Summer Shorts 2014 – Cris Dukehart #audiobook

June is audiobook month, and I’m so happy that Summer Shorts is back this year! Summer Shorts is a blog hop where participants get to share wonderful short narrations recorded by some of the best audiobook narrators in the business. Today, I’m fortunate to have Cris Dukehart, the narrator for one of my favorite childhood books, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, as a guest. She’s stopping by to give us a behind-the-scenes glimpse into what it’s like to narrate an audiobook! Check it out, and then listen to THE VELVETEEN RABBIT below!

Behind the scenes with June is Audiobook Month

by narrator Cris Dukehart

For me, a gal, just far enough removed from the big city (NYC) that my home studio gets a good workout, voice over and audiobook narration can be ironically, sort of… well… quiet.

It’s just me, a Granny Smith apple, some Throat Coat Tea, a script and a microphone in a heavily padded room 99.9% of the time.

Every once in a while though, something marvelous happens.

It could be a call to be directed “in studio”.  That means I get to go OUT… in like… REAL CLOTHES… and maybe even… SHOWER before I go to work… AND hang out with one or two people (an engineer and director) in an AIR CONDITIONED studio for a few hours a day.  SA-WEET.

OR… it could be JUNE!  In case you haven’t heard (why haven’t you heard?) JUNE is AUDIOBOOK MONTH!  These are happy happy times for this gal.  JUNE is when brilliant narrator and do-gooder Xe Sands’ brainchild, GOING PUBLIC IN SHORTS happens and I get to virtually hang with a whole GANG of marvelous talky folks and meet new bloggers (Thanks for having me, JEN!) and record short pieces from the library of public work for a fabulous CAUSE!  Literacy!

This year I’ve recorded the family favorite, The Velveteen Rabbit, written in 1922 by Margery Williams.

Normally, when I begin a new script, I do a “pre-read”… a read through of the text for accent and characters and any words or themes that need researching (right now, for instance, I am pre-reading a new YA-NA novel, See Me, by Wendy Higgins, for Tantor Audio… It’s based in a mythical realm of the Irish countryside).  This text, however, a childhood favorite of mine and it is quite possible that I have read it (or listened to it nearly 25 times or more over the years).  SO… no pre-read necessary,  I just donned my “quiet clothes” (soft duds that make minimal noise when I shift or move while recording… I am SUCH a hand talker), gathered my magic voice stuffs (the apple, the tea and some Chapstick, to help with mouth noises and lip smacking),  hopped in the booth and set to work!

I’m often asked how narrators read without mistakes and to this I guffaw and snort with near wild-silly mirth.  The answer is… WE DON’T… well… I SURE as heck-a-choo, don’t.  When I flub a line or make a mouth noise or the phone rings or the dog barks, or my 13 year old simply MUST know if she can go to her friend’s house RIGHT THIS MINUTE or she will just DIE, I pause the recording… reverse back to the start of the last full sentence and begin anew.

For the most part… this works well… except when it doesn’t…  and THEN the lovely folks that proof listen to recordings (for this project it was those marvelous people over at Tantor Audio) will catch me in a mistake and send me a list of “pick-ups” to fix before the whole recording goes to publication.  For Velveteen Rabbit, a shorty-pants story, I had three pick-ups.

Pick-ups fixed, the whole thing goes off and the producers… again, those Tantor peeps, do that voodoo that THEY do to make me sound my very best, and TRA-LA!  The product gets to you… shiny as a new penny!

So YOU get to have a listen (for free even, at the start) and then feel really brilliantly charitable when you purchase the whole collection of poems and short stories for YOUR library!

Just like that!

And THAT is what happens when a gal hangs about long enough, talking to herself in a padded room 😉

Thank you Cris, you make padded rooms and talking to yourself sound fun!

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/153989335?secret_token=s-XXLPw” params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

About Cris Dukehart

Website | Blog | Twitter

Heads up, you can catch THE VELVETEEN RABBIT story again over at The Insatiable Critic at her Critic’s Pick/bonus Listen Friday piece this Friday (6/20/14)! The entire schedule of free audiobooks is HERE, and the complete audiobook of the entire project is available through Tantor Media for just $9.99, HERE – all proceeds benefit ProLiteracy.

Previous post at SFF Audio | Next post at Jen’s Book Thoughts