Last night, due to a schedule with my daughter I got up at 3 in the morning. Sometimes when I do the work required to help with her comfort I can not go directly back to sleep. So, on a whim I went to check on my project on ACX.com. I had approved all the audio files for the reading of my first book Circe Syndrome a few weeks ago and wondering about its status. I was shocked to find it was live.
The excitement that ran through me was electric. I was awake. It had been a goal for a few years to get my book realized in this format. Originally about 2 years ago I bought the equipment set up a soundproof area in my office and tried to learn a lot new skills at once. The guidelines for the sound upper range and lower range concerned me. I started wondering if should actually hire a sound engineer to help me with my recordings. As it was I had to do the whole chapters in one take with no mistakes because I had no idea how to change aspect of the sound files with just one word.
The house has to be completely quiet with no ambient noise. I have children, that was impossible with them home. I am divorced and I time without children but for some reason going and locking myself in a room and reading over and over was daunting. After 2 years I only had about 4 chapters and one definitely had a error I wanted to just figure out.
In the depths of this pandemic I needed something to push me forward. I had wrote the rough of my second novel and needed to start its rewrite. I need a few months between that and rewrite. I then pulled up a small project that was a novella and finished that. I felt like things were stagnate and I needed something else.
I really was lamenting the audio book need because a lot of people I know including me at this point don’t always have time to sit and read a book but can listen to an audio book while doing other things. I was binging through rereading Jim Butchers books at the time to be up to speed with his two new ones he released this year.
I found myself going back to ACX and wondering how much it would cost because after all I now knew how much time of spoken words went with the volume of words I produced. So I did the math and realized I could hire someone in a certain price point. So I thought about it for a couple weeks then registered the project and hunted for the voice of Muriel my main character who tells the whole story. It is a first person narrative after all. Perfect for this medium.
I also liked the idea of helping a possible actor during this crisis. My book is full of dialogue and someone who enjoyed doing voices and accents could have a ball with it.
It was this fascinating process of looking for a voice. There were list of different qualities to a voice: femine, soft, brash, informative, etc. I had to click on different boxes and then push enter. A list of actor would come up who described themselves with those words. Each had a bit of sample audio to listen to. I started listening. When I found the ones I was interested in. I wrote the names down. Then went about getting the project finalized and reaching out to those individuals and then opened the project up for other candidates.
I was excite when the person I was really hoping would respond, did immediately. We began a series of exchanges about what I was looking for and what she was comfortable doing. I had to give all candidates a 15 minute segment of the manuscript to audition with. At first I was baffled what scene to use. But I knew I wanted a scene with different accents, of male and female participants of different ages. I narrowed it down to 3 scenes then thought about which accents were the most important.
She knocked it out of the park. All the candidates had some great takes on it. But I choose Isabel based on her range and attitude.
Some things I learned reviewing it. Even though I had three editors and rewrote it about ten times and read it out loud for some of those edits. Instead of saying “I thought” the character says “in my mind” a great deal. Every character takes a moment to take a breath before they do anything. And I seemed to be mesmerized by the word “mesmerized”. I suggest if decide you need to a drinking game based on how many times any of these three things happen you only do beer for the “in my mind” and “take a breadth”, “mesmerized” can be a shot.
The voice for the rake character makes my toes curl, her Uncle is stodgy and the main characters family's love is apparent through out every scene. Muriel the main characters voice is soft and clear like mine with that hint of amusement as you realize she really is just taking it in and responding to what is happening around her.
I hope you enjoy it. I hope you laugh out loud and say aww in all the same places I did.
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