Well my name is Joaby and I’m here to say,

I’m not going to do a rap about my book today!

Having resisted the siren’s call of title-based wordplay, let’s discuss making an audiobook out of a novel you wrote.

First things first, it’s a cool way to re-examine your work. Reading your work aloud is an old school editor trick (and just one tool in the toolbox), so I had already read Till The Heavens Burst outloud before. Reading each word intentionally allows you to catch things you might miss otherwise, because you engage different parts of your brain. It’s not flawless—our brains still fill in gaps, even when we are narrating—but that’s why you generally combine it with other things, like reading sentences in reverse order, or getting an actual editor.

But reading your book to record it is a whole other kettle of fish. Even when you’re just narrating—that is, not doing voices (or not intentionally, anyway)—there is a degree of performance involved which requires yet another part of your brain to get involved, so you catch things you might not have noticed previously.

So I’m very grateful to have gotten the opportunity to do this. I’m very privileged to have the time available, and I recognise that—even recording a half hour podcast required more than an hour of my time as I processed it, and not everyone can just… do that.

Also, recording it week to week was both fantastic and… maybe less than ideal. I learned a lot over the 16 weeks it took me to record the book, and I think that is evident in the earlier recordings. Hell, it’s apparent in the opening seconds, to me, because my method for editing in “Elliot” to the Chapter 1 header is just… sloppy. That’s me being kind to myself. It’s rough. Over the course of three and a bit months I learned a great deal about recording a solo voiceover project. And I know I still have more to learn.

I hope I’ll continue to get better, because honestly, I loved reading Till The Heavens Burst. That is a good book right there. And I’m excited to read my other stuff, too. I’m going to do Blackbirded next, which might be a little risky but I stand behind what I wrote. I think it’s a great story that shines a light on a part of Australia’s history that we not only try to ignore, we try to forget.

For fans of Till The Heavens Burst as a recorded element, I’m also going to share a 4 hour long podcast that was recorded by me, Nathan Lawrence and Liam Gilroy a month after the launch of the book itself. I meant to chuck it up last week, but honestly it has a couple of audio problems that I’ve been trying to fix, and I’ve since given up. It is what it is.

If you haven’t listened to the podcast yet, you can get it over on the Podcast page! And if you just want the Audiobook collected, you can grab it via Patreon for $5AUD (I can’t charge less I’m afraid).

On the games front, my current obsession du jour is Monster Train 2, a great blend of Tower Defence and Spirelike. You command a train full of monsters as you battle the forces of hell and heaven, and the story doesn’t matter, it’s just a great example of a middle ground between “Achieving Victory” and “Winning” that I talked about a couple of months ago. Actually, the first Monster Train featured in a graphic in that blog post.

I also played Doom: The Dark Ages, and I wrote a review of that over on The GAPodcast if you want to check that out. It’s long and rambling and exactly my favourite type of review to write. Full of analysis and goofiness in almost equal measure.

In media, I was flattened by The Rehearsal Season 2. I can’t explain why. I was going to blog about it, but I don’t want to ruin the impact it would have for anyone who might not have seen it yet. Nathan Fielder uses HBO’s money to ‘practice’ life scenarios to work out how to best approach them. The first episode of Season 1 involves practicing for a date. It’s “reality” TV, but I promise you you don’t know where it’s going.

And a writing update! I think I’m going to miss my mid-year deadline, but not by heaps. I am very, very excited to share Final Final Girl with people. I think it’s a great story that will stay with people for some time, and it’s a great introduction to some characters I want to spend a lot of time with.