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My plans were to post a post-Audie Awards blog today, to share some memories, photos and video of the gala held here in Los Angeles this past weekend, but sadly, life has intervened.

Frank Muller passed away yesterday. I received the call last night and spent a very sad evening, wishing I had had the chance to know him.

For those of you unaware of Frank’s work, he was a legendary audiobook narrator, the first real giant of the industry, whose talents brought the medium new attention and the respect it deserved. This was back in the days when the idea of walking into your local bookstore and actually finding anything you were looking for on cassette was a virtual impossibility, when most people assumed audiobooks were done for the blind, not the general public. Frank lent his voice to numerous literary giants and helped convey their words to an entirely new audience, and for that, he should always be remembered, respected and revered.

Sadly, Frank suffered a debilitating motorcycle accident in 2001, which left him unable to work further in the industry that so embraced him. Sadder for me personally, I never had the chance to meet Frank until after his accident. It was a quick meeting, I was one of many people crowding around him at the 2003 Audie Awards in Los Angeles, when he made his first public appearance after his accident and was on hand to receive an award he won that night. It was a lovely moment, and I was honored to be present, but it was nearly impossible for me to convey to him how much I appreciated his work in so little time.

In any industry, any discipline, there is an inherent respect and admiration that must be present for the generation that came before, for the trailblazers who helped lead the way and establish opportunities for those who come later. Any African-American baseball player should have a deep-seated gratitude toward Jackie Robinson for breaking the color barrier, any modern-day actor should thank God for Charlie Chaplin having run the gauntlet of international celebrity years ago, and if any modern-day NASCAR driver has no respect for Richard Petty, he should be kicked out of the sport. Similarly, anyone who makes a living recording audiobooks as I do should kneel down and thank God for Frank Muller. I know I do. I just wish I could have conveyed that to Frank in person.

Another person we should give thanks to is Stephen King. Stephen wrote lovingly about Frank and his work in Dark Tower V: Wolves of Calla, the first novel in the series he wrote after Frank’s horrible accident. He dedicated the novel to him and wrote a moving description of their friendship in the Afterword. He also, with fellow authors John Grisham, Peter Straub and Pat Conroy, held a reading of their work in order to benefit Frank’s recovery in 2002. He helped create a charitable foundation, WaveDancer, to help Frank’s family through the long and arduous process. Damn decent of him, a truly extraordinary thing to do.

For those of you, like me, mourning the loss of such an extraordinary talent and wishing you could hear him talk about the business he loved so much, I encourage you to check out this rare gem: in 1999, Frank recorded John Grisham’s THE TESTAMENT, and as a bonus feature, voiced a six-minute discussion of the process that went into its creation. He talks about everything from the research he did, to the joys of voicing each character in the story, to the very state of the industry as he saw it late in the 20th century. It’s altogether too brief, only six minutes long, but it’s a gift he gave us, a rare insight into the mind of someone so amazingly talented. Its official title is FRANK MULLER ON READING THE TESTAMENT, and you can find it at Audible.com by doing a keyword search under “Frank Muller.”

If you have problems downloading it, you can click the listen icon and hear it in its entirety. You can also hear Stephen King’s Wavedancer benefit on Audible by going to their site and plugging in the keyword “Wavedancer.” I hope you’ll give them both a listen.

If you knew Frank or knew his work and are moved to make any kind of charitable contribution, I hope you’ll visit his website and do so. You can find it at www.frankmullerhome.com.

I wish there were more to say, but given our loss of so great a voice, silence seems more appropriate.

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May 1^st, 2008. Mean anything to you? Maybe not, maybe it’s nothing more than any other Thursday, maybe you can’t think of a single reason to put a red X on that date in your calendar. But believe me, I can. It’s a huge day in the Brick household, my friends, a day I’ve hoped for lo these last 25 years, a day I’ve worked toward daily for almost a year now.

It’s the day THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT become available on audio. That’s right: both Part One, LORD FOUL’S BANE and the latest installment, Part Eight, FATAL REVENANT, are now audiobooks from Brick by Brick audio. (There will be a slight pause while Stephen R. Donaldson fans rejoice, and while I catch my breath. It’s been a lot of work.)

Click here to go to the Store to purchase and download LORD FOUL’S BANE right now. LORD FOUL’S BANE is EXCLUSIVE to ScottBrickPresents right now, you can’t get it anywhere else!

