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Christa Lewis: The Body Behind the Voice · Romancing the Threshold

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I found today's guest the way most listeners find a narrator, which is backwards.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I love the book.
• 0:11
  [music]
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then went hunting through the credits to find out who had done that to me.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: The book was Melt for You.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's a Scottish rugby player in it named Cameron.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I spent a good portion of that audiobook convinced I was listening to a man.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was listening to one woman, alone, in a padded booth, doing all of it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I've been contemplating for a while.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a conversation where I met the missing body.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: A romance novel travels through bodies.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's the character's body, written down to the heat and the breath of it.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's the author's body, which sits somewhere and put it all down on paper for us to read.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's the body of the book itself,
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: a different object in your hands as a special edition or as an e-book
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: on your screen.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there's your body, where it actually lands.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: When a book is read aloud,
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: there's one more,
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: and that one does something uncanny,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: because it is a body you never see, making a sound that then lives inside your body.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: My guest is award-winning voice actor,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: audiobook narrator, and coach, Krista Lewis, and who narrates romance as Pippa Jane.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I came in curious about voice.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I left with even more respect for this craft.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Krista was an absolute delight of a guest, and I learned so much from her.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Every question I asked,
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: she not only answered it,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: But opened my mind to this craft,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: handing me her 30 years of hard-won knowledge and experience.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: She also gave me a new rating system for romance novels
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: that has me laughing just thinking about it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Krista, I am so grateful you said yes.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: One note before we start.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Zoom had a few glitches on us affecting the recording.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, I'm learning a new editing software as I go,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: so this episode doesn't sound as clean as I'd like.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I am bummed that it happened on this episode, which is about voice.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, human error and technology were running their interference
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: with each one doing their own part.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But stay with it anyway, because what Krista shares with us is worth it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello, Krista or Pippa.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk more about that.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm great.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Good, good.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we were chatting before I hit record,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: but now I'm very curious because,
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: as for the listener who doesn't know,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I found you through the book Melt for You by J.T.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, God.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Gasinger?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I miss from Heisinger, which is a lovely book.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so impressed with your voice narration that I was like, I have to find who did this.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just, wow.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then I just sent you a message.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And lucky me, you said yes.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so you were telling me, well, you have an interpretation of the book.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So do tell.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: What's your thoughts on Melt for you?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: I love that story, first of all.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's so fun and so funny.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm a woman who's never been svelte in her entire life.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the narration and the lead character completely spoke to me
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: because she had all kinds of body issues.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what I realized was that the cast of characters reminded me a little bit
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: of Bridget Jones's diary.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was as if the author had kind of decided to write her own version of a story like
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: that in a way.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: there are some notable differences,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: but some of the characters were so delicious and so wonderful
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: that I could easily see them.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: I just cast that whole book in my head with who I would have seen in the movie.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like Shirley MacLaine as the martini-drinking neighbor in the caftan.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's always Hugh Grant.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: As you know, the dashing devilish rogue, roguish bad boy.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the author didn't say anything about him having an accent in the book.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, man, I'm going for it.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I just made him this British employer boss.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it completely worked.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like how I cast them in my head,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: just kind of, I mean, I take enormous care just not to be super flippant about it.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I never try to break What an author is doing.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like I only do things that the words that I'm interpreting the words are allowing me to do.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: But once I kind of cast Shirley as the neighbor and Hugh as the boss,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: it just all fell into place for the narration.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I just went from there.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was very,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: very impressed because the reason we chose the book,
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: it was because August's book was supposed to be Scottish, like anything Scottish.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: But we were trying to get away from the Highlander type of thing.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so three of us picked Melt for you.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was one of them because it was like, okay, rugby play, Scottish, it fits.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just do it.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I got the book and then another fellow member of the group was like,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: oh, I do the audio book because I've listened to it before.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's excellent.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: The accent is accent.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, okay, I'll do that.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she was not wrong.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's amazing.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And here's another thing.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Of the movies that I was telling you, I worked my thesis.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Bridget Jones was one of them.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So again, I watched that movie a thousand times.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just curious.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think I kind of got it a little bit?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do you think there are enough similarities to have, like, was that a fair idea?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: A set of the straw.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I really loved the neighbor.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like she was good.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I just loved it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: You definitely got him.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now that you said, I was like, oh my God, he was staring me in the face.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But my heart really goes for Cam.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Cam was like, I was like, well, that was an amazing job.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because like I said, I couldn't distinguish.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like I couldn't tell, you know, there was a difference.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was amazing.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, I thought it was another person.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like literally.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you thought it was a male narrator.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, this is so good.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, I think my heart just grew three times.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like, I'm impressed.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, Scottish accent, that's the real weakness of mine.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: So good job.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: I had to watch all of Netflix for that accent I watched.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a dark detective noir story called, I think it's called Shetland.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or something like that.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's set in the Outer Hebrides.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of bleak detective series.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I was never able to do a Scottish accent.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: I learned accents for books.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I download Accent Helps.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: I go to YouTube.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: I practice the accent.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Scottish was the one I couldn't hear.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I got so frustrated.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I booked Melt For You.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, ah, what am I going to do?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I sat down at Netflix.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I watched all of...
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: This bleak thing.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And one character, she's shouting, she's like shouting at her boss or something.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: She went, da-da-da-da-da, glottal stop.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And once I got this strange movement in the back of my throat,
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: the glottal stop that the Scots do, you know, I don't know what you're saying.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: I can't understand.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this sort of thing, this percussive thing.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, oops, sorry.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that is what did it for me.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I learned it.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so now let's take a little trip back in time,
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit about your origin story of being a voice narrator.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: But also,
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think more importantly,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: how did you become a voice narrating romance novels for romance novels?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was a news narrator for Deutsche Welle Television in Berlin,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Germany, and I was visiting the United States.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was based in Germany for years, and I came to visit my father.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: He was in L.A., and I decided in that holiday not to go back to Germany.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: I decided to stay in the States.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And as I was trying to get myself reoriented in the United States, I was making calls.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: I needed a studio.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: There were clients in Europe that were trying to book me for some job.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the studios I called got me to email her husband,
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: who it turns out was a huge audiobook producer.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: So within a very short time of deciding to stay in Los Angeles,
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was auditioning for one of the largest audiobook subcontractors in
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: the United States, based in LA, for Dion Audio.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I met Deb,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: the woman on the phone who had been In the studio that I was trying to book
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: and she got me to audition.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't even know about audio books until I auditioned for Dion.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then, so everything was happening at once.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was such a concentrated time.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: I had decided to leave Germany after 20 years.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was enormous amount of change.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: All happening at once.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And audio books were the first good fit in Los Angeles.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: The entertainment industry is so competitive.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Voice acting is just, if you think it's hard now, It is.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it was hard then, too.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to break in.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was just trying to understand everything through the lens, literally, of my computer.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was trying to learn things through my laptop,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: find auditions, find ways to connect with other narrators and audiobook clients.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a website.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: There still is.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's called acx.com.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was newish.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: This was 2012.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where authors could upload their manuscript and audition a narrator directly.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So ACX cut out the traditional publishing route for audiobooks
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: where you get picked up or your book gets bought and you lose your rights as
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: the author.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then the casting people from the audiobook publisher, they decide who gets cast.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then you end up with an audiobook months later.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this system is still in place today, but authors have become clearer about their rights.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So they maintain their rights now more often than not.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And they get to pick their narrator more often.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: But back in the day...
