Posts Tagged ‘heroine’s bookshelf’

As you may have heard, the audio rights to The Heroine’s Bookshelf were recently sold to Blackstone Audio, which got me thinking…what’s a day in the life of an audiobook narrator like?  Luckily, I have a great resource in my Twitter friend and new heroine Lorelei King, who just happens to be an accomplished actress and the multiple-award-winning narrator of an astonishing number of audiobooks and BBC Radio 4 programs (we’re talking the books of Margaret Atwood, Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, and even Louisa May Alcott…click here for an impressive list).  Lorelei isn’t just fabulous, she’s gracious…and she’s agreed to answer some of my niggling questions about the life of an audiobook narrator in my never-ending attempt to assuage the longstanding pain of waiting (in this case, to find out who’s going to narrate my book!).

To make things fun, I’m giving away one of Lorelei’s award-winning audiobooks to a lucky winner (details below).  But be sure to read Lorelei’s fabulous insights before scrolling down:

Erin Blakemore: Tell us a bit about the path you took to a career in voice acting and audiobook narration.
Lorelei King: Like most things in my life, I stumbled into it! I was living in London and working as an actress when I got a call from a friend who owned a recording studio; he was recording an ad for a client, and the US voiceover hadn’t shown up. Could I get there in 10 minutes? I did. Hurrah! I loved the experience, and found I had a knack for it. Audiobooks came about in a similar way — someone who knew my animation work asked me to do a book. Again, I loved the experience and definitely had a feeling of “coming home.” And my voice career then, as now, ran in parallel with my acting career.

EB: How does audiobook narration differ from acting for the camera?
LK: When acting for the camera, you normally only play one character. With an audiobook, you might be playing hundreds! Also, in front of the camera your character is normally engaging with other characters, which speads the load a bit — whereas an audiobook is essentially a very, very long monologue. And of course for tv you have to be ‘camera ready’ — no dark roots, no spinach in the teeth, full makeup. Recording an audiobook, I could turn up looking like a troll and it wouldn’t matter. Not that I turn up looking like a troll. Very often.

EB:  How do you prepare to perform an audio piece?
LK: To prepare the book for record, I read it through once and make a cast list on one side of a piece of paper, jotting down and clues about the kind of voice that character might have. Some authors are very helpful in that regard, telling you a character’s accent, voice quality and so on. If there are no clues, I have to make an educated guess! On the other side of the paper I make of list of any pronunciations I want to look up. A good producer will check all that for you, but I like doing my own research.

EB:  What’s the most challenging part of your job? Do you have any disasters or horror stories you’d care to share?
LK: The most challenging part of the job is maintaining stamina — having the same energy level at the end of the day that I had at the beginning of the day! Horror stories? The most horrifying thing is if the engineer makes a mistake and deletes the morning’s work. It’s only happened twice in my career, but I cried both times!

EB:  What do you like best about your job?
LK: I get paid to read books! What could be better?…. And I love being a storyteller. Audio is a particularly intimate medium — and I feel so privileged that people are wiling to listen.

EB:  What are your personal reading habits like? Who are some of your favorite authors and why?
LK: I get very little time to do reading for myself as I have to do so much reading for work! Of the books I read for work, I love the funny ones (like Janet Evanovich) and the crime fiction (like Tess Gerritsen). As for personal reading, my favourite author of all time is Gerald Kersh –Song of the Flea is probably my favourite of his books. I’m also very fond of horror — I like Stephen King, Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison, among many others. I’ve always had a soft spot for Somerset Maugham — The Razor’s Edge had a HUGE impact on me when I was 11 — and of course I have to mention my Greek boys, Homer (I prefer the Illiad to the Odyssey) and Herodotus (it’s like reading Hello magazine)! For enjoyment I read them in English, and for torture I read them in ancient Greek.