I first read this series back in college. I’ll never forget the day I spent studying for finals my freshman year in UCLA’s University Research Library. I had a huge dilemma on my hands: study for the Theater History class I was so woefully unprepared for, or learn Covenant’s fate at the end of LORD FOUL’S BANE.

Wasn’t much of a choice. I sacrificed my grades that quarter, because the idea of living with the anxiety of not knowing what happened to the Quest for the Staff of Law just didn’t seem plausible

I’ve never regretted my decision.

I learned a funny thing about those books: they sit with you long after the plots of most novels fade. A literature professor of mine once said the mark of a good fictional character is whether or not the readers spend time asking themselves, “I wonder what this character is doing now?” after they turn the final page. If that’s indeed the benchmark of literary success, then Donaldson succeeded wildly with Thomas Covenant. His dilemmas became my own, his ruminations on power and impotence resonated forcefully in my own relationships, unfortunately, and his bitter growl “Hellfire!” was never far from my mind when things went poorly in life.

I also learned I’m not alone in this. There are a TON of Covenant fans out there.

At first, I’d find them somewhat stealthily, unexpectedly. The first time was at a party when someone showed off a white gold ring (a major plot point in the Covenant saga). I mentioned the series to this person and was met with a questioning glance: have you read it, did you enjoy it, did the books resonate as much with you as they did with me, that look seemed to say. A nod, a narrowing of the eyes and a sly smile told me I’d just met a brother, a fellow member of an elite fraternity: someone who’d walked in Thomas Covenant’s shoes as I had.

Over the years, membership in that club expanded, and I found myself discussing its many virtues with acquaintances, girlfriends, even my mother got hooked on the series. There’s even a website devoted entirely to meeting other Covenant/Donaldson fanatics, Kevinswatch.com, a message board I recently (and proudly) joined. Yet with all the new members in the Covenant club I met, that sly feeling of exclusivity never faded; that feeling that you had participated in something huge, monumental; that you’d read something so painfully lovely that it felt wrong to refer to it as a mere BOOK. I feel it still, all these years later.

Of course now, the context has changed somewhat. Now, instead of being the casual reader, I’m what you’d call a PROFESSIONAL reader. I get to travel around the country and give talks, lectures, seminars and the like, sharing with people just what a cool job I have narrating audiobooks, and at these appearances I’m often asked to read a few pages of something, anything, to show the good folks what I do. And for years now, I almost always read a page from LORD FOUL’S BANE, my favorite selection from the entire series, in fact: page 182, where Covenant and the giant Saltheart Foamfollower sail upriver to Revelstone. Foamfollower asks a simple question about storytelling, which inspires an exchange that’s both heart wrenching and lyrical. (Right-click here to download an MP3 where Scott reads his favorite page). Whenever I read this, people always ask me, “Where can I get that, it’s so beautiful, where can I read the whole book?”

The first time this happened was a few years back at a lobster bake in Maine put on by the publisher of AudioFile Magazine. I was asked to read a few pages, so, since I was narrating RUNES OF THE EARTH for Penguin at the time, that being the seventh Covenant book and the first one I’d ever done professionally, I thought for nostalgia’s sake I’d trot out something from the first volume. Well, author Ben Cheever was there that day – Ben is the son of John Cheever, and author of THE PLAGARIST, as well as the editor of the recent LETTERS OF JOHN CHEEVER – and he came up to me afterward and said, “You’re recording that right now?” No, I told him, I’m doing part seven in the series at the moment; this is from part one. “Well, where can I get parts one through six?” Cheever asked. “I’ll buy them right now.”

That was the first time I ever considered doing what I did: optioning the entire series, and filling in all the volumes. Next time I see Cheever, I’m buying him a beer. And giving him complimentary copies.

Because you see, this is the definition of a labor of love. Recording these books doesn’t even seem like work to me. All I can think about is someone experiencing this story for the first time and being blessed by it as I was. That’s enough to make me forget about the long hours and the stifling heat of my non-air-conditioned studio. And getting to work with an author as generous as Stephen R. Donaldson, all to make sure that the pronunciations of this complex language and culture are accurate, is a fan’s dream come true. Stephen has spent hours on the phone, going through an ever-expanding glossary of terms that, by the end of the latest volume, ran to 593 entries. That’s nearly a hundred more than DUNE, folks.

