I'm being haunted!

AwkwardMD

The worst Buddhist
Joined
Apr 13, 2014
Posts
2,736
Bit of a cheeky title, maybe. I wrote a story last summer and posted it right about this time, for the 2024 Summer Lovin’ event. It did pretty well, and I moved on to other stories. I wrote a story for Omen’s 2025 Pink Orchid, and then I wrote a wildly fun Dwarves in Space piece that was super, super satisfying. I’ve got about 15k words written in my next project, but progress has been slow.

I don’t usually get stuck on stories after I post them. Like most of us, I obsess about them when they’re new and getting attention. I refresh often to check for comments, and then after a day or two (sometimes longer, especially for events), the views slow down. The comments slow down. The wheel turns.

And yet, a year later, I’m still thinking about that summer story. Out. I think it’s the best, most complete story I’ve ever written. I have a series that’s about twice the length that eclipses it in most respects, but in terms of bang for your buck I think Out is maybe as good as I’m capable of. At the time I was working on it, I was paying for Speechify. It was a useful editing tool, but little by little I became obsessed with having Out read to me. I was still listening to it long after that refreshing period was over. I even started making small edits to get it to read it better. There was one part where Speechify parsed “the vice principal’s voice over the PA” as “The vice prince of Pennsylvania.” There were other gaffs, but that one was the funniest, and I could never quite get it all perfect.

It took me a while to realize that I was misusing an AI tool. I kept justifying it to myself in my head, that it was hurting no one. Sometime around the beginning of 2025, I stopped using it… but I didn’t stop thinking about Out. I thought about the characters, and I read it over and over, and what I eventually realized is that I want an audiobook version of it. I want the thing that I had, but real. I should pay an artist.

I sat on this idea for a long time. I looked into getting one of my shorter stories recorded years ago (2015?), and had a rough idea how it worked. You pay an hourly amount per hour of finished content. In the course of being an unpaid sex worker, I’ve made some friends in different fields, and I reached out to a few of them. One of them sent me this link (https://voiceactingclub.com/rates/#pfh). Based on that, I was looking in the low-to-mid tier. I don't need foley or music, or anything more complicated than a read-through of a document.

I asked my friends, but they were all busy or unwilling to commit to an audiobook. Out is 53k words. When I was having Speechify read it for me, it was five and a half hours long. Some of them take VA commissions, but only for shorter pieces or only to read the dialog for a specific character. At $200 an hour, I was looking at somewhere over $1000. Fine. Having exhausted my personal contacts, I went to a few different VAs I was a fan of through Youtube and asked them. One got back to me quickly and said they don’t do audiobooks. The other two didn’t respond at all.

The friend who gave me that link above then shared this site (castingcall.club) with me. Spoiler alert: I got 30 auditions within 48 hours once I posted the job. Now, it took a little while to muddle through the options and I wasn’t at all sure that I’d filled out every field properly. CastingCall gave me the option to put 3 lines of story into a posting, and all those auditioning had the ability to read those lines, make a recording, and submit the recording. Some of them were AI, and I dismissed those out of turn. Some were male VAs even though I specified that I was looking for Young Adult/Adult Female. I thanked them and dismissed their entries.

That left about 20 serious auditions. Half of those weren’t what I was looking for in terms of vocal pitch. Of the 10 remaining, 5 were good but had a thicker accent that wasn’t what I was looking for. The other 4 were wonderful, read the lines nice and clearly, had the right pitch and tone, and were great.

One of them, though, understood the lines a little differently and put some zazz on parts that, in the original story, I had formatted with italics for emphasis. There was no link to my Lit posting of the story, so I don’t think they did research in order to nail it. Either way, I knew which one I was going to go with as soon as I heard her. It just took me a while to let go of some of the other applicants because they were so good.

I had originally put the posting up for a 2 week period, not really knowing how it would all go, but since I had my dream choice so early in the process I “closed the auditions” and “assigned the role”, all of which is pretty straight forward through the website. Once that happens, unless there are auditions that are still working their way through the system (I got one last one right afterwards, but it didn’t change my mind), the site stops taking applicants for the role.

I messaged the VA I’d chosen through the site once, and then we followed up on discord. It was nice to share a preferred platform. I was excited, she was excited. She had questions, and I filled her in on the story. Everyone is 18+. There are 5-ish sex scenes. The story is about this, this, and that. It has themes of this, this, and that. I currently have no plans to sell the recording she ultimately gives me, so it’ll just be for private use. We confirmed that Paypal was a shared platform for paying her.