EB:  What surprises you about the audio world? Are there any trends to watch for?
LK: I’m surprised at how much it’s growing! It’s wonderful that people are integrating audio into their lives, listening to audiobooks the way they might listen to music.  As for trends, I think digital audio publishing means we’ll be using audio in new and original ways: shorter titles, individual short stories and poems, getting to market much more quickly with subjects that are trending, publishing in digital download only, embedding audio into eBooks … I am co-founder (with Ali Muirden, former head of audio at Macmillan UK) of a digital publishing company, and we’re exploring some of these things already. It’s a scary and exciting time!

Lorelei King Tallgrass Contest

To liven things up a bit and give one of my readers access to a great heroine book, I’m giving away one copy of Lorelei’s Audy and Audiophile Award-winning reading of Sandra Dallas’s Tallgrass, a poignant story of the Japanese-American internment of the 1940s as told through the eyes of a young girl.  Here’s how to enter:  leave a comment on this blog post telling who you’d have voice your favorite heroine (voice actress, actress, friend, mom…just make sure to identify her!) and why.  Comment with a link to your tweet, blog post, or Facebook “share with friends” about the contest and I’ll enter you twice! I’ll choose the winner at random at close of business this Friday, April 2.  Contest is open to United States, Canadian, and U.K. residents only.  Good luck!

It’s Friday, and my Google Image Search obsession is as strong as ever.  Since Friday is a day for fun, I hereby bring you the first in a series of Friday blogs about covers of books included in The Heroine’s Bookshelf.  First installment:  Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, originally published in 1813.  Click to enlarge these gems!

From left to right, top to bottom:

1)  First, a bit of history.  Here’s the original front page (they didn’t do fancy artsy covers in the early 1800s).

2)  is kind of a swinging late 60sish take on P&P (reminds me of the exquisite Fairy Alphabet on Sesame Street).

3) has to be in the running for Lamest Cover Ever, right?

4) This illustration by Reuben Toledo brings a bit of fashion to Meryton.

5) and 6) Marvel recently put out a comic version of P&P that deserves two postings for its amazing covers by Sonny Liew.  I’ve included the first cover and the fourth.  Make sure to click to enlarge…they’re exquisite. 

7) Harper recently released a version of P&P styled after the Sparkly Vampire Series That Cannot Be Named…eek!

For another cool roundup of P&P covers, check out Belle of the Books’ recent post, which features tons of international Pride and Prejudice flava.

I have of course neglected to post the many, many covers that include a classic portrait of a woman on them.  Zzz.  What’s your favorite of these covers?  Got a favorite P&P cover you’d like to share?

This is the story of a woman whose work was lambasted as unchristian, immoral, anything but the work of an upstanding lady.  She was nervous in temperament and given to moody depression and moments of utter despair, sadness that the unfettered moors of her childhood home heightened.  She wore spectacles and had ruddy cheeks and a few missing teeth.  And she gave us Jane Eyre, another plain, poor woman who changed the world.

This was Charlotte Brontë, and she’s been on my mind recently for many reasons.

To me, reading is as immersive and essential as breathing, and there are some authors who are more than my favorite writers…they feel like my intimate friends.  Charlotte Brontë is one of those women, and she’s the subject of my first Heroine Mini-Series featuring three pivotal moments in her life.

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That shuffling scamp! Charlotte read the letter swiftly, taking in the news once, twice, until she could scarcely see for anger.  He had done it again.  Thomas Newby, the man who had published Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, was spreading a vicious rumor, this time in the United States.  Seeking to expand his fortune and capitalize off of the controversy surrounding Charlotte’s incendiary Jane Eyre, he had led the American publishing house Harpers to believe that the pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell all belonged to one person and that Jane Eyre, the American rights to which they had just bought, was in fact the work of one author instead of three.

That shuffling scamp! The Brontë sisters had never been ones to make public spectacles of themselves, but after the months of terrible reviews and public scrutiny, this was the last straw.  Charlotte and her sister Anne tromped four miles across unforgiving moorland, enduring a thunderstorm before falling into a carriage that carried them to London.  Barely rested and painfully aware of their countrified appearance in the midst of a bustling city, they sought out the offices of Smith, Elder.  Charlotte herself had carried on a years-long correspondence with her publisher, George Smith…under the pseudonym of Currer Bell.  And now his name, the name of the man who had fought for her book and brought it into the world, was being smeared an ocean away.

