The Quadrilogy Is Over

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I pushed my chair back and stood, gazing at my computer screen for a moment without moving. I was done, but finishing a project always brings with it a Bhuja-Mix™ of emotions, and this was a large project.

It was December of 2020 and after almost a year’s work, I had just finished narrating the last in a series of fantasy books for a wonderful client.

My feelings were all over the place. I was thrilled to have completed such an audacious project, in which I had the pleasure (and pain) of voicing over 50 characters and experiencing a fantastical journey — both literary and professionally — but now it was done and the client and I wouldn’t be working together again for a while. Perhaps ever. I wouldn’t meet the characters again, nor would I traverse the world I’d been living in for so long.

That’s a strange feeling.

On such projects, when you’re conversing every other day, dealing with feedback, getting and sometimes giving advice, and basically helping each other to reach this milestone, and when you’re immersed in someone else’s (or occasionally your own) work, it’s not unusual to develop a bond to a client and the material. I certainly do, anyway.

Perhaps that’s something more common in narration; a strange gig by any measure. It’s lonely at times. It’s laborious. It’s technical. And it hurts. Some days I step out of the booth and don't want to open my mouth again until the next day. Sometimes, not even then. Joints and muscles ache, and going into that little void day after day, night after night, only to hear yourself is a test of endurance and a strange game of testing your own limits, in which damaging your own voice often spells ‘Game-Over’.

It’s tough to keep your energy up. It’s tough not to drift and lose the connection to the material. It’s tough when you listen to your work and find it sounds different to what you wanted, then scrap sentences and paragraphs — even entire chapters and character parts. But there’s certainly a reward at the end of it all.

I think we're all storytellers by nature. I love telling stories and always have, even before I tried to amass crowds of students at lunchbreak for fantastical journeys before the next-period bell rang. I love to write, and I love to read, and since I began narrating I’ve discovered a love of reading aloud.

I find a lot of pleasure narrating, and as with anyone who loves their profession, I try to learn more with every project. So when a client gets that final recording and replies with joy in exclamation marks and superlatives, I’m over the moon.

That happened on this particular project, and I was reminded once again that the hard work is worth it. Not only had I developed a great professional relationship with a client, I’ve also been priveliged to turn my skills to something I can be proud of.

If you’re a fan of fantasy, then I really hope you get a chance to hear my take on the Seven Citadels quadrilogy by British author Geraldine Harris. Written in the late 70s and 80s, this series’ rights were recently acquired by a film producer in Los Angeles who contacted me for the narration. It’s a curious, exciting and touching story full of bizarre and interesting characters, which will certainly make an amazing cinematic experience. I hope it made an interesting series of audibooks!

I hope to go into this series a little more in a future post, but until then...

Ciao!