Mel: And today I'd like to welcome Renee Conoulty. Rene is a swing dancer and writes stories of dance romance and the military life. And I used to love the old musicals where Fred Astaire danced around the light pole so I'm hoping you've got something like that in store for us today, Renee.

Renee: I've got lots of things in store.

Mel: I want to talk about your book on how we as authors can narrate our own audio books. You have a workbook and a course as well over at http://heysaidrenee.blogspot.com/ and we're going to talk through the process of narrating our own work which I know a lot of us are interested in but before we do that I’d like you to read some of your flash fiction. Renee, thank you very much for reading to us today and then talking this through the process of narrating it.

Renee: No worries. The story I was going to read today is from my latest book which is called Swinging Through Life which is a collection of twelve flash fiction stories. So flash fiction is around the 500 word mark. All these stories are pretty much bang on 500 words but I've got another flash fiction collection that sort of varies a bit up to a thousand. The story I'm going to read today is called Sing Sing Sing. I like titling my books and stories after swing dance songs. So that's the song some people might have heard. And the main character in this story is codename Jane. And she also features in my first novel don't mean a thing. But she's not. She's not the main character in that one. Okay. Sing sing sing. Music pulled through cost. Okay. And that's when you pause it when you're actually narrating And then you go back and you start again. Music poured through the car stereo big band swing and jump blues. 19 favorite playlist. Her brother teased her about her taste in music but she didn't care. She preferred music from before she was born. Music from before her parents was born were even better. And that's where I would also oppose it and go back and fix all my typos and spelling mistakes and things but I'll just keep going. Music from before her parents were born. Is even better. She belted out the lyrics tapping the jazz rhythm rhythm on the steering wheel. The only thing that put her in a better mood than singing was dancing. But that was a little difficult in the car. She just needed to keep it together until she got there. Then she'd be fine. She'd never lose control in front of a crowd. That trek ended and the next song began. The words caught in her throat. It had been met in 19 song. The song that first dance to the song that first made love to. The song. She needed the last song she needed to hear of this of all days. The day match was marrying that girl. She skipped to the next track in the shuffle playlist and dabbed at the corner of her eye prying him a scar hadn't smeared. Night and shouldn't be said she'd moved on months ago. Derek was wonderful and she was happy. She glanced at the empty at the empty seat beside her. She'd be happier if he'd been by his side. Now I've lost where I'm up to. OK here we go. Turn the page it went funny. She'd call the hospital again before she left home but she she'd call the hospital again before she left home. But he still hadn't been cleared for discharge. Surely overnight observation would have been done by now. It was after 6:00p.m. Night and stomach knotted. He'd hit his head quite hard when he'd come off his pushbike. Why wouldn't he wear a bloody helmet just because it's not the law in Darwin doesn't mean it's not a good idea. Footpath step has its two. She almost swung her car around and drove to the hospital instead. But even if she did there was nothing she could do to help. And people would notice if she wasn't at the wedding. Nineteen pulled into the familiar car park at Nightcliff JT should be back here again tomorrow for the Sunday afternoon dance class. Everyone said it was so sweet that they were getting married at the same place I'd met. She pulled the invitation from her handbag and double check the details. The ceremony wasn't due to stop for 20 minutes. Nate ain't tricked her makeup in the visor mirror then stepped out of the car and locked it. She wandered over to the concrete dance floor with a swing dance classes were held and stared across the water to the jetty. Big white boats surrounded the posts all the way along. They should be having the ceremony here on the cracked concrete slab. This was where I'd really met. Where she'd met Matt to. A warm home a warm hand grasped hers. Am I too late. Nineteen smiled at Derek. You made it. I snuck out didn't want you to have to arrive alone. This was where she finally understood real love. That's the end of that.

Mel: That is absolutely beautiful and brought back a few memories to a friend I used to live in Darwin. I know Nightcliff, it's really cool.

Renee: Well both they're doing swing dancing. Still every Sunday afternoon neither quick Jedi on that cracked slab of concrete. They're all real places.

Mel: Flash fiction is an interesting genre on its own and it's something that we do in school a lot. It really forces you to make every word count and in the circumstances that you were writing them I think you said it was the Australian Writers Centre monthly furious fiction competition. It's really what you want to roll with your writing of these scenes, hasn't it?

