00:00:58.240especially for the audiobook junkies out there. I am an audio nerd, as you probably know,
00:01:04.060because I make this podcast and many other podcasts. And I love audiobooks. I especially
00:01:10.940love audiobooks during this phase of my life. I've talked to a lot of people in the publishing
00:01:15.640industry who say things like, oh, the moms of small children don't read. And so they don't
00:01:23.080typically market books to us. And that's bullshit. I think a lot of us want to read. We do. But yes,0.99
00:01:31.400our time is constricted. And so we've seen the audiobook sales for the Sicilian inheritance
00:01:35.740completely skyrocket because a lot of us want to multitask. And so people are telling me that
00:01:41.960they're reading the book at the same time as they're listening to the audiobook and they're
00:01:45.720toggling between the two. And that brings me so much joy because I put a lot of time into this
00:01:51.020audiobook. I got the wonderful job of auditioning a lot of different audiobook narrators because I
00:01:57.580am personally picky. If I don't like someone's voice in an audiobook, I DNF. I do not finish,
00:02:03.520and I do this all of the time. So it was very important to me that the narrators of both Sarah
00:02:07.840and Serafina really made the story come alive. And in the present day, our narrator for Sarah
00:02:14.320is a wonderful, wonderful voice actress named Rachel Hirsch. And I asked Rachel to come on
00:02:20.280the show today to tell you a little bit about what goes into making an audiobook because I do
00:02:26.060think that this is one of those jobs a lot of us don't know that much about and I think it is so
00:02:30.980important to highlight all different kinds of labor that women do. I am Rachel F. Hirsch. I'm
00:02:38.120an audiobook narrator and theater performer and musician and theater producer and I narrated one
00:02:47.280of your most recent book. You did. You did. All right. So talk to me about the experience of
00:02:53.240narrating The Sicilian Inheritance. I think this is so fun because we have a lot of listeners of
00:02:59.920the podcast who are huge audiobook fans, as am I. And we kind of just want to know the tea.
00:03:06.100Like, how do you get ready to narrate an audiobook? For me, it's a pretty extensive process.
00:03:12.800us. I first I find out if there are any notes from the author or producer that I need to keep
00:03:19.460in mind as I'm prepping. And then I read through the whole book and I'm taking pretty detailed
00:03:25.080notes, marking down every new character that I come across, any details that are in the in the
00:03:30.380text about their voice, about the way they look, anything about their personality that can give me
00:03:35.660some hints as to how I might come up with a voice for them. And also marking down any important
00:03:43.800plot details that I want to keep in mind. And I'm also marking, in this case, there were two
00:03:51.960narrators. And so I'm marking down which chapters I'm actually speaking in. And then I start to
00:03:56.740think about the voices. And then when I go into the booth, I'm recording and self-directing,
00:04:02.840And I'm also engineering my session most of the time.
00:04:07.000Every once in a while I'm called into a studio and there's an engineer or director there or I'm, you know, there's somebody kind of patching into where into my studio.
00:04:17.800But most of the time I'm just doing it all on my own and I'm working off of those notes alongside the script.
00:04:24.600And as I come up with voices for each character, I pull a little MP3 sample of that voice and I keep kind of a voice bank.
00:04:31.360So when that character comes up again and I've marked which chapters every character shows up in, so I kind of have a heads up right before recording a new chapter, I can reference those audio samples so that I can make sure it's consistent throughout the book.
00:04:45.720And were there any characters that you found kind of difficult?
00:04:49.580I mean, we have, we're traveling to Sicily here, right?
00:04:52.840So was it tricky to nail some of the Italian folks?
00:04:58.000you know for me i lived in italy for a little while um and i speak italian and i spent quite
00:05:05.440a bit of time in southern italy a little bit of time in sicily and so with your writing it was
00:05:10.700so vivid i really felt like i was just dropped right back into these places that i've been
00:05:15.440before and so they surprisingly i guess perhaps to your listeners um that came fairly naturally
00:05:23.180for me. I also am tasked with recording a lot of books that take place in Italy and Italian
00:05:30.660characters. And so I just I don't know, at this point, that does feel pretty, pretty natural.
