half of those fics are posted after August 2019. Of course one then has to consider the general growth of AO3, but perhaps I have to discard my notion of it being out of fashion...it might just be out of fashion in my corner of fandom. Hmm.

comments

Prooflisten to Gleam in the North

2023-01-04T18:29:24Z

I will be recording Gleam in the North for Librivox now that the copyright has gone out! : D Is there anyone who is interested in being my Librivox prooflistener? You would not have to check my reading against the text. You just need to check that the intro/outro is correct, and that there are no weird editing or volume issues. You do need to get a username at the Librivox forum and comment there after listening to each chapter.

No pressure whatsoever to do it, though, since there is usually no difficulty in getting a proof listener at Librivox. But I thought I would ask in case anyone thought it would be fun. : )

comments

End-of-year meme: podfic

2022-12-30T11:26:41Z

Flight of the Heron:
A Grimly Ghost, by regshoe (Keith/Ewen, 2h 2m)
Steadfast Unto Death by me (Keith/Ewen and Ewen/Alison, 3h 11m)
Three Strands, Braided Together (Keith/Ewen/Alison, 11h 14m)
No Man Can Shun It by regshoe (1h 3m)

Other podfic:
Known Associates by thingswithwings (Avengers, 9h 18m)
Les oiseaux que l’hiver exile by ellenfremedon (19th century France RPF, Jacques-Antoine Manuel/Pierre-Jean de Béranger, PG-13, 1h 46m)

Librivox audiobook:
The Wounded Name by D K Broster (17h 4m)

Total time: 45h 38m.

I took a break from recording in December, which I think was good. It was also good to record Known Associates, for a completely different style. Next year's projects: continue recording my longfic WIP Three Strands as I go, and record D K Broster’s Gleam in the North, which will come out of copyright next year!

comments

A song about political exile

2022-11-19T10:32:57Z

Ugh, I had a stressful day yesterday, mostly related to my environmental organisation. /o\ Luckily I now have a quiet weekend at home, because earlier in the week I realized I was under too much stress and cancelled the conference trip I was supposed to have gone on this weekend (also related to my environmental organization). Go me.

However, I have also bought myself a new and upgraded microphone, because I'd been unsatisfied with my previous one for a while (which I've had for 10-15 years now). To celebrate, I have recorded the song which yesterday's podfic is named for, because I thought it deserved a larger audience. It's a song about birds flying south for the winter, but really about political exile, written in 1816 during the Bourbon restoration. You can listen to it here!

Do tell me what you think about the sound quality! Although I have also discovered (which is no surprise, really) that sound quality is very much affected by how you listen to it. It turns out that with an external sound card and good quality headphones, recordings made with my previous microphone also sound much better than they did with cheap headphones. Ah well.

comments

Prooflisten to "The Wounded Name"?

2022-04-28T14:52:56Z

I am going to record D K Broster's The Wounded Name for Librivox. If you haven't read it, it is slashy hurt/comfort set during the Napoleonic wars. I sold it to sovay like this: Waterloo happens off stage while the main characters share a bed in a cave and make anguished confessions.

Would anyone like to prooflisten for me? This is an obligatory part of making a Librivox audiobook, but it doesn't mean you have to check the reading against the text. You just have to check that each section has the correct intro/outro and that there are no obvious editing errors.

Only do this if you think you would enjoy it! You don't need to do it as a favor to me, since it's not hard to find prooflisteners at Librivox. (Though it might happen that the one who volunteers thinks Flight of the Heron has a happy ending after listening to the whole thing...)

comments

Current fannish projects

2022-01-22T15:49:44Z

My hands have been hurting a lot the past week, but I found myself a better dictation program! I thought I'd talk a bit about my current fannish projects. I guess you saw my recent podfic, which is a departure from what I've been recording recently. I do love all these historical British fandoms, but I felt like I was getting stuck in a groove, performance wise, and needed something different to shake me up. Mind you, the first chapters of Known Associates are also historical, although set in 1940s New York instead. I've really been enjoying reading it. I also have regshoe’s No Man Can Shun It completely recorded except for the songs at the beginning, which I just can't seem to get a good recording of. But maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist there.