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: All these authors had the freedom to directly audition their narrator.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the books that were up for audition were romance.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, I mean, I had been doing the news.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: I assumed I was a voice only for nonfiction and, you know, serious literature.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I only auditioned for those types of projects.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, your voice is all airy-fairy.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: You should do young adult fantasy and stuff like that.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I went, you're so wrong.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to prove it to you.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I went home and I auditioned for 10 YA fantasy books and I booked nine of them.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: In that moment, I understood, oh, when Debra Dion speaks, you listen.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: She knows what she's talking about.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then because of that experience, I did these books.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was so fun and interesting.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then I began to,
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: it opened my mind and I started auditioning for genres
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: that would never have occurred to me.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And there was romance.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there was, you know, the bills needed paying and my partner was in Europe.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: the financial stresses were piling up because he was kind of supporting me
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: while I was making this big transition.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I took a look at this audition one day and I was like, oh...
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a romance narrator, am I?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I auditioned for Red Phoenix and her BDSM series.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's an erotica series and it's, um, She's since evolved the series.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in the beginning, it was three books and they were all about 27 hours long.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: They were just huge.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And she has since split them up into sort of bite-size seven-hour books.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's 12 years later and I'm still narrating for Red Phoenix.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: God bless her.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: She was there from the beginning and she liked the sound of my voice.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: She liked my read and I got the book and I have been narrating for her and
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: for other romance authors ever since.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess my first question that comes to my mind is
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: the first romance book you narrate is an erotic.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: How was that?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was erotica, bold, italicized,
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: underlined.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: How was that for you?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was informative.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was informative.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I would be Skyping.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Remember back in the day when there was Skype?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, Skype.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be Skyping with my then partner and I was like, I have learned Skype.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: So much.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And his eyes grew the size of saucers.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he went, oh no, oh no, no way.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like a little frustrated because I was like,
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: if you don't understand, there's this whole world of exploration.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Her series, what makes it so delicious is that it was a conceit was really clever.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was a training school for submissives.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I had so many preconceived notions.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: I had so much attitude going into that book.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then I read it and I was giggling and laughing.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a hoot.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's really fun.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: My boyfriend was like, no, no.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, dude, you do not understand.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, yeah, no.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that experience got me.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not a shameless plug or anything.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I did ultimately want that opened me up romantically.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when we got together, we were seeing each other while he was traveling around.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: He worked all through Europe.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we had like a week in Brighton and I picked up this book on Tantra because
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: and I would never have done that in a million years prior to becoming
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: a romance narrator.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it broke me out of kind of.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Just structures and ideas I had about myself.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't get any less shy for sure.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still shy.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still kind of conservative.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you looked at me in the world of erotic and BDSM,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm definitely one of those vanilla people.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm just all that.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: But thanks to Red Phoenix and that experience,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I brought us home a little book on Tantra and I was like, let's try this.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we did.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we had so much fun, right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I learned a lot.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about, I don't know, what is it?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is a Puritan thing,
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: sort of a prudishness or a,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: like I have a lot more respect now for people's discretion and their own,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: the things that turn people on or off.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm looser about it.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that experience
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: because what I think is also interesting here is I have talked to other people
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: who read romances and have read stuff that in reading it,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: it opens up perspectives and it can be interesting conversations with a partner,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: interesting experiences you can start having.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: I hate to say, you know, my favorite author.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have not narrated that many different authors.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's unfair to say this is, you know, the best one or my favorite.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: However, I've had also the fortune of narrating for Lucy's score.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Lucy's score opened my mind to, first of all, she writes French comedy.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was my actor training.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: We did Moliere and we did all this stuff.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And, um,
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Lucy's score,
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm convinced,
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this is what she would say, but she writes French comedies.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, where the doors open, the doors close, people come in, people go out.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just all these crossed connections and missed connections and misinterpretations.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the scenes were so funny performing them that I'd have to stop,
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: take a break, calm down, you know, go back to the.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that opened me up also with other people out in the world.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't want to blame COVID or that period where we were all sort of
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: in extreme isolation in a way.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've been in a little box since 2012 by myself talking to the waltz in my booth.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sort of extra isolated professionally.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: But those interactions, and these are not romantic interactions.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: They're just, you know, people to people interactions.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: She's a great, like J.T.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Geisinger is as well.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so is B.K.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Borson.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, really good writers of rom-com and romance.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're brilliant at catching nuanced interactions between people.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it opened me up too.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was like I got a dose of healthy communication and unhealthy communication.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And also instead of pathologizing everything like, oh, my terrible childhood.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that person's so terrible because they do X, Y, Z.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: It gave me a bit of a more of a The comic lens,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: like not take everything so seriously because it can be situationally funny,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: even if it's unpleasant in the moment.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that impressed me in just really diving in and reading is,
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: and that's what led me to think of the character's body.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it's because every interaction is,
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: depending on the author and the story too,
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: is so descriptive in a way that it started making me think about my own body.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: How am I in this interaction right now?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: What am I observing about what I'm observing out there, but observing within me?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is my heart racing now?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: How's my breathing?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it just led me to think about romance in terms of a genre of story.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the only one, but it is so embodied.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: It brings you back to the body, to the descriptions, to the feelings.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you allow the story to lead you, you start feeling as well.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you add the audio book, that can be a whole other experience as well.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even though this was not a romance book I read.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I read this when I was fresh out of high school or something.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was called The Perfume.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even remember the author's name.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of a thriller.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: They made a movie of it where the main character had an extreme sense of like
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: a tuned sense of smell.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: But he had no smell.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember after finishing that book,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think for weeks, I felt like my sense of smell had improved.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: It described everything.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so your experience,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can see that connection happen to me as well,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: just noticing how I was noticing the interactions.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's empathy,
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: but on a not like, oh,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: she's so empathetic,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: but like on a visceral,
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know you use the word somatic,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: but on a somatic,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: empathizing, burrowing, And she just looked at this person and she said, empathy.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think...
