Helen Taylor, Narrator Extraordinaire
Oh, about eeeeeeons ago, I’d kinda sorta been in touch with the imMENsely talented Helen Taylor: The charm, the wit!
Certainly, thought I to myself, she would be a truly wonderful person to know, to interview. And so I began to muse that, for a gift to m’self, for a Double-Nickel O’ Birthdays, wouldn’t it be such fun to reach out to her, grovel my head off, and beg, simply BEG, for a bit of her time on such a special day?
NATURALLY, it sat in m’ brain for MONTHS afore I totally whonked my sister on the head with the: Yes, I SHALL beg! and she turned around and whonked me on the head with a: You Do Know Your Birthday Is In A Week?! So I beat a hasty retreat from THAT particular conversation and dashed off to jot down a (Rather Lengthy) Little Email requesting the Venerable Ms. Taylor if she mightn’t do me the good and glorious honor of being Audiobook Accomplice’s First Ever Interview.
I got the most gracious assent from her almost immediately, and to say I was delighted would be the understatement of the year. How very excited I was when, after a flurry of WONderful emails, I rather hesitantly asked if Ms. Taylor might not extend her generosity to a face-to-face conversation…
Dude! We used HER Zoom!!!
From discussing her efforts as a newbie volunteer at LibriVox, all the way to the three audiobook productions soon to get under way (And I must shoutout her Facebook page where she keeps her followers and those likeminded appreciators of narration updated).
And from discussing the use of Regency Romances as antidotes to the blues one has after heavy-duty listening of Military History and mass genocide, all the way to how invisible the homeless must feel, nay, ARE to most of society.
My sister said I should record so that I could keep track of what-all was said, and I’m so glad that I did. Because as the above notes, we spoke of everything, even Feline Friend, Georgia, who has her own Instagram!
How can anyone resist those curly ears!
I fancy myself an adequate writer, but I sinCEREly doubt that I have the skill, the vocabulary, to tell you just how AWEsome she is, how brilliantly well-spoken, how hiLARious. In a tiny cell, excuse me, recording booth, she gyrates, she dances, she flaps her arms if the character being voiced is in a disco. She gives a pouty moue if it’s a young damsel behaving coquettishly, and she whispers sexily if it’s Katy Touchfeather out to gather intelligence as one of the world’s most devastating spies (In addition to being a topnotch air hostess!).
This is exACTly how one would imagine a maven of the stage might be whenst recording. A precocious reader as a child, she soon discovered she could NOT read without adding the flair, the drama, that stories required. Boxes she checks when she goes in to ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) to find narration possibilities: Female, Fiction, British, with BBC Accents? Oh but she’s sooooo much more than that! European first, British second. She’s not as widely-traveled as the accents she uses in her narrations, but she’d dearly love to be diving into ice-cold waters then hopping into hot springs in Iceland. I’d like to imagine roomies entranced by hearing stories read, but alas, grand performances are wasted on the young…
So yeh, she talked, and I kinda kicked back and felt like I had video added to a much-loved narration of an audiobook called, “Gillian Gets the Birthday Wish of a Lifetime” (And I could NOT, tho’ I knew afore hand that I have a tendency to use the word too much, believe how very much the word AWESOME is, like, my go-to response… :)
…. Thanks once again for your time, Helen, and the laughter, and most DEFinitely for delightful conversation that devolved as the time flew by…!
And may I bring y’all:
Audiobooks When One is Seeking the Sublime…!
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