Welcome to the world of Allan and Helen Krummenacker, authors of the Para-Earth Series. Here you will find information about our books, thoughts on writing, our adventures becoming indie authors, reviews of books we've enjoyed, and much more. So come on in and stay a while, we have much to share and would love to hear from all of you about your reading and writing adventures.
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Last night I received this comment over on my YouTube channel regarding my presentation of an unabridged version of Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” from Barbara Ortiz…
“This version is among the best, the added images are very nice, your extra research is appreciated. Ahh, also, your voice acting is spot on.”
This meant the world to me. I hope everyone else who’s checked it out enjoyed it just as much.
And if you wish to give it a try, I’m supplying the link just below. Happy Holidays everyone and may the season bring you all the joy and happiness it can.
Link:
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, a Joyous Kwanzaa and a Happy New Year to you all.
The holiday season is upon us, and I hope you are all enjoying yourselves. I know I’ve been on the quiet side for some time, but I’ve been dealing with some health issues (which I’ll discuss down the road, it’s still not fully resolved yet). But I’ve also been working on a special project for the last 2 years. It’s been quite a journey with this particular effort of mine, as it’s part audiobook and part video.
As you all know I’ve done a fair amount of audio work, but adding video was a whole new ballgame for me. Getting everything lined up just right, finding imagery in public domain, as well as music to go along with it, took a considerable amount of time and energies. But I feel like the results were worth it. I learned a lot along the way and may actually start doing some podcasting in the near future. We’ll see.
But for now, I’d like to present to you all to a brand-new Unabridged presentation of Mr. Charles Dicken’s classic “A Christmas Carol”. It’s up on YouTube and you can reach it simply by clicking on the image below:
Why I chose this particular work is explained in the opening of the video itself, but I’ll briefly summarize my reasoning here. After years of watching all the versions created for film and television, I finally read the novella itself and discovered that a large proportion of the story never makes it to the screen. And as I read, I found myself occasionally reading aloud in various voices I assigned the characters in my head. So, after actually doing audiobooks, I felt it was time to give Mr. Dicken’s story a shot.
So far, my beta-viewers were all pleased and impressed with the finished project. And I hope all of you will be as well.
Please leave any comments on YouTube, as well as hitting the Like button if you enjoy what I’ve brought you.
I am considering doing some more Christmas related ghost stories down the road, as I’ve discovered a trove of such stories available in the public domain. For those who don’t know, ghost stories at Christmas was a time-honored tradition over in Europe, long before Mr. Dickens created his famous novella. I’ll go into why this was so in more detail in my next post, but for now please enjoy my holiday season offering and stay safe my friends.
And as always, keep writing and recording, everyone.
A whole year of planning, working, sweating, and it still wasn’t enough.
For those who are wondering, I’m referring to my unabridged dramatic reading of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”. My plan was to unveil the finished project as a picture book on YouTube. Besides spending hours recording voices, some sound effects, finding music in public domain, as well as dozens of images (also in the public domain) created over the last 150 years since the book’s creation… and I still couldn’t quite get it across the Finish Line. At least not in time for this Christmas.
All I have left to do is film an opening and closing to the project, but between work and other audio and writing projects, I just couldn’t do it justice this year.
Now some of you might be asking yourselves, why? Why was this so important to you? After all, there are so many versions available of the story available on YouTube, streaming services, Blue-Ray, DVD, etc.
Well the answer is, none of them are ‘complete’. There are a number of powerful speeches and even scenes that more often than not, wind up on the cutting room floor. There have also been new scenes created and added to the films that cannot be found in the original story at all. After having read the book cover to cover myself a few years back, I started finding myself reading certain scenes with a variety of different voices for each character. And yes, this is when I really started taking the idea of doing voice over work more seriously. I was having so much fun with these characters and that it took me a while to realize I was drawing upon techniques and skills I learned in my l theater class during my last year of high school. I learned so much in that one year, and I have often found myself regretting I hadn’t taken the class sooner and then taken one of the more advanced classes afterwards. Still, I thank my lucky stars and my teacher Mrs. Nina Pfeffer for all her patience and guidance. I learned so much from her.
So after Helen convinced me to bring her books to life in audio, I went back to the idea of doing the same for Mr. Scrooge and company. Helen often refers to me as her “Voice Time Machine”, since I can do so many voices of actors who are no longer with us, which allows her to ‘cast’ the characters from her books and helps her in turn bring them more to life in her writing. And believe me I drew upon a lot of voices of actors both living and dead, to my project.
