Show Notes

• Career as a child actor
• Julia’s introduction to audiobook narration
• The process of narration
• The connection between a narrator and her listeners
• Narrating her own books as opposed to other authors’ books
• Guest procurement, and the introduction of a “special guest”
• A truly remarkable performance!

Connect With Julia Whelan

Additional Resources

✩ Book: My Oxford Year

✩ Book: Thank You For Listening

Summary

Julia Whelan is a screenwriter, lifelong actor, author, and the audiobook narrator of over 500 titles. Julia takes us inside her recording booth to reveal the connection that gets created between a narrator and her listeners. She also delivers a special performance that you don’t want to miss!

Full Transcript

Brian
Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Julia Whelan is a screenwriter, lifelong actor and the audiobook narrator of over 500 titles. She has won numerous awards, including being named Audible’s Narrator of the Year. Audiophile Magazine has given Julia the Lifetime Achievement Golden Voice Award and her performance of her own debut novel, the international best seller, “My Oxford Year” earned Julia the Society of Voice Arts Award. Her latest novel, “Thank You for Listening” was the best of 2022 pick at Amazon, Audible and NPR, as well as a Goodreads Choice Award nominee. The New Yorker Magazine calls Julia “the Adele of audiobooks.” She is also a Grammy nominated audiobook director, a former writing tutor, a half decent amateur baker, and a certified tea sommelier. Welcome, Julia, thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Julia
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Brian

Julia, you became involved in children’s theatre at a very young age; at the age of five. You moved to LA to pursue acting at the age of around 10 or 11, I think, and by the time you were 15, you had landed a role in the acclaimed television series “Once and Again.” What was it that appealed to you about acting and what caused you to pursue it with vigor at such a young age?

Julia

That’s a good question. I think it’s something that I’ve thought about, especially as you get older, and you look back, and you tend to like “narrativize” your life choices in a way, but I think for me, I’ve always had this storytelling impulse. I was an only child so I would write things for myself to perform for myself. And for acting, I think the appeal was that I wanted to see the world through as many different eyes as I could. We come into just one body and one situation, one circumstance, and that just felt really limiting for me. I always wanted to have the experience of being as many different people as I could so that curiosity spurred me on. I was not a kid that just wanted to be famous or have that attention on me; that actually made me pretty uncomfortable. It was just this kind of story curiosity.

Brian

You were an accomplished actress, at some point your career took a turn and you discovered the vocation of audiobook narration. How were you introduced to that opportunity and what was it like as you transitioned from acting to narrating audiobooks?

Julia

At the height of my success, I left the business and I went to college, because there was more that I wanted to learn and I had been working for so long I wanted to devote myself to other things. So I went to school, and coincidentally a very good friend of mine at at college, her mother was an audiobook producer and director. At my graduation she came up to me – she knew my background as an actor and she also knew that I had this new degree in English and creative writing – she’s the one who said, you might actually be really good at this, and more importantly, you might enjoy it. At the time I thought I would go back to LA and start acting again. I understood what she was saying but I’d never listened to an audiobook before. I didn’t even know what they were. It seemed so far away from what I was trying to do but when I graduated and went back to Hollywood, the business had changed a lot; I had been gone for four years. It was almost like I had to start over. I remember calling her and saying okay, please explain to me how this works. I would be reading it into a microphone, that’s what this is? I put together a demo for her and she was able to cast me in a couple of young adult novels at the time, which were just beginning to boom. So luckily for me, they needed younger voices and I was able to start slowly getting books and getting cast in books and it was just amazing. From the first time, the first hour I sat down with a book in the booth, I realized that she was totally right. This was everything that I loved doing together in one and it was incredible.

Brian

What was it that attracted you to that beyond the opportunity to earn money and have a job?

Julia

I think going back to the original answer; seeing the world through different eyes. For me, it was the literature sensibility that I have and the storytelling; the craft part of storytelling that I had so enjoyed in college blended really perfectly with acting and getting to play characters. The cool thing about audiobooks is you’re playing all the characters in the book so you get to play characters that you would never play on camera. No one’s going to ask me to play the Spanish grandfather; I’m not going to get to do that but in audiobooks I can and as an actor, that’s a buffet. It’s so exciting.

Brian

You don’t have to grow up, you get to be that only child and the kid that you were.

Julia

Exactly. So I enjoyed myself. Essentially what I do, I’ve been training for this since I was two.

