Sarah Smith Nessel gets us up-to-date on Kansas City and how she built the life and narration career of her dreams... literally.
Sarah Smith Nessel gets us up-to-date on Kansas City and how she built the life and narration career of her dreams... literally.
Let me tell you a story Music oh look, you've got your little bumper sticker.
Speaker 2:So the line is right there.
Speaker 3:The line is right where the Music.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, and I can smell the barbecue yeah.
Speaker 3:Music In Kansas City Music.
Speaker 1:It was once an idea that someone just continued to believe in Music.
Speaker 5:I also hope everything goes well for this book.
Speaker 3:Music.
Speaker 1:Hey there, welcome to the Nomad Narrator. It's me, your host and creator, emily, and I am so excited to share the first ever episode with you. Our series premiere, so I want to give you just a little background on this project to kick things off and kind of set the stage for what you're going to hear today. The idea for the Nomad Narrator came to me about two years ago when we were staying with some friends in Arkansas. They live in a really rural area on this beautiful lake and they have an airstream set up in their driveway that we've stayed in a few times, but this was still during the pandemic and work from home was kind of a new thing and it was my husband's first time being able to work on the road. So while we were staying there, we were working the entire week and then we would hang out with our friends and we'd sit by the lake and we'd go out to dinner and we just absolutely loved it. It was amazing, and on the way back home I said, man, I really wish that I could do this. I'd always really liked the idea of a camper van, but, being an audiobook narrator, it really was just kind of too difficult to take something mobile on the road. Well, technology of microphones has changed and if you've got the right materials and the right kind of vehicle, it really is not something that's that impossible. So my husband was like, why not just build your own booth, put some time and effort into this and you can have this studio that you can travel around the country with? And I was like, why not? So I ended up buying a van. I got some help from a company that does amazing automotive insulation. Their name is Second Skin Auto and they sponsored the soundproofing of the inside of the van. My friend, andy Rudloff, who makes these beautiful murals in the Nashville area. She designed a mural for the outside and we just have this absolutely gorgeous mobile studio now. You'll see it on the cover of all the things with the podcast.
Speaker 1:So the task ahead of me now is to take this van out on the road to visit with and get to know other narrators around the country, because I have been making audio books since I was in high school and there is no better group of people. And the most exciting part is that the audio book industry has been growing in leaps and bounds over the last decade and we just keep getting more and more amazing people on both sides of the mic, as listeners, as creatives. It's just a really exciting time for an art forum that I think goes back to the beginning of humanity, when we were all sitting around campfires telling each other stories. It's like it's come full circle and in 2020, as the industry changed and shifted and we were able to move into home studio recording instead of needing to live in Los Angeles and New York the way that it used to be, I really started to wonder how it is that these places that shape us could shape the stories that we tell and what we bring into the booth and what we offer to listeners.
Speaker 1:So I just wanted to tie all of this together with a big bow and offer it up as like a gift to everyone that loves audio books, whether it's people in the industry, whether it's people who are fans of the industry. I just think that we're really ripe for something that is an offering for everybody, and I really want to be a part of that and I want to help make it happen. So this first episode that I have for you takes place with Sarah Smith Nestle, who I happen to know from an audio book club that I started. We were not close friends before we had this interview, although I think we can absolutely say that we are friends now and, without any further ado, I will introduce you to Sarah in Kansas City.
Speaker 3:One, two, one two, three, four.
Speaker 1:I wake up to gentle sunshine streaming in through the blinds of the guest room where I'm staying, a sense of floral prints and solid wood furniture, and the color yellow greet my fuzzy morning mind. I snuggle back into the pile of quilts for just a few more winks. It was a long day. Yesterday. I drove in from Kentucky a nearly eight hour trip. That was supposed to happen about 24 hours earlier, but when I went out to pack my van I realized I'd gotten a flat tire overnight. I almost canceled the trip then, and there it was far from the only hiccup I'd had putting this whole thing together and I was feeling done before I'd even started. But when I let myself get quiet and asked what I should do, the answer that came back was clear If there's only one thing you do this week, you have to go on this trip. All right, then I took a breath, got my tire fixed and got on the road the next day a little later than I'd hoped. It was well after dark when I arrived at my host's house and the southerner in me was already fretting over being a rude guest. But I wasn't out of the car more than ten minutes before we hopped right back in to go out to try to find a spot we could see the northern lights. We'd heard they were showing up tonight this far south and both of us felt like that was the kind of thing worth staying up a little late for. And even though we didn't find success with the stars, the whole vibe left me with a good feeling about today.
Speaker 1:Today I'm in Kansas City at Sarah Smith Nestle's house, who's agreed to be my first interview, guinea pig on the Nomad narrator. Today. I get up, get dressed and brush teeth and head downstairs to find breakfast waiting for me. Sarah's home, which she shares with husband Jeff and son Elijah, is, I want to say, inviting, but that isn't even the right word because it makes you feel like you don't even need an invitation, you're just welcome, which probably has something to do with the people that live there.
Speaker 1:I quickly learned that Jeff has never met a stranger, to the point that Sarah has to allow twice as long to grocery shop if they go together, because he can't help catching up with everyone who works at the store. Elijah, like any 19 year old, is looking to find his place in the world, with the added challenge of being an autistic young adult Like his parents. His friendly candor and sense of humor are also immediately apparent. These people just seem like good eggs Eggs the breakfast Sarah made for me with pour over coffee. I finish up. We decide to take her car for the day so that she can drive and we head out this is a gorgeous day for this, do I have?
Speaker 1:my stuff. I have my stuff. Okay, I'm so glad you're my first person. Oh look, you've got your little bumper sticker. All right, wait, I'm gonna-.
Speaker 1:The sticker on Sarah's car was for Panna, the Professional Audio Book Narrators Association, to give you some idea of how quickly the industry's explosive growth has taken place recently. A few months ago, publishers and publishers weekly reported that estimated audiobook revenues for 2022 reached about $1.8 billion, after 11 years of double digit growth. And yet, until Panna's founding in 2021, there still wasn't really any major organization of its kind yet by and for narrators. And let me tell you, as rewarding as storytelling for a living can be, it's also really tough to work most of your day alone in a tiny enclosed space for hours at a time. So it's pretty exciting to see even more organizations and opportunities sprouting up to support the craft and business of narrators. Okay, back to Kansas City, or, at this point in our drive, just Kansas, where Sarah's home is. Kansas City proper is in Missouri, at just over 500,000 residents as of the 2020 census. Kansas City is Missouri's biggest city, with a metropolitan area including several counties and a fact that took me by surprise straddling the Kansas-Missouri state line.