00:05:36.560It's always really fun for me. But certainly something that does come up, even though I speak
00:05:42.880Italian and in the case of your book, there's a lot of Sicilian, which is different than sort of
00:05:47.540standard italian and not a language that i'm familiar with um i did a lot of sort of double
00:05:53.160checking to make sure my pronunciations not just of italian words but of accents were really
00:05:57.620consistent uh throughout so that was tricky i don't know about specific characters that felt
00:06:03.380particularly hard um i would say something i always you know if there are like maybe some of
00:06:10.360the gruffer folks in the book there are some gruff folks yeah yeah yeah yeah and you can hear
00:06:16.140my voice is like pretty high set um and smooth and so i have to do a lot of work to kind of give
00:06:21.360that texture but also make sure that i'm differentiating between the various gruff folks
00:06:26.460that they don't all sound the same um so that's probably the biggest challenge i had in terms of
00:06:31.420building characters were for your book like they don't all sound like my like trashy dude voice
00:06:37.020when i'm like hey yo right right yeah they're all individuals with their own personalities even if
00:06:42.880there are you know some uh some similarities and just because of the world that they're existing
00:06:48.980in um it still feels really important at least with the listener to make sure they know who's
00:06:54.660talking all the time and for me to just as the actor portraying them to make sure that i'm giving
00:07:00.560them i'm creating real real people and not just a single caricature that i'm replicating from
00:07:06.040person to person well you know oh hold on one second sorry i accidentally opened the video i
00:07:11.320did not mean to do that um so when when you're about to work on a book and get ready for an
00:07:18.380audiobook are you able to enjoy the book too or does it feel like work oh that's a really good
00:07:24.020question um I do enjoy it I think also I don't know if it's because I've been doing this so long
00:07:31.260or just like as I get older my attention span gets shorter I find that taking the notes in the way
00:07:37.500that I do is actually really helpful in my enjoyment because I can keep track of what's
00:07:42.520going on. Whereas if I'm not, you know, books that I'm reading just for pleasure and not for
00:07:46.740work, I do tend to have to go, you know, sometimes I kind of start to lose focus and need to go back.
00:07:52.820So I think, I don't know, again, it might just be that I've now trained my brain to only work
00:07:57.820that way, but it does feel really enjoyable for me. Plus I'm a big note taker in general. Like
00:08:02.920that's just that is a thing I enjoy I think I'm a big nerd um so I like that the whole process is
00:08:09.800really is really fun for me and I am able to kind of I don't know I guess as an actor like building
00:08:15.820and creating characters and thinking how I want to play them is so enjoyable that while I'm reading
00:08:22.480I get like this added level of experience with the book because I'm also exploring it in this
00:08:28.720other way as i prepare it for performance i love that i love that um was there anything
00:08:35.980about the sicilian inheritance that you particularly liked doing oh wow um so much
00:08:43.120i loved juicy she's oh isn't juicy the best character ever so great and it was so fun to
00:08:49.960play with her um her personality is just so there's just so much to work with there from
00:08:55.540an acting perspective. Um, and I also just really, as I said, I felt like I was really plopped down
00:09:02.280into these places that I've, I've been before and spent time with and with people I've, I've known
00:09:07.080in my past. And so that just, it felt like putting on like a cozy sweater, um, working on your book
00:09:14.100because just because of that experience, it was so lovely to your descriptions are just so vivid.
00:09:19.340I can really just see it all very clearly in my mind. And so that was just an added layer of
00:09:24.960enjoyment. Could you give us a little bit of juicy or is that crazy to ask you to go into character
00:09:29.600right now to just be like, hey, be juicy immediately? I need some text in front of me.
00:09:35.620Oh, my God. I know. I know. I know. No, that's too hard. That's too hard. That's too hard.
00:09:40.600We can keep it as a little, you know, a little surprise for folks when they listen.
00:09:44.680A little surprise for folks when they listen. So is there do you do anything to get into character?
00:09:50.080like for so when I was right when I was writing the Sicilian inheritance a lot of it was at home
00:09:54.720but some of it was in Sicily and I did crazy things like I brought my laptop while I was eating
00:10:00.520all of the dishes that are in the book and described them as I was eating them into the
00:10:07.680files and then because I'm a crazy person I would also walk around the restaurant and ask people to
00:10:12.680describe the dishes they were eating I was like what does this taste like and some people are
00:10:15.820really nice they love being asked that they're like this tastes like eating the ocean and I'm
00:10:19.660like yeah it does wow I know right so do you do anything to like get yourself into the mood
00:10:27.160I I don't I've thought about listening to like I know other narrators who have playlists that
00:10:38.020they associate with their books and they kind of listen to that to kind of yeah to get in the mood
00:10:43.180of the story. For me, I just like to sit down and just get started. I think I,
00:10:51.720especially with books that are super well written and have really vivid imagery,
00:10:57.720it's just a movie in my mind. And so I think just like starting to read a little bit of it,
00:11:03.460it drops me into that space and I can really imagine everything pretty clearly. For characters,
00:11:10.760I do tend to shift postures which has a pretty big impact on the way that I sound the way I'm
00:11:18.640portraying those characters so each person especially if they're bigger character you know
00:11:23.900a bigger presence in the book kind of has their own I sit differently for each one and so I guess
00:11:30.900it's just sort of an in the moment preparation but as I start to speak for a new character in a
00:11:37.400you know in a bit of dialogue I'll be shifting my body quite a bit in my chair as much as I can
00:11:42.160without making noise and that really just changes my voice a bit oh wow I really love that actually
00:11:49.860I love that you're kind I'm picturing you in the studio shifting around yeah like becoming bigger
00:11:55.600because I feel like juicy is also this big presence in the book and so I'm just picturing
00:12:00.220you, like becoming a big woman with like big Sicilian energy. I just did a piece for Cosmo
00:12:06.720on big Sicilian energy and how it's a thing and how I'm trying to channel it in my own life. I'm
00:12:11.980like more confident how I move in the world now, which I think is a really beautiful thing after
00:12:17.720writing this book, mostly because I think that I'm bringing that energy with me on a regular basis.
