After a lot of thought, I decided to outsource the narration for book two’s audiobook, Awaken the Three –unlike what I had done for book one. What followed was an ad for a narrator that I posted on ACX — something I had experience with when I did the audiobook for Gift of the Shaper.

Narrowing it down

The hardest part was sifting through the auditions from the talented voice actors who submitted their takes on my characters — it was especially strange because I had voiced all the characters in the first audiobook, so I kind of already “knew” what they were going to sound like (accent, tone of voice, etc).

I had an amazing audition from talented voice actor River Kanoff, as well as talking to Eddie Frierson, who has an absolute laundry list of credits in movies and TV.

But to say that I was floored when I heard David Lane Pusey is an understatement. I had goosebumps when I listened to him bringing my characters to life. I knew right away that this was my guy.

Making the offer

It’s not easy making an audiobook, and there are certain things that go into it: royalty split (if any), and cost PFH, or “per finished hour.” A lot of the higher-end voice actors (like Simon Vance or Tim Gerard Reynolds) are going to be very pricy — as in, I can’t afford them — despite my friends making suggestions for me to hire Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Irons. Lucky for people like me with a limited budget, we get to do things called “royalty split,” which means giving the narrator a split of the profit. I won’t disclose the terms of the deal, but David and I both agreed that they were fair.

We are going to make an audiobook!

That being said, there is some potential bad news: there’s a chance that it might not be done in time for the official launch on August 11th. There are a lot of factors that go into it — hell, my own audiobook was delayed a full six months for reasons that were out of my control — but both David and I are hopeful about finishing on time.

That being said, take a listen to a (spoiler free) portion of his audition that I found fantastic. I hope you agree that David’s voice is just what you would want in a narrator.

In this scene there is a confrontation between the thief, Kuu, and the arrogant Djozen Yelto.