And in spite of having a whole year to work on “A Christmas Carol” I could not anticipate back and hip problems which kept me from my ‘recording studio’ and sitting at the desk to edit either images/audio recordings for weeks at a time.
Then of course there were other projects that needed my attention as well. I’m wrapping up my 3rd audiobook narration as I write. I also created a couple of book covers over the last 12 months, as well as feeding 3 blogs with material as well. One of those is “The Vampyre Blogs – Private Edition” where I’ve been writing short stories involving our Para-Earths vampyre Nathan and his friends.
https://thevampyreblogs.blog/ (WordPress site – same content as the Blogger site, but I know some people find WordPress easier to work with)
With so much going on, I can’t feel too bad about not finishing my “A Christmas Carol” project. There’s only so many hours in the day, and only so much of me…
Therefore my New Year’s Resolution will be to keep being ambitious, but give myself leeway to scale back and not be too hard on myself if I can’t get all that I want to done.
And I do have plans for this coming year, oh yes indeed. Here’s a little list:
1- Re-work, re-edit, and re-release “The Bridge” in a special 10th Anniversary version.
2 – Get a complete 1st draft of “The Vampyre Blogs – Family Ties” which takes up mere weeks after the end of “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”.
3 – Release the first volume of “The Pass” trilogy, which I wrote with my old high school friend Rich Caminiti, with some fantastic illustrations by the talented Gabrielle Callan. We will be releasing this book in hardback (yes, your read that right) and e-book formats.
NOTE: This one is a definite. The book is already written Gabrielle just getting the last of the artwork completed along with the cover
4 – Rich and I will be working on the 2nd and 3rd drafts of the second installment of “The Pass” trilogy with hopes of releasing that book in 2023.
*The 1st draft is already completed so we have high hopes of getting this to happen*
5 – Record and release Helen’s 1st solo anthology “Forever W. I. T. C. H. Hunting”, which is actually a spinoff from her Forever Detective Series and will feature characters from that series as well as a few new faces who will be appearing in future installments of The Forever Detective books.
6 – I hope to begin recording “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” with the help of Helen to bring more variety of voices for your listening pleasure.
7 – We may start adding some podcasts occasionally to this blog and maybe even to YouTube. We have the equipment and the ability to do it, so you may actually get to see and hear us once in a while.
8 – Finally, I’m starting to look into voiceover work opportunities for myself this coming year. I’m already on LinkedIn and have seen opportunities becoming more numerous, as well as over on Audible. There are apparently opportunities here in and around Santa Cruz, so I may be trying out for a few here and there. It all depends on time and how many spoons I can spare without burning myself out.
So there you have it everyone. We’ll see how much I actually accomplish, but time and life will tell. I’m not sure how easy the new year will be starting out with our regular jobs as we’re having labor issues with management this time around. So there’s a strong possibility of disruptions in our lives in the coming month. So if I go quiet for a while, you’ll know why.
We’ll see what happens. But in the meantime, we hope the holiday season has been treating you well and that you all have a joyful and wondrous New Year come the end of this week.
Stay safe, and keep writing and recording dear friends.
All three books are the entire “Forever Detective Series” to date. Helen has more stories coming and will be releasing a fourth book “Forever Festive” this November. We are hoping to have the audio ready to be released at the same time so people can have that option to stick in someone’s stocking or leave under their tree, (electronically speaking) of course. Remember, you can gift someone an e-book or even an audiobook.
Now this may not seem like such a big deal, but for someone who spent over a year researching how to create audiobooks, as well as getting the proper equipment, and learning how to use it all, this is a huge deal. In fact, I’m kind of hooked on doing audios.
For instance, I’ve already recorded Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”. On that front, I’ve only edited the first two ‘Staves’ (aka chapters). Since that one is destined for YouTube, complete with images, I’ve still got a ways to go (like adding sound effects for certain sections, adding music here and there, and of course shooting actual openings and closings for each chapter since I’ll be releasing them to YouTube one at a time). That last part is the real sticking point for me, since I would like to shoot the openings and closings in front of a more traditional Christmas setting with a tree and fireplace. But, I’m looking into possibilities.
I’m also starting to record some of the Para-Earth series of books, that Helen and wrote together. So there’s quite a bit still coming. But what I want you all to know is once you get one or two under your belt, you’ll find it easier and easier to make audios. You’ll get more familiar with all the elements like room tone, pacing your reading, watching how loud or soft your speaking, how clear you’re enunciating, and the editing tools on the Audacity recording software.
