This week, Sarah sits down (virtually) with Renee Raudman, audiobook narrator and romance fan. Renee has performed over 300 audiobooks in the past 7 years. We talk about performing romance, how her career acting in television and film prepared her for her current success in audiobook narration. We also discuss some of her favorite books that she's performed, and her interactions with authors and readers.
Thanks to Renee Raudman, and her publicist Stephanie Fleitz for their time to make this happen!
Here are some of the books we discuss:
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Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. This podcast features “Three Ships” by a UK duo called Deviations Project, which features producer Dave Williams and violinist Oliver Lewis – they have their own Wikipedia page. This song is from their Christmas album Adeste Fiddles.
You can find their music on iTunes, Amazon, or wherever music is sold.
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Thank you SO much for this interview!! I am a huge Renee fan from the Ilona Andrews books and it was so much fun to hear her in person, so to speak! Plus some excellent suggestions for more audiobooks. As for a question for Renee, I would like to know how long it takes to get an audiobook done, including the before and after processes. Do they stay in the booth for eight hours a day until they are done?
Great interview. Renee is hands down my favorite book narrator. Blue-Eyed Devil is one of her best performances, but man oh man I love the way she reads the Kate Daniels series!
Thanks for the podcast!
Oh! I have a question. At the end of Gunmetal Magic there is a short story with Kate and Curran, but it wasn’t included in the audio version. Does Renee know why?
Does Renee ever teach people how to do this for a living? If she herself doesn’t, does she have any advice for someone interested in doing this for a living?
BTW, Renee seems like a wonderful, down-to-earth person. I loved her forthrightness. I’m also currently in Michigan and had no idea people here pronounce “car” differently than elsewhere.
Thought this was a great podcast! Really enjoyed listening to the interview. Am a big fan of Ms. Raudman – especially Illona Andrews Magic and Edge series, as well as S. Brockmann’s Troubleshooters. Would really enjoy listening to her narrating a Nora Roberts book – hopefully Brilliance/her publisher will make it happen. I was very excited that Recorded Books worked with Ilona Andrews to make sure that Magic Rises had the same narrator and hopefully this will provide even more opportunities for us to hear her narrations.
Renee Raudman is an excellent narrator. I think I have at least 1/3 or her books. Once you hear her you understand why so many authors only want her to do their books.
This was a great interview.
Maybe Renee could do the audiobooks for the Smart Bitch’s books. Wouldn’t that be fun.
Best podcast ever!
Now that I’ve had a moment to react (sorry, went completely fangirl for a few minutes after listening to the podcast—-I adore and highly respect audiobook performers!), here are a few questions I thought of for a follow-up interview:
~How do you combat vocal fatigue? As someone who sang for years (in many groups and for quite some time in a gospel quartet), I know that after a couple of hours, my voice got very thin and strained sounding. If you’re performing for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, how do you keep your voice in performance condition?
~Has an author ever responded to/contacted you after the audiobook has been produced to say that they didn’t like your performance of a certain character or of the book? How would you handle a situation like that?
~Do you have an agent? Do you bid jobs or are they brought to you to accept or decline? (I ask because, as an author, listening to the original podcast has totally given me a new idea for a story with an audiobook-narrator heroine and an author, or maybe publisher, hero, and I’m curious about all the nitty-gritty details of the business now.)
That was an absolutely lovely interview Sarah! Another with Renee would be awesome and I hope she’s able to do another sometime. I’m looking on Amazon for all the audiobooks she’s done. I’m a huge fan of the Ilona Andrews series and I’m dying to try out the audiobooks.