Beginnings and The Covenant of Wickersham Hollow

The Covenant of Wickersham Hollow by Thomas A. Bradley became available for sale on audible on December 4th 2019 and is soon to be released on iTunes and Amazon. It joins two other works, “13 Echoes” by Thomas A. Bradley and “Lovers In the Woods” by Robin Austin Reed, with a third on it’s way, “The Diamond Tree” by Michael Matson. All of these have been a pleasure to work on and the authors wonderful people to work with.

If I had to rank them I couldn’t, so I’ll just recap them and my experience performing them in the order that they were completed.

Lovers in the Woods was the first audio book I did, really pushing at the boundaries of what I was capable of. I had never produced an audio book before, and this was a fair-sized project with many characters and a couple of accents. It was kind of like jumping into the ocean and learning how to properly swim after you hit the water. Notice I used “properly swim” in that comparison, because while we can all read, reading aloud and performing are slightly different. Do I think I did a great job? No. I think I did a good job for my abilities and my studio setup. Was it a great story? Romances are not my “cup of tea”, but I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of doing my best.

13 Echoes by Thomas A. Bradley is a collection of horror/thriller short stories in the vein of The Twilight Zone and was book number 2. I performed the audition late at night and had a blast doing it. While not a Horror/Thriller fan (although I do like The Twilight Zone) I love the short story format. Getting the reader into the setting and involved with the characters in just a handful of pages is not an easy thing to do and I loved the idea of performing 13 them. Fortunately Thomas loved what I did on the audition and asked me to do the book; I jumped at the chance. Each is a story that might be started at the beginning of a commute and have completed before arriving at work. They’re all really good, but I love hearing which stories listener’s like the most. My favourite is “The Last Transaction”.

Thomas and I struck up a good relationship, working closely together we were both melancholy when the work was done. When he expressed an interest in me performing his best-seller “The Convenant of Wickersham Hollow”, a large complex work, well I WANTED to… but had to see what I was getting into first. “Lovers in the Woods” was also a large work and I didn’t know if I was up to the task. Of course that means that in order to grow I needed to take on such works; but I had to do them well, and I certainly did not want to let Thomas down.

After reading the book I had my answer. Yes. I would do this work. I loved the characters, the story was great, and Thomas and I worked well together. It was while producing this book that I realized my “studio” was not adequate to the task. Better control over the sound was required and I set about building a space that, while not soundproof, was certainly devoid of echoes and reflections. This would allow for a broader range of emotion and I would no longer have to “work the mic” as much as I did with the previous two books. For what went into the new studio see the blog entry about it’s construction.

The Covenant of Wickersham Hollow is just under 10 hours in length spanning 41 chapters, and it was a hell (pun intended) of a lot of fun to perform. I got to know the characters as I hope the listeners will, and when the work was done, felt a little empty spot where they had taken up residence. The new studio/booth made for much better sound and I went back and re-recorded some chapters that I thought needed to have the dead-space to improve listener enjoyment.

Book four is “The Diamond Tree” by Michael Matson. Michael, like Robin Austin Reed, contacted me out of the blue and asked if I would narrate his book, a fairy-tale that any parent could read aloud to their children before bed. It’s a wonderful story of adventure and growing up, of finding your calling and doing the right things because they are the right things to do, even if they were begun for reasons other than that. The Diamond Tree was the first book to be completely produced in the new booth/studio. At just under one hour in length the story will captivate the younger listener and bring a smile to any parent enjoying it with their child.

I did this recap more for me than anyone who may actually stumble upon it. Knowing where you’ve been helps in finding your way forward. Now I’m off to upload an audition for a book that, if I get the job, will once more push my boundaries and help me grow as a voice actor, while bringing stories to life for listeners.

Keep Moving Forward.