Brian

Audiobooks aren’t new, of course, and they were new to you at the time, but I think they were first introduced – you probably know this now – in the 1930s. They were originally produced on vinyl records. Obviously – and you do know this because you’re an insider in the business – they’ve exploded in popularity over the last five to ten years. What factors have fueled this heightened attraction to audiobooks?

Julia

I think the convenience of them, first of all. When we moved from CDs and books on tape – as you said, vinyl and then books on tape – and then to CDs, once it became digital and you could have it in your pocket on your phone, I think that changed the accessibility of the entire medium. And that was about…I think Audible was acquired by Amazon right around 2008, 2010 – don’t quote me on that – but I would say by 2010 to 2012 we were rolling. We were recording all the time as narrators and there was a lot of work to be done as there was suddenly the demand for it.

Brian

I had a quote from Jeff Bezos – and this was 2013, I don’t know if it coincided with when Amazon bought Audible – but Jeff, in their annual report of 2013 said Audible “makes it possible for you to read when your eyes are busy.” I thought that really nailed it. I think about where I listen to audiobooks, which is in the car primarily, and where my wife listens to audiobooks, which is kind of like everywhere. Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk about that later, but it definitely changed how books are consumed. I remember somebody having a debate about whether you say that you read a book if you listened to it? Have you heard that discussion?

Julia

Yes, I have. I’m of the camp that if you’re listening, you’re reading. It’s a little gatekeeping to me and also a little ablest to tell people who are listening to a book that they didn’t read it somehow. I don’t like that. I think any way that we can consume stories is beneficial.

Brian

I love that and wholeheartedly agree. Julia, I read that you’ve narrated as many as 70 books a year, although I think the number is lower today. Just by comparison – and I’m a voracious reader – I read about a book a week and that’s a big undertaking. I can’t even imagine the effort to not only narrate a book a week or more, but also to prepare at such a frenzied pace for that volume of work. How did you accomplish that and how do you – whatever level or pace at which you’re narrating today – how do you accomplish that?

Julia

I don’t recommend that. That was…so many narrators, we have to focus on volume because unfortunately, in the way that the industry has been set up, is we’re paid by the finished hour. So how long the book ends up being, not how long it takes to record or prep. So for every book that you perform, you have also prepped the book ahead of time; so I’ve read every book at least twice. There are plenty of narrators who have recorded much more than I have. I actually don’t think it’s necessarily something…I’m proud of it – I think we should be proud of it – but I don’t like that the industry has set it up so that you have to record 70 or 80 books a year to keep your head above water. It’s not a terribly well compensated job, especially in the world of entertainment and particularly voice-over. But it did acquaint me with the job very quickly. This is a job that you learn by doing and I was certainly doing a lot of it, especially across all categories and genre. Every four days you’d be in a different narrative arc and a different story. It’s challenging, but very rewarding and I learned a lot but it’s creatively taxing.

Brian

Do you think there was a deterioration in the experience for you? I’m not talking about the finished product – I’m sure you poured yourself into the finished product – the audiobook, whether you were doing 30 a year or 70 a year – but I wonder, it seems like there’s at least an aspect of it that’s fulfilling to you in being able to experience the book yourself? Is that the case?

Julia

That’s very accurate.

Brian

So if you’re doing one plus books a week that’s different than doing a book every other week, for example, not unlike consuming it, by the way. So if I’m listening to a book at 1.3, that’s a different experience than listening to it at 2.0 or 1.7. It just strikes me as being that same phenomenon if you’re just pushing through books to get books done, which I certainly understand from a production standpoint.

Julia

I think that, honestly, I think I became a better narrator when I was doing fewer of them, like I needed to be doing that many as a training ground. But once I really had the skill set and I had my toolbox assembled, I wanted to then be able to take the time with the books that I do, and be able to bring myself kind of fresh and full to each performance. That’s a luxury that I had to just work my way towards, but it’s so much more gratifying when I can truly have that time with the material.