That shuffling scamp! Charlotte insisted, gently at first, more passionately when denied, that she must see Mr. Smith at once.  And there he was, “young, tall, gentlemanly,” stepping forward courteous and confused at the sight of these two thin, timid-looking women.  Charlotte thrust a letter into his hand, one he had addressed with his own hand to “Currer Bell, Esq.”  He started, sputtering.

“Where did you get this?”

“At the post office.  It was addressed to me.”  She let the words sink in before she continued.  “We have both come that you might have ocular proof that there are at least two of us.”

To be continued…

One of the most gratifying parts of writing The Heroine’s Bookshelf was discovering the backstories behind the women who wrote some of my favorite books.  And it wasn’t all fun and friends.  During the course of the book, I got to look at the underbelly of some of these women’s lives:  depression, chronic illness, opium addiction, adultery, even suicide.   And you know what?  I loved every minute.

Why embrace the serious sides of my literary heroines when many of them left such happy, pert, intelligent women as their legacy?  (Anne of Green Gables or Lizzie Bennet, anyone?)  Why not just focus on the picture they wanted to present to the world…the picture of the productive, happy writer who left her dirty laundry between two covers and moved on with life?

I was reminded of this question when reading this article about Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dirty little opium secrets (or not-so-secrets, as the case may be).  For me, the answer is all about context.  When we look at the real lives of these writers, their accomplishments in the face of great trials and hardships are even more impressive.  Louisa May Alcott wrote her books in a state of constant, crushing financial worry…and if she hadn’t known what it was like to be poor, she could never have given us the image of four sisters sewing their way through dire straits and attempting to burden the load they must shoulder.  Could Charlotte Brontë have made Jane Eyre‘s Lowood School so terrifying if she herself had not survived a similar experience?

Now that I know the backstory behind my favorite books, I feel even more grateful that these women took time out of their lives to give something to us, people they never met or even imagined.  Not that I subscribe to the thought that writers must be tortured (that’s probably material for a whole ‘nother post), but I think they’re at least allowed to be human.  When we deny a Jane Austen or a Frances Hodgson Burnett her humanity, we miss out on the rest of the story.

Today is the 197th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s immortal (so far) Pride and Prejudice, which is fittingly the very first book I dove into when writing The Heroine’s Bookshelf.  After all, what bibliophile in her right mind can really resist such a spirited, flawed, funny, sexy, and articulate heroine (and such an arch and fascinating authoress)?  In celebration of Lizzy Bennet’s debut into the literary world, here are some of my favorite links and factoids about the eternal P&P:

• Jane began writing Pride and Prejudice when she was just 21 years old.  The book was originally entitled First Impressions.
• Jane actually gave away the rights to her best-known book, selling them to publisher Thomas Egerton for just £110 (he argued her down from £150).
• Though witty and accomplished herself, Jane was more similar to her grumpy, outsiderish leading man, Fitzwilliam Darcy, than her sparkling female protagonist.
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the spoof spinoff from Quirk Books, has sold over 700,000 copies to date and spawned an entire series of spooftastic books related to classic literature.
• The 1995 Jennifer Ehle/Colin Firth adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is the best televised or filmed P&P incarnation, ever.  This is an incontrovertible fact.

Finally, here are two of my favorite P&P resources:  a detailed Pride and Prejudice character map (left), and Pride and Prejudice in Facebook form (right):

I’m done writing the book, but I can’t stop thinking about heroines and their particular pull.  I just read a great post by a dear friend about the power of heroines in young adult literature, even for thirtysomething women, and it reminds me once more that heroines matter, both for our adult selves and the childish ones we keep inside.

What is it about heroines?  Why do they exert such a seductive pull, calling me away from the dishes and the to-do list?

