A Book and A Dream: An author’s adventure in writing, reading, and being an epic fangirl

The Wizard Has Spoken―Girl of Glass and Wrath and Wing Are Now Available on Audio!

August 17, 2020 Megan O'Russell Season 1 Episode 39
A Book and A Dream: An author’s adventure in writing, reading, and being an epic fangirl
The Wizard Has Spoken―Girl of Glass and Wrath and Wing Are Now Available on Audio!
Show Notes Transcript

“If we walk far enough," says Dorothy, "we shall sometime come to someplace.”

In this episode of A Book and A Dream, Megan O'Russell discusses how the first part of her audio journey is complete and shares some other exciting news. Spoiler: IT'S ABOUT KITTENS!

As mentioned in the episode, you can find Meeny here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CD2J-UUBoaQ/

Hear more about Megan's adventures in audio here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/760154/4350995-audiobook-auditions-hitting-the-narrator-jackpot

The Girl of Glass audiobook is available here: https://books2read.com/GirlofGlass

The Wrath and Wing audiobook is available here: https://books2read.com/WrathandWing/

Megan: [00:00:01] She is going to be in charge of all social media promotions, I have big dreams for her. She's also probably going to be like the head of Broadway one day. Seriously, I have big dreams for my cat.

 

Announcement: [00:00:16] Welcome to A Book and A Dream with Megan O'Russell: an author's adventure in writing, reading, and being an epic fangirl.

 

Megan: [00:00:28] Hello, my name is Megan O'Russell, and welcome to Episode 39 of A Book and A Dream. There is so much excitement happening right now, I just can't even believe it. So first of all, Girl of Glass and Wrath and Wing are now fully available in audio form. And it has been a crazy process. And I can't wait to tell you more about the difference between recording yourself and having someone else do it and the crazy collision of the two.

 

Megan: [00:00:57] But first, I would be absolutely remiss if I didn't introduce you to my new assistant, Meeny.

 

Megan: [00:01:05] Now, Meeny is a beautiful little tabby. She is three months old, I absolutely adore her. She is going to be in charge of all social media promotions. I have big dreams for her. She's also probably going to be like the head of Broadway one day. Seriously, I have big dreams for my cat. There will be a link to a picture posted.

 

Megan: [00:01:27] So click on the link. Check out this beautiful little girl who I am so excited to have in my life. And her eyeliner is on point. So what more can you ask for from a book Cat?

 

Megan: [00:01:39] Now, aside from getting Meeny and having, you know, a kitten in my life and being super exciting, the whole audio book thing has just absolutely exploded within about the last 10 days. So, I have gone through the final proof of The Tethering audiobook, which was recorded for me by a lovely gentleman named Tim. He's a very talented actor. I'm still waiting on ACX to, you know, put it on Amazon. So we'll we'll talk about that some other time. But right now, what is available is Wrath and Wing, which is the prequel novella to the Ena of Ilbrea series and the first book in the Girl of Glass series.

 

Megan: [00:02:13] Now, originally, when I decided that I definitely wanted to dive into audio, the concept was for me to record all of the audiobooks myself, or at least the audio books that had a female protagonist, because a lot of people want to hear the author's voice, and that's cool. That's super cool.

 

Megan: [00:02:33] And I'm confident speaking, and I've spent my life on stage, so those are all things I'm comfortable with.

 

Megan: [00:02:40] And so I was like, OK, yeah, like I'll record some audio books. No big deal. It is way harder than that. And we were going to, my husband and I, who is my business partner in all things.

 

Megan: [00:02:54] You know, he even helped me pick out the cat. We decided we were going to do Girl of Glass first.

 

Megan: [00:03:00] It's one of my most popular series. I am very excited about that world. There is another series coming in that world. So we were going to start with Girl of Glass and I was going to record it myself. And we got about 90 percent of the way through it. And we were like. We've gone so far on this learning curve, we're going to have to start again, and it was at that point that I realized I'm never going to get through my whole backlist if I do this by myself.

 

Megan: [00:03:26] I have 17, 18, 17?

 

Megan: [00:03:30] 17 books out right now, I'm getting the little point down finger from my husband, who is my business partner. No, up, up, up 18. It's 18, so 18 books.

 

Megan: [00:03:39] I love marriage. It's the best 18 books out right now. And it doesn't take that long to record an audiobook. I'm slow and picky.

