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Welcome to Up Around the Corner, Michael. Please,
tell us a little about yourself, your interests, and how you became interested
in narrating novels.
Thanks, Terry, and thanks for inviting me onto the blog.
In day-to-day life, I teach English (mostly composition and
literature) at a community college in southern California. I have a lovely wife
and three exciting children, and they keep my days full. When free time comes
around, I enjoy hiking and camping, reading (of course), and doing some writing
of my own. One of the things that attracted me to Flank Hawk, actually, is that it’s the kind of book I’d like to
produce myself one day.
As for voice work, I’d done a few local commercials and
other projects, but my heart has always been given to audiobooks. I’ve always
loved to read aloud. One of my favorite works is the Lord of the Rings trilogy
by Tolkien: when my wife was pregnant with our boys, she had motion sickness so
fierce that she couldn’t watch television, so at night I read through the books
aloud to her—and was happy to do so again for my boys before they were old
enough to read them for themselves. I attended some workshops and had a demo
produced by one of the greats—Pat Fraley—and had some coaching from industry
vets like Stephan Rudnicki and Scott Brick. I have a demo, but the first work I
got was through ACX, the Audiobook Creation Exchange, an offshoot of Amazon.
I’m happy to have taken up
Flank Hawk as my very first audiobook. It was a challenge and a
huge learning experience (though I’m still learning, and probably will continue
to do so throughout what I hope is a long career).
Thanks for the
compliment with respect to Flank Hawk.
Was there a
particular audiobook or narrator that first caught your attention and got you interested
in audiobooks? If so, what about that book and/or narrator caught your
imagination?
I’ve always loved spoken-word audio. My first record (the
audio format of necessity in my childhood of long ago) was the audio track of
the Rankin-Bass animated version of The
Hobbit. (I can still rattle off some passages from that, and I still have
the vinyl somewhere…). I also vividly recall wanting to borrow a recording of a
reading of “St. George and the Dragon” from the public library when I was six,
arguing with my mother who thought that I would be bored. I wore the record out
before it had to be returned, as I wore out our 8-track recording of Disney’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol (with the great
Alan Young narrating as Scrooge McDuck). On car trips, my parents would listen
to old radio shows, which were fun, and though I didn’t follow sports, even the
announcer for a baseball game (Vin Scully for the Dodgers out here in
California) could be interesting just for the timbre of his voice and the music
of the language.
I can’t recall the first audiobook I listened to, but I
enjoy just about all aspects of audiobooks: the story, the characters, the
descriptions, and so on. I also take a real delight in the language and sound,
the intonation and rhythm and melody of words jumbling up against one another
in ever-changing patterns.
How do you prepare to
narrate a novel and, when you’re narrating it, is your focus on the words from
the novel’s text, images of interacting characters and setting, some
combination text and novel scenes, or something totally different?
First, of course, is reading the work to get an overall view
of the plot, the setting, the characters, and so on. I often mark characters as
I read and think about voice qualities for each, as well as considering the
narration tone and rhythm. For instance, Flank
Hawk seemed to me to have a very natural, realistic tone; it’s also
important that it’s told in Krish’s voice. I wanted to have a slight tonal
variation between the narration and the dialogue. Part of that is rhythm, and
part was my idea that Krish would be slightly older as he is relating the
story. (I don’t know if that was in the plan, but it helped to mark the tone in
my head.)
Physically, then, comes printing out the entire novel in
large type (though I’ve heard some folk are using iPads for this now; given the
cost of the copies, it might be a very wise investment) and marking character
introductions and other important points.
As I’m narrating, I’m attempting to paint a picture of the
action and scenery for the listener without being too intrusive (which means I
have to imagine it for myself). It’s the writing that has to convey the ideas;
my job is just to show it in its best light. When I’m reading dialogue, I
attempt to see what the character would see, imagine what their mood and
thoughts would be, and let the performance flow from that.
Sounds like a
combined technical and creative endeavor to get it just right.
Can you tell us what
project you’re working on now and any that you might have your eye on or lined
up for the future?
Currently, I’m working on a collection of short horror
stories from the 1930’s and 40’s—Hugh Cave’s Murgunstrumm and Others. It’s great fun, but very long. I have a
couple of other books lined up, including a collection of science fiction works
and a detective novel. And I’m very pleased to look forward to narrating Blood Sword in the very near future. I
feel rather lucky to get a chance to narrate a sequel to a book I’ve already
done: there’s some excitement to having the chance to get back into Flank
Hawk’s world, to revisit old characters and bring in new ones.
I’m looking forward
to your narration of Blood Sword.
Can’t happen soon enough from my end J
Sort of off topic
question: If you could sit down to lunch with any three people, alive or
deceased (no longer than 250 years), who would you choose, where would you
dine, and what would you hope to discuss?
Wow—that is a new line of questioning! As an English
professor, writer, and reader, over the course of a lunch I might shoot for a
kind of literary salon. My first pick would have to be C.S. Lewis, an author,
theologian, and man I’d very much like to spend time with (and who, in the
passing years, I hope to emulate more and more). In that vein, it would also be
nearly impossible to pass up the chance to include Lewis’ Inkling brother,
J.R.R. Tolkien. That last spot would be a difficult choice, but I’d go with Terry
Pratchett, author of the amazing Discworld novels.
I can’t think of a particular restaurant that would really
suit the occasion, but I’d look for somewhere quiet, dim, and relaxed, with
leather armchairs and shelves of books; a place where we could enjoy the food
without thinking too hard about it, let the assembled gentlemen have a pint or
port, and smoke good pipes in the most genteel fashion. (I have a thing for
old-fashioned Britishisms, it seems.)
And, of course, the conversation would tend toward reading,
writing, and metaphysics. Not only would it be amazing to just listen to these
authors discuss their works, their writing process, and their successes and
failures, but these are also men of large brain and deep philosophy. Their
fictional works have greatly influenced me, but so have their ruminations on
art, writing, and life in general, such as Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories” and “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,”
and Lewis’ An Experiment in Criticism
(as well as his many theological works). Implicit in all this, of course, is
that for the perfect luncheon, these gentlemen would for some reason value my
input in the conversation so that I wasn’t just a fawning fanboy listening to
them lecture.
Interesting choice
and reasoning, Michael.
Focusing on
technology and culture in the United States, where do you see books,
literature, and reading tastes and habits trending in the next ten or fifteen
years?
It’s difficult to tell, really—the advance of technology and
the changing habits of readers shaped thereby is hard to predict. I have
consistently seen reading habits falling off among my students in college
classes: when asked, the only reading they may do is on the internet. This
would not be an end-of-the-world issue—there is some great content on the
internet—but most of them do little more than text one another and read
Facebook updates and Pinterest memes. That’s depressing. At the same time,
technology really opens up publishing (one doesn’t always need to find large
publishers to have a book run, for instance, since books can be printed to
order), and, of course, audiobooks have taken off tremendously. I’ve also
worked a bit with a company that is working on purely online texts (as opposed
to just modifying texts to be read on a computer screen): stories that can be
interacted with through reading, graphics, audio, and video, and these are
really stretching the boundaries of what we think of as storytelling. I bemoan
the fate of the printed word, and I am sad to see what’s happened in many
aspects of the publishing industry, but I try to look forward to the ways the
changes can be positive when I can. In the meantime, I will never let go of a
good, solid physical book when I have the choice.
We’re closing in on
the end of the interview. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I’ve really enjoyed this, and I’m looking forward to recording
Blood Sword. I hope many folks will
check out the series, both in print and on audio. Anyone interested in
listening to my demos or other voice work, feel free to drop by my web page:
http://voice123.com/michaelslusser.