Brian

I can see that. I have some appreciation for the process. Back in 2020, I hired a narrator to record an audiobook for a book that I had written a few years earlier. I wanted to get it done quickly, which is why I hired somebody, actually. I had written it and then seven, eight, nine years later wanted the audiobook. I wanted it done really quickly and didn’t feel like I could invest the time myself to create that. It was an incredible process. It started by – and I’ll always remember this – listening to 11 or 12 people who sent demos of the exact same paragraph in the book. I had listened to audiobooks and audio programs for a long time but I never, until that point, realized how varied our voices, accents and styles were. You talked a little bit about the process, but can you share more with our listeners and viewers about what’s involved from the time that you agree to take on a project to the moment you sit in front of a microphone to record it? Because I think people have a sense of, okay, you’re in front of a microphone and you’re reading the book. But I know, just based on my limited experience, that there’s a lot of back and forth between the narrator and the author around pronunciation of names and other things. Help us to understand that.

Julia

Sure. I’m actually going to take it back one step further, which is before I ever enter into the process. I tend to do mostly traditional publishing therefore, there’s a producer involved who is casting me. I think that if narrators are unsung heroes, I think producers don’t get nearly enough credit for being able to match an author’s voice with a narrator’s; they know their narrators so well. They know what people’s strengths are; they’ll get a book and they’ll be reading it and they’ll just hear certain narrator’s voice pop into their head, or they’ll have to provide samples to an author to choose from. That skill is magic to me. Then when they offer me the book, if I have time, I usually book about four months out at the minimum, and we set recording dates and then I’m getting drafts of the book as it’s coming. Usually by that point, they’re mostly final, but they’re not recordable final; you’re waiting for those final copy edits to come in but I can at least get a sense of the book. It’s in mostly its final form. At that point, I read the book through and I’m keeping two lists simultaneously. One is a word list of pronunciations that I will go back to the producer and or the author with. Some of these words are author invention, especially in fiction, it could be fantasy, and so there are just planets…it’s a completely different world that I’ve got to build. The other thing I’m keeping track of are the characters and is the author giving any vocal inflections, are there any accents I need to know about, any biographical details that are important. From there I build a cast. At that point, I sort of turn into a director and I am building my troupe of characters in this book and how they relate to each other and trying to build a good listening experience for someone down the road. I get all the answers to my questions back. At that point, by the time I actually sit in the booth I know what I’m doing, I’m ready to go. I try not to do more. Again, this is cutting back a little bit, I try not to do more than two finished hours a day, which is about four hours in the booth. I think books probably average 12 hours, maybe so that’s via a week or so [that] I’ve usually got the raw audio that gets sent off to the production company. They listen, there’s a proofer who sends me corrections when I have screwed up – because I have inevitably screwed up – I do the corrections, I send them back to them. They splice them into the audio, they sweeten it, they master it, they make it sound beautiful. Usually, hopefully, it’s a day and date audio so the audiobook is simultaneously released with the E and paperback or hardcover. And that’s how a bill becomes a law.

Brian

That’s a fascinating process. I’m kind of a geek, certainly when it comes to books, so I really appreciate you sharing that. Full disclosure, I read primarily nonfiction, mostly business books, personal development books, a lot of health books, and some biographies but what I enjoy when I read fiction – and I’ve had the opportunity to read both of the books that you’ve written – and the biggest difference, and it just jumps right out, is the vivid pictures that get created in my mind when I read words on paper. I’m talking about just reading now, but with audiobooks it happens too and that doesn’t happen at all with nonfiction or with business books, [but] with biographies you get some of that. But I think good writers write in such a way that these crystal-clear images get created in our minds that really bring the story to life. I love that and I should allow myself the gift of reading and listening to more fiction because it’s obviously a totally different experience. Audiobooks help us to create that picture too, with the added dynamic of voice. As an audiobook narrator, Julia, what are you trying to do or add in your work? What role do you play in telling the story?

Julia

It depends on the book. I think there are exceptions to all of these answers. But I think primarily, as an author myself, I always look first and foremost at what the author is trying to accomplish and how I can help them accomplish that, whether we’ve got a mystery with a thriller, we’ve got romance, I’m going to be sensitive to their pacing. I’m going to be sensitive to any foreshadowing that they’ve put in there. I see myself as taking on an authorial role where I’m trying to construct the experience for the listener on behalf of the author. I think, also for me, the actor part of me wants to give people a feeling of total immersion in that these are real characters, that these are real conversations happening, that there’s emotional integrity and that, at the end of the day, they’ve experienced something. They have, as you’ve said, dropped into a setting with new people and are seeing the world through different eyes – or ears this case; that’s what I’m trying to accomplish. It really does activate the both of those parts of me pretty equally.

