Ah, the 7 P's

You've heard of the 7 P's, right? If you're related to a current or former Marine, like my in-laws, you have. Prior Proper Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. And this week, I am up to my eyeballs in the 7 P's.

On Saturday, I am participating in Pat Fraley's Billion $ Read Workshop on audiobook narration at Bad Animals in Seattle. Not only will I be receiving invaluable training from Pat, and a guest teacher, audiobook pro Carrington MacDuffie, I'll also walk away with a demo. Needless to say, I'm excited, but I'm also nervous because I understand the importance of choosing the right material to represent myself as a potential narrator to audiobook publishers. It's a lot like choosing repertoire was when I was a singer. For my audiobook demo, basically, I have three minutes, three excerpts of approximately one minute each, to show publishers what I can do and get them interested in hiring me.

Pat suggested we each bring FOUR excerpts to the event and that they cover the following bases:
* Something from the "hot" genres of Contemporary Fiction, Suspense/Mystery/Thriller, or Young Adult Contemporary (if your voice is very youthful-sounding)
* One first-person narrator
* One third-person narrator
* One with a bit of dialogue
* Something non-fiction in an area of special interest to me (Technical/Medical/Scientific language is a plus, if you have the skill), as long as it's interesting

While lots of excerpts are available online, I wanted to go with ones from books I've actually read in their entirety for my demo because I don't want to take the chance of getting something wrong in my interpretation and performance on a demo I'm putting out there for industry insiders. This limits my choices, but fortunately, I am an avid reader.

As of today, I've chosen five passages of less than a page each from four books that I'll be timing myself reading and making cuts from. Why five and not the recommended four? Well, because I'm on the fence as to whether my voice sounds youthful enough for my excerpt from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It's a Young Adult Contemporary book that I, and a number of my 30+ friends have thoroughly enjoyed reading. If you know my voice (even better if you've read the book, too), PLEASE let me know whether you would you "buy" me narrating a book written from the point of view a teen. If the consensus is 'no,' at least my butt is covered.

Okay, enough blogging, gotta get back to the work itself. My next step is to time myself reading the excerpts and make cuts to get them under a minute each. Until next time, PPPPPPP!

Introduction

I guess it's been about five years now, since I abandoned my plans to become a professional opera singer. Now, with the encouragement of my father, I find myself in persuit of another career which centers around my voice: voiceover acting and narration.
Inspired by my new friend Corey, whom I met in an Intro to VoiceOver class taught by Scott Burns in Seattle, I'm starting this blog as a way of recording my journey, honing some of my technical skills, and networking with other aspiring and professional voiceover artists.