They give you medallions if you're nominated for an Audie Award, big heavy ones on ribbons. I keep mine at home, draped on the Lisa Snellings Jack in a Box statue. I have lots of them. This is because when I go to the Audies, I do not win the award, but listen as they read off names other than mine to get their lumps of engraved crystal that are the thing you get when you win.
Last night, The Graveyard Book was nominated in three categories: Thriller/suspense, Children's age 8-12, and for Audiobook of the Year.
Thriller/Suspense came first, and when they read off the winner, and, yup. it wasn't me, I resigned myself to another evening of not winning Audies.
When it won Children's 8-12, I thought "I've won an Audie!" and was happy enough thatI instantly resigned myself to someone else winning Audiobook of the Year.
And then, the last award of the evening was for Audiobook of the Year.
The Graveyard Book Won.
I went up on stage and babbled a bit, and thanked Michael Conroy (my director) and Lance Neal (editor and production) and Ana Maria Alessi (awesome publisher of Audio and digital at Harpers) and should have thanked Bela Fleck, who read on this blog that I wanted a version of Danse Macabre with banjo in it and promptly did the amazing one that's on the Audiobook for us, and completely forgot to thank Merrilee my agent who was there in the audience glowing with agently pride.
Then stumbled off to dinner with friends and was delighted.
People ask whether winning awards means anything when you've already won some, and sometimes it means more and sometimes it means less. But The Graveyard Book winning Audiobook of the Year means more than I can say.
3) Now imagine a world in which someone sits with a novel on the screen and carefully codes every character and tone of voice, every emotion. Imagine the time involved, and the effort involved in making something that, no matter how good it ever gets, will not be as good as a person reading it. This isn't teaching a computer to play chess.
An audio book, read by someone who's good at it, is an audio book, an experience that's different to, sometimes complementary to, the words on the page. A computer reading to you is a computer reading to you. And at the point where they can read books to us as well as we can read them aloud to each other, we will have other things to worry about.
As I said first time out, and this is speaking as someone who loves audiobooks, records his own audiobooks, makes a not-insignificant portion of his income from audiobooks and has even won awards for bloody audiobooks... To repeat myself -- I think any money that could be spent on legal bills trying to stop people listening to books (or to anything still in copyright) using the text-to-speech functions on their computers, iPhones, Kindles, Androids etc, would be infinitely better used to promote audiobooks, to tell people there are fine audiobooks out in the world, that there are great books and great readers, and that the experience of listening to a book is a wonderful one. Promote the Audie awards. Get the word out.
Got to Cornwall about 4:30 am (I slept for an hour or so in the car, then read a script). Dropped off by car and driver at hotel. Glad to see someone up and about to check me in. Take my bags to front desk, tip driver handsomely. Driver drives away. Night-porter slowly establishes that I'm not actually staying in that hotel, but another several miles away, and that driver was a bit overenthusiastic in dropping me off at hotel. Also that you can't get a taxi in rural Cornwall at five in the morning so I am stuck there. I sit in the lobby and write Batman. Somehow, in my jet-lagged state, this all seems quite normal.
My cellphones do not work in this town, and they are out of charge to boot.
After three quarters of an hour the night porter turns up and takes me to a hotel room, magicked into existence just for me, and everything is suddenly wonderful. I sleep for six hours, have a long bath and then go down to see my friends who are having a joint 50th birthday.
I eat the best Cornish pasty I've ever had for breakfast, and wash it down with cider (the alcoholic sort that doesn't taste even faintly alcoholic, so be wary) and listen to the seagulls and am happy. Also run into several old friends, which is good.
Am now in the hotel office, as my room doesn't quite reach the internet.
Lots of people have written in to ask about the Bela Fleck recording of the Danse Macabre that he did for The Graveyard Book.
(It was the musical piece that preceded Bill Hader's lovely "Vincent Price", for those of you who were at any of the readings.) It's on the audio book of The Graveyard Book --the one you'd buy at iTunes or on CD.
Some people asked about the cellist playing with him; others wanted to know if it would be available as a separate download. According to Mr Fleck: The cellist is Ben Sollee, a great young player from Louisville.
There are no plans to do anything else with it at my end, because it's Bela's music and he recorded it, and if anyone's going to put it up for download or something I think it ought to be him, not me. Bela Fleck's website is http://www.belafleck.com/. (I love this blog. I sigh that it would be lovely to have a Danse Macabre on banjo, and the best banjo player in the known universe reads it, writes in to ask if I'd be interested, and then records it and it's even better than it was my head when I suggested it. I mean, honestly, how cool is that?)
Here's the magical audio widget, for any of you who would like to hear some of it...
In most states, the deadline to register to vote by mail has just passed (see http://www.eac.gov/voter/docs/state-reg-deadlines.xls/attachment_download/file) but it's yet to come in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho* (mail-in today!), Iowa*, Kansas, Maine*, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota*, Nebraska, Nevada (mail-in has passed but you can still walk in and register), New Hampshire*, New Jersey, New York (today!), North Carolina (mail-in today or at one-stop stations until Nov 1), Oklahoma (mail-in today!), Oregon, South Dakota, Utah (walk-in), Vermont, Washington (walk-in), West Virginia, Wisconsin*, and Guam.
*in starred states you can also register on election day, if you miss the mail-in deadline, which is also true for Montana and Wyoming, whose mail-in deadline has passed. North Dakota does not have voter registration, according to that reference, so I guess North Dakotans just walk in and vote.
Please consider helping the votor registration effort with such a post on your blog.
So -- at least in theory and I think in practice too -- this magical widget (which I found at http://harperaudio.gigya.s3.amazonaws.com/harper_v1.html will play you the whole of me reading Chapter One of The Graveyard Book. And you can hear some lovely Bela Fleck danse macabre banjo music too.