Finally, I will be doing more posts about recording and what to watch out for, as well as what’s happening with future books. Until then, stay safe and keep writing and recording my friends.
Hello again everyone. I recently had a request to the links regarding to all my posts here about doing audio recordings. As I started to gather the links, I quickly realized that they were all seriously scattered throughout the blog, as I’d done them over the course of 13 months. Plus, there were a number of other entries in between which made them even more difficult to find.
So today’s entry mainly consists of all the links for easy access to anyone who wishes to look over the details and suggestions I had about audio recordings. So far there are only eight entries, but I am planning on more in the coming months.
Sorry for the long delay in posting here, but as you’re about to find out we’ve been VERY busy.
First off I am proud to announce Helen’s 2nd solo book “Forever Haunted” is now live on audio at both Audible and Amazon for just $17.46 or 1 Audible Credit. Once again I am the voice of her main character Rafael Jones (along with every other character). This is my 2nd full audiobook narration and I’m thrilled to help bring her characters to life once more. And yes I am still “Chief, Cook, and Bottlewasher” for the audio. The recording and editing process took longer than I’d hoped, but I learned some new tricks (through trial and error) that I will be sharing with you all in future posts. I’ve gotten things down to a checklist I keep on hand for myself of how to edit the audios for pacing speed, volume, pauses, etc. which I did not do the first time when I recorded “Forever’s Too Long”. And with the amount of time that passed between that audiobook and this one, I forgot a lot of editing techniques/tricks that I had to relearn and change.
Again, I will be sharing a number of those tips and tricks with you in the very near future. In the meantime here is some more about the new Audiobook:
Bookcover Blurb:Life isn’t easy, but it’s easier than adjusting to being dead. Rafael Jones is still learning about his new diet, powers, and limitations when he’s asked to certify that a house isn’t haunted. But when it turns out to have the ghost of a murdered flapper, his new mission is to locate the missing gangster who killed her, the magic mirror that helped the killer disappear, protect his client, and stop a new string of murders.Magic and mystery collide in the summer of 1947, and our detective is digging up answers to questions going back as far as the end of WWI.
In addition to getting “Forever Haunted” edited and sent to Audible, I have already begun recording her the third book in her ever-growing series, titled “Forever in Deep”
I’m pleased to say I’m already about 1/3rd of the way through with the recordings, and most of it is already edited. Lord, am I so glad I wrote down those editing notes to myself, it goes much quicker now, but that’s something that comes with experience.
I’ve also been busy with getting the 2nd draft of “The Pass” (my collaboration with Rich Caminiti) to the final stages. I have only to insert a few scenes into it, and that will be going out to beta-readers for inspection and comments. Once we’ve heard back from them, we will begin the 3rd and final draft, with hopes for an October release later this year.
“But what about the Para-Earths Series?” I hear some of you ask. Well, work has been continuing on both “The Door” and “The Vampyre Blogs – Family Ties”. Admittedly, the work has been slow on both of them, but they are still happening. I’m also in the process of getting some of the completed novels prepared for audio recording so they can join the ranks of Audible. But of course, everything takes time and there are only so many hours in the day. And of course with m Fibromyalgia, I have only so many “spoons” to work with in a day. So I ask that you all please be patient. I might be recruiting a couple of more voices for the Para-Earth books to make them more of an ensemble cast recording, but we’ll see.
Anyway, that’s why I’ve been so slack on getting new postings up. The narrator work takes a lot of time and energy, but I have already been approached more than once about voiceover work for other people, which would be paying jobs for me. Which would be most welcome. I do hope that my audio narrations will lead to bigger things like some voiceover work for animations, podcasts, or streaming series. One never knows. But time will tell.
And now I must get back to writing and recording. So until next time, which I promise won’t be too long, stay safe and keep recording and writing my friends.
While waiting for Audible to approve/reject our submission, we have heard back from a number of people who say they don’t do Audible. Some prefer CD’s because they cannot afford Audible’s monthly charges.
So this got me and Helen thinking about offering CD’s, even if Audible accepts our books. We are also considering the fact that some people do not have a convenient CD Player these days, or may prefer audio files for storage. For them, we are thinking about selling MP3 audio files that people can order from this site so they can download the entire book into their own device of choice.
