Interview with Narrator Joshua Story

Set in Stone audiobook is LIVE on Audible, and iBooks!

Joshua Story is the amazing narrator who brought this book to life in such a spectacular way. Joshua is a rockstar voice actor! I’m blown away by how many distinct voices and accents he created. Set in Stone is a big, epic story with a huge cast of characters. Joshua nailed every one of them. Men, women, Scottish accents, British accents, German accents, American accents. He did it all and made it look easy.

So I interviewed Joshua to ask him about his work on the story, and his work as a narrator, and his favorite character in the book.

I hope you enjoy his responses as much as I did.

Frank: How did you get into audiobook narration?

Joshua: I actually started with audio plays and fan dubbings on a website called Behind the Voice Actors (dot) com. It was the lack of availability of those gigs that led me to searching for something else.

After watching quite a few youtuber blogs, it eventually led me to audiobooks on ACX. The funny thing is that I started with narrating romance novels as they were so abundant. Before you ask though… I no longer voice those. I did about 8 or 9 of them in total and I just got bored and burned out with them. Now a days, I try to mix it up a little doing science fiction, fantasy, apocalypse, and mystery novels.

Frank: What aspect of your work creating audiobooks is least understood by most people?

Joshua: Hmmm, good question.

A lot of people don’t realize how much work actually goes into creating an audiobook. They think that we just sit there and read off a script or book page and cash a check. The truth of the matter is we’re just ordinary people, and like ordinary people we make mistakes.

As a matter of fact, we make a lot of mistakes.

After staring at a screen for hours on end you start becoming either tongue tied or find yourself getting complacent. Its eye strain, its exhaustion, its everything from mouth noise to your mind wandering that will cause you to make mistakes. Those mistakes cost you time and energy to fix.

Time is a huge variable when you work freelance and have to rush to meet a deadline. If you’re doing the editing yourself, like I do, you can easily estimate about 3 hours of work to each finished hour of the book. What I mean is that if a book is projected to be around 12 hours in length, you can expect to put in around 36 working hours minimum before its complete. That’s of course assuming you don’t have further mistakes that were overlooked until the rough draft was complete.

I’m sorry, that really didn’t answer your question did it? To put it bluntly, the least understood aspect of the audiobook is the amount of work that it takes to produce, which is the reason it takes a while to ship out.

Frank: What is the most challenging aspect of your work?

Joshua: I would have to say that not losing my mind while editing is the most difficult aspect. Its the little details that will drive you insane and I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my delivery. I think you can agree with me on that one.

There were a couple books in the past where I just didn’t feel right about the pacing or delivery of the book several chapters in and immediately deleted the tracks after putting in a day or two’s worth of work, only to go back and re-record them. I must have redone the first 5 chapters in your book twice before I was happy with it.

Frank: Do you have a favorite character in Set in Stone?

Joshua: [Laughs] I have a few, but my favorite would definitely have to be Kilian the Water Moccasin. I just like his general carefree attitude. It takes a lot to get him all riled up, but when you do, look out!

Frank: Do you voice other things besides audiobooks?

Joshua: I’m actually glad you brought that up. I do work on other projects.

Audiobooks were never my first choice, though I do enjoy telling stories. Its the characters that I get attached to that keep bringing me back. The authors might have something to do with it too. [wink]

I love embodying different roles. I’m a voice actor first, and most recently was fortunate to be cast for some decent roles in pretty large projects. For any of your fans that are gamers, I just voiced a character by the name of Hunter Hannya in the M.O.B.A. game Heroes of Newerth. Its a game in the same category of League of Legends.

My other most recent role is as Commandant Deenlark in a new animated Star Wars series. We’re working on the pilot for it. It will follow the new comics about Thrawn and his introduction to the Empire. I try to keep busy as much as a I can be with audiobooks, animation, or video games with the occasional commercial work thrown in.

Frank: Where can people find out more about you and the other books you’ve narrated?

Joshua: Log onto Facebook and steer over to my page, (Joshua Story – Behind the Mic) There you can stay up-to-date on my audiobook releases and all the other projects I’m currently working on. I post pretty regularly there so you won’t be left in the dark.

Thanks, Joshua!

And yes, we’re already preparing to begin production of A Stone’s Throw – book two in the Petralist!

Pick up your copy of Set in Stone audiobook on Audible!

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