How it all happened...

I have always loved books read aloud. Before I discovered actual audiobooks (on cassette at the time!), my mom would read to me and my dad in the evenings or on long car rides. 

As I got older I discovered that I, too, loved connecting with people through reading stories together. It became a staple of my partnerships that if we were going to be driving for longer than a few minutes, we couldn’t forget “the book,” whatever it happened to be at the time. 

Eventually I realized that being an audiobook narrator would be an absolute dream-job for me… but I had no idea how to make it happen. I thought there were a bunch of things I’d need to do, like get an agent, become an “Actor,” and generally get involved in being a “voice over” talent—which I wasn’t actually interested in. I just wanted to read books…

And then one day (waaaay back in 2014) I discovered that my cousin’s wife Nicky had started writing romance novels (a long-held dream of her own), and was using the now-ubiquitous technology of self-publishing to put her art into the world. I was thoroughly impressed, and he was incredibly proud, telling me how well she was doing in her genre, and generally being an excellent fan-boy for his love’s creative endeavors. 

“So…” I began tentatively, “does Nicky need a narrator? Does she want to do audio versions of her books?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Aaron, “I think she’s auditioning narrators right now!” 

He went on to tell me that there was a platform for narrators to essentially self-publish, like Nicky was doing with her e-books, and that I should contact her to see if she’d hired anyone yet. I proceeded to do a small, internal happy-dance, thinking, “This is my chance!!” 

So I contacted the illustrious Nicole Krizek, newly successful self-published sci-fi romance novelist… And much to my chagrin, she had just contracted a male narrator for the first two novels in her series. But she said she’d originally wanted a female voice, and could I send her a sample of my narration?

I proceeded to thoroughly freak out, because I only had a crappy computer microphone to record things with, and I knew that wasn’t going to be good enough. Thankfully I have a wide variety of incredible people in my life, including a handful of talented musicians who occasionally record at home. So my dear friends Sean Morse and David Keogh (look up their music online, they’re both amazing) offered to assist me, and I ended up recording a few minutes of narration in Sean’s attic studio (which was very much a learning experience). Through his patient tutelage, I was able to create a passable sample to send to Nicky.

I waited on pins and needles for her response, and when it finally came, I saw at first glance that it had some notes. I was terrified that she’d hated it, and I had to have my partner at the time read it with me and basically hold my hand. It turned out that she’d actually loved it, and just wanted to make sure that a few things she had found distracting could be fixed… and that I didn’t get carried away and read too fast! (This is something I still remind myself about regularly, even after many years.) She basically said, “You’re awesome, do all of my books, forever.” So I am! But the real work was only just beginning… 

That first book I produced (which was actually the third in her Arathian Universe series) took me almost an entire year! Essentially I had to teach myself audio engineering from the ground up—which, it turns out, is not actually an easy thing to do. Shocking, right? It’s like people go to school for this stuff, or something… But I was immeasurably lucky to make the acquaintance of a close friend’s husband at the time, Brendan Hogan, who was an incalculably valuable resource. An incredibly knowledgeable professional in the audio industry, with a stunning portfolio, I was shocked at his generosity and patience in explaining things I should never even have tried to take on, with regard to editing and mastering an audiobook. He sent me notes on compression from his college classes, loaned me microphones, and responded to my sometimes frantic emails begging him to help me figure out how to do (insert inscrutable thing here) in Pro Tools, with which he has a lifetime’s-worth of experience. I literally would not have made it through that first book without him. I also would not have made it through without Nicky’s near infinite patience with me, as I pushed back deadline after deadline because yet something else had gone wrong, or I couldn’t “figure out how to do (inscrutable thing).” 

I finally completed that first book. I went on to record two short (one hour each) self-help books for another author, and then didn’t really record much until Nicky had another book ready. I became her official copy editor and narrator. For a few years, hers were the only books I produced.

I considered auditioning for other books, but I thought it wasn’t something I could really “do” as a career, and so I didn’t really pursue it. I polished my skills on Nicky’s books, but maintained other “real” work to pay the bills.

And then… I got fired. And honestly? Being fired was the best thing that could have happened to my narration career.

I had a conversation with my partner almost immediately about whether it might be a sustainable business model for me to start narrating full time, and what that would really entail. How many books a month would I need to do? How long would I be able to take to produce each book? How could I cut down my current production time? Could I still copy edit, and would that help? How much could I even read aloud in a given period of time, really?!

The result of that conversation was that, in September of 2017, narration and copy editing became my full time business. 