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you bear with me,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is to your point about feeling the book,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: because I think the narrator has to not pity or sympathize with,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: but have empathy for the whole world the author is creating,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: which means allowing the voice to embody that character's point of view,
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: to embody their longings.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't go into all of them all the time,
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: especially people who are,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know, Repugnant to you, you know, if they're bad guys or whatever it is.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: But the author has deep empathy, right?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Really good writing.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can feel it.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: The author has deep empathy for all of life and all the different quirks
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: and foibles we all have as people.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they're just incredibly good at observing it.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's part of what it takes to narrate is to allow that empathy so
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: that you become this mirror is a bad word, but Is maybe not the right word.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like people say the eyes are the window to the soul.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And because I've been working with my voice since the dawn of time,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's actually,
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know, the voice in a way is the articulation of our everything.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I coach people for voice acting.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm like, look, your voice is everything.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's what you ate today.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's what you think, what you feel.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's where you put your energy.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Your voice is like a golden retriever.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you're pointing your focus at, your voice is going to follow along.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can let that happen, then the listener, right, those things will resonate as well.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the listener gets the story.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if the narrator can hold the space for the listener's imagination
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: to fully unfold, then I think this empathy kind of starts to happen.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody's body starts to kind of just light up,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: if you will, and start to experience different parts of these journeys, right?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Very true.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: A few things came to mind as you said that.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: One, the idea that I think in Celtic thinking and other cultures,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: we have a song, you know, we have a song.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's already speaking to the element of the voice.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: The other part is I was thinking how we live in the culture now.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's been coming along.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: That feels it's becoming ever more flat.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the wanting to eliminate friction in any way,
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: the ghosting and all those are symptoms of this flattening.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what I find interesting in these stories and when you add the texture of void,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: it's actually adding texture to things again
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: because you start feeling what you described as a feeling of things becoming,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: having more texture.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the voice adds another texture.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is so true.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of the power of the voice, I have a very good friend who's a therapist.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And his eyesight is not great.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he relies heavily on voice.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: So he can really tell when his patient comes in.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: He knows by the voice what's happening.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he just knows what's going on, what's not being said, even though they're talking.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's true.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's that we forget the power of the voice.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really interesting.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that last thing I'll say is what this was like three years ago.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I did...
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I went for some ayahuasca plant medicine.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing that happened to me, the message I got was, all he said to me is the voice.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do the voice.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Work the voice.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I spent the whole time under the medicine doing all kinds
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: of strange noises like I was one woman jazz band.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And once I got,
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: once I was out,
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was telling my husband, I was like, I think it was working the voice.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was something about, something was being worked there.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it just reminded me of that as well.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I just want to confirm for you your sense that things are flattening,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: but we can,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: as a coach,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: as somebody who coaches audiobook narrators and voice actors,
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: there's a part of the body.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's your upper lip.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we trained it.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: So Kristen Linklater wrote a book called Freeing the Natural Voice,
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: which is all about allowing the voice through every aspect of your physical body.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that just...
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Reminded me of that.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things we had to do in acting school and
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: in voice class was loosen our upper lip because when you flatten,
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: when you constrain,
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: when your muscles constrict right at the upper,
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: between the upper lip and the nose, right in here, this is a very expressive place.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Also your sinuses right here.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: All of this area has to come back to life.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: So as a vocal coach and an audiobook narrator,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes it's like about getting people to start moving their face again
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: because we become, when we talk now, we sort of move our lower jaw.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm exaggerating.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously not everybody does this,
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: but in a way there is a kind of a restriction,
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: a holding down, a flattening, a tightening here in this whole part.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this part is where the three-year-old Where that cry comes from the toddler.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: The emotional, right?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is where when people are like, oh my gosh, that's so nasal.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's because there's that ah, right?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: When we're like, ah, but I want to.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a very emotional space.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is the space that gets shut down first in a muscle space.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a space that you have to come bring back to life.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to be an articulate audiobook narrator,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: if you want to go into long form,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: and if you want to do For commercial voiceover,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: maybe not as much because we're all used to hearing those kind
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: of deadpan snarky reads that's kind of really like laid back,
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: like where the voice is almost,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know, the mentality just a little bit disappears.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: But the narrators and the people we love to listen to are excruciatingly articulate
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: without getting caught.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know what I mean?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: They don't bludgeon you over the head with it.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have some favorite narrators
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: and every part
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: of their musculature is maybe not always working all the time,
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: but it's available to the sound, to the emotion, to the expression of the moment.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is as true in rom-com as it is in drama drum, you know, heavy family stuff.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: You need all of it available to you.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And your body as well.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: The rest of your body as well.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that is just, you can see it.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: I see it in my friends.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously I don't run around like sticking my fingers up their nose and be like, hey.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: We should move this around because, you know, they're not voice actors.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: They don't need it, right?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's not part of their toolkit.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: They don't need it.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: As you say this, thank you for that.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's not the same, but it's giving me sort of like a new meaning for the stiff upper lip.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is exactly right.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's literally a stiff upper lip.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: It is literally that.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the sweetest voice teacher, Normie, we were all madly in love with Normie.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: She would come around to each of us as we were doing these exercises.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was 18.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: We were all babies, right?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: And she'd be like, and you just have to let this go.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: And without help, every single one of us would just sob our guts out
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: with those initial muscular releases.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Holding on here.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just come by and she just, and after a while you'd be like, oh no, she's heading my way.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: I knew what was going to happen.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: She's going to break down and sob.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: But she would just be like, and then you just got to like,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, there you
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: go.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you'd be Normie, all of us, all of us.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Larry.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is, I learned a lot right now.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this leads me to wonder, how do you find a character's voice?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Walk me through the process.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: You got the book, you're going to narrate the book.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do you find their voice?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you gave us a little bit about Melt for You, how you found the Scottish accent.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Melt for You, I watched Netflix because I knew he was going to be Scottish.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: So in acting school,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: you learn a method of how you build a character is you look for the clues in
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: the words that you're given.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you essentially look for what the author or playwright says about the character,
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: what other people say about the character, and what they say about themselves.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And essentially,
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: you can't always one-to-one port that to when you analyze an audiobook,
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: but in a way you can.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: You look for, what does the author tell you about this character?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: She's shy.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or in Melt for You, right?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: The author didn't necessarily always come out and say...
