“Listening is a journey…”
Have you ever listened to an audiobook and loved the narrators voice just as much as the book itself? I recently listened to the audiobook for The Vineyards of Champagne by Juliet Blackwell that was narrated by voice artist Xe Sands and loved how she bought the characters to life through her narration.
This week I had the amazing opportunity to chat with Xe over the phone, and I am very excited to share our chat with you here on the blog today. In the interview Xe shares about how she got her start as a voice over artist, the hardest accent she’s ever had to learn, and the authors she hopes to narrate for someday.
How did you get your start as a voice over artist and what was the first book that you ever narrated?
Actually, I owe everything to my daughter. Until she was about 12, we read together at bedtime, and as time went on, she grew a lot more discerning about my performance, lol…after all, we were listening to audiobooks during our daily commute and she was developing quite the ear for the narration! And eventually, I realized that creating that experience for her was where my joy was – that’s what I wanted to do.
Around that time, I heard about Librivox.org (volunteers producing audiobooks from public domain material), and started volunteering. This is actually something I recommend to anyone interested in exploring a career in audiobook narration – find an organization to volunteer with! It both gives you a way to explore, and gives back to the listening community. A few years later, I attended a workshop on audiobook narration offered by Pat Fraley and met my soon-to-be coach and mentor, Carrington MacDuffie. She helped me hone raw skill into the beginning of an actual skill set and encouraged me to attend our annual industry conference, (Audio Publisher’s Association Conference – APAC).
I came back from the conference on FIRE about this potential career, set up my home studio, continued working with Carrington, and started sending out demos to some of the smaller publishers. The lovely folks at Books in Motion took a chance on me, and I did my earliest projects with them, starting with The Thrill of the Chase, by Cristina Crooks – my first audiobook (and my first romance to boot). At that conference, I was also so fortunate to meet (now) dear friend and colleague David Drummond, who generously introduced me to the wonderful Tantor Media, and I was off to the races!
Before you narrate a new book, how do you prepare/get an idea of how the characters should sound?
I’m a highly visual person. As I’m reading a book, it plays out like a movie in my head (as I assume it does for many of us)…so the voices are already there, created with the author’s description and subtext and intent. The tricky part is trying to get those voices to come out of my mouth, LOL. Sometimes that’s an easy thing…and sometimes not so much. It can be incredibly frustrating to hear the character so clearly, but not be able to replicate it in the studio. When that happens, my job is to allow the characterization to drive the vocalization, and not focus so much on the specific “sound,” essentially allow the intent and authenticity to come through, regardless of whether it sounds exactly as it does in my head.
What has been the hardest accent you’ve ever had to do, and how long did it take you to get the accent just right?
I often fear having to do an obscure accent from a distant land…but honestly, the hardest accents for me are some of the American regional accents, which American listeners are often quite familiar with – so they really know when you aren’t getting it right, LOL. The toughest of these have been two that I’ve done for different Kristan Higgins books – Maine and Boston. Both have very specific aspects to the accent that create a sense of authenticity, and I felt determined to do them justice for the author and her listeners. But I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with actor, narrator and coach extraordinaire, PJ Ochlan when faced with a challenging accent. He’s phenomenally supportive and exceptional good at getting me where I need to be on an accent. From there, I spend however much time I have between coaching and recording speaking in the required accent – and only in that accent (yes, I really did have a spat with my daughter without dropping the French accent I was working to master…).
Occasionally though, there are accents that try as I might, I cannot master in time for recording. And if I have to choose between performing the accent in a distracting manner, or dropping it and delivering the character authentically, I’m going to go with the latter. I’ll confess that this happened with Swedish. Such a beautiful, melodious accent, one that can easily dip into caricature…and for most audiobook performances, caricatures are inappropriate and distracting. I chose to be true to the character’s intent and personality, rather than reach for an accent I didn’t think I could reliably deliver without making her into a parody.
How difficult is it to go from voicing a female to a male voice when narrating a novel or going between a character that has an accent and one that doesn’t?
When I first started, it was far more difficult…I was doing mainly romance novels, and to a one, they all have deeply, gravelly, sexy voices (seriously – when is the last time you read about a tenor romantic lead?). But after all these years voicing deep, gravelly, sexy heroes by working to sound as much like them as possible, my natural range has deepened and it’s become easier, LOL.