I was very excited. She was very excited.

I asked her to read a little bit of it, to see if it was her kind of thing, although I was very clear that it wasn’t necessary. If I’m paying per hour of finished recording, then she’s not getting paid to read my work for pleasure. She was happy to read some, though, and it was good that she did because afterwards she had some questions about how I wanted different things handled. “Should I add laughter when the story narrates a character laughing?” “You’ve got a part here where several characters are talking at once. Do you want me to record all of those and layer them or read it just like you’ve got it in the narration?” Etc.

We went through it a little more. I specified that, between the two main characters, I was hoping she could voice one of them slightly lower and one of them slightly higher. She asked if I wanted to do any live voice coaching, giving pointers on anything, but I declined. I’m happy to leave choices in her hand and be grateful for what I get, though I got the impression she was perfectly open to coaching and suggestions. I'm too much of a hermit to even consider it, really, but also I really do trust her instincts.

I gave her the option to turn the work in in pieces, getting paid in parts, but she was fine with doing the whole thing at once and getting paid all at once.

This is currently where the project stands. She gave me a rough schedule, and should be (at this minute), doing some it. I don’t know if she’ll finish recording today, and I don’t know how long of a process it will be for her to edit it into a finished, singular file.

Happy to answer any questions if anyone has follow ups.

(@ShelbyDawn57 @UsuallyPresent @iwatchus )
 
Are you going to post the audiobook here or are you planning on trying to sell it commercially?
 
Are you going to post the audiobook here or are you planning on trying to sell it commercially?
I don't know if Lit has a size limit for audio uploads. I haven't decided. I have also loosely toyed with making a Gumroad salesfront to sell it, and pointing my Lit profile at it for my readers, but I'm not sure.
 
I don't know if Lit has a size limit for audio uploads. I haven't decided. I have also loosely toyed with making a Gumroad salesfront to sell it, and pointing my Lit profile at it for my readers, but I'm not sure.
I think I am 6 months from thinking about that question seriously. (I want to see how far I can push myself writing-wise in that period.) But it is certainly in my head now. And I know that audiobooks are a big part of the market.

I will appreciate hearing how your thoughts on that develop.
 
Wow, that's fascinating. Out is a fucking amazing story, I can totally see why it would stick with you. (Though, of yours, my head will probably always belong to The Portland Opera and my heart to The Dress.)
Thank yooou!!! If this works out, I'll probably start saving up toward a similar recording for The Portland Opera, though that would be well over 10 hours.
 
I dug into Lit's FAQ and there is a limit. The max file size is 256 mb, though exceptions can be made by contacting support. I will report back on file size and recording length once my VA finishes up.
 
Thank yooou!!! If this works out, I'll probably start saving up toward a similar recording for The Portland Opera, though that would be well over 10 hours.
Are you doing this solely to place here, or are you considering selling? It's an investment and you may want to try to recoup some of it, even if it's a small amount, it helps.
 
Are you doing this solely to place here, or are you considering selling? It's an investment and you may want to try to recoup some of it, even if it's a small amount, it helps.
Initially I just did it for myself. I wanted it. I should pay an artist. End of story.

As I've sat with the idea more, I've warmed to the idea of putting it up on Lit and selling it through Gumroad for, like, 5 bucks US.

Lit's FAQ says there's an option to allow downloads, so I think I'll turn that off. If anyone wants to stream it from Lit, that's an option, but if you want your own download to just play locally on your phone maybe go pay a few bucks.

There's a non-zero chance I'll just donate the money anyway. I always donate my winnings from Lit contests.
 
The VA delivered the 3.3 gig raw .wav file today! She ran into a snag where applying some noise cancellation corrupted an hour's worth of recordings last weekend, and she had to redo it, but I have it today. I paid her through Paypal after listening to 10 minutes. $1,250 US. She did *such* a good job. I 100% lucked into a VA who understood the material, and the finished product is so much better for it.

I am currently giving it my first listen. There are, so far, 5 sections with some unwanted noise. In some cases, I think she had her mic on by accident(her cat jumped into her lap). In one case, she did a second take on a section she flubbed, and the two takes overlap. In one spot, she started singing Chappell Roan. I love that energy, but it's a little distracting and a lot anachronistic (the story is set in the early 80's). All small things that are easy to miss in a 5:31:20 recording. I reached out and asked if it would be okay for me to get her to re-record the original lines. None of the sections are more than a sentence or two, so they should be no more than 5-10 seconds each. She said yes.

