The Process: Recording My Audiobook

Recording My Audiobook
Baby Steps and a Stretch

What a strange time we’re in, where history echoes a little too loudly. The build-up to the Iraq War is woven into my novel, The Sinking of the Leonardo da Vinci, and lately it’s felt especially close to the present. Maybe you feel it to, that pull to escape, while still holding on to something real.

Revisiting my novel, reminds me how we need both, the escape and the reassurance that beauty persists.

One reader captured that feeling perfectly: “What a surprise to discover it was so much more than the lighthearted holiday romance I first imagined… The story carries both lightness and depth, and I came away feeling enriched. Most of all, I felt this was a book I was meant to read right now, at this moment in my own life.”
— Jane Cahan

I hope this piece and the story behind it offers you a moment of pause, and maybe even a small, needed escape. And if you feel like stepping into a world for a while, you can find The Sinking of the Leonardo da Vinci here: https://tinyurl.com/DJW-Amazon

Audiobooks have exploded, and when my new book launched, I wondered: why not mine? My publisher doesn’t do audio, which meant it was up to me. Should I hire a narrator or record it myself? Would I be good enough? Should I cobble together a home studio, or go fully professional and pay for a studio and engineer?

This is how I went from being an absolute beginner to standing behind a microphone in a soundproof booth—and getting my audiobook into the world. While this book is fiction, I also write memoir, and I’m confident that my experience translates to recording nonfiction as well.

I started with three options: hire someone, DIY at home, or book a studio. Serendipity nudged me forward when I was a guest on a podcast in Oslo, where I’m based part-time. Afterward, I lingered in the studio to record a passage from my novel. Maybe it’s the writer in me or the former actress, but I often find I have characters talking in my head. Hearing them come alive on the recording was both thrilling and daunting.

Inspired to continue, I found a New York audiobook actress and booked a few coaching sessions. Then came the gear: a good mic and stand, an interface box that connects the cables to the computer (hardware essential for good sound), recording software, and––crucially––a quiet location. My husband and I transformed a spare room into a fort of blankets, pillows and yoga mats. Early recordings sounded fine, but the weak link was me trying to be both narrator and engineer. I knew I needed a real engineer so I could focus on voice and pacing.

The Work
My coach and I listened to my first trials. Too slow? Too unclear? Were the characters distinct? After years living abroad, my accent isn’t quite New York anymore. My book includes English, Australian, Italian, Dutch, and American characters. Developing the different voices was challenging. I practiced constantly, recording friends from different places and mimicking subtle cadences.

My coach advised against caricature: a hint or nuance would do. Most of the people who populate my book are travelers; their accents are a mix like mine. That freed me to lean into their personalities more than their accents. I approached voicing the characters in the same way I wrote them.

Learning on the Road
August took me to Edinburgh and Belgium for other work. I packed my mic, interface, cables and a portable stand my husband built. Hoping to find walk-in closets in the apartments where I stayed, instead I ended up practicing in small, free-standing wardrobes stacked with pillows and draped with a blanket, hoping the neighbors would ignore the fact that the renter next door talked to herself for hours.

Then an acquaintance introduced me to a professional sound engineer in Edinburgh who offered me a free trial hour. His studio was straight out of the movies—plush, immaculate, intimidating. I slipped on my glasses, opened my book, and read.

“You’re a natural,” he said. “You can do this.” And for the first time, I believed it. He also warned that for every hour of finished recorded audio, expect at least two or three hours of work in the studio. (This didn’t include my own practice time.) There wouldn’t be time to finish the recording in Edinburgh, so I booked into a studio in Oslo for September.

In the Booth
I hadn’t realized how much stamina the audio recording would require. Years abroad had slowed my speech, so what felt thoughtful in the booth played back like molasses. Add asthma, and every paragraph became a workout. Still, scene by scene, I grew stronger. I started with three-hour recording slots but soon upped it to four or even five hours. Each session needed time to get into the flow, but once flowing, it got easier. And hour by hour, we got through the entire manuscript!

Recording an audiobook is a technical challenge, a performance, and a pilgrimage. The narrator breathes life into each moment. It isn’t reading the book aloud––it’s living the book for the listener.

Switching Hats
I was both the narrator and producer of my audiobook. That meant listening to the recording multiple times, fixing issues and––after everything sounded right––figuring how to upload the chapters to ACX, the system you need to get your final product out into the world. ACX is connected to Audible. (Here I was rescued by my husband’s son, who is wonderful at all things technical.) Even then we still needed to make a few last-minute tweaks.

That green light flashing when each chapter’s file was accepted, what joy!!

The audiobook stretched me in ways I didn’t expect and made me fall in love with my novel all over again. Although I sometimes felt I wasn’t up to the task, I learned that making the audiobook became possible when I took one baby step at a time. Early listeners tell me my voice is soothing, that it sweeps them into the story. After all the cupboards, blankets, pillows breathwork, edits, and late-night doubts, that feels like the most extraordinary reward.

The piece came out originally on Brevity Blog:

https://brevity.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/recording-my-audiobook/