One of the last things I do in the writing process of any new story or novel is to read my work aloud. It helps me find missing words, typos and, um, poorly worded sentences such as “He panted heavily in her rear.” I mean, technically not a typo but….

Reading my works aloud also helps me to figure out how I want to pronounce weird names and such when I read in front of live audiences as opposed to the mannequins I keep stored in my basement. With my new book, Has the World Ended Yet?, I decided to skip that with one of the stories: “We Are All Ghosts,” a sort of Lovecraftian superhero tale. It’s a bit long for readings and hard to pull sections out without over-explanation. Also, there’s a lot of strange language in it, such as “ia ia ftagn” and my own takes on Lovecraftian language: “Wgahst’nar phl’unk!” So I decided just to never read that one aloud. Pronunciation problems solved.

And then the other day I talked to the woman who will be recording the book for an audio version and she had some questions.

“On page 168, how do you pronounce….” she asked.

“Right. Urbl’phhar mypr’ttsh urbl’phhar,” I said. “Like it sounds.”

OK, I should have thought about the audio versions. Live and learn.

Anyway, we figured out an approach for pronouncing the unpronounceable. It went something like this:

“Just do your own take on it,” I said. “But make your own take sound like a fish. An angry fish – you know, deep tones, like the Deep Old Ones. Burbling and moaning. None of that high-pitched Dory fish stuff. This is the voice of a fish that has seen it all and knows everything ends in tentacles.”

So there you have it. Always read your works aloud, if for no other reason than to avoid awkward conversations about your sanity. I get enough of those at home already.

(Re the image: It’s called Into the Depths by Patrick Reilly, and it’s one of those illustrations that haunts me.)