Updates #1

Update: I have finally chosen a........

Hey all!

I wanted to drop a quick post to give you an update.

Here it is:

I HAVE CHOSEN A NARRATOR FOR MY AUDIOBOOK!!!!!

Yes, yes. It is true. “🎶I have found her, I have found her.🎵”*

And by “found her”, I mean I picked her out of the six options they gave me. There were a couple options that were hard passes and there were a couple that were real contenders. BUT….When I heard how she read chapter 1, with all the despair that comes with having the Darkness as your constant companion, I was like BOOM! We got it!

Ok, so the perfectionist in me wouldn’t let me jump on it quite like that. I wanted to hear some of her other work, to make sure she could do more than just despondent. I think she’s got a pretty solid cache of voices in her arsenal. And I also think she has some great expression to her voice. Some narrators sound almost robotic, but she sounds human.

Now, I know I am going to struggle hardcore with a lot of this. The fact that these characters are based on real people, whom I know and love (most of them anyway), is going to make it hard for me to accept that their voices aren’t coming out of the speakers. I think it will be especially hard hearing not-Kenny’s voice vomiting sarcasm all over the place.

Listening to the different auditions and how the narrators portrayed certain voices, almost gave it a “removed” feel for me though. I knew they were my words and that I had written them (and read them a million times over), but there is something about having them reenacted by someone else that gives it a different vibe. It was cool, but totally surreal.

“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension of sight and sound, a dimension of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. You’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone” *Insert Twilight Zone theme music here*

It should take another 4-6 weeks for the final audition by my chosen narrator to be sent to me. I am excited, but also nervous. My anxiety is over here like, “She is going to be the WRONG person and you will have to start over, but she’s still going to be the best option and you are just going to hate the audiobook forever and so will everyone else and they will hate the book because you chose a crap narrator and you are now a failure!” Welcome to my mind.

Send good vibes! I think I need them.

Until Next Time,

RaeB

P.S. If you want to check out Jenifer Witcher, here are some samples of her work on Audible:

https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Jenifer+Witcher