Brian

You talked about how acting plays into it. I actually had the thought as you were talking, I wonder – I don’t know anything about acting – but it seems like if you’re acting in a television series or in a movie, the director or the writer, the people who created this, have some vision of what they want it to look like so actors come in and fit into that vision. I wonder if it’s the same with a book, or if you have the opportunity to take these words on paper, and maybe create something that ends up…Walt Disney uses a term called “plussing.” I wonder if there’s an opportunity to “plus” the words that are on paper and actually create maybe an enhanced experience. Do you ever get that feedback from the authors – boy, you did this with a section or a chapter or with the entire book and just took it to a place that I really hadn’t contemplated in the way that you created through your characters? Does that make sense?

Julia

It does, and I have received that feedback. That’s obviously really gratifying and very complimentary. Again, it’s understanding that it’s a different medium, it’s a different experience of the book, like I should be bringing something else to this experience; where people can just read the book. It’s the first adaptation, really, of a book. So I take that responsibility seriously. But I definitely have friends who are authors, and especially people who I’ve done multiple books for…there’s one author who will just flat out say, I wasn’t sure if that scene worked, but I was just like, Julia will fix it. There’s that sense of it’ll be okay, we’ll make it work which, again, is very, very gratifying. But I also think that, to your point that it’s different from on-camera acting, I don’t want to mistake or conflate those two. Because you’re right, that when you’re doing on-camera you are responsible for your part and everything else is just kind of spinning around you. I do feel a little bit more like a director in this situation where I am blocking. I usually don’t start recording a scene until I really imagine it and I place the characters in the scene. I feel like I’m staging it, I’m working with different levels, especially in dialogue; who is angry or who is being sarcastic, giving that rhythm and a sense of pacing to each scene in the way that I think a director would. So it is wearing a different hat for sure.

Brian

And you’re playing all the roles so you have total control over that.

Julia

Like a one-woman repertory company, yes.

Brian

Julia, what do you hope that people think or say about you after having listened to a book that you’ve narrated?

Julia

That’s a good question. I hope they felt something. I hope if it was meant to make you laugh, I hope it made you laugh; if it was meant as escape, I hope it was escape; if you shed a tear, I hope it was cathartic for you. I hope that you felt something. I think that is the point of literature. I think that’s the point of performance. I think it’s to connect us all in some common human experience.

Brian

Yes, that’s great. You are one of the most prolific, most sought after narrators in the audiobook business. What qualities separate the most successful audiobook narrators from the other 99 percent?

Julia

I don’t know. I’ve been in casting positions before and the thing that I used to say was that I wasn’t casting a voice, I was casting a brain, and that’s only in so far as to explain that. It’s not just about having a nice voice. It’s really about your particular take, your interpretation of something. I think the people who are very successful at this are people who have a take the same way that a writer has what we call voice. You pick up a Hemingway novel – you know it’s a Hemingway novel; or the way that a director has an eye – we know what a Scorsese film is like. I think that, again, it’s a strong sense of interpretation without taking it over. It’s a tough balance. I think a lot of people come on strong and they make it this, excuse me, step aside, I’m acting here. You’ve got to constantly be balancing the author’s intention with your own, but the listener trusts your take, your interpretation; they want to know how you tell this story. That’s my sense.

Brian 

What about from the standpoint of the authors? You mentioned that there are certain authors who…or maybe this was from my research and I’m making it up that you mentioned it, but I know there are certain authors that want you to narrate their books – I think I even read or maybe heard that – authors who have catalogs of audiobooks already and have requested, if not you, other narrators that they go back and re-record because they like you or another audiobook narrator. What kind of feedback do you get from authors who hire you again and again because they enjoy what you’ve done?

Julia

Well, again, I think this goes back to the casting. This goes back to a producer just understanding that there might be…I mean, I will say this, the writers who I record for over and over again are also people I have come to love dearly. We share a certain view of the world, we share a voice in the same way that certain actors and directors work together a lot. There’s just shared sensibility. I feel that…I think there’s definitely the sense of like, this person is capable at what she does, people like listening to her, I trust her with my book. But I think then there’s something deeper, which is when an author tells me, you were the voice inside my head when I was writing this book and I didn’t even know it but as soon as I heard you, it was like, you pulled the story out of my brain. That’s just one of those amazing moments; celestial confluences of two creative energies coming together. I don’t want to be like woo-woo about it but there’s definitely something really magical about that.