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she had the worst self-esteem on the planet, but you figure it out.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Her inner dialogue is sharp.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And how she views her relationship with food and how she views her relationship
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: with her body and how she compares herself to her co-worker.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the clues that you use,
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: and I am biased,
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: but I think the voice is the most sophisticated instrument,
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: like in an orchestra, if you will.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think the voice is just the most sophisticated instrument because if you let
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: the voice know,
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: if you inform the spirit or your mind,
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: she's shy,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: she has a terrible relationship with her body,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: or she has no self-love,
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: she doesn't even like herself very much,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: and She's a good egg in the sense that, you know, she's good to her neighbor.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: She'll feed this guy.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: She'll take care of her annoying coworker.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: She's vulnerable to the crush she has on her boss, right?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: These are clues you pick up from reading the book.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then the author gives you other clues about the other people, right?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: The energetic coworker who pops up and startles her, right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can almost see pencils flying, right?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because she's energetic and peppy and like, what are you up to?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I look for these clues and the author will tell you if they have an accent or
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: a stutter or their breath is raspy.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you look for all of that together.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there are narrators who will create a voice before they go into the booth.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's not me.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: I like to see what kind of voice comes out then when I start narrating.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, because I see all narrations as the hero's journey, you know, Joseph Campbell.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I know for sure that my main character starts out one way and they go through a journey.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: They go through experiences and vocally they end up somewhere else.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying her voice changes, but it does in a way.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like even in Red Phoenix's book,
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: you know, this woman who starts out naive and her sexuality completely unexplored.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: By the end of that book, she's become a whole different version of herself.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: So vocally, it's not going to be a huge shift, but it is.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sound, a voice, a character that has developed, deepened and grown.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if other narrators would agree with this,
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: but I think that the author also changes, right?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: An author starts out writing a story about and they have an outline and they know
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: where they're headed.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: But by the time they get to the end of this book, they also have taken a journey.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that is what I personally want from any kind of entertainment,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: whether it's visual art or a movie or a song.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be different at the end.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a journey in and of itself.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm a collaborative audience in that sense.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: I go in hoping to be changed.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's vocally what happens.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I look for the clues in the book.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: I look for accents.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then I look for how they are with people.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: So like Cam, for example, he's like golden retriever guy who has no self.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's just not self-conscious.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's fully aware.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think he uses his sensuality like he's not oblivious to it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: So when he shows up shirtless, he's not not doing it on purpose.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that made him so endearing.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I think he knows.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I think he's also not like he he didn't come across ever as in the book when I read it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: He never came across as pompous or somebody who was going to try
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: to make anybody be other than who they are.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I just think he had very healthy self-esteem and he kind of liked her.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: So he was going to take his shot
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: and he was going to use the ammo the dear Lord gave him.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Which was a great body, right?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you had said something in your email to me how he always cheerfully kind
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: of reprimands her when she gets down on herself.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, oh, no, you don't.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that came from how the author wrote him as well as maybe my own experience, right?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like if the book I narrated, the Melt for You I narrated is going to be different.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then a Melt For You narrated by some other narrator because we have different life experiences.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I did not have somebody like Cam in my life being like, no,
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: we need him.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: We need somebody like that.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I had the exact opposite of that.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe because of how he was written and how delightful and delicious
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: and funny he All of it was.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: That woke up in me that,
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of idealized version of what would this be like
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: if somebody was always like supportive?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you're you.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody else can go suck an egg.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Who cares what they think?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: A.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: B.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're fabulous.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if you like the way you look, yay.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to change the way you look, yay.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like he had no, unless I'm misremembering it, it's like he had no value judgment.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, right?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then, and I just, maybe that just sort of struck a chord in me as well.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think,
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: to your point,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's in some ways to what struck a chord for me because I did not grow up
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: with that kind of support in that way.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the whole body image, you have to be thinner.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: at the end,
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh,
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: I wish there was a cam in my head,
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that would have that encouragement as well.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing with that,
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: with the narration,
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: how do you then manage or how do you approach performing desire out loud?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if the book does have, as you taught me, sizzle pants.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: If it's a sizzle pants type of book, I love that.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should change from the little pepper to little pants.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is it five pants?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Pants on fire, yeah.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Pants on fire.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to change all my rating now.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if it's a book that's sizzle pants, how do you approach doing the voice?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how long it takes you to sometimes have to do this.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Alone in the booth, having to, if you will, perform desire.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: What's hard?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is what people might not even imagine that's happening there?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's two answers to this.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And one is one answer, though, is,
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: what my what my voice acting teacher used to remind us all the time is acting
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: at its core is make believe.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: So and that is not to say that there aren't moments I I deeply embody.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: And tried to perform my socks off, right, to fulfill the truth of that moment.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: So for sizzle pants scenes,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: it can be all of make-believe,
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: all of I'm heavily invested, or something right in the middle, right?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: And people think, because we talk all the time, that reading a story out loud is easy, right?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: And to make it sound authentic and natural and organic.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it does take a certain amount of craft and skill and performance ability.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so for the sizzle pants scenes, if I'm feeling a little like, Yeah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's the exact same process as when I'm feeling it organically and authentically.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: I lock into the words and into the moment and I try to live and express the truth.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day,
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: if I'm doing my job, hopefully the listener will have the same experience, right?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: This moment in time will be articulated for them.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing you want to do as a narrator is you don't want to overwhelm the words
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: and you don't want to overwhelm the moment.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: So Scott Brick, a beloved narrator, he teaches 30%, right?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you try to perform 30% and let the words and the listener's imagination do 70% of the work.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're there to not...
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not there...
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: In my opinion,
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: in my philosophy as an audiobook narrator,
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not there to give you my version of the book.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Best case scenario,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: I gave you JT Geisinger's articulated version of this book so
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: that your imagination can live it,
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: feel it,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: laugh with it,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: cry with it,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: get hoo-hoo-hoo, and
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: you never have a relationship with My version of the story.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: You have your story, your relationship with it.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's about performing it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you can completely and utterly give yourself over to it.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: The thing, though,
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: that for an audiobook narrator is,
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's a good metaphor, but it's the one I use all the time.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's you're the bus driver.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're the bus.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: You're everybody in the bus.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you're the tour guide, right?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: The author.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to keep watching.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: All of those things going at the same time so that the one person,
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: your voice is going right into one person's brain so that they get all
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: of it smoothly, right?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: And really good narratives make that just magic happen, you know?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: There are narrators where I have to like, they break my life.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: I just, I have to stop everything I'm doing,
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: lie down on the floor and finish the book because I can't move anymore, right?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just taken by it.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, and we all have that, right?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: We all have those narrators that do that for us.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, as you're describing, I was thinking of Mike.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Various experience with different audiobooks.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when it hits right, I like your metaphor quite a bit.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because in a way, I feel like the voice becomes a container where my imagination gets to unfurl.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it allows me to be in that moment with the story, with the character.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: They inhabit my imagination because now through the listening,
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: the hearing, the sense of hearing, it's like they're living in my body now.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when it doesn't hit right,
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: if you don't resonate with the audio, it takes you away from the story completely.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, sometimes it may ruin your relationship with the story.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, I don't even want to read the book.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to separate, you know, I can't go there.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really, it's also interesting.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine listening to the same book, another one, and we both loved the story.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: The male voice narrated for a certain character.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then she tells me, I went to look him up.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: I said, don't do that.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to take you away.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, yeah,
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: it was kind of confusing coming back to his voice and the character and
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: then seeing what he was.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: But he did such a good job that She was like,
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder,
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: could he record little pieces just for us so we could just have it,
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know, to listen up anytime we wanted, you know?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's so powerful.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's so, again, I go back to the word hypnotic.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hypnotic.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so what do you think here,
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: having done so many in different modalities,
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: not just romance too, what do you think that the voice can do that the page can't?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're touched on it, but I so...