Speaker 4:Now, right now, we're on state line road. This freaks out a lot of people is that you can go for miles, and that's Missouri, that's Kansas.
Speaker 1:Wait, the edge of the states. Yeah, for like miles, miles and miles and miles. I love it.
Speaker 5:So Missouri has maintained this so the line is right there.
Speaker 3:The line is right where the median is. I want to go stand on it.
Speaker 1:Sarah told me that businesses will sometimes close and pop up again on the other side of the road just to make use of new tax incentives, and she even knows of one school that has its classrooms in one state and administrative building in the other. We continued on our drive toward downtown, passing through some really posh areas, so this is one of Kansas. City's big boulevards. I love those houses with the vines climbing up the walls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, these are really pretty. The town known as Kansas got its start in the early 1800s, when French fur traders built cabins in the area. By 1869, the Hannibal Bridge, the first rail crossing of the Missouri River, was completed, and by 1887, there were 15 different railroads passing through Kansas City, cementing it as a national distribution hub. As the population and economy boomed, many of Kansas City's downtown iconic buildings were constructed, and the wealthy meatpacking and lumber barons built their mansions in enclaves on the outskirts of town. Now the Kansas City suburbs include these areas and beyond, with a numbered street system starting with First Street at the river and going all the way out to the 300s south of town.
Speaker 4:That's a neat old hotel right there. We go to a little bar there that has jazz. One thing that's kind of fun about Kansas City is there's so many jazz bars.
Speaker 1:It's hard to talk about Kansas City without mentioning one of two things, and the first one is jazz. The city's central location and a local political boss named Tom Pendergast, who kept liquor laws very loosely enforced during prohibition, made it a natural hotspot for the late night jam sessions and musical innovation that turned Kansas City jazz into the soundtrack of 1920s and 30s America. Charlie Parker, count Basie and other legends called the city home, and at one time there were more than 100 performance venues, a good number of which, I notice as we begin to head toward downtown, still exist Today. Kansas City has a robust performing art scene, with local and traveling theater, a professional ballet company and several city orchestras, including the jazz orchestra.
Speaker 4:Right down here in front of us. We'll be driving right into it and we'll pull into a parking garage. This is Crown Center, which is where Hallmark is headquartered. Hallmark cards started here and is still here. So right here there's Legoland and there's an aquarium. And see, under that tent there in the winter, that's an ice rink. Oh, fun. And this whole area is a huge Christmas tree all lit up. I'm going to find a place in this parking lot. Let's just park here. Oh, there's a car wash down there.
Speaker 1:I've never, seen a car wash in a parking garage Kansas City is amazing, it's amazing, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:According to its website, in the early 1960s, a blighted area of abandoned warehouses was transformed into the Crown Center, one of the nation's first mixed-use redevelopment projects, spearheaded by Hallmark's CEO and his son. The area now includes shopping, office, hotel and housing space covering a total of about 85 acres. And while I know enough about the history of redevelopment in America to not necessarily accept the success stories at face value, to its credit, I wasn't able to find much criticism of the center beyond some articles over the years from people who simply didn't like it, one thing I definitely did like the minute I stepped inside oh my gosh. And I can smell the barbecue. Oh, that smells so good. The second thing it's hard not to mention when talking about Kansas City it's barbecue.
Speaker 4:Kansas City just got a new airport and one of the things you notice as soon as you step off a plane is the smell of barbecue.
Speaker 2:One of the best barbecue places is right by my house. I'm one of those people. I'm like barbecue adjacent.
Speaker 1:Sarah admits that it is hard to stay neutral on barbecue in her hometown where in the early 1900s, a man named Henry Perry originated a sweeter style of the slow-smoked staple, using brown sugar, molasses and tomatoes. Mr Perry sold ribs on pages of newspaper for 25 cents a slab and his restaurant, originally the back of a trolley barn at 19th and Highland, eventually became a major cultural touchstone of the city's jazz era. There are too many restaurant options at this point to keep straight, and while I'm assured that some of the best local barbecue still comes from unknown spots like the local gas station, as a tourist you also can't go wrong with heavy-hitter Jack Stack, which has several locations across town. After checking out the Crown Center for a little while, we decided to go ahead and try and get on a streetcar for a fun day out and about to see all the rest of downtown Kansas City.
Speaker 4:So we can get on. I think we can hop onto the streetcar by walking through. I think we might be in the middle of all that NFL draft stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's right I forgot to mention I happened to be in town at the same time that the NFL draft was taking place and we thought it would be a really good idea to try to see downtown while that was going on. So is this all getting ready for the draft?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they built that. That wasn't there two weeks ago, Holy smokes.
Speaker 1:Oh, and you've got one. Did that used to be a hi-it oh?
Speaker 2:gosh, yes, In 1981, there were sky walks like this and they collapsed during a huge dance event Hundreds of people died. It was like one of the first big national architecture-related disasters in the US. I remember all the way through college I majored in journalism. The media coverage of that made it into textbook case studies of how to cover disasters.
Speaker 1:It felt a little spooky to hear this information. While we were walking across a pedway connecting the part of the Crown Center we'd been in to a hotel we had to pass through to find another pedway to get to the streetcar. But I think it felt even more spooky that I had never even heard of this tragedy. I went to New York University for college and when I lived there I was really struck by how many things just disappear. My freshman year writing class was in the same building where the triangle shirt-waste fire happened, but I had no idea until years later. Have you ever heard of the general slocum? It was the city's biggest tragedy until 9-11, but all that commemorates it now is a statue with a fountain that doesn't work in Tompkins Square Park. Memories fade or we choose to forget, but I think you can only really appreciate a place once you understand the worst of what it's been through. And then we came out on the other side. Oh, it's like a jungle inside, it is it?
Speaker 2:feels like Hawaii up here. I love it. It is a little bit loud. This is a popular spot for wedding receptions. Oh, I bet, yeah.
Speaker 1:Remember that part about the Crown Center replacing a bunch of factories. There was also an old limestone cliff that had been used as a dumping ground, and when the Westin Hotel was built on the site in 1973, it incorporated the cliff into a five-story atrium with a waterfall and a lush garden. It really was quite beautiful and if I'd had more time in town I could really see enjoying some time there with a coffee and a book in the morning. But we had a streetcar to find and, thanks to the NFL Draft, turning the city inside out, that was proving to be a bit of a challenge.
Speaker 6:Right here you see the railing. Yeah, okay, that's steps, and they just circle down and go down. Okay, okay, that's where the commissioner is going to be. Down in that area there's a door they're building some kind of structure to. But if you go down the stairs, there's workers there. You should be able to get through.
Speaker 1:I like this. You're giving us an obstacle course. Yes, I am Okay.