Well, as SPINAL TAP’s good friend Marty DiBergi once said, “Hey, enough of my yakkin’!” It’s been a great deal of fun planning and presenting this gift, and now it’s ready. Off come the wrappings, off comes the tag that says “Do not open ‘til May 1^st”, out comes the card. To you, from me. Here is the first installment in the Thomas Covenant saga, LORD FOUL’S BANE, followed very shortly by the eighth and latest novel in the series, FATAL REVENANT, by Stephen R. Donaldson. Plans are to record the intervening titles at six month intervals, all of them ultimately becoming available by the time Donaldson finishes the series with Part Ten.

[Another plug from Mr. Admin, your friendly webmaster: Click here to go to the Store and purchase and download LORD FOUL’S BANE. And remember, LORD FOUL’S BANE is EXCLUSIVE to ScottBrickPresents, you can’t get it anywhere else! ‘Nuff said.]

I hope you enjoy listening to LORD FOUL’S BANE and FATAL REVENANT as much as I did reading them, the first time for myself and now for you. Leave a comment below or drop me an e-mail to scott@scottbrickpresents.com and let me know what you think.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a bit hectic getting all the last-minute details ironed out, so I’m going to go be unconscious for a while.

Thanks for listening,

Scott

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So I got an e-mail a year or so ago from Harlan Coben asking me to record his latest book, THE WOODS. No problem, I told him, I’d be thrilled! Well, when I got the news a few months ago I’d been tapped to read his latest, HOLD TIGHT, I shot him a note to tell him how much I was looking forward to it. He sent me a really nice reply, telling me he thought I’d like this one, as it was probably more demanding than his previous titles. “It’s a little different, a little broader,” he told me, “five different families whose lives intersect in shocking and tragic ways. Lots and lots of viewpoints. Should be a fun challenge for you.”

Yeah, okay, that’s all well and good, Harlan, but let me go on the record here: Challenges from authors SUCK. Whatever happened to easy reads? To simple, straightforward plots with uncomplicated character breakdowns? Would I really be asking for too much to have a story all take place in ONE person’s head…?

Okay, yes, I’m BSing here, my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek. But bear with me, I’ve got a valid point.

See, for years authors have, in the interest of good storytelling, thrown in tons of bizarre facts and obscure cultural references, liberally sprinkling tongue-twisting nationalities throughout their tales. All well and good; these stories certainly wind up being far more complex than any typical single-locale, single-nationality plotline. But I’m the poor sap who has to say all these obscure words out loud!

Do you have any idea how hard it is to sound believable when you’ve got a conversation between two characters, one of which is from Botswana and the other from Lapland? How about when one of them is a man while the other is a woman? Or when the person from Botswana grew up in Malaysia but served an apprenticeship in Missoula, Montana? Or the guy from Lapland is such a Francophile that he affects a ridiculous French accent, but can’t quite pull off the rolling Rs?

I’ve had those situations come up. It ain’t fun, folks. I’ve barely heard of Botswana, probably couldn’t even find it on a map. You think I’m really going to sound spot-on? That kind of blending of accents is almost as tough as the time I had to read a 20-page scene portraying a dinner party in Argentina during World War II. The dozen or so guests around the table that night were from America, England, Germany, Brazil and Switzerland. There was also a woman from Brazil who’d been educated in Great Britain, and a man from Argentina who had been raised in Texas. And to round things out, there were even two minor characters from Ireland and Scotland. (Ever notice how similar those two accents sound? You’re starting to feel my pain.)

All this to say, Harlan’s e-mail made my heart skip a beat. It actually reminded me of a conversation I had with Brad Meltzer several years back, right before we sat down to record THE ZERO GAME. Brad and I usually chat on the phone to go over character names, pronunciations, that kind of thing. He’ll also occasionally throw in an obscure verbal reference, and will want to make sure I clarify that for the listening audience.

Well, having just finished my initial read-through of ZERO GAME, I was struck by the fact that, halfway through the novel, Brad changes the narrator: It starts off being narrated by one Washington insider, then winds up being narrated by his best friend. Knowing how fickle the reading public can be, knowing how much they hate change, I was blown away Brad would do something so daring. When I asked him why, he told me: “Well, to be honest, one of the reasons was because I wanted to hear how different you made the two characters sound.”