When it comes to writing, I've got 20K of my Keith/Ewen/Alison fic, and it's coming along well. Probably it will be about 100K in total. But I got a new idea during the readalong, and it turned out regshoe had also got an idea based on the same premise. We decided that we would both write our stories, which seem quite different in some respects, and then exchange them for beta! So I'm excited for that. I've got 5K of the new fic so far. I think it will about, or less than, 20K, which is a short fic for me these days.

comments

My podfic in 2021

2022-01-06T21:18:06Z

Flight of the Heron podfic and audiobooks:
No Unfitting Anchorage, by regshoe: Keith/Ewen, 1 h 12 min
Audiobook of Flight of the Heron itself by D K Broster: Keith/Ewen, Ewen/Alison, 12 h 42 min
Cameron of Ardroy's Last Goodnight by regshoe: Keith/Ewen, 3 min
Divided Loyalties: Keith/Ewen, 5 h 42 min

Other podfic and audiobooks:
An Ever-Fixed Mark, by AMarguerite: Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet/Richard Fitzwilliam, Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, 19 h 56 min
That Looks on Tempests, by AMarguerite: Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet/Richard Fitzwilliam, Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, 5 h 26 min
I'll Mount the Air on Swallow's Wings by regshoe: f/f for Song Composed in August - Robert Burns, 53 min
Audiobook of "Mr Rowl", by D K Broster, 14 h 11 min

Well, that is certainly a lot. A record for me when it comes to length, in fact: that's about 60 hours! But the FotH audiobook was recorded in 2020; OTOH I have about 4 hours recorded and unposted. Out of these, I think the Pride & Prejudice podfics were the most fun! Of course I don't have a British accent, but I would be much more intimidated with something modern and British--with something that's set 200 years ago, people probably didn't sound like today anyway. The pod_together collaboration with regshoe was fun, too, with all the singing I got to do. Also Mr Rowl, for which I thank regshoe for the proof-listening. With Divided Loyalties, I think I was perhaps a little tired of the text when I recorded it, but it came out well, I hope.

comments

Recent reading

2021-12-02T18:08:23Z

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik (2021, #2 in the Scholomance series)
I find Novik compulsively readable in general and this is no exception. Also as usual with Novik, the romance doesn't really grip me, but that's okay. I don't have deep thinky thoughts about the book, though if you do, please comment! I suppose I enjoy this series more on the level of being entertaining and engaging, and given that there are plenty of books out there which are supposed to be fun and easy reading, but which don't actually engage me, I'll take it when I find it.

Romantick Stratagems by L A Hall (2018, #9 in the Comfortable Courtesan series)
I've been having a bad cold for a week, so it was time to break out the comfort reading, and this hit the spot as usual. Also it was time to read another book in the series before I forgot any of the by now rather large cast of characters.

Also, I got a very nice comment on my Flight of the Heron audiobook from a listener at Librivox! Here it is: I read this book thirty years ago and when I came across the Librivox recording by chance I thought I would listen whilst I knitted in lockdown. I was most impressed and engaged by the reading. Her voice was pleasant and expressive, not only in her delivery of the descriptive passages, but especially in her sensitive interpretation and voicing of the character's thoughts and feelings - both Ewen's and Keith's, which are central to the story of the unlikely friendship. It really did justice to Broster's story and rekindled my love for the characters.

Awww! That is very nice to hear, especially when I was feeling myself like I didn't do the book justice. Also I feel weird reposting it here because it feels like bragging, but whatever, it's just going to disappear into the depths of a forum thread on Librivox otherwise. They have a weird method of leaving feedback. You can't comment on individual audiobooks, instead you type your feedback into the "thank a reader" comment box. From there, it looks like someone manually has to post it into the forum thread for the purpose and then send a private message to the reader so they will notice it! Seems like that could be designed with less hands-on labor...but then, their forum looks pretty old. Also, sadly, you can't reply and thank the person who gave you feedback.

comments

What should I record next?

2021-04-04T20:16:05Z

View Poll: #25510

comments

Progress on fannish works

2020-12-11T19:49:40Z

1) My Yuletide fic is POSTED! \o/ Also I have a treat which is finished, except that it needs a title.

2) My poly fic is at 53K. Bless garonne for all her feedback on it! ♥ I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up at around 100K...

3) I've got two long podfic/audiobook projects which will soon be ready to post.