Here are some ideas:

• They’re not us: Heroines exist in a world outside of ourselves, something to escape into and crawl inside for a while.
• They are us: Heroines possess that which we ourselves have:  personalities, strong wills, the ability to adjust to circumstance.
• Possibilities and warnings: Heroines present another road, one in which we could do the mundane or the spectacular, transcending ourselves or destroying ourselves in the process.

How about you?  Why are heroines important to you?

Yes, I’m still revising the book (on a Friday deadline, eek!), but I haven’t forgotten my readers or my heroines.  Luckily, the entire Internet and the rest of the world is busy producing interesting content on heroines at all times.  To wit:

• The new Louisa May Alcott movie that recently ran on American Masters on PBS.  I really enjoyed this film, even though I abhor historical reenactments in documentaries.  The best part was watching LMA’s biographers and great champions Madeleine Stern and Dr. Leona Rostenberg talk about figuring out that Louisa wrote pulp novels under the name of A.M. Barnard.  Their glee over this momentous literary discovery, half a decade after the fact, was contagious.  (Also, who doesn’t love elderly female scholars?)
• Lizzie Skurnick’s recent article on heroines in peril.  Though I don’t agree with the article entirely, I think it’s important to look at what heroines are doing and how it affects readers and viewers. (Thanks to Lorelei Laird for pointing me to this link.)
• Little House:  The Musical! also known as The Best Christmas Present Ever.  Though several anachronisms made me cringe (the Ingalls girls betting on a horse race?  I think not!), it was a great way to spend an evening.

Publishing a book is a saga, though I’d never presume to think it’s as exciting as the lives of the women writers I’m writing about (how very meta).  I just received a very incisive and encouraging revision letter from my editor at HarperCollins and as I go through the manuscript, adding layers and clarifying, I am reminded that the ability and opportunity to revise is in and of itself a blessing.

Think I’m being cheesy?  Just think of Louisa May Alcott, tart author of Little Women and other beloved girls’ classics, and the hurried way in which she had to write her books.  She was so busy sewing, going out as a servant, and caring for her impoverished family that she never had much time for revision.  In a way, though, much of her literary work was revision: editing out (sometimes ineffectively) her frustration over her ongoing poverty, her family’s crushing expectations, and her never-met ambitions.  Writing is rewriting, and Louy spent much time rewriting herself into something more socially acceptable than the clumsy, sarcastic, workaholic who was just as compelling as any of her heroines.

…[Jo] read several liberal offers from budding magazines for her to edit them gratis; one long letter from a young girl inconsolable because her favourite hero died, and ‘would dear Mrs Bhaer rewrite the tale, and make it end good?’ another from an irate boy denied an autograph, who darkly foretold financial ruin and loss of favour if she did not send him and all other fellows who asked autographs, photographs, and auto-biographical sketches; a minister wished to know her religion; and an undecided maiden asked which of her two lovers she should marry. These samples will suffice to show a few of the claims made on a busy woman’s time, and make my readers pardon Mrs Jo if she did not carefully reply to all.

- Louisa May Alcott, Jo’s Boys

Think I’m giving an awful lot of screen space to Miss Alcott these days?  Yup.  I’ll admit it:  my interest in the woman who gave us Jo March has become somewhat of an obsession.  I’ll stop now lest I expose too much of my nerdiness up front.

There are many explanations for my seeming neglect of this blog, but for the time being I will merely point to the deadline looming up before me like the most ferocious of Louisa May Alcott’s vortices.  I’ll be back in late November…until then, hear Louy’s words about what I’ve been sucked into:

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and `fall into a vortex’, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her `scribbling suit’ consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, “Does genius burn, Jo?” They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow, did anyone dare address Jo.

She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living, even if they bore no other fruit. The devine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her `vortex’, hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.

- Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

There were so many ways of seeing things and so many ways of saying them.

- Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Shores of Silver Lake

Left to right:  Caroline Celestia “Carrie” Ingalls, Mary Ingalls, Laura Ingalls, late 1870s