“In the Moment”

Recorded books have become the modern equivalent of the antique art of storytelling round the fire.  On a Monday in November, Josh Sundquist, a handsome, Obama-slim, Roman-nosed young man with sky blue eyes and a punk haircut, starts to read in a soundproof cubicle at Recorded Books, Inc., the world’s largest independent producer of unabridged audio books.  The book he will read aloud for between four to six hours a day through Thursday is  “Just Don’t Fall,” his account of being told at nine he has cancer, losing his left leg at the hip socket at ten, and skiing in the Turin Paralympics at twenty-one — four years ago.  Most of the six hundred books put out annually by Recorded Books are narrated by professional stage actors in its seven studios on the tenth floor of an office building at 12^th and Broadway above the Strand, the city’s iconic used book store, but occasionally an author who passes an audition, as Sundquist has, is permitted to read his own memoir.   He begins:

“The physical therapist glues two stickers to my back, to the lower part of my back right above my underwear.  There are wires coming out of these stickers, wires that will give me an electric shock – not the kind that electrocutes and kills people, no, don’t worry, she says, this is a tiny shock I will barely feel.”

Greg Steinbruner, a professional actor and playwright, who now works as a producer at Recorded Books, is seated in a separate room with a window facing Josh’s windowed cubicle.  In front of him are a Furman console, a computer keyboard and screen, and a microphone.  Every time Sundquist makes a mistake – which is frequent, about two or three times a page for the first couple of hours — Steinbruner interrupts him by pushing the computer’s space bar, which serves as a stop button, unless Josh has already stopped himself by saying  “Sorry,” or “Nope,” or  “Let’s do that one again.”  Greg then has Josh read the last correct words before the glitch, Greg repeats them, Josh repeats them and continues reading, a process known in the audio world as cueing.

Josh: “the kind that tastes terrible”

Greg: “the kind that tastes terrible.”

Josh: “the kind that tastes terrible.  We always ask her to make pizza with white crust and pepperonis because we don’t mind about eating lots of fat and cholesterol and having heart attacks when we go up.”

Josh: “when we grow up.”

Greg: “when we grow up.”

Josh: “when we grow up, but she still makes her whole wheat crust and spinach-on-top pizza every week.”

Josh: “But soon I won’t have hair because the chemotherapy will make it all fall out…So I ask Mom to shave my hair…Eighteen homeschool boys come over and get the Chemo Clut.”

Josh: “come over and get the Chemo Cut.”

Greg: “come over and get the Chemo Cut.”

Steinbruner has a foot pedal and when he presses it, Sundquist can hear him. The producer sometimes stops the author-reader because a word is “slushy” or because “that was a bad pause,” or to suggest, “Instead of going softer on the italics, go louder,” or to offer advice: “Just take your time when you’re reading alliterative words.  If something is hard to say the intention is not for it to be read quickly.  There’s a one-to-one correlation between reading faster and making mistakes.  The art of audio books is to slow down and get yourself in the moment.”

To cut down on pauses for page turning, two pages of the manuscript of “Just Don’t Fall” are on a cloth-covered table in front of Josh.  (Cloth muffles sound.)   When Josh is reading his voice makes EKG-like squiggles on Greg’s screen.  When Greg interrupts Josh, the squiggles stop.  Solid pink appears on Greg’s screen when the recording resumes, and the squiggles start anew.

Sundquist reads with a mixture of discipline and humor (“I read ‘durses and noctors’, what?”). During an occasional fifteen-minute break he speeds down corridors on titanium forearm crutches.   He no longer wears a prosthesis. “If I wear it I limp and when people see me, they don’t know why so that’s awkward for them socially,” he says.

The need to concentrate on the performance makes the daily four to six hours fly while seeming to stand still.  The work is intense for both Greg and Josh, but again and again they both wind up in the moment.  The hardcover edition of the book, blurbed by Elizabeth Strout and John le Carre (“Inspiring.  Courageous.  Sometimes heartbreaking”), will be published in January.   Public libraries, the prime customer of Recorded Books, will circulate the unabridged audio version.  Others can download it from the Internet or purchase it directly by mail from Recorded Books.   Library purchases and downloading are two financially bright spots in today’s economically challenged book publishing industry.

On Thursday at 3:30 p.m. after Sundquist has finished reading his 316-page book, Josh and Greg make a video of Josh reading its brief preface for his website.  “The physical therapist glues two stickers to my back, to the lower part of my back, right above my underwear…”

To watch the full-length interview, including interviews with my parents and brother, please check out Brad’s website.

Wow!

I am so grateful to all of you who have purchased the book and become such fervent evangelists for it, both in your face-to-face conversations and online, especially on my Facebook page. You are the readers for whom I wrote it, and you are now the reason for its success.

Been doing tons of interviews. A few of my recent favs have included the Bookotron Podcast, Chic Loves Lit, and The Washington Examiner.

My final book signing on Saturday was covered in three newspapers, two radio stations and on two local television stations. Watch the television spots:

• NBC-29
• ABC-3.

A great article and interview in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Check out this article in the Vail Daily.

Usually you have to wait for your wedding or your funeral to assemble a group like that. Luckily, I beat the system by holding a book release party.

The room’s capacity was 150. We exceeded that. Between nine and ten it was so crowded you could barely move.

The first thing they teach you in motivational speaker school is how to turn any piece of furniture into a makeshift stage.

You may recognize both of these guys from their hilarious cameos in my new video, The Amputee Rap.

Left to right, John (my childhood neighbor and now friend here in DC), me (sporting the Mr. Rogers look) and Brad (my roommate since college).

As I explained in my first and second posts, I decided to write my memoir from a child’s perspective. But since the book covers a period of my life from age nine, when I was diagnosed with cancer, to age twenty-one, when I competed in the Paralympics, I also felt that the voice needed to mature along with me as the story progressed.

So I divided the book into four different voices, four different maturity levels. The differences between them are subtle, and deliberately so because I wanted the changes to happen slowly enough that you only notice them in retrospect, like when you look at a photo of yourself from a few years ago and realize that you’ve aged. But behind what I hope is a smooth progression in narration style is a carefully planned set of rules for each voice. Here are the four stages as I outlined them before writing the book: [read the rest on penguin blog]

I am writing this post from the second floor balcony of Barnes and Noble, where I am spying on people browsing the new arrivals table downstairs.

This is the first time I’ve seen the book in a bookstore. Very exciting.