Over the course of the years between 2014, when I produced my very first audiobook, and 2017, when I launched my full-time narration career in earnest, I had learned a ton, and had grown significantly as a narrator. But it wasn’t until I made the leap to pursue narration full time that I really began to hone my craft. What started out taking an entire year, had gradually been honed down into a 2-3 month process. But I couldn’t produce a book every two to three months and make a living. So how did I go about condensing my production time into a format that would make by business more efficient, and make me actually competitive in the industry?

Enter Neil Hellegers. I met Neil and Steven Jay Cohen when they were answering live questions during a taped interview for ACXU, which is an annual online education event run by ACX (the Audiobook Creation Exchange: a subsidiary of Amazon, which is basically like a dating site for authors and narrators to find each other). They were both fantastically engaging in answering the questions of the interview attendees, of which I was one. I connected with both of them outside the live chat, and they were both brilliantly generous in helping point me to the resources that moved me along in my career. Steven’s blog content for narrators alone is unparalleled, and incalculably valuable—to say nothing of his patience and generosity in answering endless questions over email.

But it was Neil’s gentle ass-kicking and firm hand-holding that really helped me level-up in my productions. Neil went from being a business contact, to being a friend, to being a solid mentor, and then to being the recipient of a probably unfair portion of my angst, grief, frustration, anxiety, insecurity, and just general growing pains of my fledgling full-time narration business.

He gave me two pieces of advice that completely changed my workflow:

1. Learn how to punch and roll, and...

2. OUTSOURCE YOUR POST.

Previous to learning advice-point-1, the punch-and-roll technique of recording, I had been doing what’s called “open recording,” which is where you just record your narration all in one long track, and then go back through and listen to it later on and cut out the parts that shouldn’t be there (like extra takes, noises, etc.). This basically means you’re automatically taking at least twice (or more) as long to record something than you need to, because you then have to go back through and listen to the whole recording session over again in order to fix it. Unless you have some very good efficiency measures for this sort of thing (like, Simon Vance-levels of awesomeness), this process is unnecessarily arduous and time-consuming. It was necessary for me early in my career, because I was recording in places where I didn’t necessarily have access to the computer I was recording into to stop and start my recordings. (Like when I was working in studios outside my house, and couldn’t afford to pay for an engineer to be present for the whole session, for example.) But once I was recording in my own studios at home (photo above, built for me by my phenomenal partner, Zach May), where I could see and interact with the tracks I was recording, I started “punching in” when I’d make a mistake. That means I drop the cursor at a logical place in the track before the mistake occurs, and then continuing on with the recording from there until I fuck up again… Which is sometimes not very long, but what can you do… ;-)

Anyway, taking Neil’s advice and learning how to P&R took my recording and production time down from a few months, to a few weeks! It was magical. I am forever indebted to him for helping me turn that corner.

Point two is something that I still go back and forth on, occasionally trying to help my authors by applying my own sort of blanket-engineering filters, which I have honed over the years, but which still aren’t as good as my actual engineers can do. The biggest time-saver for me, though, was letting go of proofing my own recordings…

I am a perfectionist. It’s a problem. If I proof my own work, I will spend *hours* longer in production, recording and re-recording bits of narration and dialog until they’re exactly, precisely, as perfect as I can possibly make them… And it’s just not necessary. NOT proofing my own work has been another key to efficiency in my work, and was pivotal in cutting my production time once again.

Because of this sage advice, my productions went from months, to weeks… to, in some cases, just days. Life-changing. Seriously. I’ll never be able to thank Neil enough for his contributions to my business.

So I struggled along with bookings and auditions for a few years, and then in February of 2020, after a few months of struggling with very few production contracts, and not nearly enough work to be sustainable, I decided that I just needed to get my shit together, buckle in, and start hustling auditions like there was no tomorrow. So I did.

And then there was this crazy pandemic…

But you know what? Working for yourself inside a small-ish wood-and-foam box, inside an only slightly larger room, inside your own home… turns out to be the absolute perfect job to have already been doing for years when a pandemic hits. I still got my hustle on in February and March of 2020, auditioned my ass off, and went from scraping by with a handful of contracts at the beginning of the year, to booking out 3-4 months in advance by September! I have so much narration work that I’m having to hire out the copy editing portions of some of my contracts! So, I’m calling that a win. ;-)

And that’s where I am now: feeling amazing about the work I do, privileged to work with some incredibly brilliant and creative writers, loving my career and being incredibly grateful that I get to get lost in a story every damn day of my life! 

I am literally living my dream. Literally. 

And it’s amazing.