Hi, all—

Here’s some exciting news: for the past two weeks I’ve been receiving auditions for the audiobook narration of The Mason of New Orleans (and eventually The Angel of Ecbatana, as I’d like to have the same person read both).

The process is pretty interesting. I put together a snippet of the book—about 15 minutes’ worth that includes dialog by several key characters and scenes with different moods and pacing. I then posted it as an open call on the ACX marketplace (the back end of the Audible/Amazon platform). After it was approved by ACX (which, due to a glitch, took a few weeks longer than usual) it was available for narrators to audition.

Since then I’ve received 51 submissions (as of this writing—I’m still getting one or two more every day). Some—though really just a few—are pretty awful. Most are pretty good. Some are awesome! I have about a dozen on my short list.

(By the way, 15 minutes times 51 auditions? That’s a looooot of listening!)

This week I’m going to go through that short list and narrow it down to just a handful. Here’s what I’m listening for, starting with (roughly) the most important things and working downward:

When I have it down to my final few, I’ll give them some notes (on how to pronounce names, what character voices might sound like, and so on) and ask each to submit a second audition—probably reading a shorter snippet that contains some different character voices. From there I’ll make my final choice!

I hope to get through all of this in the next few days. If we’re lucky, maybe I can share a snippet of audio before the campaign ends Thursday afternoon!