Reading Winter Song

Posted by Colin Harvey Aug 24, 2009

A few weeks ago Angry Robot sent me a dictaphone on which to record the opening chapter of Winter Song for the website.

Great, I thought. How hard can reading from a page be?

Bloody difficult, actually.

For starters remind me never to let Lee talk me through brain surgery. His "It's easy to use. Simply ensure the button on the side isn't pointing to 'hold' and then press the record button" omits the nine hundred other buttons, including the one that erases everything you've just read...

Then there's Alice's tendency to bark at the sound of a car door slamming three miles away. Not sure how much Lee can clean the tape up, so I'm erring on the side of caution. OK, so that limits when I can 'perform' to when Kate was walking Alice, but that's okay.

But then there are the grand-children visiting next door, screaming their bloody heads off. OK. Slam window shut.

So how is it that all of a sudden my throat feels like it's full of gravel?

Not to mention getting tongue-tied. And while I'm at it, I must remember in future to write in short, simple non-alliterative sentences.

Never mind. I'm sure that when I eventually get this finished, you'll be able to click on the site, and it'll all be worth it.

Just ignore the throat-clearing, the stumbling, the dog barking and the children next door screaming!