Brian

That has to be incredibly gratifying for you to get that kind of feedback.

Julia

Yes and it’s very exciting. This is such an isolating job. I mean, you don’t have a lot of moments of intersection so even if it comes delayed, even after the fact that you get that kind of feedback, that’s a really beautiful thing.

Brian

Yes. So I want to segue into your books. You narrated hundreds of books before writing and narrating your own books. How did it feel to to narrate your own books, “My Oxford Year” and “Thank You For Listening,” and how did those two experiences compare to all the other narration you’ve done?

Julia

I started out…I was a writer, like I said, that’s what I went to school for. I was planning on just doing that and then this job sort of just came into my life. When I was first starting narration, again, doing 70 books a year, being in different authors, voices and worlds and their heads, every four days switching up books, I could not keep my own author voice intact long enough to write. So I had to stop writing for about three or four years while I was first getting this job, getting my legs under me. Then once I got better at both, I could sort of balance them. But with “My Oxford Year” it was the first time I’d recorded one of my own things. I, first of all, had like debut author kind of impostor syndrome happening anyway so I could not turn off my editorial brain. I was in the booth recording and I would just see a sentence that bothered me and just be like, Oh, why is that in there? Or why did I…I’ve said something the same way three different times, why am I doing this? So it was very hard to stop being an author and just be a narrator. For the second book, having had such a traumatic experience in the booth with “My Oxford Year” I made sure I read every draft aloud and used it really as part of my editorial process so that by the time I was actually sitting down and performing it I was able to relax into it. It’s also a much more fun book. It’s a Rom-com; it’s got banter, it has some deeper stuff, obviously. But “My Oxford Year” is challenging in that it’s emotional. It also has like 13 British characters that I was juggling, so it’s technically more difficult. Recording “Thank You For Listening” was, honestly, just joy.

Brian

It was different, you’re right. The spirit of “My Oxford Year” is an emotional, heavier book, whereas the “Thank You For Listening” has, like you said, a lot of banter, a little more whimsical, funny, playful, so I could see where the narrating experience would be different for that. I want to ask you about something. Your first book, “My Oxford Year” a story, of course, of an American from Ohio, Ella Duran, and the character in the book studied at Oxford – thus the title – you also studied at Oxford. Your second book, “Thank You For Listening,” is the story of a childhood actor, Swanee Chester, who became an audiobook narrator. You see where I’m going with this?

Julia

Well, I will push back on both of them but go ahead. Set up your question. [Laughter]

Brian

So given the parallels, and in spite of the obvious differences – I see you’re not wearing an eye patch for example – one of the things I very quickly wondered – and I read “My Oxford Year” in sequential order, as they were published, “My Oxford Year” first, then “Thank You For Listening” – but I wondered, very quickly, how much overlap existed between your life and the lives of Ella from Ohio and Swanee Chester. Are these books autobiographical on some level or at all, other than just the obvious?

Julia

So yes, okay. To take the first one, “My Oxford Year,” there’s really nothing autobiographical about “My Oxford Year” other than, yes, I spent a year at Oxford. But nothing from my life was in that book, except for the kind of key question that the character is grappling with, which is: is the dream that you’ve had your whole life open for review, at any point? Like, at what point in working towards something do you stop and say, is this actually what I want? That felt like a very real thing that happens in your mid to late 20s, and was something that had happened for me, so writing it, at a bit of a remove, having gone through the process, I kind of just went back and had her go through the process. But the actual stakes and everything she’s dealing with, nothing autobiographical. For “Thank You For Listening,” knowing that people were going to automatically assume that character was me, I tried to differentiate in as many ways as I could – she’s actually not a child actor, for instance – that’s very important to me. I think, again, it’s like something that, for me, it’s less about what happens to the characters and more about who they are becoming. So another pivotal point in my life was when I had it with Hollywood and was like, I like this lifestyle being a narrator and being a writer affords me, a lifestyle I like so much better than being at the mercy of the grind of the business and having my hand out constantly looking for on-camera work. And to me, I was fine with it. I still had some lingering anger over the fact that I couldn’t make that career happen the way that I have made everything else in my life happen. But I thought, I’m okay with it because it was my choice. What if it hadn’t been my choice? What if the rug had just been pulled out from under me? And to me, that was an interesting kind of thought experiment and that’s at the core of that character’s journey. So they’re all rooted in experiences that I’ve had and moments of growth in my life but they’re not autobiographical.