 

Megan: [00:03:50] So an eight-hour audiobook would probably take me like a 40 hour work week, which isn't like that bad for someone who's being, like, super compulsive about getting everything perfectly right. But if you add that up to all 12 books and you put in proofing, not editing, I would not audio edit myself. No, no, no. I have a dude for that. He's amazing. I love my audio dude.

 

Megan: [00:04:13] But it's just gets to the point where I would have to choose between writing new books and having audiobooks. And so I kind of had to choose to give up some of the control of audio. And that has been amazing.

 

Megan: [00:04:27] It's very weird to have people like actively coming to a meeting, like, I want to be your narrator like that's so weird, to have people audition for you is creepy. Link in the show notes to the podcast where I talk more about that, but it's, yeah, it's crazy. And then I found Claire who recorded Girl of Glass for me. And the way it works is that you get a 15-minute sample from them. So I hired Claire, we signed a little contract and then she sends me the first 15 minutes and I get to be like, oh, this is said this way. This is set that way. Maybe a different character choice for.

 

Megan: [00:05:01] And then that's it.

 

Megan: [00:05:03] Claire goes off into whatever magical booth she works from, and then I get a notice from ACX of, hey, the whole audiobook is ready for you to proof. It just magically gets done. I mean, I'm sure Claire doesn't feel like it's magic. I'm sure she's like I spent so many hours doing this, this was a lot of work. But to me, it's magic and it just shows up. And so I love the outsourcing factor of that because there's no way there's no way it would get done otherwise.

 

Megan: [00:05:34] It's impossible. And so I made the decision going to outsource Girl of Glass and The Tethering series first. Want to get those done. Found a guy, found a girl did that. And they also realized that there are some things that I am not willing to have other people do for me. And for me, that was the Ena of Ilbrea series. I love Ena. I love her story. I love Ilbrea. I am very protective of it. I'm also very specific.

 

Megan: [00:06:04] And, you know, readers may not hear it in their head and that's totally fine. But there is a very specific pattern to the way Ena speaks. Her words have a rhythm, and there is a lot of things that she does that could be taken very wrong. And there's a lot of weird twists that could happen with her character that aren't there. If you were to read things into the text that don't happen or if you were to not believe the warnings that I give. So that's one of those... I wanted to do Ena's series myself.

 

Megan: [00:06:40] So it's very interesting that we have Wrath and Wing, that I recorded. So it's read by the author. And we have Girl of Glass. And on the one hand, we have this product that I was selling control of. And yes, I, I have an audio engineer and I love that part, but other than that, in massive amounts of control of all of it. And I'm so happy with the way it turned out and I'm really excited for Ena to have this other way to tell her story. And then on the other hand, I have the magical book where I said, here's your script. And then it came back done. And that, for me, has been the beauty of audio, of giving up so much control, even though I'm not willing to do that for Ena, doing that for Nola and sending her story out and having someone give me this complete finished product back is very affirming in some ways because with Claire's performance of the material, I'm like, Oh (this is going to sound really bad of me, but) I'm actually pretty good at what I do.

 

Megan: [00:07:46] Look at this. Someone properly interpreted the characters based off the text I wrote like, oh, look at me, I'm so proud.

 

Megan: [00:07:53] And it's also like crazy because it feels like I had so little to do with it. So, yeah, it's insane.

 

Megan: [00:08:02] And then adding Tim in with The Tethering is a whole 'nother, absolutely insane process.

 

Megan: [00:08:10] It's... It's great, and I am so excited to jump into this audio world with both feet. Now, in the show links, you will find, or if you're not listening to the podcast, if you're doing the video, then in the post it goes with this, you will find links to the Wrath and Wing audio book and you will also find links to the Girl of Glass audio book. But do not tune out when I stop speaking to you in a moment because I have the audio file, I have a sneak peek from Girl of Glass to share with you. It's so great. Claire did such an amazing job. I'm really happy with it. So keep listening for a few minutes. Check out the sample of Girl of Glass because I am so thrilled to have Nola's story told in this completely new medium.

 

AUDIO BOOK: [00:09:02] (SAMPLE OF AUDIO BOOK)

 

Megan: [00:11:38] Thank you so much for listening to the clip from Girl of Glass. Now you can follow the links that are with this post to find Girl of Glass on basically any audio retailer where you could want them. If you find an audio book retail venue that it's not in, let me know and I'll find a way to get there.

 

Megan: [00:11:56] Also, if you're a super avid library listener, ask your librarian to get Girl of Glass for you so that you can listen to it with your library card because it is on Overdrive.

 

Megan: [00:12:05] So librarians do have access. And thank you so much and I can't wait to talk to you next time. Bye bye.