Hmmmm…

I shook my head and told him, “Brad, I hate to tell you this, but they’re both gonna wind up sounding like me.”

(A note: In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t do over-the-top character voices. Accents yes, where called for; subtle nuances, absolutely; but nothing you’d call cartoon voices or anything. Narrator characters are almost always me; every other character is just various degrees separated from my own voice.)

I had to laugh at Brad’s comment. To be honest, I found it gratifying, as much as I like bitching about it. I laugh because Brad had already been doing stuff in books that made his stories oh so much more challenging than other authors. In THE MILLIONAIRES, he went on and on about the tonal qualities of the bad guy’s Chicago accent – and I, of course, had never even been to Chicago at the time. In ZERO GAME, he went into incredible detail about the differences between northern and southern Floridian accents. And yes, again, at the time I narrated it, I’d never been to the Sunshine State, so how was I supposed to know a northerner from a southerner? He even delved into the intricacies of the flat vowels inherent in the North Dakota accent, and the closest I’d been to that part of the country was seeing FARGO! Man, I started wondering if Brad hated me or something! His latest should be landing in my e-mail box in a few weeks, due out in a couple’a months, and I shudder to think of the Eastern Kuala Lumpur accents in store for me this time.

Okay, I’m going to stop bitching now, because I can’t quite pull off the aggrieved- audiobook-narrator thing. Cry me a river, right? And besides, it being April Fool’s Day, and Brad Meltzer’s birthday, I have to remind anyone who bought into the idea I’m seriously complaining about authors being involved in their own audiobooks to check the date on this posting. I’ve got the coolest job in the world, and authors who put challenges into their books for me to tackle are a godsend, literally. I actually feel quite blessed. I just like bitching and moaning sometimes.

I’ll finish up by explaining that Harlan Coben’s e-mail to me was dead-on: There were indeed a plethora of various character points of view in HOLD TIGHT, which you’ll be able to experience firsthand in a few weeks; April 15^th the book hits shelves near you. If you’ve never read his work, you’re in for a treat. Harlan specializes in the surprise, he makes the double-cross an art form.

He’s got a natural gift for something the legendary silent film star Buster Keaton used to do. Buster would stage a scene where he was driving a car towing a house across train tracks, and there’s a train approaching in the distance. The car, of course, would stall, and Keaton would strain mightily to push or drag the house out of danger. Finally he’d run off, avert his gaze and pray, and miraculously the train would pass them by. It turns out it had been on a parallel track — the impending doom was just an illusion, there was no peril at all. Then, just as Keaton would sigh in gratitude and seeming safety, a train would come from the other direction and plow through the house, reducing it to splinters. The initial danger was an illusion, but that moment of safety was a bigger one.

Keaton used to call that “The Big No.” Harlan Coben’s books are like that. Don’t blink, don’t relax, and for God’s sake, don’t get complacent.

Anybody who loved THE WOODS as I did will also get a kick out of a particular story element in HOLD TIGHT. No spoilers here, but trust me, you’ll dig it.

Okay, time to head back to the studio. Gotta polish my Australian accent for THE ATLANTIS PROPHECY, cuz wouldn’t you know, the protagonist’s girlfriend just HAS to be from Sydney…! Thank you, author Thomas Greanias!

Thanks for listening. Happy April Fool’s Day!

Best,

Scott
April 1, 2008

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Welcome to my blog. It’s my first attempt, folks. Hope you enjoy it.

I thought I’d inaugurate my site (and my ramblings) with a peek into what it’s like to create an audiobook, lift the curtain as it were to see some of the nutty experiences that break up my workaday life in the studio.

This happened to me just the other night, Monday, January 7, 2008. That day I began to narrate a new title, SPIN by science fiction author Robert Charles Wilson. It’s a really well-written tale about Earth being trapped in a bubble where time flows differently than the rest of the universe. It’s being released digitally by Macmillan Audio (formerly Audio Renaissance) and should debut in March.

It’s late Monday night and I’ve given myself a deadline to hit: 100 pages before I call it a day. Slightly bleary-eyed, I make it to about page 90 when what do I find but a curse in Flemish. And not an everyday curse, mind you, but a whopping sentence-long string of profanity that I just know will keep me at my desk for hours.

