Audiobooks!

I’ve been working on Audiobooks recently. What a fun exercise. You get to listen to hundreds of male and female voices to narrate your book. That alone is interesting, hearing all these different people read all these different selections…poetry, dramatic speeches, informational messages… but when they switch from reading their prepared samples and start reading YOUR actual words that YOU wrote for YOUR book, it’s a trip!

 

Now, you can’t expect anybody to sound like the voice you had in your head when you wrote your book. In my case, I’d be looking for ME – my stuff is largely humorous stories about our family. But it’s a lot of fun hearing somebody else interpret your words and bring them to life.

We have about 6 Audiobook projects going on right now, and some real talent has decided to work with us. We feel very lucky to have professionals like Chaz Allen, Jason P Hilton, and Jake Marek doing our books.

 

Jake Marek agreed to take our hardest challenge right now, with the project we are working on with him, and I’m sure he will be excellent at it. It has a wide range of voices and dialects, and the material ranges from funny to tearful in a few seconds sometimes. Jake has the right attitude for the project we selected him for: fun. Plus, he actually sounds a lot like ME! So that was a kick. He has such great comedic timing, you’re going to love him!

 

Chaz Allen is a seasoned professional with a voice that makes me want to write stories just for him to read. So I’m doing just that! Look for “Santa Maybe” to come out later this summer. You are going to love his voice as much as I do. He is a fine actor and a rare talent. We were very lucky to get Chaz on board.

 

I believe Jason P Hilton is a newcomer to this business, but you would never know it. Jason’s reading style is bold and his deep voice is still flexible enough to play all roles. He enunciates very well, reads with nice inflection and punches up the comedic lines in the right places. He manages the voices of different characters nicely as they converse, which is very important. My manuscript is mostly a first person speech, with lots of humorous, rambling, run-on sentences with an occasional short dialog thrown in. Jason does these well. In the informative sections, he delivers with a calm intelligent style; acting out the humorous parts, he’s lively and having fun. This guy has a bright future ahead of him in this business!

 

Audiobooks are so much fun. “Theater of the mind” is what they called radio plays, and this is definitely the same. Once the audience settles in, the curtain goes up and show is on! 

I am very fortunate to be working with all three of these gentlemen. I think you are all going to be happy with their work as well.

 

Stay tuned!