Renee: I had a little play around with flash fiction before and so when I saw the Australian Writers Centre was doing a furious fiction competition I thought this would be good fun. It's good writing practice. You get to write a story and actually finish a story. And that's like when you're writing a novel that can take quite a while so to be able to get that done in one or two sessions was really fulfilling. I decided well I don't want to just have a bunch of flash fiction sitting on my computer. So what could I do to make something. That would work with my brand. I decided from the very first furious fiction competition that I would incorporate swing dancing somewhere in those first year worth of stories and then by the end of the year I'd have something I could publish. So that's what I did which was quite a challenge.

Mel: Some months some of the friends they came up with but I managed to twist everything around in some way to get a swing dancing reference in yeah.

Mel: And it's a writing habit isn't it. When everything else is happening in your life and like in the Air Force you move around a lot as we spoke about before to the past being out to develop a routine something like this actually makes you commit these stories doesn't it.

Renee: It was just that that once a month. Even when I was having a rough time if. I would just make that time it's like Okay Friday night the email came in and I'll read through the writing prompts and have a think about it and brainstorm some ideas and sometime Saturday I'd sit down and I'd write out the first draft and then Sunday I would take some time to go through and edit that and fine tune and make every word count as you need to when you've got a 500 word limit. You don't have words just to play with you've got to make everything fit the story.

Renee: And sometimes as a reader too we only want to read in snippets so that little story that you told it immediately created a picture for me. It took me to Darwin. I liked the idea of swing dancing because it's just pure romance. Yeah. And and people can flick through the stories and choose the ones that they want to in to comfort.

Renee: I also went on marketing that one I've mentioned if you want to retest if you want a story you can finish before your cup of coffee goes cold. Grab this one like you can. There's heaps of stories in there. You could sit there and you can read an entire story from start to finish. While you have the coffee you don't have to remember what happened for the next day. And carry on you can just slotted in when you've got a moment and it's great for people who don't do a lot of reading. To start with something short and sweet.

Mel: Don't make a mistake anybody you think these things are easy to write because they're not are they?

Renee: Like a lot of people when they start with flash fiction they just it's more like a vignette they just write. This is a little snippet of something but nothing actually happens. You've still got to sit down you've still got to work out character motivations you've got to have a goal for them you've got to have something happen they've got to want something in the story and they've either got to get the thing or not get the thing but you've got to actually. Still have a plot. And to work all that into 500 words you've got a limit you've got to introduce your character in 100 words or less and set the scene and then you've got to have obstacles or have things happen. Some some of my stories are stronger than others but yeah. Trying to fit them all in it's it's a challenge but you've got two collections.

Mel: Now look I know when I teach my writing workshops and I set the word limit because we're on it on time restraints. People can't do it. People get starting to write and they think the longer they write the better they are and I say well now you actually have to pull it back I want you beginning the land and I want you conflict I want all those conflict and then they start to get a bit cross because they want to just walk alone and keep writing was I will know we've got to have parameters here and this is with skill starts to come in doesn't it.

Renee: Definitely challenging. I'm lucky though that I tend to underwrite more than overwrite with my novels so it's a little bit easier for me to keep it concise I don't waffle when I'm talking but I don't feel quite as much good at writing.

Mel: You have novel out as well there are two collections. One's called Wife Mother Woman as well we've got a Swinging Through Life but we don't want it to move on to today. This is of interest to a lot of this is you know write your own audio don't you.

Renee: Yeah. So I've done that so far from my self-published titles. So the two flash fiction collections you mentioned there. I've also got a perma-free short story that I wrote for originally for the Romance Writers of Australia. One of the little gems competitions and it just missed out on getting into the anthology so I thought beauty I'll just publish that and I've done an audio version of that too. And I've also done audio version of my How to Make an Audiobook book because I figured well I might as well have an audio of that too.

Mel: I've had some fun researching here in preparation for my chat with you Rene and I found the book on how to write.

Mel: Then I found the workbook which is really interesting because it was how you mark up the manuscript and we're going to talk about that further and a few different things that you don't think of. You know documenting your technical record you know all these things that you think oh you just sit down and you talk but of course it's not that easy. And then you've put out this whole course now going to mention everybody this course is forty-nine dollars it would have to be the best value simply because you're talking about your own experiences and you're talking about the problems you had and then there was a riot.

Renee: There was a lovely expression there that made me laugh because it was all your stuff ups as well or something like that which you heard some of just then and as you can tell that's what happens when you sit down to record it doesn't come out perfectly. There's lots of editing and lots of other behind the scenes stuff that goes into a finished product.

Mel: When Sam does my podcast she spends an awful lot of time taking out ums and she says Mummy or your words run into each other. And it's hard to get rid of them. You know it's when you are reading your short story you'd stumble you'd stop and then you just repeat and keep going because you can edit all that out.