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: The more I think about it,
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: there is in a way almost first I want to talk about like the voice can be
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: a limiting factor because when we read off a page,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: we only have our own voice in our head.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we only have our own version and our own points of view,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: our own perspective, our own, I mean, limited experience.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: I say that in a big way,
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: a good way,
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: not a bad way,
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: but you know,
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: we only have our And so when you add a voice,
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: you're bringing in another element,
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: you're bringing in another human soul,
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: consciousness,
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: point of view,
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: perspective,
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: and they're articulating certain parts of the story that the author may
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: or may not have meant.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: To be articulated as powerfully or as softly.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because a voice, you can do a lot with a read, right?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: I did a book once where I was so irked,
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: and I never do this,
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: this is the one time I've ever done it,
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: but I was so irked at the author's point of view that I consciously worked
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: against it.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I used every trick in the book because my voice naturally lends itself
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: to very warm, loving, kind of authoritative, soothing reads.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I literally just amped that up as much as I could because I felt
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: the author was going in the wrong direction for their message.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: They were saying, yeah,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: I care about you,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: but the way they behaved or the examples they gave and how they behaved
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: in these examples, I was like, I don't want somebody reading this.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're going to hurt them.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I fought the author through the whole book.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't recommend it.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: I would never do it again.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: However, you can do that with a book, right?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can make it sound the way you think.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's totally not my philosophy as a narrator.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: I want the book to sound the way the author, with the author's song.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: I used to say that all the time.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like every author has their own song.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: I want to sing their song, not my version of it.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that is what happens.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I learned this from Mary Gatesgill, who wrote The Mayor.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: This book had been auditioned and cast.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was a four-person cast.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: And three of the roles had been cast, and they had already done their narration.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: Mary Gatesgill had wanted to perform the one role that was still left uncast.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: And they had declined her offer to narrate it.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess they didn't want an author's voice competing with three professional actors.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: They had the best roster in the country.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's no reason.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: 49%
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Auditions got turned down unless the author really wanted something specific.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he asked the author and she said, oh, I want something more brittle.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: I want a brittle sound for this character.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I did the audition.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: I sounded very brittle and I got cast.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then they said, okay, you're cast.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to do the role, but Mary Gates Gill wants to talk to you first.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: And this rarely happens.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, production companies keep narrators and authors separate for a reason.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, okay.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: So here's why I'm telling you this story,
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: because it also laid the foundation for how it's an answer to your question.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Mary Gayskill called me and she said, I would like to read you chapter one.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: And before she started, I said, ma'am, I'm really sorry.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: I just got this job like two days ago and I'm reading the book as fast as I can,
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm only up.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I told her where I was at.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, so I don't know how the character changes after that.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, oh, she doesn't change at all.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's no change after that.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, okay.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then she read to me chapter one.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And in her reading out loud of chapter one,
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: I heard the pain of a rift in the relationship between
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: these two characters,
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: the sisters,
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: that I had not even caught while I was reading it.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like that relationship wasn't even on my radar.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: The main character's relationship with her sister, I did not get it.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: And when Mary Gatesgill read it aloud to me, chapter one, I was like, it was huge.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: But then I started narrating the book and I finished the book.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that character that I was narrating changed completely
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: after that moment
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: where
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: the author herself said, oh, she doesn't change at all.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lived articulation that happens maybe when we speak it out loud,
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: when we bring voice to it,
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: that maybe on one hand,
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: in a way,
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: limits a listener's ability to experience and open up all the doors for themselves.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or the exact opposite is true.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you start opening up doors you had no idea were there.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean,
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: literally in that book,
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: I would never have picked up on the author's and the sister's relationship.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: But she read it to me and I was like, wow.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I got to that point in the book, she was like, no change.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right after that, the character lost her sobriety.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: Her marriage ended like stuff went down.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Stuff happened.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe she meant her inner self just came out.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like there wasn't a change.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe she meant it was a reveal.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'll never know.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, a lot of things change.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the too long, don't listen version of this is...
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think when an author writes a book, they create this world that is its own thing.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when you bring in the narrator and they do a narration, they create another separate thing.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: So somehow the audio book becomes the author plus the narrator,
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: the words and the voice, and it becomes its own.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the best case scenario, it becomes its own thing.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: The third living, breathing thing.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's not better or worse.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a slightly different way into the experience.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm thinking here that once the listener gets the book, it transforms again.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do we metabolize the characters?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do we take it in?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: How do we speak of them to other people and to other readers?
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's why the book reviews.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the way we experience that and write about it is very different than well.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: The intention was.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Any narrator, worst narration ever.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then three reviews down, best narration.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like, it is whiplash.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's the whole spectrum.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, speaking of that,
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: as audio, because in your origin story, it was kind of, if you were early days.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it was already competitive then and all.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: As audio books keep growing, what do you think is changing how people listen?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: What are they asking for?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or what are you being asked?
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: I have a little bit of a shuddered view, if you will, because I speak German fluently.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: So when I'm not narrating romance or rom-com,
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm narrating a lot of historical fiction or nonfiction that's World War II based
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: because they want the accurate German pronunciations and French and stuff like that.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I tend to get books that have a German component.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not always, but...
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Often.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a request, is accuracy in the pronunciation and in the language.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell when I go onto Reddits and Facebook and you get that Facebook page,
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oral Fixation for Romance Fans, right?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the great debates, right?
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: Over do you listen at once at the original speed or do you listen at 1.5 or 1.7?
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Every narrator, I mean, I haven't met a narrator who isn't, like, horrified, right?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: But reading those discussions about people who are like, oh, no,
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: I always speed it up,
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: in romance particularly,
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: has led me to start narrating just a little bit faster for romance and rom-com.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like,
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: snappy dialogue always anyway, you know, bing, bing, it's like a ping-pong, right?
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: You want to go bing, bing, bing, because it's funnier that way.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the actual narration now in some genres...
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just a little faster.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that does not apply to nonfiction.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just came out of a huge book on North Korea.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to let the listener be able to catch up, right?
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: Their imagination has to process.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: Always, always, always have to be mindful that somebody's hearing this for the first time.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they're processing this information for the first time.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the speed has become as contentious as it is.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it breaks your heart just a tiny bit because you're like,
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know how hard I worked on that?
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: And now you're like, gloss, gloss, gloss, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, right?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because I just want to get the story or I want to find out what happens or
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: for whatever reason, right?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or but maybe it's just too, right?
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're listening at the arithmetic.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's just too slow for them.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the speed thing has become something that's changed.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how other people think about this,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: but there is a tendency for marketing language.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, you have to give people what they want or they're not going to buy it.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Really?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: You think if Hemingway had done a retreat and tried to figure out what
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: the frack we all wanted and then come back and written about it, right?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's dangerous.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: God bless all authors and may they all just write.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is in their soul and in their heart and in their imagination and
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: in their capability to articulate and bring to the world.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because is my imagination going to expand, grow?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Samantha Hunt, The Dark Dark.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: I read that book.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: I had the privilege of narrating it.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: I read that book and it changed.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: I could feel synapses rewiring in my head.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yeah.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess you can give people what they want if you're baking an Oreo cookie.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: And even then, right?