See, the hardest part about doing an audiobook is looking up the words we here in America don’t use in everyday conversation. Sometimes this is easy: it could be nothing more than an obscure English word like macadam. (Might not seem obscure to you, you probably see it every now and again in print, but when’s the last time you SAID it? I had no idea if it was mc-AD-am or MAC-uh-dam. Makes a difference.)

But sometimes it’s anything but easy, and that’s usually when foreign languages are involved. I’ve done books that have lengthy sections in French, German, Japanese, Cantonese, Italian… I’ve even had to dabble in Khmer Rouge! It’s enough to make even a goy like me say “Oy.”

But the great part is when you’re working with a producer, the director of the piece, ’cuz then it’s THEIR responsibility to look things up. All I have to do is remember how they pronounced it long enough to pronounce it accurately myself on tape, then I can swiftly forget it and focus on the next tough word.

Only trouble is, I’m producing SPIN myself. No help, alas; I’m alone in the booth.

So I hop onto Google and plug in the key words FLEMISH and DICTIONARY. After looking over a half-dozen translation sites I realize I have no chance of finding curse words here. Dictionaries just don’t include them. My best bet is to find the Flemish language’s pronunciation guide; basically, just a primer on how they pronounce their Zs, their Cs, etc., then piece the whole thing together letter by letter, sound by sound. Begin to see why I’m despairing at this point?

So I head back to Google and change my parameters to FLEMISH and PRONUNCIATION. Well, imagine my surprise when I see a link that actually lists the option to “learn to curse in Flemish.” I clicked on it and prayed.

It took me to a site put together by a guy named Luke Swartz, a twentysomething who’s traveled extensively around the world and blogged just as thoroughly about his experiences. One of his pages details the Flemish language and had a link to the “learn to curse” site I so desperately needed at this point. I clicked it… and damned if I didn’t get an error message. “Cannot find server.” Turn around. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

I began hunting around Luke’s site and finally located his e-mail address. Figured what the heck, I can send out an e-mail like a bottle on the ocean and hope he gets back to me sometime in the next week. If so, I can go back and fill in the appropriate curse. Having said that, I realized it could very likely be months before I heard anything back, if at all. Just because it’s the Internet doesn’t mean we get immediate access; we’re still at the mercy of when someone chooses to read their mail.

I e-mailed Luke and explained the situation, said I was an audiobook narrator who needed to know how to say something accurately in Flemish, and could he point me to the appropriate site? I had an English translation of the curse, and thought briefly about including it, to show him the kind of thing I was looking for. The problem is, it really was a horrible curse. It was the English equivalent of saying, “Goddamn my balls a million times, Jesus!” – apparently, the absolute worst thing you can say in Flemish. So I didn’t send him the curse, leery about cussing in an unsolicited e-mail. I merely asked him to get back when he could and left it at that.

Imagine my surprise when, less than an hour later, I get two e-mails from Luke. The first has a working link to the cussing site, as well as a slight explanation: it’s technically a “learn to cuss in Danish” site, but he explains that Danish and Flemish are basically the same language, and gives me a quick primer on slight variations in pronunciation between the two. I was ecstatic, but wondered briefly what could be in the second e-mail.

Check this out:

<<Actually, never mind–I found a link to SPIN on Amazon.com (gotta love “Search Inside”)!

I’m assuming you’re talking about “Godverdomme mijn koten miljardedju”?>>

And not only did he proceed to explain each and every guttural G and silent J, he’d also recorded an audio file of himself pronouncing it for me. Wanna hear it?

Click right here to hear Luke swear in Flemish.

My jaw literally dropped open. I stared at my computer screen in wonder, marveling at the ease with which this information dropped into my lap. Oh, and even better, Luke signs off his e-mail by saying, “My dad’s a big fan, by the way! (He’s addicted to books on tape…)”

I knew this Internet thing was big, folks. I knew it was here to stay and I knew it was a unique tool. I just didn’t realize how quickly or thoroughly it would make our jobs and our lives easier. Six degrees of separation used to be the standard by which we were all connected, yet that’s no longer the case. His dad is a big fan? It’s ONE degree of separation, folks. The Net has made Kevin Bacon superfluous.

I shot Luke a note of thanks, saying, “You give your father my best wishes, and tell him if he ever listens to SPIN, his son’s stamp will be all over it.”

Okay, gotta run now. I have to learn how to say “Me love you long time” in Portuguese.

Thanks for listening!

Scott Brick