Brian

That makes total sense. I’d like to bring up something that I’ve never spoken about before on the show. It’s what I call guest procurement. This is moving now away from your books, obviously. Guest procurement is how a guest comes to be on our show, on LifeExcellence. Julia, this is an area for me that at times is transactional; where I contact a prospective guest or her manager representative and she comes on the show, very transactional. But there are other times where the guest procurement experience is fascinating and exciting. It’s happened enough that I’ve wondered how do you inject some of these behind the scenes stories into the podcast; I’ve thought about maybe having separate podcasts where I talk about some of these, what I call guest procurement experiences, and haven’t done any of that before now.

Julia

We’re in a pilot episode right now?

Brian

I guess we would be a pilot episode, we get to be pioneers in this. So the latter, this notion of being an exciting and having the story behind the scenes leading up to us being here on the podcast is certainly the case with you. It also involves my wife, Heidi, which again, is a unique thing for the podcast. It’s so cool on a number of levels. Heidi grew up…and we’ve been married a long time, we were high school sweethearts. I’m a voracious reader, as I mentioned before, and Heidi historically has not been a reader for different reasons. When our kids were growing up, she had no time for anything other than raising our kids, especially not things like reading. In recent years, now that our children are all grown, she has more discretionary time. She started to both read and listen to books, which I’m thrilled with; it’s just opened up an entirely new world for her and she absolutely loves it. At some point – and this is why I’m bringing it up with you – she stumbled into books that you narrated and became absolutely enthralled with your voice and with your books. I remember standing in the kitchen with her one day and she was talking about the latest book that she was listening to and talking about you and she said, Why don’t you have Julia on the show? My first reaction was, that’s a great idea and then my second reaction, of course, was why didn’t I think of that? I’m pretty good about identifying great prospective guests for the show and, of course, Julia is perfect. She’s amazing. She’s achieved excellence in her chosen profession. So I really need to and want to acknowledge Heidi for introducing me to you both in narration and in books. I can’t tell you how many times, just about every day, I walk into our house when I get home and I hear a voice and it’s not Heidi’s voice, and it’s not always yours either, but oftentimes it is one of your voices. So it’s really been neat getting to know you even before talking about coming on the show. Again, I want to acknowledge her for introducing us and I also want to thank you for encouraging her through your narration to both read books and listen to audiobooks. Again, it just opened up this whole new world for her. I appreciate that very much and I know she does to.

Julia

Oh my gosh, I love those stories I really do. That’s like why we do this. So, yes, thank you.

Brian

Thank you. So what I’d like to do next, with your permission, of course, is to bring Heidi into the conversation so you two can meet and she can share directly how much she’s enjoyed listening to you. 

Julia

Yes, please!

Heidi

Oh, my goodness, I’m so happy to meet you.

Julia

I’m so happy to meet you.

Heidi

Truly, you have changed my life. I think I walk around with you in my back pocket or I have my phone in my back pocket and I have my earbuds in. When our fourth child left for college it was kind of lonely at our house. We have three animals and my husband said, you cannot get another animal [so] I found audiobooks. I feel like I have a friend with me all the time and that friend is you.

Julia

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. This is just so lovely. I, really, I’m very honored. I feel like a pet walking around your house. [Laughter]

Heidi

Well, you bear with me when I take our dogs for walks (Julia: a dog walker. That’s great.) Yes. I found out about you, because when our kids left for school and I was home by myself, I joined a Peloton Mom’s book club which I had never done. There are recommendations all the time for a specific genre of books and then they started talking about narrators. I so gravitated to your voice because it’s warm, it’s compassionate, I feel like you’re a friend and I can just sit down and talk with you. (Julia:  Thank you.) Then I just started seeking out books that you narrated and got into historical fiction and then I found out you wrote your own books! So I think I’ve listened to “My Oxford Year” at least three times, (Julia: Goodness.) and “Thank You For Listening” a couple of times, and I’m going to go back, especially after this experience, and listen to them again, but I just want to say thank you so much.

