come with me to record the hitchcock hotel audiobook
Author dream unlocked!
Let’s first make absolutely clear that I am not the voice actor in question. For that, you are welcome. I excel at a number of things, but voice modulation and acting are not two of them.
I had been wanting to attend a recording session for the audiobook edition of one of my novels since my debut came out in 2020. Yesterday it finally happened! The very kind folks at PRH Audio were nice enough to let me sit in as the team recorded a couple chapters (38 and 39, if you’re wondering).
The recording team was quite small. While I was in the room, it was just the director, Allen, seated at the computer in the photo below, and Gail, the voice actor, in the recording booth. There are, of course, lots of other people involved in bringing an audiobook to life—a producer/casting director, a publicist (not to be confused with a regular publicist, this person specifically works for the audio department), and I’m sure a half dozen other people whose roles I’m unaware of.
While the voice actor read/recorded, the director was following along with a PDF of the book. If the actor left out a word—even the tiniest and most insignificant words, like of, to, that—the director interrupted and had the actor reread the line. Allen told me the department is very strict about sticking to the original text. For example, if an actor pronounces going to as the more colloquial gonna, they have to re-record. I think this is in part a legal/copyright thing and in part a sense of duty. On one hand, I appreciate the desire to remain faithful to the author’s intention, but on the other, doing so leaves actors little wiggle room for creative interpretation. We want to avoid wooden narration, don’t we? We want dialogue to feel lived in, realistic. Few Americans fully enunciate going to!
The director also made notations in the PDF anytime the actor flubbed a line, tried a different take, etc. For the most part, he let the actor do her thing, but occasionally he’d offer guidance, like, “I think this cop should sound a bit older” "or “Character X sounds too similar to Character Y right now.” The actor would then try again—and nail the correction immediately.
Speaking of actors, THE HITCHCOCK HOTEL will have three of them narrating the seven (!) points of view. My past novels only had two or three POVs, so I was curious how the audio team would tackle the large cast. The answer? One actor took all of the chapters by my protagonist, Alfred. Another actor took on a second character. (You’ll have to listen to the audiobook to find out who!) Which left actor Gail Shalan, below, with the task of reading the remaining five POVs.
Gail is a 2x Audie Award winner (the Oscars of audiobooks) and has narrated hundreds of audiobooks. Listening to her work was magic. During my visit, she recorded scenes with upwards of ten characters present. Not only did she have to narrate the voices of the six main characters, but two detectives and two cops as well. I imagined it would take a minute or two to switch from one voice to the next, but nope. Gail kept right on reading at normal speed, switching from one character voice to the next seamlessly and without pause. How?! I ask you. How?
When I create characters, I always have a physical appearance in mind for each one, but I don’t necessarily know the sounds of their voices—unless they’re unusual in some way. It was kind of eerie, then, to hear my characters brought to life aurally, to listen to them joke and snap and shout and whisper lines that, until yesterday, lived only in my head.
The months before publication can be a nerve-wracking time as you wait for reviews and sales figures to come in, but I never fail to marvel, with each new book launch, at the number of people and amount of creativity required to bring a new novel into the world. I was both awed and humbled as I watched these two mega-talented people take very seriously the project of turning what I’d written into an audiobook.
In the space of one week, the director Allen will have finished recording all three actor’s chapters. By next month, the book will be ready for your ears. How can we not be wowed?
HH’s first media mentions!
I know we’re getting close to pub week when magazine features and “most anticipated” roundups start coming out. Below are the first two.
Thanks to both Canadian Living and SheReads for recommending THE HITCHCOCK HOTEL to their readers.
That’s all from me today. Next time, I’m going to tell you about my North American book tour, which I am losing-my-marbles excited about. Until then, I hope you’re enjoying the dregs of summer.
Warmly (literally),
GAIL! She narrated The Writing Retreat! She is the BEST!!
this is so cool to learn about—thanks for taking us behind the scenes!!