Hard Lessons About Narrating An Audiobook

I spent nine months narrating an audiobook version of my novel about Beowulf and it taught me a few things...

Reading silently is wildly different from reading out loud.

Bones and Keeps is based on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem that tells the story of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon poetry is written in four-stress alliterative lines that are quite different from the metre of modern poetry. I mimicked it in my own writing style, like this: “Blood soon soaked the deck and spilled into the bay.” But reading it aloud trapped me in a nightmare universe of tongue-twisters. Here’s one: “Sinfjotli’s slack jaw clapped shut while Seashit’s still hung open.” Try saying that three times fast!

If you wrote it, you gotta read it.

For me, that included the hot sex scene. Now there’s something my mother never imagined I’d be doing!

Never think the workload will be no big deal.

Two hours of rehearsal six days a week; two hours recording every Monday. Twenty-two other hours in the day for all my other stuff. Technically true, but in reality this project sucked the creative oxygen out of my brain. Oh, I kept doing laundry, etc. But anything else creative? Forget it.

If you ever do this, you will weep with joy when you get to the end. I don’t care if you claim you never cry. You will weep.

Audiobook: https://www.audible.ca/.../Bones-and-Keeps.../B0BZ9MDJ1M

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