It is warm outside, probably fifty degrees. The sun is shining and there is enough blue in the sky to make a shirt. What is a pasty white woman in Montana to do on day like this? What is the pasty white woman’s family to do?
The wind isn’t blowing. The lawn chairs in the east yard faced into the sunshine and were dry enough so out we went. Havan caught a frizbee and followed up by retrieving some dirty and soggy tennis balls. Pretty soon I was warm enough to shed my black trench-like coat.
About that time my DH mentioned reading a newspaper and I offered him the Post from my K2. He was surprised to be able to read from the device in such bright light.
My son went to retrieve his target, a half gallon plastic milk jug with a Dairy-gold label and a red cap. He set it on one of our rubble piles and plunked at it with his Red Rider. At this point I took out some more technology and snapped a photo or two.
After my DH grew tired of the St. Louis news, I opened a novella called the Holocaust Opera by Mark Edward Hall. I set the K2 to read this out loud to me. With the very good forward to the novella behind us and several pages into the story my gender senses began tingling. My son, as though reading my mind asks if the narrator is supposed to be a man’s voice. After the first person narrator took a shower, powdered up and put on heels, we were still thinking she could be a guy. I have to add here that with the dog fetching, DH chatting about awakening his motorcycle and my son plunking at the milk carton, the gender of the main character in the Holocaust Opera might well have been defined for us shortly after the closing of the forward comments.
Pretty soon my DH took off in the mini-van to read a real newspaper about real and local stories. Me? I got hot, the dog had a blade of last year’s grass hung up in a streamer of slobber hanging from her lower jaw and the milk carton was toast.
We are inside now, Havan is snoozing, Dan’s at the computer, the cat is throwing up her prey and while my DH catches up on the local news, me, this pasty white woman is planning a spell-check and choosing a photo to go with this post.
Mark, if you are reading this, please take a moment to lift the skirt on your narrator and show us all what she or he has under there.
Till next time, stay warm and don’t touch anything sharp.
Comments
4 responses to “April Sunday”
Sounds like an exciting Sunday at your house….!! I haven’t tried listening to my Kindle yet, but will soon. Thanks for the idea.
No need to apologize, Sally. I wasn’t at all upset. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. She introduces herself to Jeremiah early on as Roxanne Templeton. I just assumed that that was enough. Thanks for pointing that out. Eventually I will have a professional audio version done with a female narrator.
By the way, I’ve received a very good review for the book. I’m not sure what site it is but I think it was All Romance. I’ll find the link tomorrow and send it so you can put in on the site.
Mark
Thank you Mark. The default voice I have on my reader is male. I chose it during set-up but seldom use it. It wouldn’t have needed to be stated, if I had been actually ‘reading’ the book and not listening, I certainly would have known. I tried to get you to forgive my distraction earlier in the post, now I am asking you to forgive any implication that her gender was unclear. You write wonderfully, I loved The Haunting of Sam Cabot and I am really pleased with this book. Sally the Gender Confused…
Hi, Sally,
The narrator is a twenty-one year old female. It’s obvious to those who read it. The fact that they used a male narrator is something I did not know or have any no control over. Kind of a bummer though because nowhere did the main character say, “I’m a woman”. I didn’t feel it needed that and obviously neither did Lisa Jackson who did the editing. It’s kind of self-explanatory.