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have to grow and expand and hold and unfurl.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I also use reviews just like everybody else, you know.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they liked it.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't like it.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: But thank God, you know.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody entrusted The Dark Dark with me or Olga Grushen's book,
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: 40 Rooms, or Lucy Score reached out.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when her production company reached out, I didn't know who they were.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know who Lucy Score was.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: And this guy was like, you have never heard of me, but I'm out.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, legit, here's our website.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is the name of the altar.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, who are you?
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got to do our book.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: And by the end of that book, I sent like a begging you email.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I just want you to know the best time I've ever had in the booth, bar none.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if there's
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: anything else I can do for you, anything ever in the history of ever, I am here.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think diversity is a spice of life.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's an abused and misused cliche, but it's so true.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if we don't have other people expanding our minds for us.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I personally have, you know, I like to listen at the normal speed.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not counting it.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: Especially, especially romance.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to savor the meal, you know?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a minute, you know?
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: Unless the story's not great, then it's a different, you know?
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm here for it.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm dumbfounded when I hear people,
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: like, I got to go
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: fast.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, why are
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: we rushing?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm the kind of person who tells my friends, we're not going for a walk.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're going for a saunter.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're just going to meander.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is not for health reasons.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is just to enjoy, you know?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Who's rushing to eat the chocolate cake, really?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you mentioned you coach other narrators now.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: And do you tend to coach those who are coming in or they're already in it?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what tends to be your...
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a mix.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've talked voice actors out of narrating audiobooks.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like people have literally paid me...
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it was most prevalent during the pandemic when, you know, all on-camera actors, right?
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so suddenly they were, you know, getting their audio set up so they could work.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: And some of them just booked me and they were like, okay, tell it to me straight.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because audiobook narration is, I call it the Iron Man voiceover.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's It can be for as gorgeous and as delicious and as fun as it can be.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's also grueling.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bunch of muscles that you really have to work on acquiring.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: So these are actors who are like, I want to hop in and out of the booth.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, okay.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: But these are two to four hour sessions and you have to hydrate and you have
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: to do this and you have to do that.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I get some newcomers.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: I get sometimes a narrator just wants to,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: rarely a narrator though will want to just check in and kind of get reoriented
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: or they'll run an audition by me.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: I offer narrators sessions where they just email me their audition
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: and I'll give them five minutes of notes so that they can do the audition
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: over again, sort of like a semi-directed experience.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I also direct.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've directed some of my narrator friends when they've done narration.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the best thing about coaching is that it forced me to try and understand or
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: to articulate all the things that I was doing intuitively.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it forced me to kind of phrase it.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like I realized if I couldn't explain it to somebody else, then I couldn't teach really.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I spent some time trying to understand what I was doing,
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: what worked,
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: and how to convey that in a method
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: that would help somebody else successfully narrate.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are bones to storytelling.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the common challenges?
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're starting out.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say they're starting out.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: What do you see as a very common challenge they face?
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: Getting their space set up.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: You do not know how loud your environment is until you try to narrate a book.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: You just don't.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: You don't realize that there's a refrigerator cycling on and off or
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: that your neighbor's HVAC is cycling off or that there's a rumble in the cellar from
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: the whatever it is.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you live in an apartment building, that's a whole other set of noise challenges.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: So this is one of the challenges is the expense of getting it quiet enough to record.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: And to put out a product that is acceptable.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: Prior to the pandemic, you didn't have to put out pristine broadcast-ready audio.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because if somebody really wanted you, they would book you into a studio.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because of the pandemic and nobody could get booked into a studio,
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: everybody had to have a booth at home or get set up at home.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: Even the very, very, very biggest names in the industry.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: So suddenly there were like lots
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: of engineers Telling very freaked out voice actors exactly which microphone they had
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: to buy and exactly which equipment they had to purchase and which software they had
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: to use.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: And this runs into big
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: money at the beginning.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: When you're not,
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: and if you're a brand new beginner and somebody is like,
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: well, you have such a nice voice, you should do books.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: You should do audio books.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: You sound so nice.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then suddenly they're faced with, oh, I need a bunch
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: of equipment,
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I need some software.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I need headphones.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: Which headphones do I get?
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I and other teachers as well,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know, you try to boil it down to like, this is the bare minimum you need.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just that bare minimum has a much higher quality than it was prior to the pandemic.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because prior to the pandemic, publishers were used to paying for the studio.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: And now they're like, why am I paying for the studio?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you have a home recording set up?
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then you send them a sample and they're like, that's not good enough.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the challenges.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then the first thing that happens
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: when you start recording your first audio book is your body's like,
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: excuse me, I did not sign up for this.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why I'm sitting in this chair for 10 hours at a go.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: And your teeth all go.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: You get acid reflux and you learn that you have really weird vocal quirks
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: that you never knew you had.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: suddenly instead of just doing a 60 second or a four minute or a 20 minute read,
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: you're challenging your whole organism to make sense,
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: direct, do the tech and perform like melt for you, right?
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like five different characters.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Keep those psychological threads active and alive in an entertaining way.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Mm hmm.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: All at once.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Once you get used to it and once you get Scott Brick to quote him again,
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: he said it took about the 50th book.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Took him about 50 books before he sort of started to feel like,
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: oh, I think I'm kind of getting the hang of this.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly and true story,
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: I walked into the booth one day and I always have terrible start the
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: book panic because I'm like, oh, the last one turned out okay.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: How am I going to make the next?
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: What did I do on the last one?
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what am I going to make this?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: How is this going to be?
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: So anxiety.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I get in the booth and I'm like, I hit record and I'm like, this was
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: easier than it's been.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: I realized I was at my 50th book and I had just the bones of the production and
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: the bones of creating.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: You're not just acting one character,
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: you're acting all of them and you're also trying to Create the space
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: that they all inhabit.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing the whole opera all the time.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: So getting somebody past the technical hurdles has been the biggest challenge.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've had brilliant actors,
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: absolutely brilliant,
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: work with me for 10 sessions only to walk away because they were overwhelmed
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: and flummoxed by the tech.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of audio.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of files.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of gigabytes, right?
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's something I try to help people ease into while they're doing all the other stuff now.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I took questions on that because just doing the podcast, I can...
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly right there.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: I always get them confused.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's duet and duet.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: A duet, yes.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: So there's the one kind is where there's man, woman, man, woman, man, woman, right?
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: We each do a chapter.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if a traditional publishing house,
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: like one of my clients,
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: hires me and we're alternating chapters,
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: what happens is we send our initial recordings to the engineer.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's the engineer's job to not only...
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: Listen against the audio for misreads, right?
