An audiobook contract is completely separate from a print contract, so for the audiobook format of Of Fire and Lions and Isaiah’s Legacy, I worked with Penguin Random House Audio, my (book) publisher’s parent company. I heard from the audio producer right away. Incredibly professional and friendly, he asked about the tone of my book and the number of narrators we thought would work best.
A Complex Story
Since Isaiah’s Legacy has so many characters and uses four different POVs (points-of view), Aaron–the producer–suggested we use four voice actors. He then sent me samples from three different actors for EACH voice! I chose between the twelve actors with these things in mind:
- Which woman’s voice could sound like an eight-year-old Shulle and transform to Shulle in her fifties by the end of the book?
- Which male voice could show both Nasseh’s innocence as a child and grow into the evil man he’d become?
- Which of the three mature voices could carry Zibah’s wisdom with tender strength?
- Which of the three mature male voices displayed Shebna’s aging and bitterness?
Such huge choices, but so much fun! I enlisted the help of several friends and family members. You can CLICK HERE to listen to a sample of Shulle as an eight-year-old.
Nightmare Names & Places
As you may recall, most of my books have some difficult names, locations, and generally wonky words because of the ancient culture and historical settings. I certainly wouldn’t want to read the whole thing into a microphone! But these brave voice actors do just that—with a little help from a pronunciation cheat-sheet.
After the producer and I made the decisions on voice actor(s), he passed me off to the director, Christine, who was a DREAM to work with! She researched the pronunciations on a database and sent me a table similar to the one below with many blank spaces on the right side. We then set up a phone call to discuss how to fill those blanks!
Through my limited Hebrew knowledge and her memory of pronunciations for Of Fire and Lions, we muddled through this book too. Feel free to print the pdf file provided at the end of this post!
| A (command to dog, p. 203) | AY (long a sound, like at the end of “play”) |
| Ab | AHB |
| abba | AH buh |
| Abijah | uh BEE juh |
| Adaiah | uh DAY uh |
| Adar | AY dar |
| Adnah | AD nuh |
| Adrammelek | uh DRAM uh lek |
| Ahaz | AY haz |
| ahu | AH hoo |
| Akhet | AHK ket |
| Akkadian | uh KAY dee un |
| Alorus | uh LOHR us |
| Ammon | AM mun |
| Amon | AY mahn |
| Amoz | AY mahz |
| Anatho | uh NAH thoh |
| Anubis | uh NOO biss |
| Asherah | AH shuh ruh |
| Ashkelon | ASH kuh lahn |
| Ashur | ASH ur |
| Ashurbanipal | ah shur BAH nih pahl |
| asiputu | uh SIP uh tuh |
| Assoros | uh SOHR ohs |
| Assyria | uh SEER ee uh |
| Aviv | uh VEEV |
| Aya | EYE uh |
| Azariah | az uh RYE uh |
Treasures of His Love Cover Change
I hope you’ve enjoyed the inside look at how an audiobook is made! BTW, if you’ve seen the new audiobook covers for the Treasures of His Love series, you’ll notice they’re different than the book covers. This is because the company that recorded those books isn’t affiliated with my print company, so they needed to create new covers.
Not only did we get to choose a voice actor for that series, but we have new cover models, new costumes, and more decisions! But sooooo much fun, and I love that y’all have audiobooks as a choice now!
Today’s Question:
How often do you listen to audiobooks?
Comments 2
I’ve only ever listened to one audio book. But I LOVE this! The process sounds neat and makes me want to listen to audiobooks because I enjoy hearing the Biblical names/words pronounced outside of my head. Lol!
And I love that there is a narrator for ea h point of view.
Author
Doesn’t it sound like fun to have all those narrators? I’ve never heard an audiobook with that many!