Renee: I would often do it often either leave a larger gap or I'd make a silly noise which helps with the frustration when you've made the same mistake four times in a row.

Mel: You go you make a silly noise I blow a raspberry and they show up really well on the audio files when you need to cut things out.

Renee: Yeah. And just for people who don't know anything about the equipment we'll talk about that in a minute. When you look at the audio it gives little vertical lines up and down and when you speak normally the vertical lines on up and down very much but when these forces it breaks and when there's loud noises it jumps really high and Semmelweis gets me to give a clap so that when she goes in she can go in and fix it two o'clock and snap your fingers or something it's like that like a if you haven't seen it if you can imagine a heart rate monitor with the bits that go up and down when your heart beats it's that kind of thing you know that you say on your screen we're recording an audio podcast here everyone and we're both during your fingers up and down kind of crazy women are we.

Mel: Let's start at the beginning. Equipment, okay people weren't in the right or people weren't podcast or people won't do any kind of audio because they're worried about equipment but it's not that hard is it.

Renee: No. I was a little bit worried about upfront costs and that sort of thing. So a budget was a consideration when I looked into it. I spent quite a lot of time researching before I got started. So all up so far I've spent about one hundred and sixty dollars and that was on the microphone and that's all I've had to pay for. I decided that I needed a decent microphone. But if you're just getting started you can do a practice run and try it out just with the headphones that come with your phone they've got a little mark built in and you can try it and see if you like doing it if you can handle doing the process if it's something you want to do have a listen back and if you do like it then go out and invest in a decent microphone. I wouldn't recommend using your phone headphones to do the final but it's a good way just to try out the process before you commit to lots of hours and a microphone that you probably won't use for anything else unless you do podcasting and microphones were a very interesting topic of conversation you can google them and you will get all kinds of advice.

Mel: I took my roadie Mike off my camera and I've been using that now for nearly three years then it now got specialist podcasting microphones which I didn't have then but very similar to my shotgun camera mike. Yeah.

Renee: Yep I've got a road. NTSB Mark. That's the one I picked up I picked it up atJ.B. Hi-Fi. They had a few different microphones that would do the job but this is one that I had heard of before and I hadn't actually planned to buy a microphone when I went in I'd gone in because my laptop died and I needed a new laptop but I did a little bit of a wander around the store and ended up coming out with a laptop and a computer like computer laptop and a microphone as well.

Mel: Yeah there's so many cool things out there and if you listen to me talk to Scott about what is it about Dragon Dictation.

Renee: You know you need a good microphone for everything else as well. And this is some of the things you can use it for. All right. Physical pros and cons of self-narrating now in I think was issue 3 of all the success stories make it seem we had a beautiful lady called Tina Dietz and she talks about how important it is to get in a professional Narrator And I know when Sarah Williamson's win Sarah Weems is just dumb got Nick from McLeod's Daughters who love with to narrate her Brigadier book which is really exciting.

Mel: I had a little listen to the audition too and I'm like oh I could listen to him all day.

Renee: We're romance writers really have fun. There is a time and a place for us to narrate our own stories isn't it.

Renee: Joanna Penn just mentioned that recently on her podcast as well. She's gone into the writing her own book she's just released her own self-narrated flash fiction. Oh short stories as well. And she had a podcast recently with seven reasons why we should narrate our own books. So it is definitely a topic of interest at the moment and a lot of her reasons were around branding and how a voice like even with you male I feel like I've known you for ages because I've been listening to your podcast. I hear your voice I feel like I know you I have I have a connection before we've even met which is a lot stronger than just writing somebodies books. Well when you hear their voice you do connect with the more.

Renee: I think that's really important. That's the number one reason everybody. Personal branding I think a reference in a pen at the bottom of the hour podcast chat today and also that Australian Writers Centre said that you can go in and have a go at writing and writing yourself everyone. But the reason I've gotten Rene on today because I know that you've done it and we can pick your brain because people know like and trust don't they. Once they know like and trust you they're going to go in and get your stuff. You're talking is like writing your own books does help to build that.

Mel: I had a go with Fiona McArthur everyone. She's got a book out on midwifery and she asked me to write that for her. But the trouble is I don't have a nurturing voice. I said you you're the voice that is that nurturing.

Renee: Come on let's get this baby out. VOICE I haven't got that I'm saying can step it up. It didn't quite work for I didn't think it was the right person for that. So it's really interesting you've got to find the right person. And yes everybody we can all have mic.

Mel: When you were...