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: To do cleanup edit, but then to marry that audio.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like me and Mr. XYZ recorded from the same space.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like we were, right?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: So this is yet another added challenge from working remotely,
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: but it's a boon because now I can record here and another narrator can record there
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: and we can, right?
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the other kind of narration where they just drop in the lines,
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: like where some guy says the male lines and the woman says the woman lines,
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: it's exactly the same, but it's even harder, right?
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's where you really need a very savvy,
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: gifted, and there are brilliant engineers who marry then this audio together.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: But it's always the same, essentially.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: My client will come to me.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: They send me the manuscripts.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: I narrate the book and I send them chapter by chapter or all the chapters via a server.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then they do a correction list and a quality control pass.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: They send me my mistakes.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: I do the rereads.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: They marry that all together.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: They produce the final book.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's an independent author who's not working with a traditional publisher,
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: it's exactly like that on my end, right?
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have an editor.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: I do the read.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: I send the editor all the files.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: They do a quality control listen.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: They send me back the corrections.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: I do them.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then we produce the final files.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's always the process.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have more than one narrator,
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: you have to have an editor who can elegantly and well weave all that audio
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: into one product.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because that's quite amazing.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like if it's one chapter female, the other chapter male, a little easier.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: But when they're Having a dialogue together.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they're on different microphones and they're in different spaces.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: And just really good engineers are, you know, a gift.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a gift.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely a gift.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we touched on a little bit about,
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you, Krista, but also Pippa Jane, who narrates romance.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me a little bit about her.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pippa.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: I really like Pippa Jane.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I shift a little bit in persona when I narrate as Pippa Jane.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: I love her website.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, she's on my main website.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: But she's just more fun.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: She's got more sparkle.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: She's less fun.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm a little bit more formal when I'm not narrating as Pippa Jane.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really funny, and other romance narrators have pointed this out.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you forget you're not narrating romance,
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: and you slip into your romance persona,
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: and you just don't want some sort of lighthearted rom-com or some sort
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: of lyrical fiction work to suddenly get your
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ooey gooey, a late night voice.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely, it's a shift in persona.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: Pippa Jane came about because I got booked for my first romance book.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or what I was about.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I came up with a very funny,
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: very irreverent, very cheeky pseudonym that was absolutely not okay.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: At first I was like, ooh, PJ, I'm going to call myself PJ.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then I gave myself a super rude last name, you know.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I sent this off PJ Cummings to my newly booked author.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: And she just she's like, oh,
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even remember how she phrased it in the email,
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: but I could tell she did not want that name on her book at all.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what are you kidding?
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is so fun and so cheeky.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that is when I understood that romance readers and romance authors take
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: the genre really seriously.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: They love the genre.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: They appreciate the genre.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't need smart aleck me being like, right?
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so grateful.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I went back to the drawing board.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: And because I started with PJ, my childhood nickname was PJ.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: Pippi for Pippi Longstocking.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Pippi, Pippi, Pippi.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Kate Middleton's sister, right?
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_01: At the wedding, Pippa.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and then Jay, Jay.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then I came up with Jane because I had a crush on the mentalist, Mr. Jane.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember his first name in the show, but you reminded me.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: His name is Simon Baker, the actor.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: So Pippa Jane was born and my author, Red Phoenix, she was like, yes, okay.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: My narrator is not a crazy person.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that was Pippa Jane.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: You just slightly, it's like, I don't know, it's like wearing a mask at the ball.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: She's not a secret.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: The only reason I have a pseudonym is because Deb Dion,
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: who gave me my start,
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: said to me,
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: if I didn't use a pseudonym for spicy sizzle pants romance,
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: I would have to use a pseudonym for other genres like young adult or stuff like
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: that.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized it was so that when an author is scrolling through my catalog
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: on Audible,
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: right, that they don't have to worry about something super racy popping, right?
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know,
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: if they let their teenager go get their own books on Audible,
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: right, that they're not going to be confronted with.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: Racier titles or spicier titles.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's to protect the authors who just don't want to have anything to do with that genre.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a secret.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: If an author really wants to know if I work in two names, obviously they're going to find out.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: They can ask me.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's on my website.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it's so that my Audible catalogs just have a clear separation.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because like I was telling you before we hit record,
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I want to listen to other works you've done.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I searched Bipper Jane and then I started listening, you know, Bipper.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: If I hadn't, I would have been sort of, where do I go?
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: If I want, depending on what I want to listen.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I learned so much from the world of voice.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Just another sort of tech question that's kind of fascinates me.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like if a book is like,
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: let's say 10 hours and you're doing all the voices,
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: how long does it actually take you to record?
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: Depending on the genre.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_01: So nonfiction, not the one I just did.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: The one I just did was based in North Korea.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it was very different.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: Dense and there were a lot of pronunciations you had to get right.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that means there's a pronunciation sheet.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you always have to check the pronunciations.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: And every narrator is different,
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: but you have to sort of average around three hours in the booth to one finished hour
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: of audio.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if a book is 10 hours long to listen to,
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: it has taken that narrator anywhere from 20 to 30 to 40,
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: maybe even 50 hours to record it,
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: depending on complexity, accents, pronunciations, stuff like that.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have that.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: No wonder, as you said, the body definitely feels it, right?
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a real channel for all that's coming and you're holding it together.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this has been really amazing, Krista.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I've learned a lot.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_00: I did forget to tell you that I like to do like a five rapid fire question at the end.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of like Stephen Colbert meets actor studio.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: So just go from your gut.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't have to be one word.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just go with whatever you want to say.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one, your favorite word to say out loud and like a bonus.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: Bing.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: Bing?
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: Bing?
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_00: B-I-N-G. Yeah.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a favorite accent to say it in?
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, British is always the most delicious word.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: In your opinion,
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_00: what word has ruined more sex scenes than any other and it made it hard for you
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_00: to record the scene, if there's any words?
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: Moist.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: Moist.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or a top.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would donate a kidney to eliminate the word a top.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or grasp and clasp.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: You hear that.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm coming back to moist here.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_00: What is it about moist?
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because it feels like such a kind of a controversial word.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe because for me it gets into the icky.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: And also because it feels like how it sounds and when you stay it.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: And, I mean, I've had the privilege of narrating extensively.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: Exceptionally sexy scenes.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't need the word moist, but there's just something about that word.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's just one of my turnoff words.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like how we all have a different flavor of ice cream that we love,
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: you know, and moist is just not my jam.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's good to know.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Good to know.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Whose voice would you like to be able to have in your toolbox?
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_00: You could just like sort of reach out and pick and use in your narrations.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's a few, honestly.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a narrator.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: His name is Samuel Dewhurst Phillips.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he narrates the Heathcliff murder series.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_01: The Heathcliff Lennox murder series.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have listened to that so often.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Something, something, something.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: The Heathcliff Lennox something, something series.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Written by Karen Bormated by Samuel Dewhurst Phillips.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And his voice, his acting...
