Out Loud
I walked into the room to read my book out loud. Instead, I had to learn how to let it breathe.
A little while ago, I found myself at Sensible Music's studio in London. It was time to record the audiobook for The Boy From Elsewhere. The first of my books to achieve this status. I went into it with a very reasonable plan: sit down, read the book out loud, job done.
About ten minutes into day one the sound engineer interrupted me mid-flow to tell me to relax and stop reading like I was sprinting towards the finish line. He played back that first take and… oh wow. It was not good. Perfectly clear. Technically fine. Completely lifeless.
What I had to do was stop reading it, and start letting the way I hear it in my head come out of my mouth. I had to act it. Live it. Let it breathe.
Once I did that, everything slowed down. Massively. I relaxed. I started getting emotional when the characters did. I found myself stopping, taking a breath, and letting moments land, the cliffhangers especially. Saying a line, then letting it sit in silence, reverberating in the air. That was magic.
It helped that the engineer was properly getting into the story too. Nothing steadies you quite like realising the person looking at you through the glass partition is leaning in, waiting to find out what happens next.
The process of this recording has changed my relationship with the book more than I expected. I genuinely can’t believe I’ve released books before without reading them aloud like that. Not just skimming, but reading to be heard. Reading to an audience. Doing that showed me the book anew. It even flagged a couple of things that needed correcting. And, yes, produced some excellent bloopers. (I cannot say “coffee cups” three times in a row, apparently.)
More than anything, it reminded me that no story ever really belongs to one medium. When we read, the words already become voices in our heads. Audiobooks just make that literal. Good stories leap out of whatever form they arrive in and take up residence.
The paperback and ebook are nearly here. The audiobook will follow soon after. And this story is about to start meeting people in all sorts of different ways.
That feels… right.
If you’d like to be there at the beginning, the book is available to pre-order now. Choose your format, tell a friend, and think of me as I start pacing every room in nervous anticipation.
Two weeks. Wow. I think I need a sandwich.
