Dearly Beloved,

DID YOU KNOW my novel Chokeville is still available as an ebook and audiobook? Miraculously, these infinitely reproducible digital files have not yet run out of stock, but the internet could get erased at any moment so you should get your copy before it’s too late:

💋 fireland.com 💋

You know, it just occurred to me I could tell you how I made this rad audiobook. Okay, let’s do that.

Once I decided to put Chokeville out myself, I got it in my head to do an audio version, mostly because I’ve been obsessed with the audiobook of Mark Leyner’s Et Tu, Babe for my entire life. He narrates it himself in his little Jersey accent and it’s like the most comforting weighted blanket ever invented.

I didn’t want to narrate my book, however, because most of the main characters are women and that would be weird. So I went looking for someone else to do it for me.

This led me to ACX, which is Amazon’s frankly kind of low-rent service that connects writers to narrators. You basically put up a notice on this primitive message board describing your book and what kind of voice you’re looking for, then include a little excerpt for people to read as an audition.

You’ve got two money options. The most common one is you share a percentage of your audiobook sales with the narrator. In the sad sweaty world of self-published Amazon books, this is not typically a profitable endeavor for anyone involved.

The other option is you pay the narrator upfront. An hourly rate, not based on how long it takes them to do the work, but how long the finished audiobook is. (This is called PFH, per finished hour, though I kept accidentally calling it PSH, philip seymour hoffman.) So I posted a thing on ACX that said: Hey I’m willing to pay such-and-such PFH and my book is this many words so this is actual real money on the table.

What this meant is I got a ton of auditions.

And, you know, nothing but respect to the hardworking voice actor community, but most of them were rough as shit.

First off, iffy sound quality, like recorded on a wax cylinder while they were at a petting zoo. Secondly, it was like they’d never read a sentence aloud before? Or heard a human being say words? Like they were phonetically sounding out each syllable and hoping for the best?

The third issue was my fault. I said that my book was “funny” and I was looking for someone who could “nail the comedic tone.”

This was a mistake. Most people tried wacky voices and borderline offensive accents and basically ended every sentence with a laugh track.

But! There was one audition that was great. Cool, smooth, natural. Her name was Nicole Fikes and I looked her up and sure enough, she wasn’t doing this as a side hustle but as a career. She had her own recording booth and fancy equipment and this whole meticulous process that I adored.

So we cut a deal and went to work. She did a test-read of the first few chapters and I realized the key to the Chokeville tone was to read it straight, as if it was a normal thriller or mystery or the like. My comedic voice—and actual voice—is pretty deadpan. And the events of the story might be goofy or absurd but it’s all very serious to the characters who are living it. So: no laugh track.

Once we got that locked in, and agreed upon the correct pronunciation of all my ridiculous five-dollar words, she recorded the rest of the book.

I wasn’t paying enough to micromanage every line-read, but I didn’t really want to. I was happy to—for the first time ever on this project—cede creative control, and trust Nicole’s ability to bring the many, many characters of this thing to life.

There are a lot of parts that are different from how I would’ve read them, but they’re better than I would’ve read them. My favorite moments are probably when she shifts into a quiet, emotional mode, giving scenes this dramatic heft that may not even be on the page (my bad).

It was all going gangbusters until the final act. There’s this big showdown on a ship that involves a lot of new characters and a convoluted card game, and I liked it fine enough in text form. But when I listened to it…reader, I had a wee meltdown. Hearing it aloud made all its overstuffed contrivances so horrifically obvious. I couldn’t even finish listening to it—still haven’t.

So I stripped the whole thing down and built it back up, then had her re-record it. This was only like four months ago! This was way beyond last minute!

But I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. I think that stretch of the story is Nicole’s best work, and the whole last act feels like it finally clicks.

ANYWAYS Chokeville is now on Audible and Apple Books. If you’ve listened to it (and have something nice to say!!) please leave a review. If you haven’t listened to it, I have some Audible promo codes (a few for US readers, a bunch for UK readers) that will let you read it for free, so hit me up if you want one.

Okay that’s it for this month. Hope you’re hangin’ tough like NKOTB.

xo
josh