Speaker 6:You get down the steps, turn right. I mean you'll see the construction kind of going on. There's a hallway. Just go all the way to the hallway, Maybe it's 20 yards. Turn left, you'll see green and you see blue sky my confidence in our ability is to find this is waning.
Speaker 2:It's not that I haven't lived in Kansas City for 28 years now. I should be able to find this. We can do it. We can do this. They could not. Are we supposed to go all the way down, or just to this one? He?
Speaker 1:said to take it right Okay.
Speaker 2:So, hello, we're trying to get to the streetcar. We've been told you're building, but you will let us through.
Speaker 4:Oh, man, the skywalk is this way, Skywalk that's it.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you. They say this is supposed to generate like a hundred million dollars in local revenue, and apparently hundreds of thousands of, whatever the city it's like a hedge maze.
Speaker 1:They could just charge admission to find your way. We walked, and walked and walked for what seemed like forever. We ended up at doors that didn't go anywhere, hallways that didn't lead to anything, rooms that were empty with music playing that was really creepy, and we just kept going and going until finally, there it was, the skybridge, or skywalk, or you know the thing that takes us across the street to where we're trying to get the streetcar. We did it.
Speaker 4:Look at this Yay, here we are somehow.
Speaker 1:Well, they certainly don't waste money air conditioning this God, this is a bit warm Oof. But then we couldn't figure out how to get off the thing. All of the exits were blocked. Can we get out here? No, that's crossed off.
Speaker 4:So here's the streetcar Right there.
Speaker 3:Is it even down there?
Speaker 4:I wonder, man, if it's not. We got to walk all the way back to the car.
Speaker 1:Okay, what are you all looking for?
Speaker 3:Oh, we've had this Around the block, did you?
Speaker 5:find it no.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, better luck to you. Okay, I'm going to look up.
Speaker 4:KC Streetcar and see what the deal is.
Speaker 1:Oh, is this like a museum? It is.
Speaker 2:Here we go. All right, the Union Station Streetcar Stop will be closed in the days leading up to well, we could walk to the crossroads.
Speaker 4:Stop at 19th and main.
Speaker 1:Okay, not a problem, we've got good company, comfortable shoes. There's a neat museum right ahead of us, so we go on through this museum, which is like a segue between the Skywalk and the station, and then you walk out into the main station hall.
Speaker 3:Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1:Isn't that?
Speaker 4:ceiling gorgeous.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is even prettier than Grand Central.
Speaker 4:So this shut down, you know like, oh, I don't know in the 1960s or 70s, and it was just left to fall into disrepair and they passed a tax. They got people on both sides of the state line to pass this tax which was a miracle, to restore it and reopen it. And now they have exhibits. There's a science museum, there's a planetarium Looks like there's a restaurant up there, there's a theater. There are several restaurants.
Speaker 1:We spent a while walking around Union Station so I could get some good pictures. I love taking pictures and this place was really neat. But everywhere we turned there were more tents and ropes and banners for the NFL draft blocking off or covering things up, and we still weren't really sure where we were headed. But I think we were starting to not really care.
Speaker 4:My husband, local news has been saying stay away from the Union Station area.
Speaker 2:Well, you know we can. We don't stay away.
Speaker 1:We're podcast journalists.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking there used to be a footbridge. There's an IRS thing there is. There's an IRS office.
Speaker 1:This really is an entire civic center. It's right by the museum.
Speaker 5:Okay, wait, let's get that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:It's like Mary Potter. It's Casey Election Board.
Speaker 1:You got the election board in the IRS office in the same place as the Children's Science Center in. Imax Really not a bad idea when you think about it. All right, I'm a little heartbroken that the Museum of Illusions is closed because I don't know if you know this about me I used to stage manage New York City's longest running off Broadway magic show.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, I love that. We came. One of our big performing arts centers, which we'll go by if we can actually get on the streetcar, had Penn and Teller. So you stage man that has got to be of all the things to have to stage manage.
Speaker 2:I would think a magic show would be one of the hottest.
Speaker 1:It was really fun and the best part was so I was like 18. And it was like all these like old, like grizzled magicians Well, I mean, they were old to me. Then I don't know how old they actually were, they were probably like in their 40s, I know.
Speaker 1:But they were all like you know, these older men, and some of them were like the only people in the world that could do the different tricks that they did with cars and things. So we would all go out after the show, we would all go out to eat at the focaccia ria on McDougal Street and they would like, and they would like, do tricks. Yes, they would like do tricks and they would talk about all these places that they've been and things that they've done. And they were so welcoming and I just got to go hang out with these guys like every Monday night. It was so fun.
Speaker 2:I've only personally ever known one magician, and he was coming back from work one night.
Speaker 4:Not a magician job, but like some late night job. He was a bartender or something. Now I could be leading as totally astray here she was, but anyway, he was exhausted and so he started drifting and he got pulled over by the police and the cops pulled him over and they made him do the you know walk and all that Did he start doing like close-up magic with some.
Speaker 1:He started doing magic.
Speaker 2:And their jaws are just dropping. They let him go with a warning and then, like a week later, he gets this letter in the mail that says Dear Mr Eberhard, you don't know my name, but I was one of the officers who pulled you over last Saturday night. You did some card tricks for us. I am organizing our fraternal order of police fundraising bank, oh my gosh, we were wondering if you would be available to come and entertain. So yeah, that's a great story.
Speaker 1:I just love the idea. Show us your license, take out your own wallet. It's inside. Oh man, at this point we're just walking. I'm not paying any attention to where we're going, because I think that Sarah knows and I think Sarah wasn't paying attention because she was really happy talking about magic and before either of us knew it, we looked up and we were standing in a train yard. This looks like the trains in India, it does.
Speaker 4:I think it's here for historic value, perhaps.
Speaker 1:I don't think it was an active train yard. It seems to be on the other side of a fence, but it was maybe an old train yard where they were storing things Sleeping car. I'm sure it's locked, yeah.
Speaker 2:I bet we're not supposed to be on this thing. Do we want to still try to get on this? I think we should try to get on the streetcar. I think so too.
Speaker 4:We want to walk back to our car and just find some way to drive over there. Yeah, that'd be fine.
Speaker 1:To be honest, I think I kind of thought we were already walking back to the car. I really don't remember what was going on, but we decided that it looked like we could get to the other side of the train tracks using another padway that would keep us from having to go back through the maze, so we headed in that direction. None of this is closed. Can we walk up something over here? And is this the streetcar? I don't know.
Speaker 4:Or is that a train?
Speaker 2:That's an Amtrak train that sounds like a train.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's an Amtrak.
Speaker 1:See, because it kind of looks like there might be stairs right inside there. It does.