00:12:23.660Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, her energy was so clear in the way you wrote her and I, and I,
00:12:29.500You're exactly right. I mean, I sort of anytime she was speaking, it's like I sort of expanded, you know, like my shoulders kind of stretched out more.
00:12:39.880And I'm it's a it's a very. Confident posture that she has something, some challenge that I do have whenever I'm performing anything that take that's like steeped in Italian culture is I want to be moving my arms and my hands.
00:12:59.220so much it just feels so natural to go along with the text when it's written really well which yours
00:13:06.080was and I and that's only a problem because the microphone in my studio is very very sensitive so
00:13:13.240if I'm like flapping my arms around or doing a lot of gesticulation I'm gonna have to re-record
00:13:18.340a bunch of stuff so I feel like sometimes that energy that would be coming out of my hands and
00:13:24.740fingertips, if I were able to gesticulate as much as I want to, just comes, you know, I try to
00:13:30.160channel it to kind of come out in my voice a little bit so you can get that flavor of that,
00:13:34.580that like sort of cultural flavor and energy and what you're talking about, that sort of big
00:13:39.020Sicilian energy without it having to be movement. And of course, no one would see my movements
00:13:44.260anyway. So it's like, how do you manufacture that for the listener in a way that'll make sense to
00:13:48.580them in their ears. I know. I know. Exactly. Recording an audiobook is not easy. I did it
00:13:55.660for my book, How to Be Married. And I was eight months pregnant at the time with my first baby
00:14:01.820and so big. It was very hard to figure out how to get close to the microphone. They had to really
00:14:06.220make adjustments. And I was burping all the time. I'm pretty sure if you listen to How to Be Married,
00:14:12.660the audiobook, you can hear me just being like, oh. How long does it usually take you?
00:14:18.580It really depends on the book. I do a lot of romance under a pseudonym, Rose D'Oro. And those books, if it's like a rom-com, they're pretty quick. But something like this where there's a lot of accents, languages are going to take a lot longer in the booth because, again, I get really in my head about consistency and making sure that I'm even with something that I'm really comfortable with and I do a lot of.
00:14:42.520if it's not my my typical like typically the way that I speak in my normal life I just want to make
00:14:49.220sure that I'm all the things that I'm doing that make me sound different than I normally would are
00:14:53.960the same so it goes a little bit slower but I'd say you know I probably record for every finished
00:15:01.020hour that you hear I'm generally in the booth for like an hour and a half of that time which is
00:15:09.960pretty fast. Um, I think typically people, it takes like a full two hours per finished hour
00:15:15.680for the average narrator, like for an average narration. Um, but I think I've been doing this
00:15:22.280so long where I'm, you know, kind of, cause I'm just alone. I've been alone in my booth for so
00:15:29.920long. I've been alone in my little booth and they won't let me out. Yes. That I, I get so locked.
00:15:36.920I've learned how to really get locked into this story and keep it moving along.
00:15:40.220And I've become pretty adept at sort of, it's not really cold reading because I've prepped it,
00:15:45.060but you can't memorize an entire book, obviously.
00:15:47.340So, you know, it's, you know, I get, I can read pretty fast when recording, I guess.
00:18:35.620And we are back. One of the things that I was dying to ask Rachel is whether or not
00:18:41.420audiobook recording has changed since the pandemic. Because I know podcasting has.
00:18:46.520Prior to the pandemic, I used to go into people's homes with a sound engineer to do interviews, or we would meet in a studio.
00:18:57.180And now, so much of my recording is just me alone in essentially a closet.
00:19:05.480And I'm curious if that's how it is for Rachel now, too.
00:19:07.820I think, yes, since the pandemic, most folks are doing the bulk of their narration at home these days, which is sad because it's already like pretty solitary work and it becomes even more so when you don't get to see other humans just, you know, passing them in the hallway in the studios.
00:19:25.780I know. I know. Well, it's the same for podcasts, to be honest, because for so long we would travel to people to do our interviews for Committed and stuff. And now it's all on the computer. And I miss that human interaction.
00:19:41.920My last pre-pandemic interview was in studio with Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach, and I got to hug both of them.
00:19:50.000And I'm like, we all probably gave each other COVID, but I'm like, I miss the hugs.