December…the time to give thanks for those things that have sustained us through the past year. For narrators, a huge part of that is YOU, the listening community! As we wind down 2016, we want to give back to you, our listeners, who help make our job so rewarding, and who travel with us on each audiobook journey. SO! Over 60 narrators have partnered to bring you FROM THE HEART – recordings of poetry, essays, stories, excerpts, songs, etc. – throughout the month of December.

I’m so thrilled to be among this group of exceptional narrators and offer you a free reading! Today, I present “The Christmas Present” by Richmal Crompton. In this short (11:55) Christmas tale from 1922, Mary learns that the best presents don’t cost a thing.

Thanks to Xe for spearheading this project and to a favorite audiobook blogger Jennifer Connor at the Literate Housewife blog for her generous publicity of this project throughout December. I encourage you to visit Jennifer’s site to catch up on narrators and their readings from earlier in the month, as well as those to come.
Happy holidays!

The post The Christmas Present appeared first on Karen Commins.

To celebrate, a number of audiobook narrators are posting short recordings today in the Going Public project.

This audio project is the brainchild of narrator Xe Sands. Each Friday, new audio is offered  for free download. Xe describes the project as pieces

recorded purely for the joy of reading something that truly resonates with the narrator and then sharing that joy with others. Pieces are offered gratis on a weekly basis, without compensation of any sort either to the narrator or author.

The project is also a brilliant way to further perfect and market our voices and our talents as audiobook narrators!

Today, I’m presenting the short story “Black Thursday”. Author Melissa F. Miller graciously gave me permission to record her award-winning short story, which is the prequel to the suspense/thriller audiobook IRREPARABLE HARM.

In this story, first-year legal associate Sasha McCandless learns that her blessings come at a cost.

When performing audiobooks, one large part of the narrator’s job is the preliminary preparation. You need to pre-read a fiction book to know how the story flows and find clues about each character that will help you make good choices about their voice.

You also need to look up pronunciations of words. Since this short story dealt with a law firm, I needed to find out how to pronounce some legal terms.

I usually start by Googling “word pronunciation”, for example, “qui tam pronunciation”. Usually, dictionaries pop up first in the results, and I may quickly find what I need.

In this example, I found an interesting document from the American Bar Association which explains that lawyers differ on the pronunciation of qui tam. This material was an exciting find since it allowed me to further develop the character in my mind and decide which way he would say the phrase based on the back story I imagined for him.

Narrators Judith West and Heather Henderson collected and created an exceptional resource of pronunciation dictionaries and research techniques that is a treasure trove for any audiobook narrator: AudioEloquence.com

If you have some free time, take a listen to the contributions in Going Public. Like researching pronunciations for your book, you’ll never know what you’ll find!

Photo:  iStockPhoto/ContentWorks
 

The post Going Public for Audiobook Month and Some Pronunciation Info appeared first on Karen Commins.

Many of the stories written in the 19th century contain language that sounds jarring to our 21st century ears. I enjoyed narrating this sweet and humorous story written by Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855-1896) in part because his words sound more contemporary. In this age where people meet on-line and break up by text message, The Love-Letters of Smith is a refreshing look at relationships in past times.

Mr. Smith’s letters gave me the key to his character’s voice. For instance, here’s one sample of his writing style:

A mishnery that sells Rum
is the menest of Gods crechers

I recorded this story for the LibriVox Short Story Collection, Volume 35. Download this short story (20Mb, time 21:48)

Photo: Stefan Klein, iStockPhoto.com

The post Short story — The Love-Letters of Smith appeared first on Karen Commins.