Audiobooks for the win!

Fasten your seatbelts, readers. I'm pretty certain this post is going to get some of you pretty riled up, but I've recently gone through an epiphany, and I'm going to bare my soul and share it here. In 2006 when my husband and I relocated across the country, I purged a giant portion of my books. In fact, I only hung onto the tomes that I knew I would read again, crying a little as I parted with the bulk of my childhood books and many of my other favorites. I’ve been carrying books around with me since I left my parents’ home, and throughout my life my books have provided me comfort, in addition to hours of entertainment.

But the wheel turns and attitudes change. Lately (oh, this is difficult to write) my favorite way to get story doesn’t involve a book at all. I hereby declare myself an audiophile. I adore audio books. There’s nothing like being read to by a professional reader, and audiobooks let me go about my day-to-day activities, like cleaning house and exercising, all the while listening to my favorite book. Although I have a well loaded Kindle, and I do read on it occasionally, lately I’m getting my story via audio.

Industry pundits say that audio books are experiencing unprecedented growth. Now, more than ever, there are choices galore and all kinds of content available. As I wondered why I felt such guilt over abandoning the physical books which I’ve loved forever, I realized it doesn’t matter how we get our story, how we absorb the words and sentences that take us to new worlds and expand our minds. Be it physical books, e-books, or audio books, at the end of the day it’s really about a tightly woven plot that resolves in a satisfying way and character relationships that involve us emotionally.

As I curl up on the couch with a cup of tea, headphones at the ready, I like to think that listening to a book is teaching me to use my brain in different ways, to focus on what I hear, and to make me a better listener. I will always have a soft spot for books, of hours spent in bookstores, of the smell of bound volumes, and of the way physical books enhanced my life will always be dear. I’ve just moved on and embraced a new way to get my story.  

How about you? Are you attached to physical books? Do you like listening to audio books? Drop and a comment and let me know.

Happy reading (or listening), everyone.

Terry

 

HOW ECO ARE MY READING HABITS?

Hello!

The rise in social media means now there's a 'day' for everything, and when World Earth Day (focusing on how to preserve the earth's resources) and World Book Night (celebrating reading for pleasure) fell during the same week, it got me thinking about my reading habits, how environmentally friendly (or not) they are, and how they've changed over the years.

World Earth Day and World Book Night

STORIES TO MAKE YOU SMILE

As an aside, World Book Night is offering a collection of Stories To Make You Smile for FREE, which includes pieces by Katie Fforde, Dorothy Koomson, Veronica Henry, Richard Madeley and more, which is available to download in e-book here... STORIES TO MAKE YOU SMILE

A free collection of uplifting stories for World Book Night...

Back to my bookaholic tendencies, and just how environmentally friendly are my reading habits?

E-READER

When thinking about e-books, I felt quite virtuous. I wasn't amongst the first to adopt an e-reader but, once I had one, quickly converted to buying more e-books than paperbacks. A quick audit shows I currently have 523 on Kindle. Number read - 119. Given I read around 50 books per year, it will take me 8 years to complete my Kindle collection. I was shocked! I comforted myself that these numbers were less wasteful than if I'd bought paperbacks.

PAPERBACKS

Time to confront my paperback addiction... I always buy my monthly book club read in paperback form, as well as having a favourite list of authors I love to see on my bookshelf. Then there are the novels I know I'll wish to share with family, with friends. Also, I prefer to read shorter fiction in paperback  - short stories, flash fiction, poetry. And non-fiction too.

Last week, I invested in yet another bookcase. The Rose Metal Press Field Guild to Writing Flash Fiction arrived whilst writing this post! I didn't dare count the paperbacks dotted in stacks around the house, but a rough estimate of ones still to be read sits around 150. Again, using my 50 books per year reading rate, this will take me 3 years to complete.

So far, I have enough reading material to keep me occupied for the next 11 years!

AUDIOBOOKS

Over the past year, the most dramatic change in my reading habits has been the increased number of audiobooks completed. I use a variety of platforms, which made it difficult to work out how many I own. However, I can say with confidence that I have 36 still waiting to be read. Given it takes me a fortnight to finish an audiobook, this means I have enough listening to last well over a year.

TSUNDOKU

It would be fair to say I suffer from tsundoku, the Japanese word for purchasing more literature than I have time to read.

