MechMuse, iTunes, and Column, Oh My

Writing Stuff

Published:
– My September Writing for Young Readers column is now up: “An Interview with Deborah Vetter of the Cricket Magazine Group”.
– The audio reprint of “The Storyteller’s Wife” in the Fall ’06 issue of MechMuse is also now live. I’ve been especially excited about this one after I heard their Spring issue, which had great fiction and fantastic production values.

Unfortunately, while MechMuse‘s website is pretty and very professional-looking, I find it unintuitive and awkward to navigate. Even more unfortunate, they’ve changed their delivery method such that it requires iTunes to access their content. I’m not an iTunes user, so I had to download and install it, and then I spent some time wrestling with the iTunes podcast subscription setup–which again, the MechMuse website did not make transparent, unlike Escape Pod‘s, which I find much easier to use and get around in.

But after a plaintive email to the MechMuse folks, I’ve finally had a chance to listen to it (after struggling with iTunes so that it would convert the .M4A file it seems to want to default to into an .MP3 file) and it’s . . . not what I expected.

I think the cover image sums up my feelings. It’s a beautiful, professional illustration of an elven woman–I presume Nicnivin, Queen of Faerie, as per my story. But it’s not at all how I imagined or wrote her:
“Her gleaming hair wreathed her in a froth of night. Wisps of moonlight shifted and roiled in soundless tides at her feet. Her gown was a gauze of mist that swathed her body from neck to ankle, fluctuating from sheer transparency to modest opacity.”

and

“Her eyes were black as jet, deep as midnight, and cold as stone.”

The story itself is read by a male narrator, which took me aback. While I certainly don’t maintain that my stories require a female voice to perform them–on the contrary, I think a male one would suit a number of them–the main character in “The Storyteller’s Wife” is a woman, and when I wrote it, it was a very clear and very female voice that I heard in my head. Also, my story is presented in a rather somber, drammatic tone, which while I could see it being great for, say, War of the Worlds, strikes me as being overdone for “The Storyteller’s Wife.” And finally, the character of “Hobs” is depicted with an English accent; an Irish accent would have been more appropriate, but more, Hobs ends up sounding much more dignified than I think the character should.

Urg. I’m probably just too close to the story, but I have to admit being a bit disappointed with the end production.