Operation Pimento - Audiobook
I was somewhat surprised when my publisher Hodder and Stoughton asked me- a total studio novice- to record my own audiobook, but I happily obliged. Sitting down and reading prose I had written couldn’t be that hard, I thought naively. 16 hours later, I emerged physically and mentally exhausted, with newfound respect for people working behind the microphone. I also realised there is a rather large flaw with narrating a book- they’re not usually written to be spoken aloud.
Operation Pimento is available wherever you get your audiobooks for £13.
“Within the first few paragraphs, I realised there is something brutal about reading prose you have written aloud. If a sentence lacks authenticity or punch, it’s magnified when spoken in a way that just doesn’t happen with reading. Wandering clauses, questionable comma placement, woolly metaphors, all have nowhere to hide in front of the microphone.”