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he's brilliant.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Simon Vance.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Simon Vance, his narrations break me.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_01: They end me.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's just, there's, it's the quality of his voice.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's his narration skill.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: A woman named Anna Fields, who passed years ago, she narrated a Many books in her day.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And she was asked in an interview what was her favorite project ever.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And she said it was Bel Canto.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot recommend this audiobook highly enough.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is deliciously, slyly funny.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_01: It is wryly funny.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is extraordinary.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And her work is, I mean,
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_01: if I could be like anybody,
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_01: that is who, if I could narrate like her, I would narrate like her.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you take care of your voice?
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an absolute jerk to my poor voice.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_01: I eat dairy.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I drink coffee.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_01: I drink a lot of alcohol.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I always have sinus issues.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I never warm up.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do the straw things.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody once asked me what my warm up was and I got up out of my chair.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I opened the studio door and I walked in.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, That's it.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's because building my career took so much energy and narrating
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: an audiobook takes its Herculean that I'm just like not going
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: to change any other part of my life.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: However, I have Come to a certain age where I now may have to.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So now I try to take a little bit better care.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, I may start doing straw exercises soon.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So the one thing I do, I try to take allergy medication.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I never used to have allergies when I was working in Berlin.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I moved to the States and so I have to take allergy medication.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I do, I steam.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's a nebulizer.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I use steam.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if I'm narrating too much, And my voice is sounding hoarse and raspy.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_01: I eat gelato.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I freeze it.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I ice it.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll just go between steam and ice.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm literally, I mean,
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: people have almost like left conversations I've been in because they were so annoyed
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_01: at me because I'm just like, I don't do that.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely do that.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you're starting out and you're working with your voice,
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_01: find a 10-minute YouTube thing,
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: a Kristen Linklater or any of the famous great warm-ups.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Just do a 10-minute warm-up.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to kill you.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have to live by this.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've been working every single day since like 1995,
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, if I'm not warmed up now, I'm not going to be warmed up later.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's hard to walk the talk, you know?
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do all the things.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if you ask me to like, well, don't eat dairy.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be like, you know.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: As a dairy lover, I feel like there's no reason to live.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I love cheese, all the dairy.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be difficult.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I've noticed that my body has changed.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like I used to be able to eat anything and I could walk into the booth and you would never know.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And now, if I eat cheese for lunch, I may as well quit recording for the rest of the day.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because it does, it just changes how my body's processing it.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, just wait till dinner, Chris.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, you can do it.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you can.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I have to kind of like hoax myself along.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_00: You need Cameron's voice in your own head to tell you, like, don't do it.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Drink your dang bone broth and get back in the booth.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, the podcast is called Romancing the Threshold.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So when you hear that, Romancing the Threshold, what comes to mind for you?
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because we were talking about erotica, the first thing I think of is BDSM right now.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_01: For the longest time,
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't understand why anybody would find any kind of pain or any kind
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_01: of physical discomfort erotic.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I realized, oh, this must be like what the yogis do.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like you put your body in an extreme.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you reach kind of a meta state,
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_01: like whether it's endorphins or some kind of release happens in the body.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I think of putting oneself in a heightened state, in an extreme.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_01: For me personally, that is not how I want to express myself in intimacy, genuinely.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody offered that to me when I moved into this apartment.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, yeah, we do this, that, and the other.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's a big community here.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, nope.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I could understand it.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't seem that strange to me anymore.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that's what I think of.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I like that because I've asked people what they think.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I love hearing what comes up for people.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that now romancing the threshold is, you know, it's got that answer too.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I particularly like the idea of the extreme here because
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_00: the threshold experience can feel you're about to,
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_00: if you will, it's going to take you somewhere.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it can be, it can bring up so much.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to that release.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Once we cross to the other side.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Krista slash Pippa, thank you so much for saying yes.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is so much fun.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I learned a lot.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you were the puzzle piece of what I was, you know, in my ideas of the different bodies.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_00: You brought the voice.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: We needed the voice.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for bringing that.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for doing amazing audiobooks because,
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: like I said, I'm listening to the other series.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, God, this is good.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So very, very well.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't recommend Melt for you.
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Folks, catch it.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: The audiobook, I'm telling you.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this was lovely.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything you want to sort of share as a parting thought?
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's an era where AI is kind of coming in and people are getting used to something
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_01: that you talked about earlier, a flatness.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that in narration,
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_01: if you can't feel the narrator breathe, you
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_00: can't absorb what they're communicating.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're even building in breath snap to our AI voices so that they sound authentic.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I would just urge everyone when they choose their audio to just look if it's
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_01: a virtual voice or a human voice and to decide for yourself how it makes you feel
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_01: in your body.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've talked to people who listen to nonfiction.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_01: They always choose AI because they just want the information.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And they have absolutely no,
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_01: they're agnostic about the sound or they're not,
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know, experiencing it in their body.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_01: An artificial or virtual voice is a little bit like GMO foods that don't seed new life.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not saying it's bad.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I use AI.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I work with it.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's here.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think We can use it as a tool.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess I would just urge people to be at least mindful or critical
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_01: and do comparisons that you just don't end up feeling.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just see how you feel and then compare to a human voice versus an AI voice.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think it changes how we communicate with each other.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: The words we use, how we write, how we listen and how we absorb information.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I just want to put that out there.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying it's better or worse.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody has their own preferences.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if it's in the scope of what you're talking about,
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: like what's happening as this passes through my body?
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you notice something off, it's called the uncanny valley.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Something does happen to your body when it's not a human voice.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Just be mindful of it and see if that's okay for you.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's all.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for bringing that because I was thinking about and I have not,
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have heard, listened some and I just can't take it.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's a flatness to it.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's just.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I get a little strange, nauseous feeling.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's strange.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's uncanny.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And like you mentioned, the GMOs.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's almost like a Diet Coke.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you drink it, it just goes right through you.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not nourishing.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And for me,
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_00: the power of story is that when we're able to digest it and metabolize it,
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_00: that's the, you know, be it a story, not fiction or fiction.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's something in that.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're just taking it for the information,
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're losing a sense of wonder and poetic and imagination as well.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for saying that because it's here and they brought it in.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't ask the questions.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't ask.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_00: There was no consent, I would say, given.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for bringing your voice today.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear what we've been talking about, go find her catalog on Audible.com.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Under Crystal Lewis or under Pippa Jane if you're looking for a romance novel.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Start wherever you like.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if this episode gave you something,
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_00: pass it to the one person you were thinking about while you were listening.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's usually one.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how the show travels.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not through an algorithm, but through one person handing it to another.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And also, follow the show wherever you're listening.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_00: It could be Apple or Spotify or Substack.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that way when the next episode drops, you don't have to go looking for it.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And remember,
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_00: we don't have to white knuckle our way through our own crossings or
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_00: the collective ones.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can meet change with the curiosity of lovers.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Vanessa Couto.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Romancing the Threshold.
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I will see you at the next crossings.