Speaker 2:Well, you're right, this is open and there appears to be no one here to stop us.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it's a giant train.
Speaker 4:It is a giant train. Yeah, I'm sure we're not supposed to be here.
Speaker 1:If there is a stairway right inside here. If there's not, I think we should turn around.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't see a stairway anywhere. I don't either, but this is so cool. Oh, you know what this is. This is like the set type shop for the museum exhibits. Yes, that's what this is. There's all this Christmas stuff.
Speaker 1:We better get out of here. We couldn't find a stairwell, we couldn't get to the padway and we didn't actually want to get arrested, so we decided to retrace our steps and go back. We settled in for a long walk, so you're my new favorite friend for wandering around abandoned train yards with.
Speaker 3:This really wasn't what I had in mind when I thought oh, let's go show Emily the city.
Speaker 2:I once had a friend who had a t-shirt made up that just said event staff and he would go places, Just walk around places. Well, the key thing is you also have to carry a clipboard. Okay, no one will question you if you have a clipboard.
Speaker 4:And then all of a sudden there's the bridge Da I can't even see there's actually an arrow pointing to it.
Speaker 1:Does that mean that we can go this way? It did not, but we didn't know that yet. Now, this time, we thought we would do our due diligence and we actually asked someone who worked there selling train tickets if we could get to the other side of the tracks with this bridge, and they told us yes, so off we went. But there must have been a miscommunication because, alas, it was a bridge to nowhere, but it was pretty high up and there was a really lovely view of the whole Kansas City skyline and we pointed out different buildings and I got to take pictures and we laughed and it was great.
Speaker 4:That's taking me, beautiful oh neat. And the view from in there. See, this side of it is all glass, yeah, and the view from there is just spectacular of this whole lower part of downtown. What's it called the Kauffman Performing Arts Center? Kauffman Performing Arts Center those things behind it are sculptures on top of a convention center that stretches over a highway.
Speaker 1:So sculptures on top of that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, those are the suspension things. You can kind of see the wires.
Speaker 1:I just think, like if I were a person from like 70 years ago and I saw something like that, you guys I have to have met 700 years ago, because 70 years ago was the 1950s and I just don't think they would have been that impressed by a suspension bridge. I saw something like that. I'd be like what the hell do you do that Honestly.
Speaker 2:If you saw something like this, can you imagine Now?
Speaker 1:here, I was still staring dreamily out at the skyline. Eventually, however, I did realize she was talking about her phone.
Speaker 2:I mean this is magic. Yes, I mean. What's the saying?
Speaker 4:Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It really kind of is. I mean, if you were from 100 years ago, you would have no other choice but to think that is magic.
Speaker 1:You know what's interesting to me too is that like people make fun of ideas, of things like manifestation and all of that, but when you think about it, everything that we have, that exists in this world today, was once manifested. It was once an idea that someone just continued to believe in until they brought it to fruition and made it happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we are living the manifestations of our ancestors. This is nice to just stand here and look, though. We ended up walking to the car all the way back the way we came without having technically done anything, and yet I feel like we had a pretty good time and we were still going to get on that streetcar Until.
Speaker 2:Now, if we had a little kid, we could go to Legoland and see life. That's actually cool. I love aquariums. They've got one of those cool jellyfish exhibits where you walk through and it's all dark.
Speaker 3:I've never seen anything like that.
Speaker 2:I didn't even want to go to the aquarium.
Speaker 1:We can do that if you want, but you wouldn't be able to see the rest of town.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's open, I don't know. See life. I have no idea what tickets are. It's open.
Speaker 1:Let's see how much it is, because it's like $40. I don't know that.
Speaker 3:I want to see the jellyfish, that much I have no idea.
Speaker 1:How much is one adult ticket? $21.99. Your call Is the jellyfish exhibit open and you like go in and they're all glowing. I'm doing it. Okay, so it starts now, because there's fish right there. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Look at this giant cloudfish.
Speaker 3:I'm actually going to give you a little definitive vote.
Speaker 5:These are in front or next to almost every single one of the tanks. Okay, we'll tell you where it's from, the status and what's happening around in that place. Thank you, absolutely.
Speaker 1:What's your name? I'm Donovan Donovan. Thank you, donovan. Absolutely, it's very cool. Do you like working here? I do, actually.
Speaker 5:You guys are all into taking pictures as long as you know that there's no flash, because that will affect the fish family. Yeah, I don't want to bother them.
Speaker 1:All right. So that is a giant cloudfish. It's a Clark's cloudfish. It lives in coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific Ocean from Japan to Australia. They form symbiotic relationships with anemones, where each provide food and protection for the other animal.
Speaker 4:One of the tongue twisters I warm up with is mini anemone season enemy anemone.
Speaker 1:I can't even remember the last time I was in an aquarium. It was so beautiful and fun and there were families everywhere having a great time and we got to see all kinds of animals and read all kinds of things and just so much stuff that I hadn't even thought about in ages. Look at these things.
Speaker 4:Oh my.
Speaker 1:God, those are wait, I know this lionfish.
Speaker 2:Those are hideous.
Speaker 1:Look at their faces. You know what they remind me of the 70s Everything is brown and orange. Look at that one. That's like 1978, right there. There's a moray eel in here somewhere. Oh look, he's inside the tube. He's in there. You can see his little stripes. Look at the ray. Oh, how cool. Look at that dude. If you look at them from underneath it looks like they're smiling Really. Yeah, they're cute. Here's one over us. That one's spied up there.
Speaker 1:You can see when he comes through his little mouth, his little smile. Don't look at him. He sure did. That's a podcast. That's why he's happy. Feel better, buddy. And then my favorite part no, it was not even the jellyfish. You got to pet a starfish so I can touch these starfish. Oh, my gosh, okay, they're so pretty. And it wasn't even just sea stars, it was like a whole little menagerie of underwater creatures. Is there anything that's going to pinch me? Nope, okay, what about that one?
Speaker 5:These are a little shrimp. They're cleaner shrimp. Okay, what the heck is that? That is a slipper lobster.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 5:I know he looks like a bunch of you, but actually slipper. Lobsters don't have claws or pinchers.
Speaker 1:I trust you, but that one's hard, that was just, I think it was.
Speaker 5:Bob.
Speaker 1:It's just Bob, guys, just Bob.
Speaker 2:Oh, look at this pretty blue and orange one. Can I touch that one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can touch pretty much everybody and I can lean all the way over and touch him. If you can reach him, yeah.
Speaker 4:So do they have sense organs that they can feel when we touch, like the spiny thing. Hi bud, Can I?
Speaker 1:touch the blue yeah.
Speaker 5:So you can see it's trying to touch my finger back. You're free to do it as well, Hi bud.
