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Early Christmas present for me

Douglas Pratt
@DouglasPratt
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Yesterday felt like Christmas. I believe I have mentioned what a great time I am having with my current book project, Team of Giants: The Making of the Spanish-American War by Matthew Bernstein. When the main characters are Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, "Fighting Joe" Wheeler, Stephen Crane, and the likes of Joe Pulitzer, even the dryest of academic writers would have a hard time writing a boring book.

Prof. Bernstein is anything but dry. He knows how to tell a story, how to set up a chapter, how to balance an event by shifting viewpoints. It has been a real pleasure to narrate this book, and Prof. Bernstein and I have developed a cordial relationship via email. He's been helping me with pronunciations; some of those Spanish names just don't follow any rules (Forvo.com has three pronunciations for one of them, all different!). I've been tracking typos for his next revision; since I'm essentially reading the book word for word three times (one recording and two edit passes), I will see things that a copy editor can be forgiven for missing. Team of Giants is due to be published December 17, and the audiobook won't be far behind that.

On a whim, I looked at Amazon to see if Prof. Bernstein had written something else. Sure enough, in 2021 he published George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age. I snagged a Kindle copy, and it's just as much fun as Team of Giants. Amazon didn't list an audiobook version, so I asked Prof. Bernstein. Seems that one of my favorite publishers, Redwood Audiobooks, had made a deal to do the book, but Covid hit and he hadn't heard anything about it since. So I emailed my friend at Redwood, and a couple of hours later she wrote back. They had indeed licensed the title, but the narrator they were going to give it to got Covid, and it got lost in the general disastrophe. Would I be willing to narrate it? Hell Yeah!

So, yesterday I had a whim in the morning turn into a contract in the afternoon. Merry Christmas!

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Discussion (12)

  • Douglas Pratt@DouglasPratt
    ReplyingtoSusan Quinn

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Good job, Doug! I had no idea there were such complexities! I love that you were able to correspond with the author and work on pronunciations, too. Great fun!

    Well, it's a craft, like making cabinets or fixing computers. I try to improve my skill set and stretch my horizons. I've written books, so I can approach things from the writer's viewpoint. It's ultimately his decision. I see myself as building a nice frame for a picture someone else painted.

    I love it when I get to work with a personable, engaged author. These Trees Tell a Story was like that; it's a very personal book, and it was worth the effort to get it just the way the author wanted it. So was Faith, Reason and Beyond Reason by @SaintAugustine. A real pleasure to work on, and satisfying when it is well received by the audience, which includes the author.

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