 Beth and Niamh standing together in an RNIB recording studio, smiling at the camera. I am an avid (a more acceptable word than obsessive…) audiobook listener, and I have been since I was a child. So when I found out that a date and venue had been chosen for the recording of my debut novel, Wolf Siren, I screwed up my courage and sent a very tentative email asking if I could tag along… Luckily, the very kind people at HarperCollins Children’s Books and the RNIB were very happy to humour my nosiness! I was equally excited to meet Niamh Longford who would be narrating Red’s story, as I was to go behind the scenes of audiobook recording. Niamh had already been working hard all morning, recording the prologue and first four chapters of Wolf Siren. Then I rocked up and she took a break from reading to record a Q & A with me, in which I got to ply her with questions about how it was going. Both Niamh and I are visually impaired, as is Red (the main character in Wolf Siren), so during our discussion we chatted about not so much what we are able to see, but how we go about navigating the world, the amount of guesswork it involves and inevitably, the times we guess wrong! We chatted about Wolf Siren, from the very first words I wrote, to my hopes for what readers will take away from the finished book. Niamh was super kind which made me embarrassed, awkward and grateful all at once, but we laughed plenty and she was so easy to talk to I forgot that we were being recorded!  Niamh viewed through a glass window. She is sitting at a desk in a dark recording studio reading Wolf Siren from an iPad. I then had a chance to sit the other side of the glass panel and listen to Niamh reading and recording. Niamh had repeatedly said she thought that she stopped a lot, but when I was sat there, I felt like I was already listening to the edited audio and I am so excited for listeners to hear her! Before I went home, I had a go at recording the author’s note and the acknowledgments. And I truly hope this made Niamh feel better about her own abilities because it was NOT easy! Firstly, I realised Niamh was reading from a PDF of Wolf Siren on an iPad, so even if you zoomed in as far as the margins would allow, the text was not very big (by my standards, anyway!). What was more, when zoomed in, scrolling passed the white space at the bottom of one page and the top of the next seemed to take forever, and it was very tricky to read a run-on sentence smoothly. Secondly, when Niamh was recording and she made a mistake, the sound engineer, Jim, would play back the last bit she’d got right and then she’d carry on reading from there, like her past self was curing her present self! However, when it was my turn, I simply could not see fast enough to find the place on the page that was being played aloud. I’d hear my own voice from the speaker (which is never fun anyway) and then there would be a long deathly silence as I frantically (and fruitlessly) scanned the page for the right bit… In the end, Jim said I could just read, make a mistake, stop, pause, then do it again. I got through it, but I did not read it well and it was not easy! In hindsight, I should have found the PDF of the final manuscript in my emails and read it on my phone. If I’d done that, I could have opened it in an app that converts PDFs into plain text and adjusted the font and size. I could have also put it in continuous scroll mode so there would be no gaps between pages. But in the moment, I was just trying to crack on. Niamh and I had just been talking about the importance of accessibility, so I wish I had taken the time to make it a bit more comfortable rather than just muddling through. But at least I'll know this if there’s ever a next time. I am very glad I was able to give it a try, and was delighted to chat with Niamh, hear her reading and my admiration for her (which was already high) skyrocketed even higher! If you want to hear the full conversation between me and Niamh, it’ll be at the end of the audiobook which, along with the paperback and e-book will be out on March 27th 2025!  Landscape artwork banner above with illustrations of the character of Red, three black and grey wolves and the title text 'Wolf Siren' and author name text 'Beth O'Brien'.
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I am two weeks into my Creative Writing MA. I am enjoying it a lot and survived my first round of feedback on my writing from my fellow students! As usual, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I write disability in the stories I come up with. But during my Thursday evening class, I realised that there is something interesting in hearing others pick up on how I write.
The character in the story I wrote was not stated to have any disability and (perhaps naturally) everyone assumed her to be able bodied. Here is an extract from my story: In the distance, she can make out a cluster of colours. It stays still for the most part, but as she watches, a solitary figure breaks away. Masie hangs back at a socially acceptable distance and together, although they do not know it, she and the huddle watch the figure step towards the iron railings. The class pointed out that it is not clear that the cluster of colours is a group of people, and that they only began to guess that it was a group of people when the figure stepped away. In my head, I was thinking, 'Well, yes, obviously' because this is exactly how I work out the world. Nine times out of ten, I use location and context and movement to guess what it is I am seeing. So, yes, I’d have seen a bundle of colours ahead, I would have tried to notice specifics, would have failed, and would have used the movement and the distinct shape of the single human to guess that the bundle of colours was more people. Another point they had was that I peppered my description with spots of colour, homing in on certain specifics while giving very sparse detail about other things. Again, I have a tiny field of vision. I see the very thing I am focusing on with almost no peripheral. I found it really interesting to hear all of this, because I have never noticed (how would I?!) that my default way of writing might create unnecessary confusion for sighted readers. I’m not saying anyone should have guessed whether or not the character had a visual impairment – it wasn’t the point of the story. I’m also not saying that my way of writing did not deserve those comments, because they are totally valid and I had no idea I wrote in this way! I just think it was a really interesting thing to note, and a really good example of the different perspectives a disability lens can give a piece of writing. Thank you for reading my ramble – I’m happy and eager to hear any questions or thoughts you might have on this!  Photo of Light Perception by Beth O'Brien beside a coffee and computer. A little while ago, the lovely humans at Wild Pressed Books asked if I'd do a poetry reading for their new YouTube channel. A couple of days ago, I sat down to record, holding my little poetry pamphlet, Light Perception. The pamphlet is all about visual impairment, disability, and the struggle to appear able. It was not long until I realised the irony of my pretending to be reading aloud from the pamphlet, when in reality, I took a couple of moments to memorise the poems I wanted to read, as I am definitely too blind to read the font in the actual book. I could have probably read from the book itself if I had held it uncomfortably close to my face. Instead, I had a closer look off-camera, and used the shape of the poem on the page, and the length of each line to act as a prompt to remember the words themselves. I don't know if that makes sense. But it is easier to remember what line comes next when I can see roughly how long it is, and my brain can associate the overall shape of the poem with where the words come. I've used this 'shape of the poem' prompt before, and it has mostly worked. One time, I had a a complete blank mid way through a poem in front of a room full of people while I was 'pretending' to read out loud. If I wasn't nervous before that performance, I was definitely shaking then!!! The nice thing about video it is that I could just re-record if I forgot what came next! I spoke about pretending to read in the video itself, because it was only as I was recording it that I realised I had been memorising the poems in preparation before I'd even registered that that meant I was going to pretend to read. I could have had the poem up in large font on my phone, or on the laptop, but I know what a poetry reading video 'should' look like, and I did my best to copy it. I'm not saying I did it wrong, or even that I'd do it differently. I wanted the people watching to be able to see the book, and especially see the beautiful cover which was designed by Tracey Scott-Townsend. It just got me thinking, and I wanted to share this 'behind the scenes' explanation in case anyone was interested. You can watch me (sort of) read a poem from Light Perception below, and you can buy a copy from the Wild Pressed Books' website. Thank you for reading my ramble, and have a great day! Beth
Hi there!
If you're reading this, you've found your way to my brand new website! I've created it as space to share and showcase the writing projects I am working on, as well as to take on new projects. I plan to share exciting things about my books, including my forthcoming poetry collection, I Left the Room Burning, which is coming out in February 2021 with the lovely Wild Pressed Books. Aside from that, I'll be writing, and writing about writing, for your general amusement! Thanks for being here and stay tuned! Beth |