Julia

Oh, thank you, thank you, I was just saying that this is a pretty isolating job; I’m talking to myself all day. It’s so different from doing on-camera or doing theater where you have that kind of live feedback so to, at any point in that process, hear someone say your work means something is obviously like, just all of all the good things. It’s just so necessary too for really anyone, to just reach out and let someone know that what they’re doing has an impact on you. I just so appreciate that. Thank you.

Heidi

You’ve made a great impact and you’ve made a big difference. I’ve shared your name and your books with all of my friends, my mom, my sister, and I’m just very grateful for you.

Julia

Oh, that’s lovely. I appreciate that. I really do. And that’s a great book club, I think I did an event for them once, a virtual event. They’re great.

Heidi

I think there are 37,000 members; your name just came up again last week and I thought, Oh, I can’t wait to tell people to tune in so they can see you. [Laughter]

Brian

Julia, one of the things that I learned – and I know this really stood out for Heidi; I don’t think she realized it in the beginning when she was listening to books that you narrated – but in certainly in “My Oxford Year” this came up, and came up for me immediately, was that you do all the voices and so it’s not just the all the women voices. I know in “Thank You For Listening” you’re narrating a book with Brock, he’s doing the male voice, you’re doing the female voice, but could you talk a little bit about that generally, in the books that you narrate, and then also specifically with “My Oxford Year” and even “Thank You For Listening,” the same way.

Julia 

Sure, I think that this is really the power of audiobooks; it is the only medium that really exists like this where we do it this way. That’s why I think people who have a visceral kind of immediate reaction too…oof, I don’t like that. You do have to train your ear to be in stories where you have one person playing all the characters, that is something you acclimate to. But then once you do, I think that again, that goes back to what we were talking about, of why certain narrators, I think listeners come to trust the way that a narrator tells the story and the way that they populate the world with the characters. For me, that’s just a balance that you find. I started out and I remember the first – I think it was probably the first romance I narrated – I had this very, like alpha male voice, and I was really trying to go super low and I was tearing my throat apart; it was like, lemon tea at night and lozenges. I listened back and I was like, I sound the same, it’s not working, this certainly wasn’t worth it. I had to start over from the perspective of, okay, what makes this character a romantic hero, it’s not just that he has a low voice, it’s that he’s a real character; I need to give him as much attention as I give the heroine and building out that character. That was a game changer for me and it now has set the way I approach all of the characters in every book; everybody has to be a fully fledged person that walks onto the page and you believe them, and they walk off. So it’s an interesting convention of this medium, for sure and everyone just has to find their own balance in it.

Brian

In terms of process, one of the things that I wondered – I’m a process guy – I wondered how you do that? I was thinking, well, maybe…I don’t know how many characters are in “My Oxford Year,” there are lots and lots (Julia: Too many!) but I thought, well, maybe she does all of one part and then goes back and does all of another part and then the third part and then she has a great producer who takes all of that and cuts and pastes all that together. Is that how that works? How do you do that process-wise?

Julia

You start at page one and you read the book straight through (Brian: Oh, my goodness.) and you try to do it as efficiently as possible.

Brian

Oh, that is awesome.

Julia

I’ve had a couple of situations where, for instance, if I’ve been tasked with doing a book and there’s two points of view, like alternating chapters from two different characters perspectives and normally that would be something I would have another narrator on but for whatever reason, somebody said, we just want you to do the whole thing. I think I’ve had two situations where I’ve gone through and I’ve read all of one character’s chapters straight through so I could stay in the voice, and then I’ve gone back and done all of the other character’s chapters straight through. But that’s not typical. Usually you just read it, and you’re flipping in between characters as you go.

Brian

The other thing that I noticed…and I’m going to…so we’re breaking all kinds of new ground on this particular episode (Julia: Love it.) – I’m going to…I have a big ask in a minute but I wanted to make sure I asked you about this. The other thing that I noticed – and I noticed in speaking with you here – is that your conversational speaking voice is not only not any of the character voices, but it’s also not your narrator voice in the books. Is that true? (Julia: Yes. Yes, that’s true.) How does that work? You just sort of jump into it, is that the actress in you?

Julia

I think so. I mean…I think that first of all, it would be…I don’t know…for me there’s just something almost  pretentious about staying in your work voice in your off-time. For me, it doesn’t feel natural. That said, I will say that my narration voice, the style that I do kind of drop into when I’m recording feels as natural to me as just being “myself;” I feel as connected to it. It’s just, I’m more conscious of adopting the storytelling voice that people have come to know and trust and that’s the lane. I don’t want to jar anyone out of that unless it’s for a specific reason, if a book calls for it or something, but I feel that it’s just like a character, yes.