So please take a moment and let us know which of the following options that would be of interest to you. We are simply seeking feedback which would be a huge help to us in deciding what path(s) to take as far as making our audios available to people, so your responses are VERY important to us.
NOTE: you CAN vote for more than one option from the list below:
A – Audible?
B – Audiobook on CD’s?
C – MP3 audio files that you can download to the device(s) of your choice?
Please leave your votes in the comment section so we can see your responses, and as always we thank you all for your continued support for this blog and our works.
New Year’s is a time for reflection and looking ahead… or so I’ve been told. My first thought was “I didn’t really get that much done this year. I don’t have much to say or show for it.” Then at the urging of Helen I pulled out a pen and paper and started making a list. The results surprised me.
I created not one but three book covers. This is the most art I’ve done in one year in I don’t know how long. Two of them were of course for Helen’s new The Forever Detective Series. The other was a new cover for “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” which we re-released as the first Young Adult (YA) installment of our Para-Earth Series.
Speaking of Helen’s new series, we created not one but two book trailers, one for each book.
This was the first time I’d ever made a book trailer and it was a blast. Helen wrote a short script for each and also found a bunch of images she wanted used in them. I not only supplied the expertise in turning it all into a video, but also the voice-over.
Now all this voice-over work, as brief as it was, led to yet another new project. At the urging of many others, I started looking into creating audiobooks. I spent a couple of months researching equipment and software and how to use it all. Eventually, I finally started recording a couple of our short stories from our anthology “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At a Time” and got some seriously positive feedback, as well as some solid tips.
Here’s one of them:
I’ve recorded several more in the meantime, with the hopes of eventually having the entire anthology recorded in the coming months.
This leads me back to my efforts to get into creating full-scale audiobooks. In spite of all my research and blogging about all the technical aspects of creating an audiobook (there are seven entries in this blog already with a few more to come) I still wasn’t sure I was ready to fully go for it. Then in early November I went to a class about voice-over work and got the reassurance I needed from a pro. As she told me in an e-mail “You’ve got the chords for this…”
With this in mind I’ve been fully throwing myself into completing the audio recordings of Helen’s first solo book “Forever’s Too Long”. To date 20 of the 22 chapters are recorded and edited. I have re-record two more and get them edited. Once their done and meet with her approval (I had recorded them earlier but neither of us were happy with the results hence the do-over) we will be submitting the entire set to Audible. We’re hoping this will happen no later than the end of this month (January 2020). From there I intend to continue recording more stories from the anthology as well as begin turning her second book “Forever Haunted” into an audio, as well as “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” in which Helen will be lending her vocal talents to bringing those characters more to life.
Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t started turning “The Bridge” or “The Ship” into audiobooks, instead of jumping to “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” and “TVB – One Day At a Time”. The answer is simple, length. Both “The Bridge” and “The Ship” are much longer than any of the other books I’m tackling and will take a great deal more time to record. Plus, I still have to come up with voices for all the various characters in those two books. So until I’ve nailed down voices for everyone, those are on the slow track for now, but they will be happening.
But getting back to 2019, with all this artwork and recording, did I get ANY writing done? The answer is of course I did. Some of it was on the long-awaited sequel to “The Bridge” and “The Ship”.
“The Door” is fully under way, and will hopefully finally see the light of day by the end of this year if not sooner. As this book is a major turning point in the Para-Earth Series, I really want to get this book completed as much as people want to read it. However, some of it’s progress will depend on another writing project with my other collaborator Rich Caminiti.
“The Pass” has been one of the most ambitious projects I’ve worked on to date. It is also the only book I’ve worked on as a long-distance collaboration, which has involved trading off chapters and as well many, MANY Skype sessions. But Rich and I are closing in on a finished 1st draft and then the process of creating a 2nd cleaner draft will begin in another month or so. So I will have much to do on that front. After the 2nd draft, it will be sent to beta-readers and an editor for further clean-up. Our hopes is to have the book out by the end of the year, but we will see what happens. We refuse to rush the book without getting it as clean and exciting as possible. And on a side note, the 2nd installment of that tale is also under way as I write. So more on that will be coming in future blog posts.
Also on the writing front I completed 3 brand new short stories for our other site “The Vampyre Blogs – Private Edition”. Two of those tales were rather lengthy and took several months apiece to complete. Yet in spite of their length, they are still considered short stories and not novelettes or novellas.
So that covers most of 2019.
What’s in store for 2020?
