The Audie Awards are to pick the best audiobooks of the year. Son of the Black Sword is one of the finalists for Best Fantasy. The winners will be announced in May. Good luck to all the nominees.
This is a good year for my narrator, Tim Gerrard Reynolds, because he’s up there twice, competing against himself. I did that one year, with both a Monster Hunter novel and a Grimnoir novel as finalists (I won!). Tim deserves it, he really did a fantastic job. He was a real pro to work with, and he turned in a compelling performance.
I do really well in audio. I think my writing style translates over well for the medium. I’ve made a bunch of best of lists every year, hit the top of the Audible bestseller list a few times, and I believe this is the 6th Audie Award I’ve been nominated for. I’ve won two. (if I could do proportionality in regular books what I do in audio, I’d move up to the C list!) 🙂
I’ve been remarkably blessed with good narrators. Audible Studios has done a fantastic job picking the right narrator for the right series, every time. In this case, Tim Gerrard Reynolds just has the perfect tone for epic fantasy. He nails it.
When I talk about writing business stuff, I often refer to people as pros, and that is like the ultimate compliment. Tim reached out beforehand and wanted to talk about every name and pronunciation, and this one was a real challenge because the setting is inspired by India and southeast Asia, so many of the names sound really different to the western ear from how they’re spelled. (in reality, Ashok sounds more like Oh-shoke, but to an English reader it’s going to be Ash-ock. Sort of like in America my last name sounds like Korea instead of Qoh-whey-ah 🙂 ) Lots of the names I had no idea, so Tim had to improvise.
He made it sound awesome.
But I’ve been really lucky with all of them. Professionals, the lot of them.
Oliver Wyman is the narrator of my Monster Hunter series, and he has just gotten better and better with every book. For those books you need a sort of irreverent, smart ass, tough guy vibe, yet still needs to switch between a whole mess of different (and sometimes really weird) voices. Oliver is great. At one point he even plays a character as a very convincing Christopher Walken.
Then I’ve got Bronson Pinchot for the Grimnoir Chronicles and Dead Six series, and he is just phenomenal. He’s got a range, but he brings this incredible depth of emotion to the characters that just blows you away. Bronson was also up for the Best Actor Audie one year for his work on Grimnoir. His craziest performance ever though? Big Eddie. Holy moly. The Big Eddie scenes from Dead Six… You just need to listen to them.
For my Warmachine novels I got Ray Porter. Ray is a pro. His performance on Into the Storm was excellent, When he asked what the main character sounded like in my head, I told him young Frank Sinatra. And Ray nailed it. He’s recording the sequel now.
I’ve had other narrators for short stories and novellas (speaking of which, check out Gabra Zackman’s performance on the novella Instruments of War, holy moly, she is good), and Audible Studios has never let me down. Every narrator they have ever paired me up with has always been excellent.
A special thanks goes to Steve Feldberg and his crew, who puts all this stuff together behind the scenes. Steve, and all of his people I’ve ever dealt with, have been great communicators and solid professionals. It has been a wonderful partnership. I love working with Audible.
