Recording Audiobook of The Magicians
January 2, 2020
Here I am at the end of 3 days at ID Audio in Queen’s Park, recording the Audiobook of The Magicians. As you can see, I am very happy! Relieved, even. I’d thought Day 3, recording the last few chapters, would be a short one. But then it turned out there had been an intermittent source of “noise” on the Day One recording and I had to do a whole load of that again. It took 10 hours! I’m certain working down a mine is a lot harder but it was exhausting, nevertheless. The only time I got out in the open air was to walk around a cemetery! (Mind you, it was an interesting cemetery, full of crumbling memorials to the Victorian great and good).
Such a weird experience – sitting in a room talking to yourself for three days, the talking punctuated only by dashes to the loo because you sip so much water to stop your mouth getting dry. Then your stomach starts rumbling – particularly before and after lunch – and you have to keep doing lines again.
Steve and Joe, the audio engineers on the other side of the glass partition, were brilliant, picking up fluffed words and re-winding the recording in real-time so I could just pick up at the point before I’d cocked things up. And so was Sarah, who made me hot lemon and ginger drinks to lubricate my throat. Don’t know if they worked but they were delicious.
Catherine Daly of Faber hung on to the bitter end, providing moral support, for which I am very grateful. Leaving the studio with her and waving her goodbye, I felt a great sense of achievement, though I was like a speechless pit pony on the 98 bus home. I hope people enjoy the Audiobook of The Magicans, out on 20 February!