4) I'm going to attempt bookbinding, because I want my own longfics in my bookcase! : D
Step 1: Write a book. Yes, I did that.
Step 2: Do a nice layout. I'm almost done with this, here is what I've got so far. Being a mathematician, of course I'm doing it in LaTeX. *g* If you have thoughts on what would make it better, please share (those A4 pages will be mapped onto A5 when I rearrange them into signatures).
Step 3: Buy tools and materials. Have not done this yet, but it looks like I will have to order from the UK or Germany--I guess the Swedish market is too small for there to exist shops for bookbinding supplies.

comments

Do you prefer your podfics with chapters?

2020-07-05T08:24:35Z

So I'm recording my recent longfic, and wondering if I should keep the chapter breaks, or just read on. And if I do keep the chapter breaks, should I make each chapter into a different file? The whole thing will be about five and a half hours, and there are eight chapters as well as a prologue and epilogue. So that's a little more than half an hour per chapter, on average.

I know most people probably listen by streaming these days, right? Me, I still download the files and put them on my mp3-player (yes, I'm old-school), so I don't like files that are too large, because if I lose my place, I can't find it again. But OTOH, I don't know if it will bother people who stream if I do have multiple half-hour files, and put them all in a folder on box.com? This is the way I usually do it for long podfics, though the files are usually larger.

comments

Fannish administration

2017-06-16T17:23:05Z

I have now updated all the LJ links in my story index to only point to DW (or sometimes AO3) posts. I dunno, this index is maybe redundant when all my stories are on AO3, but I like having it all gathered and organized here, too. Actually I've been rereading some of my old stories, and I like a lot of them! I wrote some good stuff. *somewhat wistful over my writing days*

I am preparing to delete my LJ and transfer my community mod rights to a new, empty LJ so that I can help with further DW community backups (thanks to sage for this idea!). What's bothering me is my podfic. This is not really an LJ issue, though I do have a lot of posts on amplificathon. The audiofic archive was kind of down, and by a random sampling, a lot of my stuff seems to have made it back up. But it doesn't really seem like a stable place anymore, so I'm pondering what do. I have some stuff on box.com, but I'm not sure if that's a good place to put all of it. Hmm, I know paraka hosts for a lot of podficcers.

A separate issue is that I never put my podfic on AO3 because I was waiting on separate media categories, which then seemed to be coming fairly soon. Well, it's years later and we still don't have that, so maybe I should just start putting it up anyway? Hmm.

comments

Podfic collaboration

2014-11-19T20:14:40Z

Some time ago (a fairly long time ago, it feels like), I was talking about collaborating on a podfic of The Land of Lost Content by desireearmfeldt and, hmm, another author who seems to have orphaned the work. mific wanted to do Fraser, and I seem to remember andeincascade expressing interest in Stella? Possibly malnpudl was involved in the idea as well? I hardly remember any more. Anyway, I recorded all the Kowalski parts, and they have languished in my WIP folder. But it seems a shame to never finish this! I am convinced it would make a great podfic, especially with the soundtrack.

So. I am emailing the people whom I asked originally--are you guys interested? And if you're someone else who's reading this and are interested in taking part (all the original people might not still be interested), please chime in. : )

comments

General update

2014-06-03T19:18:09Z

Sorry for the lack of fannish content lately, you guys! Er, the current content seems to be booklogging and politics and a bit of RL. But I am actually writing, if a bit less of it--I've got 7000 words on my due South Big Bang science fiction story, so that's going well. I am having so much fun with the worldbuilding! Also podfic_lover and I are going to try podficcing cesperanza's famously un-podficcable fic Scrabble, so wish us luck with that, ha ha.

In RL news, I have graaaaaading.

In two weeks I will leave for my usual field work in the mountains! Only for two weeks this year, though--I wish it was longer. And I won't be alone up there, so I won't be able to do my usual hermit act. Here's hoping the other people are nice, anyway.

