June is Audiobook Month! To celebrate, the Audio Publishers Association (APA) kicked off a video campaign titled “A Good Audiobook Speaks Volumes” in which authors and narrators share why we #LoveAudiobooks!
I had such fun in creating this 2:01 video, which premiered today on the Audiobook Community Facebook page. I hope you enjoy it! If you also love audiobooks, please tell me your favorite audiobook in the comments. I’m always searching for my next good listen! 🙂
As we count down to a new year, I wanted to take a moment to update you on some of my activities this year. Much of this article originally appeared in my profile earlier this week on the Eargasms Audiobook Review site. I appreciated the great questions from audiobook listeners and encourage you to read them.
During 2015, I’ve drastically increased my efforts to help authors and publishers with a backlist understand the audiobook production process and get more of their titles into audio! I wrote a number of articles and created some videos, which I will detail in a moment.
Rest assured, my writing and video production activities are mere extensions of my greatest passion, which is audiobook narration! I’m delighted to announce I released 8 new audiobooks in 2015!
My first release of 2015 was BLY VS BISLAND: BEATING PHILEAS FOGG IN A RACE AROUND THE WORLD, which the talented Melissa Reizian Frank narrated with me. It was a very special narration project, and the story behind the story still gives me chills!
In addition, I performed:
You can hear samples of my 2015 releases in this Soundcloud playlist:
Last Monday was Ladies’ Night on the East West Audio Body Shop (EWABS) show! On 22 June 2015, I was excited to be a guest on the show and talk with hosts George Whittam and Dan Lenard about my favorite thing — AUDIOBOOKS!
My narrator colleagues Hillary Huber and Ann M. Richardson and publisher Carlyn Craig, founder of Post Hypnotic Press, joined me as guests.
In our 1.5 hours on the show, we covered a variety of topics of interest to both new and experienced narrators.
At one point, I compared the job of audiobook narrator to that of a baseball player. I summarized my thoughts in the graphic below.
Howdy, pardner! Welcome to my first stray post roundup! I don’t always confine my writing to this blog, and some of my critters have wandered off hither and yon across the ‘Net. I thought I’d rein ’em in here in case you missed seeing them.
In this roundup, I’ll link to my new magazine column and responses posted on other sites about my thoughts on setting boundaries in your voiceover business, how audiobooks allow you to read more books, which audiobooks about technology are best, and whether to read fiction or non-fiction. I’ll also unveil my latest video, which shows how to use the iAnnotate app during the audiobook corrections process.
In writing a response on author Elizabeth Spann Craig’s blog about tips for success on ACX.com, I realized I had been remiss in adding my latest video to my own blog!
Last fall, I spoke at the Georgia Romance Writers annual conference to help authors get started with creating audiobooks. I recently created a 41-minute video from that presentation which:
If you have questions or comments about the video or the audiobook production process, please leave a note for me on the blog!
A friend’s daughter has recently started college. She’s living on campus, which is something I didn’t do. In fact, she traveled around to universities in several states to pick the right campus for her.
I only applied to one college and commuted here in Atlanta. While I got a great education and never regretted my choice, hearing about this girl’s experiences both in picking and living at college have made me think about things I may have missed in my college years.
One thing I missed was going to football games. My college didn’t have a football team. I had played piccolo in high school marching band and would have enjoyed playing in the band on college football Saturdays.
A big advantage to being an audiobook narrator is that I can vicariously live through other people, even when they are fictional characters. For instance, in the fun, cozy Dixie Diva mysteries, Trinket Truevine, the first person narrator, and her cousin/best friend Bitty Hollandale went to Ole Miss. In fact, the latest book in the series Divas and Dead Rebels revolves around a dead professor on campus.
In one scene, the ladies attend a tailgating party at The Grove. I decided to make a video of that scene for an audiobook trailer and was thrilled to do the Hotty Toddy cheer for Ole Miss right along with some students!
