Vintage Radio II

Tomorrow is my big radio day. I've been practicing. Why does speaking with an American accent give you such a sore throat? Or maybe it's just speaking with a bad American accent that does it. Vintage Radio goes out on 87.7 FM and my live fifteen minutes of fame will slot in sometime between four and five pm.

I spent today in Ruthin, North Wales, manning a table at the Write Minds event with Cheryl from my writers group. The event was organised by Dee Rivaz from the Pinboard Writers, and she did a terrific job. It was worthwhile, well attended. I met some interesting people; other writers, other writing groups, educators... I'm not sure how successful we were in accomplishing our primary goal, ie. recruiting new writers for our group, but who knows what things may come out of activities such as this? There are always chances for unexpected benefits. The secret is just to do it and see what happens.

Anyway, back to Texas for another read-through. Then a warm mug of soothing cocoa for the throat.

Vintage Radio

I am about to make my broadcasting debut!

Vintage Radio is a community station (87.7FM if you're living in the Merseyside area) and they will be airing one of my non-sf stories, called Dancing Sailors, on Sunday 1st March, between 4.00 and 5.00 pm.

Now here's the thing - and this is where the comedy starts - the story is written in first person about a group of American sailors during the Spanish-American war. So it needs an American accent. Anything else will sound, well, silly.

So I have been practicing.

Here's what I have learned: I will never be an actor.

This is a great shame, because I'm rather proud of the story, (it came second at the 2007 Winchester Writer's Conference) and I really want to give it the best shot I can.

I recorded my first efforts on my handy little Olympus digital voice recorder. In my head I heard Kevin Costner. When I played it back I was kind of surprised to hear Ricky Tomlinson sounding like he'd suffered a glancing head injury from a passing 82c bus.

Oh dear.