I’m in the middle of a really fun and totally unexpected project right now, to do with my second novel, The Love I Could Have Had.
The book came out last summer, July 2023, and I had already accepted an audiobook publishing deal with Spotify when it came out on e-book and paperback. Due to Boring Stuff, the audiobook contract took forever, and was only finalized late in the year, so production on the audio is now going ahead. The Love I Could Have Had will come out in audiobook in April – yay!
What’s fun and unexpected for me right now is the level of input I’m having in the audiobook production process. I had imagined that it would be like my first novel’s audiobook – I would help cast the narrator, and then have no further input, and would hear it for the first time when it came out. My first novel’s audiobook was published by Findaway and produced by Orange Sky, who were bought out by Spotify shortly afterwards, so I figured it’d be the same folks within Spotify doing my second audiobook – and therefore the same process. How wrong I was!
The audiobook team at Spotify have, this time around, looped me in to give feedback not only on casting the two narrators (a female voice for Olivia’s POV and male for Jake’s), but also on their sample recordings. And the narrators don’t just record samples for excerpts of regular narration – they record samples for every character they have to voice, to make sure they’ve got it right before they record the whole thing.
This makes for an interesting challenge. Both the Olivia and Jake narrators have to perform many roles. They must have their own regular narration voices, their own character’s in-dialogue voice (ever-so-slightly differentiated to denote dialogue), and every other character’s voice in dialogue (including each other’s). The range of voices is considerable! Both POVs feature all the main and secondary characters, so both the Olivia narrator, Suzanne, and the Jake narrator, Greg, will have to voice every character.
The unique challenge of this is that it’s a dual-narration book, and you don’t want to have different voice interpretations for any of the characters between the two narrators. To prevent this, I’ve been given access to a shared project folder, in which all the character notes live, what their voices and accents are like, and all of Suzanne’s samples for each character’s voice. I was able to go in and add my own voice notes and relevant details, and give feedback on Suzanne’s samples – although, I have to say, she totally nailed every one!
Now, it’s up to Greg to provide a set of voice samples for every character, all of which need to “match” Suzanne’s interpretation of that character. Not an easy feat for him, when Suzanne has a female voice and he has a male voice, so there’s no way to exactly match! Especially for some of the women’s dialogue voices, and the little girl, Taylor. What a tough ask.
Given that I have some experience in radio and TV broadcasting, a lot of people have previously suggested to me that I should narrate my own audiobooks. My answer is always a hard no, I definitely shouldn’t! I’m in awe of these audiobook narrators for the skill, nuance, accent work, and energy they bring to their performances. It’s truly acting, indeed acting multiple roles at once, and a very specialized acting form at that. I’m more than happy to leave it to the professionals!
The Love I Could Have Had is due to publish on audiobook on April 23, 2024, and will be available on Spotify, Audible, and Spotify’s 40-plus audiobook platform partners.
CJ Connolly 