Speaker 1:You want to hold my hand. It's true.
Speaker 2:I can feel it. It kind of closes around. We're not that different oh wow, I bet you didn't have pet a sea star in Kansas.
Speaker 1:City on your list. No, that was not on my list of things I thought I would do today. Or hold hands with Bob the Slipper Lobster. That was so worth it, Wasn't that fun that was so worth it.
Speaker 2:See, part of my project for myself is to be more spontaneous. That's one of the most spontaneous things I've done in years when I was in my we need to hang out more. I was in my mid-twenties, I spontaneously took a road trip to Memphis in the middle of the night. It was like after midnight when we left, and Memphis is a long fricking drive.
Speaker 4:So we got there at you know like mid-morning and we were exhausted and found a Howard Johnson's and immediately crashed and fell asleep.
Speaker 2:But we woke up in the middle of the afternoon and went to Beale Street and toured Graceland.
Speaker 4:That was like 30 years ago, so it's been that long since I've done something spontaneous.
Speaker 1:Wow, thank you for coming today.
Speaker 2:I think it happened earlier than that next time, come back in the winter and I'll take you ice skating. I love figure skating. Oh, that's so fun. I'll teach you to skate if you don't already know. You do figure skating. I do what. I love it, love it, love it. So tell me more. I moved to Kansas.
Speaker 4:City because I wanted to learn to figure skate. In the city I lived in at the time had no ice rink, so I got a job with the Kansas City Star and I moved to Kansas City. Oh look, there's our car right there.
Speaker 1:The way that Sarah shared this like it was just a little footnote in the story of her life was mind blowing to me. Later that evening, when we sat down to talk audio books, I had to know more, so you told me a little bit earlier about how you came to Kansas City. But let's just start back with college and like what is it that brought you specifically to this place? You mentioned figure skating, which is super cool, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I moved here in 95. So in about 1994, I was in Springfield, missouri, which is down in the Ozarks, beautiful country. But I wanted to be in a bigger city and I wanted to find a sport, some kind of activity that I could just lose myself in. I always wanted to learn figure skating. There was no rink in Springfield, so I had to look in a bigger city. So I started interviewing at newspapers that were owned by the same company that I worked for at the time, because you were in journalism I was in journalism.
Speaker 4:I was a copy editor and the company I worked for at the time that owned the Springfield newspaper also owned the Cincinnati Enquirer. The Louisville Courier Journal did not own the Kansas City Star, but Kansas City was relatively close to Springfield. So I interviewed in Kansas City and Cincinnati. The boss in Cincinnati who was in charge of hiring went on vacation and in the interim Kansas City offered me the job. So I never even went to the Louisville interview and then the Cincinnati boss called me, offered me the job. I'd already accepted Kansas City and one of the people who trained me in Kansas City was actually the brother of the woman in Cincinnati. You know, that's the whole thing about what a small world it is.
Speaker 1:I was going to say isn't it funny, so many different little pieces were coming together to bring you right here where this has been home for how?
Speaker 4:many years now, yeah, almost 30.
Speaker 1:And when did you get into audiobooks?
Speaker 4:I had been in radio in high school. My very first job in high school was as a radio announcer. I was 16. I worked in radio and college ended up in newspapers, but I'd always wanted to get back into voice work. So one day in about 2018, I'm flipping through this community college catalog and there was an item about a class for learning to narrate audiobooks. So I thought I'll bet there's a better way to go about it. I bet there's Facebook groups where you could start research. I'll bet there's a very right way to go about this, and the right way is going to be the slow, methodical way to learn about the industry. So I gave myself like a five-year timeframe.
Speaker 4:You just decided this was something you wanted to do, so I decided this is what I was going to do and I very methodically went in.
Speaker 1:So when you decided that you wanted to move here because of figure skating, had you ever figure skated before? No, interesting, no.
Speaker 4:I don't yeah, when I decide I get real focused and I still figure skated to this day. I love it. But yeah, I started studying the industry and I divided it into categories listening to top books, learning the technical aspects, industry trends as a whole, performance and networking. So those were my five and I tried to spend like every day I would focus on one or two of them, but over the course of a week you know you're going to hit all of them. I knew about Audio File Magazine. I knew about the Audis, because when you're a copy editor you know a whole lot about major magazines covering all these different industries. You know, I know that there are professional organizations for all these different industries. So I knew about the Audio Publishers Association. So I looked up all the top narrators, all the audio winners for the previous 10 years or so, and I joined Audible and I started buying their books and listening to those top narrators.
Speaker 1:Okay, for those of you who are audiobook laypeople or new to audiobooks, I've got you covered. What Sarah is referring to here are a few commonly known terms in the audiobook world. The first is Audio File Magazine, which reviews and recommends audiobooks. If you're an audiobook fan, check them out. You might find something new to listen to. Second is the Audi Awards, which are kind of treated like the Academy Awards of Audiobooks. These are presented by the APA or Audio Publishers Association, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like Now. Finally, she mentions Audible, which you almost certainly already know of if you're a fan of audiobooks. They're a distribution platform you've probably given a lot of money to over the years and they're now owned by Amazon.
Speaker 4:And then, right about this time, karen Cummins was starting to put together the Narrators Roadmap stuff, and so she had a lot of good information for all that.
Speaker 1:Oh, and that's about Karen. She's a delight. She put together a wonderful resource narratorsroadmapcom which is absolutely something that you want to check out if you want to get started in audiobooks. And never fear, if this feels like it's a lot of information, I'll put everything we talk about in the show notes.
Speaker 4:So I've never been one of these people who jumps into things.
Speaker 1:I'm like… Unless it's figure skating or audiobooks.
Speaker 4:I mean, I get fixated on what I want to do, but I don't do it fast. So I had planned to just kind of study and learn for five years before I even attempted to record an audiobook, which I ended up doing it sooner than that. I've also never been one to think something's going to be easy. Apparently, there are people out there who just think it's reading into a microphone and it's going to be easy, and I just don't have that affliction of assuming any… I always assume things that it's going to be. I feel you on that one. There's only one thing in life that I ever thought was going to be easy. As God, as my witness, I thought golf would be easy. Why is golf hard? I mean, the ball is not even moving, it's just sitting there waiting to get hit and nobody's tackling you or elbowing you out of the way.
Speaker 2:No, it's all you. The crowd is not screaming to distract you.
Speaker 3:The crowd is silent. Shh Ooh, baby quiet. There's a golf, oh.
Speaker 4:I'm still astonished at how hard golf is.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's fun to drive the cart. The cart is cool.
Speaker 4:I'll do that yeah okay, I want a Vespa too.
Speaker 1:I also want a motorcycle.
