Audio Joy

Uncovering voice acting skills & embodying my novel in a whole new way

I’ve just returned from two weeks in Toronto, where I recorded my audiobook for What We Found Instead. Two weeks honing previously-undiscovered voice acting skills, bringing this story to life in a whole new form, making something that is the book but also is a little something extra—and oh my goodness, the experience was amazing.

I auditioned for this job in May. Authors do indeed have to audition to narrate their own books—no one on the team wants to produce a subpar product (including the author), and let’s face it, actors have a lot more training and skill in voice work than writers do. With memoir, the author is often the narrator, but it’s less common in fiction.

Over the course of a couple weeks, I progressed from zero interest in ever doing that to maybe it would be interesting to try to I MUST DO THIS. This story is so personal, one that has lived with me for a long time. It’s set in the place where I am from. I knew intimately the musicality I wanted in each line. As I asked the producer if I could audition, got vocal coaching from my actor husband, listened to the other auditions and tried to decide how mine stood up beside them, I grew into certainty. This job was mine.

I had some help assessing the auditions. These are my 16-year-old daughter’s notes. I gave myself a pseudonym so she wouldn’t know which audio was mine. She was not fooled.

The recording process—nine 3-hour sessions at the audio recording studios in the Penguin Random House building in downtown Toronto—ranks among the most meaningful of my experiences as a writer. I had incredible support. The sound engineers were awesome. My director, Rooks Field Green, was in my headphones from Nova Scotia and had somehow, in very short order, pulled together such a nuanced and insightful read of the book, such deep understanding of the characters, that I was frequently awed by their take on the subtext in a particular scene or the motivations of a particular character.

Everyone was so invested in this book and in the version of it that we were making together, and I loved how collaborative it was. I don’t get to collaborate like that very often.

I learned more about my novel than I knew before, and I fell in love with it more deeply. Several times I cried while reading emotional scenes, swept away in this story with which I am all too familiar but still, evidently, open to experiencing anew. (The characters were also crying, so hopefully it works.) I also thought, This is a good book! I think people are going to like this book! It was so meaningful to be the person who got to create the actual voices of these characters who’ve been living in my head and on the page for so many years—giving them audible form in the world, engaging in this story in such an embodied way. I loved it.

And I certainly learned a bunch about what goes into creating an audiobook. It’s not nearly as fluid as process as the finished product suggests. There is a lot of stopping and starting, trying lines in different ways, discussing motivation and tone, taking sips of Throat Coat tea and bites of green apple (the acidity reduces mouth noise), redoing sentences due to a stomach rumble, the director or audio engineer informing you that you read that sentence the way it used to be written and not what is currently on the page.

I also had to create character voices, with loads of support from my director—a thing I hadn’t quite realized I would need to do. (See above re: actors usually voice audiobooks.) I knew that narrating an audiobook required skills other than just a) knowing how to read and b) knowing how to speak, but we spent considerable time creating the sound and attitude of about twenty different characters…all of whom needed to sound different from one another so that the listener, without benefit of paragraph breaks and quotation marks, can tell who is speaking.

More than once, Rooks made a suggestion that required layering about five different aspects of personality and attitude and background and tone and pitch into a single line of dialogue, and I’d feel I had definitely reached the limits of my acting skillset…and then I would do it. When we got to the end of one chapter with seven different characters colliding in tense cross-purposes, I felt like I’d summited a mountain.

But I did it!

Here we are after wrapping the final recording session: director Rooks Field Green on Zoom and audio engineer Matt Beckett in the room with me.

I was euphoric after we wrapped. I did it! We did it! It was finished.

And then I went out for a celebration dinner with a dear group of girlfriends, finishing off my two weeks in Toronto with such a full heart. In fact, although I was working or recovering from working much of the time I was there, I was also living alone in an apartment of my own (with so much gratitude to my friend Heather’s mother for being away and letting me use her place), and it turns out that having only your own needs to meet frees up a heck of a lot of time. And so I took full advantage of being in the city where I used to live, meeting up with friends, attending a book launch (for Harriet Alida Lye’s Mother Clown, which looks amazing), meeting two current Novel Alchemy writers in person, seeing my beloved therapist in person for the first time in years, working in some of my favourite cafés. I also had lunch with my publicist and started working in earnest on the zillion tasks associated with bringing a book into the world.

I lived that bachelorette life to the fullest while I had it. And now I am happy to be back in my quiet riverside home with two teenagers in the madness of finishing the high school year and the partner who held down the fort while I was away.

Scenes from my 2-week bachelorette life: 1) end-of-recording celebration dinner with Heather, Erika, Zahra, and Sarah 2) with Novel Alchemy writers Amy and Loretta 3) with Zahra Haji, who I worked with for years as a copywriter 4) with the ARC of What We Found Instead.

What We Found Instead (including the audiobook!) is available for preorder now

The book doesn’t come out until July 28, but you can preorder it now in any format (paperback, ebook, audio) and get two exclusive preorder gifts.

1. 📖 Still Lake: the prequel to What We Found Instead, an ebook that’s yours immediately upon signup

2. 🎟 After the Last Page: a spoiler-filled private reader’s salon to be held live online in August with me and Anena Hansen, my creative partner and best friend, who also helped inspire the women of the novel

All the details about how to preorder the book and claim your gifts are right here.