I’ve been in almost constant contact with Rod Janpol the past few days. He’s within easy striking distance of getting the final touches added to the tail end of the upcoming DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal A Harvest of Memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best audio book. He is meeting every challenge head on like the true champion he is. He loves De every bit as much as I do…as we all do.
As you know, the last part of the audio book–which is unique; none of the other versions have this feature–is a series of voicemail messages left on my answering machine during the time I interacted with the Kelleys and after De died. These are messages from the Carolyn and De, Tippi Hedren, A.C. Lyles, Harve Bennett, and Teresa Victor. (I think Rod is even leaving in a couple voicemail messages from my mom and dad, since both are mentioned in the book and fans might be interested in hearing their voices, too.) We think the voice mail portion of the audio book will be around thirty minutes long. (Final length should be known within days.) We’re taking out messages that can’t be salvaged due to too much background noise, or because they don’t really say much. (No one needs to hear “Give me a call” a dozen or more times, even if the caller is De Kelley!)
The problem, of course, is that Rod is working from reel-to-reel vinyl tapes, many of which are twenty years old and carry substantial background noises. Back then, we didn’t really notice background noise on voicemail messages, but we do these days ever since digital options came along.
The amazing thing is that, in almost every single case, Rod has been able to cancel out most (in some places, all!) of the background noise to such a degree that I don’t think it will even be noticed enough to distract from the message. The voices will carry the day! We were worried about that, but I feel confident that fans will be happy enough with the result to be glad we decided to add the voice mails at the end of the audio book, even if the quality doesn’t equal (exactly) the rest of the audio book. Rod has done a fantastic job. I’ve heard about three minutes of the first part and I was Impressed, with a capital I! Now I want to see if I can find the first-ever audio recording of the time De introduced me at the Spokane Convention in 1986 and see if he can clean that one up. THAT would be a miracle, but it would mean the world to me. It’s less than a minute long, but really, really bad…
Editing and enhancing the voicemail messages must have been a real headache for Rod. I did it once, to delete all the beeps between messages, but then I remembered I had a better (perhaps the master) version of the audiotape that I hadn’t worked from so I sent that to Rod. He listened to it and said, “Yeah, this one is a lot better. I’ll work with this one..” so he had to go through the whole thing again and delete all the beeps between messages, too… and there were probably a hundred of them. It gave me a headache the time I did it! I hope it didn’t do the same to Rod! He didn’t mention it, if it did.
Anyway, I have already listened to the first half of the audio book and the only boo boos in it are ones I made when reading while recording on Audacity. (Very, very few, and Rod fixed all of them he could manually when he got the files.) And hey, the few remaining glitches prove I’m human and that I really did record it myself so I have no one to blame but myself! Lisa tells me there is a native American tradition in one culture where artisans always deliberately introduce at least one minor mistake/error/glitch to show that they are human/not perfect. Works for me! My audio book will prove conclusively, once and for all, that I’m a fallible human being…but still well worth putting up with, warts and all–as we all are!
I am sooooooo looking forward to having the audio book available. I think anyone who buys any other version will also want this version because of the voicemail messages at the end. And some people prefer audio books. Some fans are blind or nearly so, so an audio book will be “just what the doctor ordered” if they want to learn more about what a fabulous human being De was “up close and personal…”
P.S. Rod will also be pulling three or four one to three-minute snippets from the audio book so I can use them on social media and at other venues to “preview” the audio book. We’ve settled on some great snippets…but if there is a particular story or anecdote that you particularly LOVE from the book–those of you who have already read it–that you think would make a terrific “preview” piece, please IM me and let me know what it is. We’ll certainly consider using it in our outreach efforts, too!
