In Tree Pose, Ric and Elaina’s romantic getaway in Tasmania turns perilous when a mysterious text from Ric’s past threatens to upend their lives. How important do you think the role of a narrator is in shaping the listener’s experience of an audiobook?

For an Audiobook, the narrator makes or breaks the production. A seasoned, professional narrator or voice performer can heighten the storyline with a deep sense of storytelling. They can bring the listener into the “story world” with their voice.

In many ways, an audiobook is a play that happens in the listener’s mind. It’s all about the words and the way they sound.

We wrote the Yoga Mat Mysteries series as lyrical fiction. It’s not only meant to be read but also to be heard.

We envisioned this long ago when we first started talking about this series. The words and combinations of words are carefully crafted to put you in every scene as if you were attending a play. Our narrator Rupert Degas is a consummate actor and voice actor. He has the ability to take the words from the written page and transform them into verbal voice images.

We like to think of our stories as having magic. The storyteller can add that fairy dust which gives the stories even greater capacity.

How involved were you in the selection of the narrator, and what qualities do you think Degas brings to the storytelling that enhances the listener’s experience?

We spent over a year searching and listened to audition tapes each day. There were hundreds of auditions heard over the entire year. We were searching for the narrator that could collaborate well with us.

We had written our prose that begged not only to be read but also to be listened to. Storytelling is an art and important in the Yoga Mat Mysteries series. We wanted to immerse the reader and the audiobook listener into the world of our characters.

Overall, enriching our characters with the power of audiobooks, gave them a new world beyond the printed page. We had originally breathed life into them, but audiobooks gave them the clarity of clear speech.

Our characters now had an expanded stage presence—and they could talk, laugh, and cry … in various accents!

Rupert Degas brings his voice-acting energy into the strong characterizations that we have developed. In our joint project of working with Rupert, we have fused together a winning combination of the human voice speaking the award-winning prose.

How did you feel when you first heard Rupert Degas’ narration of Tree Pose, and what aspects of his performance stood out to you the most?

After a full year of searching, our compatibility meter zeroed in on Rupert Degas. Rupert has the uncanny ability to create, craft, and deliver an infinite range of voices. We had another unique set of voices in Tree Pose for him to voice perform.

Once again, we gave Rupert a detailed biography for each character. We knew these characters well. We had lived with them for two years by then. John claimed that Ric, one of our main protagonists, was using his straight razor and leaving it wet on the bathroom sink!

Hearing the prose spoken and Rupert’s interpretation of our characters was very fulfilling. We had read the book to each other numerous times during our edits. As this is book three Rupert has a thorough understanding of the main characters and how they would speak and react.

We have poured our energy into their personalities, bringing them alive on the page. Rupert helped intensify the drama, love, humour, fear, and wonder of each of the characters.

Were there any particular scenes or moments in Tree Pose that you were especially excited to hear brought to life through Rupert Degas’ narration?

Every dramatic, funny, powerful story starts with the characters and storyline. The best narrator cannot resurrect a story that does not compel.

We spent about a year on the written part of the book /audiobook. We are careful and diligent writers. We ensure excellence in terms of editing, proofreading, and production. The book has to be ‘5-star’ before we even start the audiobook production.

Our goal is always ironclad: The voice of the storyteller had to enhance the listener’s experience of our stories.

We were seasoned audiobook producers by the time we came to book 3, Tree Pose. We were excited to once again be working with Rupert.

Our first audiobook, Dead Man’s Pose had captured the imagination of AudioFile, the premier review of audiobooks. It earned an Earphones award and the founder of audiobook, Robin Whitten, provided a ‘Behind the Mic’ podcast interview with Jo Reed.

By the end of the year, Dead Man’s Pose was awarded Best of 2023 in the mystery/suspense category.

Earlier this year, we won an award from IBPA for the Second Audiobook in our series – Cobra Pose. This was in the category of Best Audiobook – Fiction. A month later, we won the Best Audiobook for the (Mystery/Suspense/Thriller,Action/Adventure) category again for Cobra Pose from the Indie Reader Discovery Awards.

The story of Tree Pose takes place on the island of Tasmania Australia and besides Ric and Elaina, the characters include our seasoned outback detective, Jack MacMasters, and Alfred Hastings a man who prefers sleep rough.

Alfred’s voice was particularly difficult for us to describe to Rupert. We liked Chris Hemsworth’s Australian accent, but there was a particular commercial that we had heard where that male voice speaks with a gravelly sound to it. It took us a month to track down the commercial we had heard and describe what we liked about ‘gravelly quality’.

Alfred is one of our characters who likes to sleep rough. He’s been ‘on the ground’ for over ten years. It was that gravelly quality that we were after.

As a connoisseur voice actor, Rupert nailed Alfred’s voice. As Alfred roams around Tasmania, his role becomes instrumental and his voice perfect for this mystery thriller, hinting at just enough romance for this third story in our series.

Recently one of the reviewers of Tree Pose confided they stayed up all night listening to it. Now that is music to our ears!

It makes every minute of the year of unsuccessful listening, the time in our unventilated closet, the nights wondering about ‘What’s the Plan?’ … all worthwhile.

We want every listener to listen to our stories and be so enthralled, they stay up all night to listen. Or they, “go around the block just one more time” so they can hear the end of that story.

Author Links: Website | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram | Twitter | Sound Cloud