Speaker 4:Oh, those terrify me, but for some reason….
Speaker 1:Chris promised me on my 30th birthday. I said when I turn 35, I want you to give me a motorcycle. I was like you've got five years. Wow and and I did not get a motorcycle. Bring it up in book clubs, see what happens. Okay, casually mention motorcycles. I'm sure we can put that somewhere into the next book's discussion.
Speaker 4:Okay, anyway, where were we?
Speaker 1:Okay, so explain a little bit more about when you say that you're not someone who usually jumps into things, but you have these two figure skating and audiobooks. What is it that happens like internally when you make that decision?
Speaker 4:I don't know where it comes from, but there's this weird phenomenon I've noticed. Like all my life I've had this dream where you're living in a house and suddenly you discover all these rooms you've never used. Have you ever had that dream? I have not.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:I've had that dream a lot. What happens? I'm just walking through this house and all of a sudden I'm discovering all these rooms I've never used. But the more of these things I do in my life like the figure skating, the audiobook narration the less often I have that dream and the fewer rooms there are in my house. When I do have the dream that I haven't yet used. That is incredible. It's the wildest thing, and I didn't make this connection for decades. But I had that dream as a child when I was younger. It had a whole lot of unused rooms and now it has fewer. And every time I add a big thing in my life or pursue a path that interests me, like learning to play an instrument or traveling to a specific country. That has always been the dream. The house, the unused rooms are gone.
Speaker 1:That is like I'm going to need to sit with that for a while.
Speaker 3:I did too when I first. I am not expecting that to come out in this interview.
Speaker 1:That's deep Okay.
Speaker 4:It's a lot deeper than. Oh my God. Golf is hard.
Speaker 1:But golf carts are nice. Golf carts are cool, yeah, all right. So how long into your sort of self-guided learning process did it take before you felt comfortable? I'm going to invest in a booth. As you can probably guess, being a home narrator and having a professional quality sound booth can be quite expensive, so it's a leap that many do not take lightly. They can really run anywhere from a couple thousand dollars up to over 10 grand.
Speaker 4:I had it in my head that I was only ever going to do nonfiction, because my whole background was in journalism, my background's not in theater or performance or anything like that. I started studying with Sean Pratt.
Speaker 1:Sean is a really well-known narrator and coach who loves nonfiction.
Speaker 4:And I worked with him for it takes like a year and a half to get through his course realistically and in the meantime I was trying to set up a space in this house and no place would work Too much noise.
Speaker 4:This house, it's old, it's creaky, it's got a lot of tile floors and hardwood floors and it's got two other people living in it and I'm finally, like you know, I've got to get a booth or it's just never going to happen.
Speaker 4:And about that time I was working for this company that had this really robust cybersecurity protocol for all of us. We had to take all these cybersecurity classes and one of the things they did was they would send us fake, phishing emails and that kind of thing to see if you open it. The point is an email landed in our inboxes one day saying our company was being sold and that those of us who had been there since the beginning were eligible for our stock options to be exercised. We all thought it was fake and we started deleting it because we'd been getting in trouble for opening attempting sounding emails. Well, it turned out to be real and I got stock options, because I've been with this company for a decade and the stock options were enough to buy a booth, so this money just kind of landed in my lap at an unexpected time. It's funny how that happens, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the same way that we got the bar.
Speaker 4:Is it really?
Speaker 1:Yeah, before the COVID-19 pandemic I briefly owned a bar called Shots. It was super cute and a ton of fun and it taught me some of the greatest life lessons I'll ever learn. We actually have a saying now that whenever we're like you know, kind of feeling a little tight on money or something, we tell each other you never know what's in the mailbox. Oh, yeah, don't worry, everything's going to be fine. You never know what's in the mailbox. And like it's now extended to like anytime we're worried about something.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to say it to each other, because when some friends approached us with this business opportunity to go in and buy this bar with them, we had loved this little place, we had been there as customers, we thought it was so cute. We thought why aren't they doing more with this? Like?
Speaker 1:we've been thinking this for like a year and a half since we had moved to this town and then it went on the market and there was like a quota on how many liquor licenses you could get in the downtown district at that time. So if anyone wanted to open a bar they could not, but we, in buying this place, would be grandfathered in with the liquor license, right. So it was really kind of a unique opportunity and we looked at the numbers and we were like, yes, let's do it, why not? But then when it came time to actually buy it, our partners both lost their jobs. So we didn't have enough to buy the bar and we were like, what are we going to do? Like, as we're trying to make this decision, we go and open the mailbox one day and there is a check for the amount that we need. Really, yes.
Speaker 1:It was half of the cost of the bar. Wow, and we were like where the heck did this come from? Turns out, chris had signed up for a class action settlement against Coinstar on behalf of visually disabled people in California, and it was hilarious because I distinctly remember there was a day when he had no money. He was completely broke when he lived in California and he was on SSI and then it would run out at the end of the month. Yeah, and he was scraping change together to buy food?
Speaker 4:Yeah, my son's on SSI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he got all of his coins together and he went to the Coinstar machine and he put it in and it gave him an Eddie Bauer gift card instead of cash. Oh my God, and there was no way to fix it and there was no. So I distinctly remember this because I had to, like, send him money or we were dating at the time and it was.
Speaker 1:He was so mad about it. He ended up giving the Eddie Bauer gift card to his dad. But like he needed food and he took all his coins there to get money because it was just like a bunch of pennies, like you can't go and pay for food with pennies.
Speaker 1:So because of that that one time and thinking like all the blind people get screwed over by this but no one cares, because there's only like five of us that are ever going to say anything, well, those five or however many it was that got the class action because there were so few of them. Yeah, and it wasn't like when you send out a thing and it's like Coca-Cola did this and you might be entitled to 32 cents.
Speaker 2:Right now there's one for Facebook. Yes, everybody who's ever had a Facebook account.
Speaker 1:And you're going to get like 32 cents in your bank account, right? Well, this was thousands of dollars, wow. And so when that happened, we just kind of sat there and were like this has to be a sign, right, like we should do this, and we went ahead and bought the bar you never know what's in the mailbox so you said that the timing just worked out like so perfectly for you to get your booth.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I got the booth in August of 2019, a year after I started researching the industry and all that I finally started auditioning and it didn't take me long to start getting work. You know, early on it's royalty share stuff and you're trying to do everything yourself and I pretty quickly figured out that I wanted to outsource.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's royalty share? Well, sometimes when an author or smaller publisher wants to produce a book in audio but they don't want to pay a flat rate up front, they can contract with a narrator to go ahead and do the work and then the narrator gets paid with a share of royalties as the book sells. It's kind of a gamble for the narrator. You could strike it rich with a hit, but you could also end up getting paid nothing. So sometimes it's newer narrators who lean toward that work and others might shy away from it in favor of PFH or Perfinished Hour, which is paid Perfinished Hour of material, basically how long the audio book ends up being.