After that, I'll begin a longer process of identifying all the little pauses that I want to trim down. It's tempting to start with those now, but the length of the whole thing will change once the fixes are in place. I might end up spending weeks listening to it over and over, spotting sections where I want to trim 0.1-0.3 seconds of silence to tighten things up.

I'm so excited!!
 
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The VA delivered the 3.3 gig raw .wav file today! She ran into a snag where applying some noise cancellation corrupted an hour's worth of recordings last weekend, and she had to redo it, but I have it today. I paid her through Paypal after listening to 10 minutes. $1,250 US. She did *such* a good job. I 100% lucked into a VA who understood the material, and the finished product is so much better for it.

I am currently giving it my first listen. There are, so far, 5 sections with some unwanted noise. In some cases, I think she had her mic on by accident(her cat jumped into her lap). In one case, she did a second take on a section she flubbed, and the two takes overlap. In one spot, she started singing Chappell Roan. I love that energy, but it's a little distracting and a lot anachronistic (the story is set in the early 80's). All small things that are easy to miss in a 5:31:20 recording. I reached out and asked if it would be okay for me to get her to re-record the original lines. None of the sections are more than a sentence or two, so they should be no more than 5-10 seconds each. She said yes.

After that, I'll begin a longer process of identifying all the little pauses that I want to trim down. It's tempting to start with those now, but the length of the whole thing will change once the fixes are in place. I might end up spending weeks listening to it over and over, spotting sections where I want to trim 0.1-0.3 seconds of silence to tighten things up.

I'm so excited!!
You will spend weeks listening to it making those edits.

Also, just be mindful that listeners tend to like a little "white space" in audio recordings. One of the comments I got recently told me to take a deep breath, relax, and slow down about 5% to allow for some empty space between lines. (This is why I started recording things, I want to learn how to adjust/speak/read things more naturally instead of as the ball of anxiety that I am.)

So, trim, but don't lose those needed pauses that allow a listener to soak in the text.

ALSO *very fucking important* make a copy after every edit session with the date in the file name so you can go back to an earlier copy if you decide you don't like an edit you made without losing more work than you need to lose to undo the unwanted edit. It will eat up hard drive space like crazy, but can save you from undoing weeks worth of work if you find that the edits on a particular day messed up the flow. When you're done, delete the extras. Audio files and edits take up a lot of fucking disk space. An external drive specifically for such edits/recordings is bonus.
 
You will spend weeks listening to it making those edits.
I'm giddy at the idea.
Also, just be mindful that listeners tend to like a little "white space" in audio recordings. One of the comments I got recently told me to take a deep breath, relax, and slow down about 5% to allow for some empty space between lines. (This is why I started recording things, I want to learn how to adjust/speak/read things more naturally instead of as the ball of anxiety that I am.)

So, trim, but don't lose those needed pauses that allow a listener to soak in the text.
I think the VA did an amazing job already. Mostly I think I'm aiming at splices between recordings that line up a little jaggedly. Teeny, tiny adjustments only.
ALSO *very fucking important* make a copy after every edit session with the date in the file name so you can go back to an earlier copy if you decide you don't like an edit you made without losing more work than you need to lose to undo the unwanted edit. It will eat up hard drive space like crazy, but can save you from undoing weeks worth of work if you find that the edits on a particular day messed up the flow. When you're done, delete the extras. Audio files and edits take up a lot of fucking disk space. An external drive specifically for such edits/recordings is bonus.
Amazing advice that I'll be taking. Thank you.
 
I think the VA did an amazing job already. Mostly I think I'm aiming at splices between recordings that line up a little jaggedly. Teeny, tiny adjustments only.
If it's jagged sections, you may want to consider inserting silence and creating a blend from one cut to the next (merging/overlapping at the center of the silenced section as a guide), it can lessen some jarring transitions.
 
If it's jagged sections, you may want to consider inserting silence and creating a blend from one cut to the next (merging/overlapping at the center of the silenced section as a guide), it can lessen some jarring transitions.
Yeah so far I've noticed maybe 2-3 places where I'll want to add a third of a second, and maybe 40 places where I want to remove a third of a second.
 
The initial .Ogg is 268 mb in size, which is slightly over the FAQ-stated maximum file size (though it sounds like there's some wiggle room). It is currently 5:31:20. Hard to say how long it will be when it ends up, but I think this is a full quality encoding and not the kind of limited quality version I'm considering uploading to Lit anyway.

Will report back soon.
 
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