This isn’t the only way to voice male characters, of course. Many narrators use performance tools other than pitch to signal a shift to a male character. I might also have gone this route, but fate stepped early in my career by giving me a cold when I narrated one of my earliest projects – a book that was on the radar of a (what would eventually become) AudioGals.net…and having that cold meant I could sound more like Kathleen Turner than I normally might! It meant that my hero sounded a whole lot like an actual guy…so when they reviewed the book and loved how he sounded, I decided to see if I could recreate that characterization all the time. Turns out I could, and the die was cast 😊
All that is to say that it’s now much easier to switch back and forth in a scene. Accents though…oy, that’s a totally different thing. It can be pretty tricky to switch in and out of accents, especially when there are several in one line.
What is your favorite character you’ve ever ‘brought to life’?
That’s impossible to choose! There’s too many that I love…but…I’m going to break all protocol and name him: Oscar, Lily’s gobgoyle familiar from Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery Series. He has a very distinctive voice that just created itself the first time I voiced him back in early 2012. I will so miss him if Blackwell ever stops writing the series.
While listening to an audio book is seamless when going from chapter to chapter, how long is the actual process of narrating an audio book?
A good estimate is usually 1.5 to 2 times the length of the book – for the recording piece, anyway. There is also the prep time (reading, research, and character/tone development), post-production corrections, etc.
LOL, that of course doesn’t take into account when you have to voice something in a language you don’t speak. Then…all bets are off!
What is your favorite part about being a voice over artist?
That I get to be entirely different people, live their lives, go on their journeys with them, feel their grief and loss, celebrate their recovery and joys…and it is also gratifying and humbling to hear from a listener that the performance truly transported them, or from the author that they heard their intent and characters come through when they listened.
Do you go to a recording studio or do you have one in your home?
I do. It’s a 6x6x8 box lined with foam to make it as dead sounding inside as possible. Good thing I like small spaces! My first recording box was even smaller.
Many people work in a professional studio with a director. Because I live outside the main audiobook publishing hubs, when I am paired with a director, it’s often easier for directors to work with me remotely.
Has there been a particular author whose books you’ve enjoyed narrating the most?
No picking favorites! I’ve been so fortunate to work with so many wonderful authors on some incredible books! That said, there are two authors I am particularly grateful to for their support through the years. I’ve worked with Juliet Blackwell and Kristan Higgins from almost the beginning of this crazy narration journey – and I feel downright blessed to partner with them in bringing their various series and novels to life in audio. Their books are a joy to narrate, and they are just truly wonderful people – as I said, blessed 😊
You are a Audie Award Winner, SOVAS Voice Arts Award Winner and ALA RUSA Winner. How did you feel when you won your first award for your voice work?
While it wasn’t the first award, I just have to say that when I won an Audie Award (the Oscars of the audiobook narration world) along with my phenomenal co-narrator, Simon Vance, for Euphoria, by Lily King, I remember exactly how it felt…it felt magical…you know that feeling – it’s like there’s a “shift” and all things suddenly feel possible.
Is there an author or authors that you haven’t narrated for yet, that you hope to have the chance to narrate for someday?
There are again so many of them…but a few come to mind because of either the beauty of their writing, or the way their stories slip under my skin and truly transport me…
Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife, Her Fearful Symmetry) — I love her writing and the chances that she takes. I was completely destroyed by Time Traveler’s Wife – by the end, it almost felt that I shared a heart, a mind, a reality with the characters she created.
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Sharp Objects) —The way she writes about human darkness is tremendously compelling – not easy, but that also would make it a delicious challenge.
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaids Tale, Oryx and Crake) — I mean, come on…it’s Atwood…
Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls) — Wintergirls hit my daughter and I so hard. Her characters are so raw and authentic…she just moves me with her honesty and credible voice.
…and that doesn’t even touch POETRY! I’ve been so fortunate to have poems pop up occasionally, and to have recently recorded Paige Lewis’s collection, Space Struck for Pear Press & Libro.fm, but it’s incredibly rare that I get to record poetry. And in a perfect world, I would be tempted to just start with DH Lawrence and Pablo Neruda, and cruise on through Mary Oliver, Linda Pastan and Stephen Dunn…and never do anything else 😊
Keep up with Xe through the following links…
Website: https://www.xesands.com
Instagram: @xesands
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