MY READING ECO FOOTPRINT

I suspected my book buying habit was hefty, but even I was surprised by the stats and know I can do better - particularly as far as my teetering paperback piles are concerned. That said, I wish to continue to support authors, but my book audit has highlighted that I need to be more thoughtful about the format I chose, and speed up my reading!

So, have your reading habits changed over the years? Do you suffer from tsundoku? How do you decide which format is best when purchasing a book?

Also, remember to bag your FREE e-copy of Stories To Make You Smile... 

Happy reading!

Rae xx

IF ONLY THE WALLS COULD TALK ... OR MAYBE THEY DO by Victoria Cornwall

Buildings can form a great backdrop to a scene, but they can also be used to tell us about the characters’ mind-set, past and even their future. Buildings can show the passing of time, add tension to a scene or show the class the character has been born into or aspire to join. Buildings are an amazing tool and are, in my opinion, not used to their full potential, yet they can draw a reader into the story and help them to walk in the footsteps of the characters themselves.

An example of this is Manderley, the house in Dauphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. It holds a sense of doom for the new Mrs De Winter. Its rooms feel haunted by her husband’s former wife, the heirlooms are hers and even her portrait still hangs on the wall and gets her into trouble. In addition to all this, the housekeeper constantly reminds the new wife how Rebecca liked to run it. Little by little the present Mrs De Winter feels overshadowed by the former wife as her confidence is gradually whittled away. Mrs De Winter never meets Rebecca in the novel, she doesn't need to. The house is a constant, imposing reminder of how great her husband's former wife was and the housekeeper uses the building to her full advantage to taunt her about this every moment she can.

When I wrote A Daughter's Christmas Wish, I ensured that each main character had a building linked to them which helped to tell their story.

The heroine, Rose, feels lonely and trapped in her unexciting life living with her parents. Her mother still grieves for the loss of her son and is unable to move on in her life. Their home reflects this and, hopefully, the reader will be able to empathize with Rose's feeling of being trapped in a dull life. If only she had someone who could help her to feel festive again as Christmas approaches … cue the arrival of a lone soldier, called Nicholas.

Nicholas has returned from the Great War and has a promise to fulfil - to give a fellow soldier’s fiancé, Rose, the Christmas she has always wanted. Once again I have used his home to show his class, the past he has tried to hide from and how the passing of time (and war) have changed it. He also imagines the future too, which I hope shows his mindset in that moment.

Yet for these two people, who are from very different classes, to meet I needed a neutral setting and, for the first time in my writing career, I used a place of work – a teashop. This allowed them to meet and be alone together, an oasis for their festive countdown to Christmas to begin and their relationship to grow. It is where shy Rose feels most confident. This allows her to blossom and think about leaving her grief for her fiance behind her. Hopefully the reader will feel that they are watching Nicholas and Rose from a quiet corner of the room as these two people learn to live in peacetime again.

As a writer one must use all the tools at hand. We often use smell, taste, sound, feel, sight, thought and internal emotions to convey what our characters are experiencing, but the buildings that form a backdrop to their lives can also speak volumes - in their own quiet way.

A Daughter's Christmas Wish

Available as an ebook & audiobook from 20th November, 2018.

Available to pre-order today. 

Victoria Cornwall

WRITING OUT OF SEASON by Victoria Cornwall

I've lost count how many times I've written a scene describing the season in some way. Often, my fictional timeline is in a different season to the one I'm experiencing in reality. I've written about the burnt amber leaves of autumn while wearing shorts, a t-shirt and with the pungent smell of suntan lotion on my skin. I've written about the blustering gales of winter as I munch on an Easter egg. I've written about the fresh new shoots of spring  ... well you get the picture.

Last year I began writing my first Christmas novella. I was in the middle of a novel at the time, but I was advised that if I was going to write a Christmas themed story it would be a good idea to set the other novel aside as it would be easier to write about Christmas around the Christmas period.

I seriously considered the advice given to me, as although I can easily imagine a winter season in the summer, there is something magical about Christmas that is not so easy to capture when the celebration has come and gone.

I know that many of my friends have successfully written a Christmas story outside the festive season. They've told me that they have used decorations, mince pies and Christmas music to recapture the mood as they write. This sounded like a great idea and probably works well, but I wasn't so sure if it would work for me and this is why ...

