A Newsletter From Someone Who Hates Newsletters

My MFA program felt like it was sponsored by the Newsletter Industry. I was there to learn how to write a publishable book but every instructor harped on about how important newsletters were for writers. I’ll never have a newsletter! I said to anyone that would listen.

Well.

Here I am with my MFA diploma, my novel is out in less than a month, and I’m writing my first newsletter. For what it’s worth, while I’m subscribed to hundreds of newsletters, there are exactly two that I don’t automatically delete upon their arrival in my inbox (Dear Good People by Dolly Chugh and Reads & Eats by Yi Shun Lai, if you’re curious).

Finally, after many discussions with writer friends, I’ve accepted that I need a newsletter. I promise I’ll try my best to not become one of your auto-delete subscriptions.

First things first…

I mentioned that my book, How One Becomes Sarah Mead, is coming out soon. January 17, 2021!

I’ve been toiling away on this book since 2014 and it’s finally done! This is by far the most personal project I’ve ever worked on. It is both a tribute to my late partner and the book I wish I had read when I was younger and needed to see fictional characters I could identify with.

While traditional publishing had long been my goal as a writer, after nearly 100 rejections from agents, most of whom told me some version of “It’s too diverse,” I said screw it, hired a couple editors, had a cover designed, and decided I’d self-publish.

You can learn what How One Becomes Sarah Mead is about here and pre-order the Kindle version here (the paperback will be available for purchase on January 17, 2021).

On to the nerdy things and accessibility things…

A couple weeks ago, I chatted with a friend about how one goes about getting blurbs for their book (she got Billie Jean King to blurb her book and I would probably die if I ever learned that Billie Jean King even knew I existed in the world). She asked if I was also going to have an audio book. I said no but it got me thinking…how could I make an audio book happen with zero budget to do so?

Now, if you know me, you very likely know that my day job is that of a captionist. If you have seen it on the Unreal Engine YouTube channel, I probably captioned it. I am constantly looking for better captioning solutions. My go-to, Subtitle Edit, is robust and amazing but it’s freeware that looks like it was made for Windows 95. I am the sort of person who needs the software I use to look nice and work well.

I discovered Descript a few months ago and it’s an incredible tool. It’s a full video editor and it allows you to edit captions and transcripts as though you’re editing a text document. It also has a super cool feature called Overdub, which uses amazingly natural-sounding voices to narrate your text if you choose to use it. It’s mostly for correcting errors in videos with existing voiceover without having to re-record the video but it has other uses too.

While procrastinating on my very last read through/edit of my novel, I got to wondering if I could use Overdub to narrate my novel.

It worked!!

All of the Overdub voices are given names and have three tones to choose from. There’s even a voice named Ruth which I used to narrate for my character, Ruth. She sounds exactly how I imagine Ruth sounds.

It’s not perfect, nor is it as natural as a human recorded voiceover, but it certainly makes for some very cool little previews and snippets.

What’s Tali up to?

I am aware that most of my followers on Twitter follow me for my Tali content. She’s adorable and I’m just not that interesting a person. So what better way to end my newsletter than with a Tali update?

I got a VeloCore bike for Christmas and the assembly person is coming to put the thing together today. I spent the wee hours of the morning preparing a spot for it. Tali, very uncomfortable with the fact that I temporarily moved her bed, proceeded to spend the next three hours glued to me, as shown above and below:

Much like me, Tali is not a fan of change. Also much like me, it tends to ruin her entire day (week/month/life). But we endured and we are not-so-patiently awaiting the bike’s assembly with masks at the ready, mass amounts of hand sanitizer by our side, and a can of Lysol which I will soak my apartment in upon the assembly person’s departure.