Also, this weekend I will be one of the instructors on a course on bryophytes as used in forest inventories, and the other instructor is, like, Sweden's foremost authority on bryophytes. OMG, I am all starstruck. What if I totally suck and don't know enough? *hides under the bed*

comments

Fannish achievements

2014-01-26T11:46:36Z

I'm dogsitting at my parents' house this weekend, and it's proving a quite productive weekend. Besides dog-cuddling, dog-walking, and crossing various RL tasks off my to-do list, I have done the following fannish things:

- finished the draft of my C6DVD card and sent it to beta
- beta-read seascribe's delicious Vecchio/Cortez fic (do go read it!)
- posted my Pod-Together lightning round podfic, which is a collaboration with feroxargentea (the collection won't be revealed until January 31st, though)
- watched Pacific Rim on my parent's huge flat-screen TV, which I was inspired to do by this vid, which was recently recced by cantarina. OMG, go watch that vid, it's so good! And I quite enjoyed the movie, although it felt kind of weird with a live-action mecha movie--I think of it as an anime genre. Would take recs for gen fics about Mako Mori?

comments

Microphone fail

2014-01-19T19:19:26Z

Arrrgh, argh. I've been getting really bad quality from my microphone lately, and done various fiddling and re-recording. This in a situation where I already don't have a lot of time for podficcing, so it's been going glacially slow. It turns out that the reason was that I'd switched to the rear microphone on my ZOOM H2, which picks up a wider angle, when I was recording songs with my sister, and then forgotten to switch back. How stupid can you get?

So now I guess I just scrap what I recorded recently and re-record it for the third time. Gah, I have lost so much recording time with this. Well, now at least I know what the problem was.

comments

The due South podfic exchange

2014-01-11T22:40:44Z

Sooo, around this time last year I ran the due South podfic exchange. I don't think I'll be running it this year, because I'm kind of busy. What do you guys say? Would you be sad if I don't? I'll gladly give it to someone else to mod if there's anyone who wants to take it over--it doesn't really take a lot of energy to mod, just some familiarity with the AO3 challenge interface.

comments

End-of-year meme (podfic edition)

2013-12-28T23:16:25Z

( Index of my 2013 podfic )

( Statistics, commentary and meme answers )

comments

New account for my podfic

2013-08-27T14:06:40Z

Right, I have made a separate AO3 account for my podfic: Luzula_podfic.

I wanted to be able to see my podfic fandoms and tags and statistics separately from the ones for my fics, and if I used a pseud for it, then the statistics would still get mushed together. Plus, you can't easily link to a pseud (as above). The drawback is that my podfic username has to be qualified with "podfic", while my fic account has no qualifier, like fic is obviously the main and most important thing I do, which is not true. But I created a "Luzula" pseud at the podfic account, to counteract this as far as I could.

Er, don't expect much to go up there soon, though--there's just a couple of podfics that had to be posted to AO3 for challenges, as well as some collaborations that other people have posted. I'm waiting on separate media categories at AO3 before I upload the bulk of my stuff, because I have tons of podfics, and uploading and then having to edit afterwards would just be unnecessary work. My podfic index is still the best way to find my podfic.

comments

This and that

2013-04-04T22:07:49Z

1) I went to the Brazilian jiu-jutsu club today for the first time since I got back home. I'd been putting it off--I've missed so much, I've forgotten everything I've learned, the others will give me the evil eye for being gone so long...But no, everyone was very nice, obviously, and I remembered at least some stuff. What did happen was that I felt like I was almost going to die during the half-hour warm-up: throat burning, nauseated, arms and legs almost giving way. Wow, I am out of shape. Although maybe it's not very productive to compare myself against brawny martial arts guys.

2) I cannot stop looking at this photo from 1920 with various Northwest Mounted Police uniforms.

3) I forgot to say that I was podficced by desireearmfeldt a while ago! You should go and listen to it--it's a sweet and porny little RayK-and-Stella story I wrote a while ago, and she does a great job reading it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

4) Sedoretu story aaaalmost done. I just need to round off the last scene, and fix a couple of little things.

5) The due South podfic exchange will go live soon! Yay!

comments

The due South podfic exchange!

2013-01-17T10:52:38Z

I just held the last lecture on the first-year calculus course I'm currently teaching. Whew, no more lecturing at 8 am every morning! I am so going to sleep in tomorrow morning. Of course, soon will come the graaaaaading of hundreds of exams...

If you're into both podficcing and due South, do sign up for the due South podfic exchange that I'm running! Sign-ups are here and rules are here.

