I checked in with the audiobook recording team at John Marshall Media to see how things were going and whether they might have any tidbits I could share on social media. I was very pleased not only to hear that the project was going well, but to receive substantive updates from voice actor Mack Sanderson and the production team.
He said "Narrating The Washashore is proving to be a great pleasure. Christopher has supplied ample background information for the more than 40 characters in his fast-paced novel. Unlike most authors, he has gone so far as to provide extensive notes on the personality, temperament, and voice of each person to be portrayed. In order to be faithful to his direction, I spent hours before recording practicing the accents, pitch, tone, volume, and speed of each voice, making notes as I went.
"Every narrator brings life experience to a project. I was fortunate enough as a child to spend summers on Cape Cod, and lived in Boston during Graduate School, so the novel’s terrain is quite familiar to me. I also lived in Texas for about 5 years, so Silas has been easy to portray.
"The snapshot of my booth interior reveals some of the tricks of the trade. The iPad on the right is the script from which I'm reading. On the monitor there are two open windows. On the left is the live recording as I go, and on the right is another recording of each individual character I can refer back to as they recur throughout the novel.
"Christopher's character notes are printed out in front of me, and to the right of it is the all-important mug with Throat Coat tea. It’s not uncommon for me to be in the booth for five hours during a single recording day—I’ve allotted twelve days to record all 434 pages. Silas's deep voice, meant to channel Sam Elliott, takes quite a toll!
"It’s a great experience—I’ll resume on page 355 in the morning and look forward to wrapping up the audio on Sunday, after which I’ll get “pickups” to re-record passages I flubbed. Nearing the end—I’m going to miss performing this lively tale!"
I told Mack not to be sad because we will be starting the recording of The Holdfast as soon as the pickups on The Washashore are recorded. The current plan is to have the audiobook of The Washashore out by early/mid September and The Holdfast out in November.
One of the JMM production engineers also added a photo of his workstation where he is already hard at work reviewing the raw recording for script accuracy.
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