Saturday 28 May 2022

Emma Newman on Becoming an Audiobook Narrator

 

This is the lovely Emma Newman talking about how she became an audiobook narrator, what the process is, and the skills you need for the job. Emma narrated my book, Those Rosy Hours at Mazandaran, and had to learn to sing in Farsi for it! She's a great narrator and a very talented author. 

Tuesday 24 May 2022

Wordle One Month


Not bragging... well, bragging slgihtly. My first month of Wordle went well.

Wednesday 18 May 2022

Saturday 7 May 2022

How to Format a Short Story for Submission


Just a little writing guide on how to format a short story for submission. You can find a great list of writing prizes on the Almond Press website. There's also an excellent written guide by William Shunn, here.

Thursday 5 May 2022

Wordle

 

Up until now, I haven't played Wordle, as I'm usually engrossed in Words With Friends, but I finished all my games and still couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd check it out. I've been playing for ten days and so far it seems fairly straightforward - though I know I've just jinxed it by saying that. My strategy is to start with LOUSE, because that knocks out three of the vowels. If none of those come up, I go for HAIRY, which sinks the other two. Once you know the vowels and the easy endings (S, R, H and Y) then there's only really D left as a sensible possibility. The one today was tough:


LOUSE

HIARY

DRAIN

GRAIN

TRAIN


It's harsh when you hit an ending with multiple rhyming options. The other ones that are difficult are double letters. So, LOONY for example, because you don't want to blow a vowel guess by doubling it unless you're sure. 

But, on the whole, there tend to be a limited number of options for a five-letter word once you get the vowels down. 

It's a bit tough for Brits as they use the American spelling for a lot of words, dropping the U in OU words, even though it was invented by a Brit. 

It's more fun than I was expecting, but I won't be tweeting my daily score.