Speaker 1:Now, this is not a commentary on royalty share. There are many people who are very successful with that strategy. It does tend to be more of a gamble, is really all I'm saying. And Sarah also mentions outsourcing. That's basically just paying someone else to do any work that isn't the actual narration of the book. So you would narrate and then you might hire someone to edit the files or to proof them for accuracy.
Speaker 4:First book I did was. It was this woman who had what she called her sexual awakening at age 70. Oh wow, she was 80 when she wrote her memoir and she was making up for lost time. A therapist told her to write erotica. It was kind of a powerful book. She had a lot of abuse in her childhood and it was. Yeah, it was rough, so I narrated that. Then I got another royalty share from Fireside, a horror book. I love horror stuff.
Speaker 1:Fireside is a small audio publisher that specializes specifically in the horror genre. If you like the spooky stuff, look them up.
Speaker 4:And then I did a couple of learning ally things.
Speaker 1:Learning ally is a non-profit. They make audio materials focusing on literacy and particularly accessibility for people with print disabilities.
Speaker 4:Then I started getting full union scale PFH. I just stated that was my rate and I have been doing like. My third or fourth book was a full PFH rate.
Speaker 1:Now, I know, you know what PFH is because you're smart and you were listening. But what's union scale? Okay, like many other performers, audio book narrators can be members of the union SAG-AFTRA and the different publishers have contracts with SAG-AFTRA, agreeing to a minimum. They will pay per finished hour. That number is what is meant here by union scale, though it does vary some from publisher to publisher, and I'm happy to report that is all the jargon we're going to need to cover for today, and just check out the show notes if you need a refresher on any of it.
Speaker 4:I'm about halfway through two series and they're very different. They could not be more different. One is Technodistopian, futuristic Sci-Fi set in Europe. The other is Christian cowboy country romance set in Texas.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've noticed, but neither of those is non-fiction.
Speaker 4:I know, I know I've got a grand total of two non-fiction this memoir by the woman and one for university press audio books about Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 1:So that did not go according to plan no not the way I thought it would go at all. Have you enjoyed that you've done more fiction? Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 4:It really is. Accents are hard, but you know.
Speaker 1:So how did you meet these people? Did you follow Sean's course of author reachouts, and that's how you got these jobs.
Speaker 4:It was pure luck. I mean, I, the cowboy romance author, I auditioned on ACX for a book, a single book, and she wrote me and said you know I don't want you for that book, but I've got this series of 11 books that I'd love to have you do, oh darn. So I never did get the one book, but I got 11 other ones. And then the author from Finland just reached out and I opened my email one day and she said we've seen your website and we think you would be perfect for this 21 book series, but I'm slow and it takes me longer than it should.
Speaker 1:Okay, so tell me a little bit more about that, because all day you have been saying that you feel like it's time for you to move on from audio books.
Speaker 4:I do. I'm not good enough at it.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to say that.
Speaker 4:Well, 30 minutes of finished audio a day is really good for me. I can't even bring myself to listen to my own samples. If I were really going to stick with this, I'd update my samples, which do not at all reflect my current skill level.
Speaker 1:Well, but here's a question, Because I didn't know when I very first started my website when you say, if I stick with this, I need to do this, do you? Because what I've heard is that you got 33 books out of one audition. I know it's crazy. Basically, yeah. So my question becomes what's working best for you?
Speaker 4:I don't have a lack of material and I'm so grateful for that, because I see narrators who are a thousand times better than me absolutely panicking because their schedules are.
Speaker 1:But why do we need to say better or worse? That's what I don't get. Why can't we just say you're working at the pace you work at for authors who want you to work for them and you know there's going to be something in the mailbox and it's working. Why are you so sure that you need to quit? Are you having that feeling that you need to do something else? Or are you just trying to move away from something because it feels hard?
Speaker 4:I think it's the latter. Don't do that. Yeah, it's the latter.
Speaker 1:I want to just move away from something because it feels Well, I can't tell you what to do. You know what to do for yourself far better than I ever will. But I just know for me, when I move away from something without it being because I'm moving towards something else, that's always a big mistake for me. What always works is when something is attracting me and I actually have a goal To move towards something.
Speaker 1:Yes, to move towards something is very different than moving away from something. That's what I've found. I have no idea what works best for you. But, I hate hearing someone say I'm not going to do anything, I'm not good enough at this, I should quit.
Speaker 4:I just feel so demoralized after a day in the booth. I go in there enjoying it at the beginning and then when I come out and I've only got 20 or 30 minutes done, all these people who get hours done, do they not hear the mouth noises and things like that? That's what drives me crazy, like right now if I were recording this. Listen to me, I need to tell you.
Speaker 2:But we are recording this.
Speaker 4:I mean, let's see my throat. I'm getting a little hoarse right here.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, let's try and just wrap up this portion of things. So it seems like your audiobook career has been encapsulated in this five years that you've set out for it to happen in.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's working out pretty well. I mean, I did two or three years of prep and now I've been doing two or three years of recording and then I'll probably be done.
Speaker 1:So it was just like a great adventure. Yeah, yeah, and now it's time to move on to something else. I proved myself I could do it. It's so amazing, though, that you have put this much time and this much effort into something that, just on a whim, you decided you needed to do, and obviously there is something like in your soul yeah, yeah, it's wild If you had that.
Speaker 4:If you hesitate to spend time and money on things, that's another thing. These people who go in and say you must treat this like a business, not a hobby. Okay, I was a copy editor for business publications for 20 years. Most businesses do one thing they fail. That's true actually I went into this thinking of it as a business. Most businesses fail within the first five years.
Speaker 2:And when we say most yeah, it's the vast majority.
Speaker 1:It's not just like 55%.
Speaker 2:It's like 90 something. Yeah, they do.
Speaker 1:So that's actually a really interesting take.
Speaker 4:And I don't break down how many hours this takes and that takes and how much I'm making per hour for all the effort I put in. I do it for tax purposes but not for this.
Speaker 1:There are reasons why it's a good idea to do that stuff, yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, I just when we were kids, and I think most narrators are this way. We love books. When we were kids, we would sit for hours and hours and hours and just read and read. I remember having trouble standing up because I would sit cross-legged as a kid with my book, and now it's like a page or two and then I'm looking over at my phone. I'm wanting to check my email. Why, at nine o'clock at night, I'm not going to reply. Why am I checking it?
