Continuing the conversation with storied audiobook narrator, director, and coach Robin Miles.
Continuing the conversation with storied audiobook narrator, director, and coach Robin Miles.
Let me tell you a story. I tell you what. I am going to hop up and just like shake off the one that we just did and grab a cup of water.
Speaker 2:I put myself in a physically vulnerable position. To put myself in the depth of the vulnerability I need to be in to read this book. No, shut up Now this time. Take your time and see what you discover in the rhythm of the writing. It's warm and squishy and it just radiates love.
Speaker 1:Warm and squishy and radiates love. How could it get better than that? Now I'm kind of thinking like maybe Robin will be my first three guests. Maybe I just recorded three months worth of these coaching things because I want to use all of these.
Speaker 2:There's also the value of the juxtaposition, because doing speakeasy after Storm Crow is a tremendous change of who am I. Same format, first person, but way different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I tell you what. I am going to hop up and just like shake off the one that we just did and grab a cup of water and I'll be back in like three minutes. All right, I'm going to do the same. Hey, welcome back to the no man Narrator. I'm your host, emily, wishing you a very happy Thanksgiving today with this extra bonus episode of the Coaches Corner with legendary audiobook narrator Robin Miles.
Speaker 1:Robin and I had so much to say on our call last week that we ran far over time, which, lucky for you, means there is a whole lot more to dive into in this extra episode. But before we do, though, I just want to tell you a little more about that writer's retreat that I was at last week with a handful of other narrators. So a couple months ago, there was an audiobook producer who had an author client who said hey, I've had so much fun working with you and going through the whole audiobook production process and I just love what narrators do so much that I want to do a little something to give back to the narrator community. Are any of your narrator friends writers? So this producer, erin, shared with a bunch of us narrators that an author would like to host some of us at a free writer's retreat at her home, and would anyone like to go Now? I am pretty much always down with an interesting opportunity like this, so I immediately RSVP'd yes, and I even actually just been telling my husband about a funny idea for a book. I thought someone should write. So I was like, why not? So I went ahead and said yes, even though I have to admit that somewhere in the back of my mind was this thought of like? Isn't this like a plot of a horror novel that I've heard before, where some fancy stranger invites a bunch of people to their home for a getaway? And anyway, it was not. I'm happy to announce the plot of a horror novel.
Speaker 1:We ended up spending this week at the home of author Dakota LaCoy, which was absolutely incredible. She lives in this beautiful home that she and her family have. It's on a lake in the mountains of South Carolina. It was warm enough to go swimming. We took the boat out. We had fires every night on her back deck with these furry blankets she keeps everywhere. There was pumpkin bread for breakfast every day. It was absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1:So we spent this week doing these workshop sessions where we learned about things like character building and how to map out plot points for your novel and how to craft compelling sentences and just all of these things that I won't give too much away of, because Dakota does host these retreats every so often. So if you're a budding writer who would like to learn more about that, you can certainly reach out to her. And in the meantime, if you are a romance reader, dakota does specialize in the romance genre and she hosts a romance reader roundup on Clubhouse the Clubhouse app every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at 9 pm Eastern. So if you are interested in that, or finding out when her next retreat might be, or even getting a peek at her latest series to come out, which is absolutely adorable it's called the Bradford Brothers of Honky Tonk, texas. There are seven books and she's just put so much care and thought into crafting literally everything about this series, from the cover art to the books layout and just the way that she even features her audiobook narrator and these little interview spots on her website.
Speaker 1:It's really cool. She puts so much time and thought and care into everything. If you're interested in any of that, you can check everything out at dakotolacoycom. That's D-A-K-O-T-A-L-A-C-O-Ycom, and I really hope that you will take a look at that and enjoy everything she's been putting together for her audiences. Now I don't want to keep you waiting on the rest of our audiobook talk here. So, without any further ado, I represent to you the lovely Robin Miles as we dive into just a little bit more of the coach's corner. Okay, I am back.
Speaker 2:I'm coming back in with my ginger juice, my ginger juice.
Speaker 1:I also find that I have very different physicality between my narrating self and my chatting self. I know that when I get in the booth I need to probably do a little yoga or something right beforehand and really pay attention to my posture and feel where my neck is and how tight my jaw is and blow through my lips a little bit. I get so interested in what we're discussing and in how we're looking at it that I get my chest closes off a little bit because I'm leaning forward and then when I try to go back into the material, I have to open myself back up.
Speaker 2:That's because your body is so intuitive. You've moved into left brain I'm thinking about and analyzing and picking apart and then you got to jump back into your right side. That's what it sounds like to me. And okay, you know those days, right, you know those days. You get up in the morning. There's bad stuff happening maybe in the world, things going on in your own life, whatever those trying things that we live through. They bind us up. Sometimes it tenses your body. Shoulders go up and then you go in the booth. I've had this happen a couple of times where the experience of the characters is so deeply personal and you have to just kick open all your emotional gates. But you need to keep some of those barriers up to just sort of protect self a bit and I'll go in and I'll start reading and I feel the tension and I go. This is not it.
Speaker 2:So I just stop and I take my hands and I put them face up on my knees. I'll open my knees a little bit, sit up straight, open my body, let my belly fall open, and I will look at the text and just begin to read it and breathe.
Speaker 1:Totally different experience.