Last night I started working on my due South/Temeraire fusion, so that's apparently the next thing I'm going to write (although I plan to work on some WIP:s as well). Dief as a dragon! It's going to be so much fun, and it'll be perfect for the due South AU challenge that sage and I are planning to run.

comments

Podfic End-of-year Meme

2013-01-02T10:21:57Z

( Index of my 2012 podfic )

( Statistics, commentary and meme answers )

Fic edition of this meme to follow.

comments

This and that

2012-12-29T13:07:37Z

1) I watched the 2011 Jane Eyre movie last night with my mom, and I really liked it! I thought both Jane and Mr. Rochester were well cast--and okay, now I realize why there exists an XMFC/Jane Eyre fusion fic (I really recommend that fic, BTW). I liked Jane especially--she really worked for me. It was interesting to see Jamie Bell as St. John, although I did think they could've built up to his proposal a bit more.

2) I forgot to announce one of my podfics here: Just A Kiss, a Sherlock podfic which is a collaboration with six other podficcers that helens78 organized. Haven't listened to it yet, but I love recording 15 minutes and getting a two-hour podfic back. *g*

3) Speaking of podfic, until recently a podfic had the most hits on the AO3 of all my works during 2012! Granted, it's a podfic of a long fic by a popular author in a popular fandom, but still, this makes me want to put all my podfics up on the AO3 (the one I linked is a collaboration and was put up by a co-reader). But I've been holding out for separate media categories, because otherwise I'd have to go back and edit all those podfic posts when we do get them, and I have a lot of podfics. Hmmmm. *dithers*

4) I've read a fair amount of the dSSS fics, and I've made my way through the short and sweet stories in Madness, but I've barely made a dent in the main Yuletide archive. I won't offer rewards for guessing my Yuletide fic, because it's a former WIP that I've talked about a bit in my journal (but feel free to guess anyway!) I'd love to see if anyone can guess my due South holiday fic, though, and I offer a ficlet as a reward to the first one who guesses right (betas not included, of course). I don't think it should be that hard to guess.

comments

Update + thoughts on podfic

2012-12-03T22:21:16Z

Winter has finally come in earnest--we got a nice thick blanket of snow this weekend, and it's cold, brrr. I spent most of Saturday in a board meeting over Skype, and it left my back kind of wrecked, augh. Am slowly recovering. I have tons of things on my to-do list right now, but I'm managing to stay on top of it so far. dSSS progressing satisfactorily; Yuletide on hold for now.

Recorded the first part of a new podfic yesterday, and I love how it came out! It's very different in style from the last one, and I really enjoy that. Reading different styles is something that keeps me from getting stuck in a rut, and makes me feel like I'm stretching myself and learning new things.

Speaking of podfic, I participated in the group podcasts on collaboration and on acting for pod_aware, which was fun. There are tons of interesting podcasts over there; check them out! The one I've found most interesting so far is this one by aethel, which is a study of podficcers' voices vs canonical actors' voices. Specifically, it's about how you get lots of Teen Wolf podfics [disclaimer: I know nothing about TW] where Derek is voiced in a lower pitch than Stiles because of fanon tropes, even though Derek actually has a similarly-pitched and perhaps even higher-pitched voice than Stiles in canon. Very interesting.

Which got me to thinking: I don't think I often use a systematic difference in pitch to distinguish character voices myself. For example, I usually distinguish Ray K and Fraser by differences in enunciation, pacing, and melody of speech instead. Or at least I think so? People who listen to my podfic: do you think my Fraser and Ray K systematically differ in pitch? Hmm, my Ray K might have a wider range in pitch, and go up and down more. Anyway, often when people say "character voice" they often seem to mean that they use a difference in pitch, and not all the other ways you can use to differentiate characters. Hmm.

comments

Podficcing: Beyond the Basics

2012-11-28T09:45:20Z

This is a podfic workshop that I originally posted on the generation_kill comm, intended as a follow-up workshop to chemm80's excellent beginner's workshop. That comm is mostly locked down, though, so I'm posting it here as well. I am going to assume you know the basics of how to get sound recorded, how to edit, how to export your podfics, how to upload and how/where to post. Some of what I say is also going to assume that you're using Audacity.

All of this is of course from my POV, and while I am doing my best to acknowledge the different opinions and experiences out there, YMMV on any of these topics. Thanks to andeincascade and podcath for reading through the post beforehand!

( 1) Reading )

( 2) Sound quality while recording )

( 3) Sound quality post-recording )

( 4) Editing )

( 5) Podfic fandom )

comments