Speaker 1:The last time that I got lost in a book was probably 2000. So yeah, you have to think back Pillars of the earth. Oh, I've never read that. It's like I just couldn't put it down. It's written in such a way that you just keep wanting to know what happens next.
Speaker 4:So it takes place over the course of two or three generations and it follows the construction of this cathedral and the town that's around it and the people in the town that whole thing of construction of cathedrals that fascinated me when we were in Florence, just to think that there are people who spent their entire lives building something that they knew they would never see finished.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing to have something that you, if you're willing to devote your entire life to something, you don't have to be willing to die for it. It's even more impressive if someone is willing to live for something.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I agree, totally agree.
Speaker 1:What would you be willing to do that for?
Speaker 4:Oh, I don't know. I can't even focus on any one volunteer thing. I was a volunteer literacy tutor for a long time and, man, I'll tell you, that was an eyeopening experience. I mean, I mediate my entire world through print, through reading. I mean, from the minute I get up in the morning I read a digital newspaper that's huge and it's local, national, international news and I spend two hours with that every morning before I even start my day. Then my day for decades was copy editing for eight or 10 hours and then I'd read a book at night. Now it's narrating for several hours and then I read a book at night. Then, when you're in a situation where you're teaching someone to read who's never read, it's astonishing how they see the world. Some people who are even pretty profoundly illiterate can figure out words like so they see the McDonald's logo and it's got the word McDonald's and they know it starts with an M sound and they see that big yellow M they associate with that M sound. When they see that written, they'll make that connection. But yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Do you think that that's how your son taught himself how to read?
Speaker 4:I have no idea that whole hyperlexia thing. It's the functional opposite of dyslexia and they've done imaging of kids with autism who have it and it has something to do with the structures of the brain that decode letters. He pretty much taught himself but I read to him constantly and he had this little book called Chicka, chicka, boom, boom that had the letters of the alphabet in the back of it and it had capital small, capital small. I called them Mama A and Baby A, mama B and Baby B and that he immediately got that Mama Baby thing. When I did that I would trace with his finger these letters and he really enjoyed that, that tactile sense. I think those two things helped. But this hyperlexia thing is super common in kids with autism. A lot of kids with autism have a lot of sensory sensitivities. With my son seeing other kids that he would be in special therapy programs with and everything so profoundly affected, he hardly has any compared to some of those people.
Speaker 4:Can we come in Sure, come on in. How was your?
Speaker 5:day Really good. How was yours Good?
Speaker 4:Awesome, I have a couple of songs for you please Like which ones.
Speaker 5:Anything.
Speaker 1:Can we do?
Speaker 4:that tomorrow Anything doesn't branch grace, because it's getting late and I'm ready to go to bed and I think Emily has to. I guess we won't do it tonight. I guess it's too late for me to play covers of songs. Is this guitar? You want to play guitar? Maybe tomorrow? What songs are you planning on playing? I don't know. I'm going to have her take a guess on the songs on playing. Oh yeah, he likes to play songs and you have to guess what they are.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can do that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:Good night. I hope all goes well for you both.
Speaker 4:Everything will go well for us both, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:That's a nice wish. I also hope everything goes well for us both. I ended up spending another couple of days with the nestles. I had actually been planning to go to a campground, but Sarah said that I was welcome and they just had the kind of home where you like being. So I said yes and I worked out of their guest room and I thought about what it would be like for this house, this city, this spot on the globe, to be the center of my life for the last two or three decades. And there's a thing I've noticed about myself, being from Louisville, and I wonder if you can relate. It's like no matter where else I've lived or where I go, there's always this kind of map in my head that orients me to where I am and my whole life. No matter how much recalculating this internal GPS has to do, its orientation is always in some kind of relation to how far and which direction I am from Kentucky. And when I think about how we all have this different nexus of our universe, no matter what it might be, it's really no wonder we all see and experience the whole world a little differently.
Speaker 1:I caught up with Sarah recently over Facebook and I was really interested to see how things have been going for her since we left off. She let me know that she has decided to step away from the industry, but she's looking forward to moving toward a downsized life with her husband in Lawrence Kansas, a cool college town she had mentioned to me earlier. They're on a wait list for a place there that could open up in two years or ten enough time to work a little longer, move toward retirement and help Elijah get his start in the world. In the meantime she'll keep her booth to finish out any current projects and for possible volunteer work. When they move she's hoping to sell it to another narrator or maybe a podcaster. She says you can't swing a stick these days without hitting a podcaster. I asked if she had one pick for a classic road trip song recommendation Dancing Queen by Abba, because she's pretty sure she was supposed to be Swedish. She also wrote those unused room dreams are back and I think they're pointing me toward learning to play the piano. I found a YouTube channel that teaches you to play without reading music, since I can only read treble clef from my years of playing the flute. So I've been working on that a bit and it's super fun.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening to the first ever episode of the Nomad Narrator. This project has been such a dear piece of my heart for many months now and it is just a real treat to be able to share it with everyone. If you liked what you heard here today, it would mean so much to me. If you could please take 30 seconds to do these three things First, please follow this podcast in your app of choice, so just go to the show page for the Nomad Narrator in Apple or Spotify and click the follow button and then, second, while you're there, if you are willing to leave us a five star rating and review. And third, if you could share this episode with a friend so that they can get in on the fun too. Thank you so much, and it is such an honor to have you as a listener.
Speaker 1:This podcast was created, hosted and produced by me, emily, for Imperium Productions, expanding the universe of storytelling. I want to give a big shout out to my first ever in depth profile guest, sarah Smith-Nessle, and a thank you to her family for welcoming me into their home and their lives for a couple of days, and also a very special thanks to our own podcast house band Jake and Mr Stewart. I'd also like to acknowledge all of those who've helped the Nomad Narrator to get on the road and on the air, including everyone who shared and donated to the initial GoFundMe campaign. The Kentucky Foundation for Women for a Very Generous Grant. Second Skin Automotive, who sponsored the Mobile Studio sound treatment.
Speaker 1:Sherwin Williams, who donated paint for the mural completed by Andy Rudloff and a team of volunteers at Louisville Visual Art. Brett Riley and Sarah Sibley-Harran for pulling off the world's most epic photo shoot, and Tracy Raffdel for turning those pictures into our beautiful website. Warren County Public Library for letting us use their facilities looking for a little theater company, for opening their prop and costume closets to me. The audiobook accountability buddies for holding my hand every Tuesday night for the last two years. Countless other colleagues for lending their support or expertise, most especially Jennifer Wren Pickens, jessica Stevens, daniela Messinek, young, elise Arsenal, daniela Acetelli, byron Wagner, james Romick, johnny Howler, guy Oldfield, robin Lye and Karen Cummins. And finally you. None of this would mean anything without you. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on down the road.