Susan Sarah here, welcoming our special guest at Word Wenches today: audiobook narrator Wanda McCaddon, who has recently recorded the audiobook of LADY MACBETH. The set (9 CDs, 13 glorious hours! *g*) is available to order directly from the audio publisher, Tantor Unabridged Audiobooks (www.tantor.com) and can also be ordered here: Lady Macbeth at Amazon.com (*please note Amazon's error in attribution – the CDs are narrated by Wanda McCaddon, not Josephine Bailey).
Originally from Staffordshire, England, Wanda now resides on the west coast. Her various careers include reporter, professor, stage and screen actress and audiobook narrator, and she has earned 16 Earphone Awards and has often been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices. Wanda has narrated over 600 audiobooks under her own and other names, including Donada Peters and Nadia May. Some of her releases include Karleen Koen’s Dark Angels and Through A Glass Darkly; Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice; Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre; and countless other classics as well as nonfiction and recent novels. Her latest audio release from Tantor is my own Lady Macbeth.
Listen to an audio clip from Lady Macbeth here.
I was thrilled to learn that Lady Macbeth would be released on CD--and a bit nervous about all the Gaelic and unfamiliar terms the narrator would have to pronounce. I contacted Tantor and offered to help, and they put Wanda in touch with me. I was impressed by her gorgeous voice -- as well as her careful attention to detail and sensitivity toward the needs of the story and characters.
I’m listening to the audiobook now, and it’s superb. Wanda’s rendition of Lady Macbeth is vibrant, subtle, and powerful. She adds a rich dimension to the story in ways that a writer, dealing with words on a page, can only imagine. I’m honored by her interpretation of my characters and story -- and it’s such a treat to sit back and listen!
I asked Wanda a few questions, which she graciously answered for us. Here are her responses ....
How I became a narrator: I began out as a newspaper reporter in England, came to the USA, started on a PhD in English, taught at UC San Diego for three years, dropped out and became an actor. Doing readings for the local PBS radio station, in 1980 I met someone who turned me on to a couple in LA who were actually paying for people to record books on cassette. That was Books on Tape – basically a kitchen table operation at that time – and they were the pioneers. They paid $25 a recorded hour for men, and $15 for women!
How audiobooks get done: In LA, New York, and a few other places, recording is done in studios, with the narrator at the mike in a booth, and an editor on the other side of the glass stopping them if they make a mistake or suggesting a change of emphasis or intonation. I would HATE that! I’m afraid I would be arguing with them all the time.
I am a holdover from the pioneer days. I work in a sound-proofed studio in my home – a monument to all the developments in recording over the last 28 years – cluttered with microphones, cassette recorders, DAT machines, ADATs, computers, M-boxes, hard drives and gizmos. My recordings go on CD or DVD to the publisher to be proof listened, and they send me a list of clicks, pops, extraneous noises and (heaven forfend) mistakes, to be redone.
How I set about narrating a book: Most narrators “prep” a book – pre-read it to familiarize themselves with plot and characters, check tricky pronunciations etc. I don’t if I can help it (Lady M was an exception on account of all the Gaelic!), because a) I’m very good at tricky pronunciations off the cuff and most foreign languages, and b) I want to retain the spontaneity and excitement that is part of reading a book for the first time. I want that to come through in my narration (actually, even with Lady M I just “skim-read” it – just looking for names and Gaelic – and then consulted Susan by phone).
Voices and interpretation: Some narrators (and some publishers) prefer a straight read without voicing the characters (in the trade, “unvoiced reading”). I’m in the other camp. To begin with, in an audiobook something has to take the place of visual cues the reader would see on the page-- paragraph breaks, quotation marks etc.-- to alert them to who is speaking. And luckily, I can’t help it – when I read a work of fiction I hear different voices.
The narrator’s job is to interpret to the ear all the author has packed into the words – what I call “teasing out the nuances.” It’s collaborative, and largely non-intellectual, and when the writer and narrator are in synch it can be astonishing. With Lady M it didn’t hurt that I am half Scots, know the land and the people and the history well and can do a passable Scottish accent!
But that was only half the equation; the scenes were so vivid, I was so aware of sounds and smells and shadows and voices, of the fierceness of heart beat. Lady M just battered her way into me in the first scene, and that was it! It was an exhilarating ride, and not always an easy one. I’m highly emotional, and many times I found myself in tears -- a real pain in the butt for a narrator, as it means breaking off until the hoarseness clears and the nose stops running!
What kinds of books do I most enjoy? Fiction (well written!) is most fun, and most challenging because of the characters. History next, because I’m learning new and (hopefully) interesting things – although I rarely remember them beyond the next recording session. Biography last, and only if I like the subject.
Currently I’m lucky enough to be re-recording classics – Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Thackeray – what bliss!
Many, many thanks, Wanda, for visiting Word Wenches! This is fascinating stuff, and it's great to learn more about the audiobook world from such a gifted and knowledgeable insider. What a great job you have -- reading for a living would be divine.
Please help us welcome Wanda here at Word Wenches (wwwowww!). If you have more questions about audiobooks, feel free to ask! She'll be checking in to say hello.
~Susan Sarah