Get a Job!

Owen and Amelia are in camp together -- finally! -- and I'm getting a preview of what my life will be like in six weeks when Amelia joins Owen in elementary school.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Amelia gets out of camp at noon, but on Monday, Wednesday and Friday she's there until 4:00, like Owen is every day. So I've got more free time than I've ever had, and have started getting serious about how I'm gonna fill that time, and, with any luck, actually earn some money in the process.

My first priority is to finish my children's subway book. I am working with an illustrator and hope to present a draft with some pictures to the licensing agent for the MBTA in the not-too-distant future. If the book gets green-lighted, there could be other projects.

Also on the writing front, I continue to work on the memoir I mentioned a while back (see May 25, 2012, "Inspiration"). I've been working on it for four months, pretty regularly, and feel like it's coming together nicely. I've gotten down the facts of the trip after listening to audio tapes and going through my journal, newspaper articles and foggy memory. I've also included details about places we visited, and places we blew past that I wished we'd visited, and brought in memories from my childhood sparked by events and places.

I still have a lot of work to do to incorporate larger themes into the work, something I've begun but realize is going to take a bit of time. Unlike with my first book -- still available for sale here -- I plan to have a few sets of eyes look at my memoir.

I hope to get it out next year as an e-book.

That book probably won't make me any money, but reading other people's books (and my own) might earn me a living.

My mother-in-law, Rose, has told me over the years that I have a good radio voice. Recently, she suggested I should be an audiobook reader. So I looked into that and found that Audible.com seems to always be looking for voice talent.

Those interested in the job need to submit a 2-minute sample of themselves reading a book, so I've been practicing reading my book. While doing so, I looked into the possibility of turning my book into an audiobook, and Audible offers authors a chance to do that as well (apologies to my college buddy, Pete Duchesne, who last year raised the idea of doing my audiobook).

Anyway, I plan to send in an audition recording after I've done quite a bit of practice. After watching a six-minute video on Audible's web site, I realized that quite a bit goes into not only reading books -- a good voice, sure, but also good acting and diction skills -- but also producing quality audio recordings.

If that doesn't work, I could always go back to my first career: working in the Stop & Shop produce department.