Singer/Narrator Janel Ridenhour
In a few days, our third novel, “Are We A Band Yet?” will be released as an audiobook by Audible. “Are We A Band Yet?” is narrated by Janel Ridenhour and in our view, her best yet. This book was published a couple of years ago in small and large print versions and we are very proud to be able to offer it to the public and our fans as an audible edition.
Alexander Francis
Audio Sample of “Are We A Band Yet?”
It’s my great pleasure to announce the release of the audio version of Memory Gap on Audible.com as of today. It will shortly be available also on iTunes and Amazon. The narrator, Janel Ridenhour, brings out the characters in the book so well that when I listen I scarcely believe that I am the author!
This version also has a number of sound effects and musical additions which markedly enhance the story and narration. We were careful not to overdo it, but as you will hear, a bit of additional sound in the right places makes a more impactful presentation.
At one time, I had an idea of going much farther with sound effects but discovered that a talented narrator such as Janel can create the illusion of being there for the listener, and too much additional sound is unnecessary, even distracting. We believe that we have found the right mixture, but you are the final judge, and we would be interested in hearing your response.
A heartfelt thanks to Janel Ridenhour for the hard work and talent she invested in making Memory Gap come to life as she has done. I look forward to several more projects with her in the near future.
Alexander Francis
P.S. Listen to this sample of Memory Gap.
Introducing Janel Ridenhour, our new narrator. She has plenty going on at the moment, not only with the time-consuming labor of narrating a full-length book, but also completion of her first album of jazz recordings.
Janel is a longtime friend and graciously gave consent for me to use an on-stage photo of her for the cover of Are We A Band Yet?, and of course, her eyes grace the cover of The Green Scarf, also one of her eyes is seen in the rear view mirror on the cover of Spy Hunt.
We created a recording studio just for her
and discovered that she can do her best singing over a pre-recorded track instead of live in a larger studio. Separation of the instrumental tracks and the voice tracks have improved the quality and excitement of her recordings enormously. We’ll have much more to say about the creation of a professional studio for the do-it-yourselfers, and a discussion of what hardware and software we chose as well as an explanation of good practice using a DAW for voice.
Here is a sample of her narration of my book Geminknot:
Janel’s album is nearing completion, and we will post a sample of her work in a future blog.
