Genre - Fantasy Stories Archives

Because Sometimes Only Hearing is Believing

I’m featuring sounds from my recent audiobook projects, just for fun, and I hope that this feature of my narration work will resonate with authors and listeners. Here are some of the others.

Many times my FX are drawn from a marvelous website called Freesound.org. I cut, slice and alter them using effects found in the Audacity tool (also free to download and use). Sometimes I create the sound myself, using my voice or things to hand.

Featured Sound: Arrows and Spears

Believe it or not there are actually several FX on Freesound for “battle” including medieval-style conflicts. You can hear horses, the clash of swords, men shouting, it’s incredible. Sometimes it’s Live-Action Roleplaying stuff and others I think may be drawn from movie soundtracks. I’ve used them before.

But for the recent prequel to Gilbert Stack’s Legionnaire series, entitled The Jungles of Ekanga, I had a special challenge. During a climactic moment of the action, I needed the sound of Roman soldiers armed with throwing spears being harassed by jungle tribesmen firing arrows. No clashing, no shouts or horses, just impacts. So I crafted it.

Here’s the sound, Arrows and Spears:

How It Sounded

There are many great FX for arrows, but I added some that qualified as “thunk” or “clunk” to get the spear impacts. I also threw in a couple instances of “chopping meat” for the ones that hit their targets. All this was to run under the narration and hopefully not distract too badly from the tale: what you’re hearing is much louder than the volume I used.

How It Looks

I should probably do a post someday on “How I Suck at Searching” because the results of my terms is often both depressing and amusing. Below is one lovely photo I found with “Romans in the jungle”. But I also got pictures from various iterations of “Survivor”; and there is evidently either a person or a product, or both, having to do with ED that, ahm, “comes up” on that search. Sigh…

The Legionnaire series by Gilbert Stack is available through #12 on Amazon and I have the privilege of the first six chapters out on Audible. It is a truly marvelous adventure with epic scope but lovely bite-sized pieces for you to read and enjoy. Start with The Fire Islands if you like, and then later if you find yourself geeking out, come back and enjoy this prequel, the kind of We-Knew-Him-When stuff that the fans really love to hear.

Because Sometimes Only Hearing is Believing

I believe good sound FX are always in season and for those interested I’ll be sharing some on my site, while I work through projects as an audiobook narrator.

Featured Sound: Giant Eagle

I don’t know if I ever had more fun than when narrating the ripping adventure yarn by Debbie Bishop known as War Eagles. This Indiana Jones-level barnstormer was intended by Merian C. Cooper as a follow-up to his work on King Kong back in the 1930s. I mean, lost tribe of Vikings rides giant eagles to fight the Nazis, what else could you want from a story! But the heart of it, of course, was being able to replicate the sound of the eagles themselves.

Here’s the sound:

How It Sounded

I built this sound on one of many terrific entries by user “CraigSmith”, called eagle-cries (#437968). The background noise needed reduction, and I lowered the pitch slightly (I always seem to want to pull the sound lower!) as well as adding some echo.

How It Looks

Many fantasy fans will be familiar with the Giant Eagles of Tolkien and this certainly hearkens to those. I also think of the epic hawk, eagle and condor cries from that fabulous cartoon series Johnny Quest.

Here are giant eagles doing their thing, with Orcs standing in for the Nazis, from The One Wiki to Rule Them All:

Hope you’re enjoying the ride with these fun FX. War Eagles the audiobook is available on Audible and I can highly recommend it if you’d like a rollicking adventure tale that quite literally “flies by”.