Brian

Has that always been the case for you or was that something that you learned? I imagine you refined it over time.

Julia

I think the refining…that’s a good question. I think that…it’s always you’re performing. It’s a performance. It’s not just…I mean, even an author who stands up at a bookstore and reads their book is performing. You don’t just read it. So there was always…you know you’re performing; you always go into it with that feeling. I think the refining over the years has been what I’m saying where it feels more emotionally connected. Now it’s not just a performance, it’s as fluid for me and as true to who I am as my normal talking voice.

Brian

That’s amazing. That’s fascinating. So I said we’re breaking new ground. I have never…no guest has ever performed his or her craft on the show. I had a young woman named Fabiola Kim, and she was a child prodigy violinist. I was so tempted to ask her to play her violin, but that would have been…it just seemed so awkward. Maybe it wouldn’t have been and so what we ended up doing, we had her playing at the introduction and put up on the YouTube video, there’s video of her playing from a concert. That was the closest we came to somebody actually practicing her craft on the show. But I’m so fascinated by the way you describe how you narrate. Would you – I know this is a big ask – would you be willing to just give us a sample of that?

Julia

Gladly, oh, my goodness, I’m not going to make you say the whole thing. I will gladly do that. You’re a process guy so you will, I think actually, as you said, enjoy the process of this. I have noticed that – and it was totally counter-intuitive to me – but when I would go out on tour for my books and I would be reading from my books, people really liked seeing me do this live, which was just not something I expected. But I think it’s because, as you’re saying, it’s not how people think that these things are made. They just assume it’s cobbled together the way we cobble films together and it’s not. Let me…I have a physical copy of the book, but I actually think it’s going to be better if I can just pull up a…this will do, this is the PDF. Okay, probably the best scene to do because it doesn’t require a ton of setup and it’s not spoilery. It’s a phone call that our main character has with her grandmother, her beloved grandmother, who she is basically taking care of at this point, Bla. And Bla had called her the night before in a total one of those dissociative Alzheimer’s moments of not knowing who she was calling, where she was, just a total fantasy land, and then hung up. And so our main character, Swanee, has been not sure what she’s supposed to do, but here she is working. She’s in the booth and her phone rings. [Narrates the excerpt from “My Oxford Year”] Okay, that’ll do. (Brian: Wow.) It’s a Rom-com, I swear.

Brian

Thank you so much for sharing that. What a blessing that was. I really, really appreciate that. That gives our listeners and viewers such a great (Heidi: Tease!) yeah, really, really good sense of what your narration is about. I so appreciate that. What can we look forward to next, Julia? Do you have something you’re working on now that you can share?

Julia

Sure. I am. So there’s actually a book within the book of “Thank You For Listening.” There’s the book that they’re recording and I am working on that. Actually, that story couldn’t let me go. That’s almost at a stage where I can start talking about it more fully, but I’m very excited about that. I think it’s going to be particularly great in audio. Then I’m also developing a new project for me of just things that I don’t normally get to do in this…when a book comes to me and I just receive it. There are things I want to do in the space of public domain titles: the old classics, poetry, children’s books, things like that. I’m really focused right now on this human connection through storytelling and the kind of elemental, primitive connection through human voice. As technology continues to spin around us and as AI is coming in, especially in this space, I just want to keep drilling down on human-to-human vocal connection. So I’m creating a production company and platform around that project. I’m hoping to have something launched by the end of the year. So I’m putting back on a creative hat in that sense.

Brian

Well, that sounds awesome. We’ll certainly stay tuned to that. We’ll add information on how to contact; you, share your website in the show notes, (Julia: Great, thank you.) seeing how that plays out. Julia, thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure meeting and getting to know you. I’m so grateful, not only for the opportunity to have you on the show, but I’m grateful to Heidi too, for making the introduction. (Julia: Thank you, Heidi.) I’m also really grateful for your willingness to include Heidi in this podcast.

Julia

Oh, absolutely. This was a pleasure and it was it was fine. I love actually doing the readings for people who know the book and know the work and appreciate it. It’s such a good feeling.

Brian

It’s been awesome and we’ve loved every minute of it.

Julia

Thank you.

Brian

Thank you and thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with Julia Whelan on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.