1. Christmas is very special to me and I wanted it to remain that way, neatly tucked away between November and January ... a warm, cosy, spiritual oasis filled with generosity, family and a well known biblical story. Did I want to recreate it in March and April? I'd rather be munching on a chocolate Easter egg by then.
2. By the time Christmas is over I've had my fill and quite relieved to pack the decorations away and give the house a good clean (a task which is so much harder with a wilting fir tree wearing tinsel). The house clean signals that the hard work (and stress) of the big day is finally over. Did I want to be reminded about it during the summer? I didn't think so.

So I set my current novel aside and began to write my first Christmas novella around Christmas time last year.

Did my plan work? Was it easier to write a Christmas themed story around Christmas time?

I loved writing A Daughter's Christmas Wish during the build-up to Christmas. It felt special and not like work at all. I hope I managed to capture the build-up and magic of Christmas, but perhaps only someone who is an expert on Christmas will know the answer to that. What do you think, Father Christmas?

Did I keep Christmas neatly tucked away between November and January?
Not quite. I finished the book in February/March. During the late summer and early autumn I was working with my publisher to prepare it for publication, which inevitably requires immersing myself into the build up to Christmas outside of the festive period.

Although my mind has been pre-occupied with Christmas far longer than I had anticipated (6 to 7 months in all), I've loved every minute of it. Maybe immersing myself in the festive spirit of goodwill outside the Christmas period is not so bad after all!

Now, I think its time to put my feet up. I have a little respite ... until, of course, the real countdown to Christmas begins!

A Daughter's Christmas Wish will be released on 20th November as an ebook and audiobook.
It will be available to pre-order soon!

To find out more about Victoria Cornwall's books click HERE

A LITTLE KNOWN FEATURE ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK by Victoria Cornwall

When I was a teenager I became temporarily blind. It lasted for several minutes and was caused by a head injury to the back of my head. I had slipped on some ice at school, fell backwards and hit the occipital lobe of my brain. This area of the brain is responsible for vision and the trauma caused me to suffer from cortical blindness.

I still have a vivid memory of having my eyes wide open but not being able to see. It was terrifying. I was fortunate, my eyesight returned completely, but many who suffer from impaired vision, either as a result of disease, injury or degeneration, are not so lucky.

What has my experience got to do with writing, books and the little known feature on Twitter and Facebook? I guess I just wanted to convey how suddenly we can find ourselves in the position of losing our sight.

On the 1st April, my debut novel, The Thief’s Daughter, was released by Soundings as an audiobook. It is narrated by the very talented and experienced voice-over artist, Emma Powell, and I believe her soft, husky and expressive voice adds to the experience of being whisked back in time to the 18th century. See if you agree by clicking HERE to listen to the preview.

I understand that those who enjoy listening to audiobooks do not have to be visually impaired as they make great companions whilst driving, working, enjoying a hobby or doing the housework. However, they do open up another world to those who do suffer with some degree of visual impairment and their importance cannot be over-emphasised.

I spend a lot of time on social media as part of promoting my writing. How was I going to promote the audio version of my novel to visually impaired fans of fiction? Screen reading software is great for the written word, but I wanted the cover of the audiobook to be accessible to them too. It turns out that Twitter and Facebook were already one step ahead of me.

In 2016, Twitter added a feature to help visually impaired twitter users “see” the images attached to tweets by allowing the tweeter to add a description to the image which could be read by screen reading software.

This is how you enable the feature:-
Click on your Twitter Profile drop down box and click on Settings and Privacy

Click on Accessibility

 Next to the Image Description tick Compose Image Descriptions.

The next time you tweet with an image, a box will appear for you to add a description. It does not work on schedule tweets and don't forget to use an appropriate hashtag such as #visuallyimpaired

Facebook has an alternate text feature for images too. To learn how to do it click on this LINK or follow the steps below:-
Upload a photo to your Facebook page and click on the edit icon.

Click on the Alt Text icon and fill in the box with the description of the image/photo you are posting.

Then click save in the bottom right corner.

So next time you post an image on Twitter or Facebook, consider making the image accessible to users who are visually impaired by using the features described above.

Do you know of any features that can be used to help increase the access to social media by the visually impaired? I would love to hear about them.

Victoria Cornwall

To Buy Links:-

The Thief's Daughter

The Captain's Daughter