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People often ask me about my audio books—how it happened (easy), how I found my narrators (I didn’t), and what it’s like to hear my books read out loud (LOL—keep reading, I’ll get there).

My publisher owns the subsidiary rights to my Feral Warriors and first two Vamp City books (including audio), so the process turned out to be really easy. My publisher said, “We have an offer from Tantor Media. Yes?” And I said, “Yes!” Literally, that was it, although they did send me the covers for approval each time. Tantor did a great job with everything, including lining up superior narrators, which is why I say I didn’t find them. Tantor did.

I actually had some communication with the narrator of my Feral Warriors books, Rob Shapiro, which was very cool. He contacted me before he began, asking for the pronunciation of the unique names in the books. I write mostly paranormal romance, so I make up a lot of names. Part of the lore of the Feral world is that new shape-shifters (and there are only nine in the world when the story begins) take the name of their animals when they first become shifters, but in a unique way. Lyon is the lion shifter and his name is pronounced as you’d expect. Paenther is the black panther, and also pronounced as the animal. But Tighe isn’t so obvious. The correct pronunciation (at least my pronunciation) is Tie. I had a friend in high school with the last name of Tighe (pronounced Tie), so that felt obvious to me…until my BFF critiquer called him Tie-ghee, and another friend pronounced his name yet a third way, and I realized that my pronunciation wasn’t obvious at all. The odds that my narrator would pronounce the names as I did weren’t good, so I was thrilled when he contacted me and asked. I sent him a long list of the various names, and how I pronounce them all, and though I’ve (so far) only listened to book one, he got them all right. (Yay!)

So, back to what it’s like to hear my books read out loud. When my copies first arrived, I admired my beautiful audio book boxes, and admired them, and admired them. But I didn’t get up the nerve to open one, and actually listen, for more than a year. I had a long drive ahead of me…alone…so I finally had the perfect opportunity, though I was pretty sure it was going to be strange, and maybe a bit uncomfortable, listening to someone else (especially a man!) read my sex scenes out loud. Seriously, think about this. Though of course I know that readers read my stories (my not-so-secret fantasies), it’s not out loud, is it? LOL. Maybe it is. But it’s not out loud where I can hear it! (Oh, the weirdness of being a writer.)

Well, I very bravely slid that first CD into the deck of my car, tense and ready, very glad that I was the only one in the vehicle. But something funny happened. It wasn’t weird at all. As I listened, my tension slowly eased, then disappeared altogether. I was at first surprised, then delighted, then amazed as I became swept up in the story…as if hearing it for the first time. And that’s no small feat given that I know that story backwards, forwards, and inside out. For heaven’s sakes, I wrote it, and re-wrote it, then read it again before I started writing each and every one of the books that came after. Yet I found myself completely caught up in it. Part of the reason, I know, is that Rob Shapiro is a first-class narrator. But I think it was more than that. I think it was also the medium. Until I popped that CD into my car’s player, I’d never heard Desire Untamed, or any of my stories, out loud. I’d only ever heard them in my own head. Listening to the audio version created a distance that somehow brought the book to life for me in a whole new way. Though it might not have been quite like watching my characters on the movie screen (which I still dream of doing some day), there was definitely an aspect of that. As the story came to an end, I sat there, kind of stunned, thinking, “Damn. I wrote that.”

So far, Desire Untamed (book one in the Feral Warriors series) is the only one of my audio books that I’ve listened to, but that’s about to change. I’m hitting the road again, this time for good. At least for the next year or two, my plan is to be a full-time traveler, researching and writing on the road. My Feral Warriors will be accompanying me on my grand adventure, and I have every expectation that they’ll sweep me up, once more, in their stories—stories that I know by heart, but that are somehow made brand new for me through the medium of audio books.

By the way, if you’d like to follow my adventures, I’ll be posting regular updates on my blog.

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