Well, not quite.
But it has been extraordinary difficult to find a narrator for my book, “Pagan Worship.” You may remember from a previous blog that the company #Voices had kicked me to the curb after deciding that my book was too violent, and therefore wouldn’t allow it to be seen by their in-house roster of narrators.
However, in writing about #Voices, I did make a mistake. It is not an American company, but Canadian. Perhaps if we can assume that Canadians are a kinder, gentler people, I can understand why they might not want to involve themselves with a book that culminates in Donald Trump’s assassination.
And so I sought out other companies. They turned out to be #ACX, #Findaway Voices, and #Voquent, a British company. I won’t bother to detail anything about these companies, but at least none of them told me to never darken their doorstep again.
Here is an interesting aside: I believe it was ACX that stated that it has 747 books piled up and waiting for narrators. This could mean so many things: that none of the authors of these books have been able to find a narrator that satisfied them; that no one has been interested in auditioning for these books; that there is a huge paucity of prospective narrators; or simply that too many people are writing books and that the really quite large number of narrators out there can’t keep up.
In my own search for a narrator, I had no problem in finding people who wanted to audition (particularly on ACX, which is, in effect, owned by Amazon). In fact, I believe over 60 people did audition. Maybe this says something good about my book – I would like to think so.
Out of all the people who auditioned, I selected three possible candidates, and even made offers to two. The first woman (I wanted a woman to narrate my novel), had a terrific voice but had never narrated a fully-realized audiobook. Despite her really very auspicious audition, as soon as the project began in earnest it became obvious that she was not up to the task. Her line readings were terrible, and just as soon as I proffered some advice, she pulled out, telling me that once she was able to read the entire manuscript that there were parts in it that made her way too uncomfortable to perform. OK – this is legitimate, and besides, she was so awful that I was extremely relieved that she ended her contract.
My next experience was almost exactly the same, and it was at this point that I came to realize that I had to warn any serious candidate what they might be getting themselves into by emailing them the entire MS in advance of making an offer. The original blunder was mine: in preparing the audition script, I probably should have included the most fraught passages, but didn’t. With the very high degree of violence and sexuality beaming out at us from every medium, I didn’t think I needed to. And mine’s not even gratuitous. It’s there to make a very serious point.
Then, just a few days ago, I got lucky. A true professional – a noted character actress – auditioned for the book. She was magnificent and I immediately knew I wanted her, but I still had that final hurdle to overcome.
I sent her the MS – she read it – she liked it – and she said she had no problem at all with any of the content.
I was saved!
Please look for the audiobook version of “Pagan Worship” some time in September.
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