Yes, it IS Audiobook Month, as spearheaded by the Audio Publishers Association, and cheered on by narrators, proof-listeners, producers, directors, sound engineers and, most of all, listeners. So, I have a few commercial projects in progress, one of which is in its closing stages, so I’ll update about that when it becomes available. I’m also… Read more »

Last month, LibriVox hit the rather astonishing milestone of 100 million downloads at archive.org. I don’t know how this compares to the Grateful Dead collection that is the other incredibly popular draw there, but for myself, I’m entirely a-boggle at the 100 million number. I’m even quoted as being shocked, although it’s true there’s no… Read more »

So, I’ve been head-down on commercial audio recordings for the most part so far this year, but found a little time to squeeze an entertaining piece of non-fiction into a just-published LibriVox collection. Octave Uzanne’s The End of Books is a lively set of imaginings on Life in the Future, from 1894. There’s a brief… Read more »

My second romance this year, and this is just a wonderful book. Willow is a under-employed journalist, living a relatively sedate life in the house her hippy parents left her, trying not to strangle her quirky siblings, hanging out with her best friends — and strictly no romance. Willow has a little problem, you see… Read more »

Now, myself, I couldn’t make it across the lounge in stilettos, let alone out of the front door and onward. But the heroine of my newest audiobook, Sophie Farrier, can do exactly that, as travel writer and glamour puss extraordinaire. She loves her job, she loves her shopping (most particularly shoes) and … all she… Read more »

I recorded this collection of short parables by Edith Wharton a few months ago, as a sound test for my latest recording booth. It’s just been catalogued and is now available for general listening: [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/short_story_049_1108_librivox/shortstory049_07_valleychildishthings_cs.mp3] (13:48) In the introduction to another of her short story collections, she wrote: “To a generation for whom everything which… Read more »

My latest addition to the LibriVox catalogue (recorded a couple of months ago, but the collection took a while to be completed) — A More Ancient Mariner by Bliss Carman. It’s a sweet poem about the buccaneering ways of the honeybee, and it goes along with a lovely swinging rhyme. The general mood matches the… Read more »

In between other projects, I rummaged around the LibriVox forum for something short and interesting to record … and ended up contributing a couple of chapters to Goldsmith’s Biography of Richard Nash, which has just been completed. Although this was a collaborative work, in the end only three of us contributed to it — Tricia… Read more »

So, I’ve recorded one book for Iambik Audio (the lengthy and wonderful Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, by Lydia Millet) and I have a second lined up, which I am genuinely very excited about. It’s a huge change from OPRH, different genre, totally different narration style, and likely a different audience. I’ve been doing practice… Read more »

Attention all fans of E. Nesbit – I’ve just finished my latest LibriVox solo, and it’s her mini autobiography My School Days. It’s very short, just a bit over two hours, and as she writes towards the end, covers only a few incidents from an astonishingly clearly-remembered childhood. Places that she lived, games that she… Read more »