Ooh... Look at Me!

I look a bit serious, don't I? This is my 'I must concentrate or I'll get it wrong' face. I'd like to tell you that I'm in a recording studio narrating one of my story collections for Audible... but I cannot lie. I was in fact taking part in a demonstration of how to narrate as part of an afternoon talk at Horsham Library. The event was called 'Audiobook secrets' and was part of Love Audio week. It was put on by Harper Collins and audio book publishers, W F Howes. 

It was writing chum Tracy Fells who suggested we went along (she likes to drag me out of the house at regular intervals) and I wasn't sure at first. I don't actually listen to audio books, preferring to read them in print, but then I remembered my husband listens to audio narrations every day on his hour drive to (and back from) work. He'd be interested to know how a book gets from print and into his car and I could report back.

So along we went to said library, not really knowing what to expect... but it was great!

For a start, I got to meet the lovely Katerina Diamond, author of the thriller 'The Teacher', who talked about her path to success. Apparently, she started off by writing film scripts but wasn't brave enough to do anything with them. Then luck shone on her when she won an opening chapter competition. This excerpt was to become the opening chapter of The Teacher. The prize was to finish the novel and be introduced to an agent. Unfortunately (for the agent as it turned out) they didn't like the end result but, undaunted, Katerina took it elsewhere and it was snapped up by agent, Diane Banks.

I also won a novel opening competition... hmm.

We then had a talk by professional narrator, Antonia Beamish. Before she was a book narrator, Antonia was an actress (playing Rita in Educating Rita for a European tour) but, before that, she ran off with a circus. Yes really! Apart from her lovely clear voice, what made the audio companies love Antonia was her skill with accents. As the only accent I can do is the one I was born with, I know that narration would not really be my thing! Antonia is the narrator for all of Katerina's novels, she read an extract from one of them and we were instantly transported.

We had coffee and cupcakes and then sound engineer, Lewis Hampson, asked if any of us would like to have a go at narrating. It involved reading a paragraph into a microphone, Lewis would do something clever at his end and then it would be played back to us. I just had to have a go. Of course everyone was listening, so I just had to pretend they were a class full of children otherwise I would have stammered and stuttered. When it was played back, it was actually perfectly okay but don't you just hate listening to your own voice?

All in all, it was a fabulous event. We had fun, we learnt a lot, we got a complimentary book of Katerina's to take home and it was free! What wasn't there to like. A big thank you to everyone involved.