Well, I’ve already covered the fact that I’m close to releasing a complete audiobook, which I hope to follow with at least 2 more before year’s end. As I mentioned earlier, one will be “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At a Time” anthology, the other will be Helen’s 2nd book “Forever Haunted”. I’ve got voices prepared for both titles and depending on how things go I may get “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” under way as well.
When it comes to my own writing getting “The Pass” into a finished 2nd draft and sent to beta-readers and an editor are the top demands. Rich and I would like to see it reach readers by the end of the year, but I know from experience that there’s still so much to do before that can happen. But we will see.
I’m already planning several new short stories for “The Vampyre Blogs – Private Edition” as well as beginning preparations to put together and 2nd anthology with several never before seen stories included.
“The Door” of course is another priority for me. I’d really like to see that finished and prepped for release this year. With luck, and patience, I hope to make that actually happen.
And of course, I’ll be making new book trailers as well as helping format Helen’s next two books in her Forever Detective series.
So that’s what’s been and what is coming. There’s a lot on our plates, but we’ll keep bringing you new posts regarding all these projects and more so stay tuned. Please accept this late wish for a HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all and as always keep writing.
As many of you have learned from my last post, my great adventure in audio recordings has begun. So far I have recorded only the one short story “Wolves and the Northern Lights”, which comes from our first anthology book “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At a Time”. But simply recording one story is a far cry from turning a full-length novel into an audiobook. However, that is indeed my long term goal. At this point, I’m keeping things simple for myself as I still get used to the equipment both for recording as well as editing to get the best sound quality for listeners.
To keep things manageable for myself, I’m planning on recording the rest of the 25+ stories from the anthology, as well as slowly begin recording it’s predecessor “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”. Like the anthology, that novel is mainly comprised of blog, e-journal, and e-diary entries from various characters in the book. And I plan on doing different voices for the authors of each entry, in an effort to bring the entire story and cast more to life for you all.
I have already started compiling what I call my “Voice Library”, which currently contains over 140 different voices (most based on actors and characters from movies, television, and even cartoons). I’ve always been a vocal mimic since childhood, and am taking great joy in finding a constructive outlet for all those years of trying to amuse myself and friends. I may share some brief recordings here, featuring some of the voices so you can get a better idea of just how versatile I can be.
But with all that said, the main topic I’d like to share with you all how I’ve been able to make all this happen. I know many of you might be wondering if I rent time at a local recording studio, or did I set up my own inside my home? If I’m doing it at home (which I am), how much special equipment did I have to buy? Did I have to soundproof an entire room? Who is doing the editing of my recordings? Will they be available through Amazon’s Audible program? If they will be available through Audible, how did I submit my work to them? What are their requirements, etc.?
Okay, let’s begin with how I got started down this particular path. As I’ve mentioned in a post last August when I first began thinking about this, I had been asked many times if any of our books were available in audio. Whenever I said I’d been thinking about it, but couldn’t decide on a reader I would be told “You should do it yourself! You’ve got a great voice…” So that of course got me thinking.
I did wind up trying a few samples back then, but I wasn’t happy with the quality of the recordings and kind of went off the idea a bit.
Then Helen not only began but finished her first solo novel. Besides listening and helping beta-read for her, I wound up doing the cover art for her. Then we had to focus on marketing the book to build up interest. So besides promoting the book on blogs, FB, Twitter, etc. but I wound up creating my very 1st book trailer. Anyone wanting to see the results can click on this YouTube link:
While not 100% perfect, I was quite happy with the results, especially the voice-over you hear in the trailer. Shortly afterwards we held a book launch party for her novel “Forever’s Too Long”. During the party I did something I’ve been thinking about for some time but never tried, namely loud readings using the voices of character’s appear in the scene for those who attended. Their responses were much more positive than I’d expected.
As a result, I finally decided to go ahead and begin doing audio readings. But first I had to start gathering the right equipment for such an undertaking.
These days, books as well as movies are often advertised with trailers that use images and sound to give you an idea of the flavor of the book, as well as sharing information about genre, storyline, and availability.
Allan Krummenacker was a huge help with this, doing the actual production based on music and images I chose, and a few finds of his own, but I especially like his vocal work– since the book is almost entirely first person narration, I decided to script the trailer that way, so he’s giving the voice of Rafael Jones.
*And remember the book will be available on June 1st, but you can still pre-order an e-copy at the following links:
Musings Of Two Creative Minds 