Speaker 2:Totally different experience. Your body will start to respond to the opening when you open up your neck. I mean, think about it your neck is the kill spot. If you're a wild animal, two animals are fighting in the wild. One wants to give up. What does it do? It exposes its neck and goes okay, I give up. Here it is. And then the other one usually walks away, unless, of course, it's predator prey and one's going to eat the other one. But if they're fighting for dominance, one gives up and nobody gets killed. That's an extremely vulnerable part of a mammal's body.
Speaker 1:I deal with a lot of throat chakra area, tension, kind of things I have never thought about. I always thought of the belly as being the vulnerable spot, and it is. But the neck is what you're saying it's the kill spot, it's the most vulnerable.
Speaker 2:You just tear that carotid artery and you're done, and you're done. Or crush the windpipe. Yeah, I put myself in a physically vulnerable position. My knees are fallen open, so there's the sexuality unguarded, and I put my wrists up on my knees, which is again opening across the chest. That's the heart, and I don't want to compress my neck, so I keep my eyes fairly level and then I just begin to breathe, and I do zen breathing. So it's like you concentrate more on the out breath and just let the breath come in. I don't pull it in In just a moment and I'll do that maybe 15 times. By the end of that 15th breath, I've centered again and I have the courage to put myself in the depth of the vulnerability I need to be in to read this book. But that's what I that's my like. It's the can opener for me, the can opener that opens the lid of my can when it's lamb shod.
Speaker 1:That's what this is going to be called. This exercise is forever now known as the can opener. Did someone teach you this or did you just sort of Into it this and come up with it?
Speaker 2:I just kept finding like I wanted to be more vulnerable, and so I was just like how can I get more open? Open my knees and open my chest and the wrists upward like that, with palms open. It's like giving and receiving position You're ready to give and you're ready to receive, and if you do that with your body, it sends a signal to your heart and your mind and it follows. It's like I was in Udahoggan's class when I was a young actress. No, shut up. That's how old I am, love.
Speaker 1:You were taught by Udahoggan.
Speaker 2:It was so cool.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, Because I was like in like a Udahoggan class, but that's not the same thing.
Speaker 2:We had her. Oh my God, Robin. What was her like? Phenomenal for many reasons. One, her sense of professionalism and craft, the way she approached work, Going through all of the exercises that are in the book. She was writing the second edition while we were in her class and a couple of times when class would end early.
Speaker 1:Which one Respect for acting or a challenge for the actor.
Speaker 2:Respect for acting was the one that had been written first, and she wrote a new edition of it, and so she would sometimes read us a chapter.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. You like workshopped Udahoggan's book with her. It was really exciting, you're like even cooler than I already knew.
Speaker 2:Wow, I never consider myself cool, but if you do, I'll take it, you totally are.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm a huge nerd so maybe don't listen to me, but I think you are.
Speaker 2:From the Jersey Shore. I'm not sure how cool I could be, but one of the things that she would always say is you never, as an actor, you don't try to cry. What you're actually trying to do is what you do when you start crying is you try to control it or stop it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you get that sort of like hot feeling in your face and in your throat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what are the things that your body does when you're trying not to cry? Just sort of observe. The next time you have a teary moment, you get choked up and you try to hold it in. And she was right. When you do the things you do when you are crying to stop it, your body starts crying. It's like it goes I'm constricting in my throat. I must be crying.
Speaker 1:And the tears just come out to match what you're doing. It's like making me misty-eyed, just to sort of like half blink a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I never try to cry and I was never very good at that to begin with when I was a young actress. You know, you're doing your check off play, right, you're playing Masha, and then you see in the script it goes she cries. I would always go, oh shit, because I can't make that stuff up. I can't pretend to cry, I just can't. Some people can.
Speaker 1:I'm amazed by it, because I never have been able to either. It's like you're saying, it's like it's a nuanced set of things, but I can't manufacture the tears myself.
Speaker 2:Uh-uh, nope, can't do it. So if I don't find an organic way to get myself there, it ain't happening. So that oodahoggan note was gold.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you this this is not even audio book related, but have you ever had an experience on stage where you like like this is one of my favorite parts about performing life theater is that, depending on just how you're feeling that day, or have the audience's vibe, or what your fellow actor throws at you on stage, that might be slightly different because of what they're doing that day? Like, have you ever had a spot where you had gone through the scene a bunch of times and it's one of these things where she cries, but you always are kind of like I have to get myself to that spot, but then one day it just hit you like a wall of tears. Yes, how did you handle that afterward? How did you have that experience? Find yourself literally sobbing and then just continue in this whole new emotional state that you're not used to doing the rest of the scene in.
Speaker 2:I find that emotions that are heightened like that are like a wave, and one of the things that I do when something like that happens is I just let the wave wash over me and it'll push me back a step.
Speaker 2:But I'm confident that if I just let it, if I don't fight it too too hard, like I just let it wash over me and keep going when the tide's coming in, it's hard sometimes to get into the water. You have to time it so that it washes over and then it's like a little bit calm and that's when you walk in. Well, if a wave is washing over you, you can't make it go away, you can't make it disappear. You have to just sort of absorb the energy of it and realize that you'll just keep moving forward as soon as it's kind of passed. Now the thing that I find happens is, especially with actors, we'll have something like that, like a real, true emotion washes up on our shore and it feels so good to be doing this thing that we've trained to do, that we try and hold onto it. And that's the problem you can't hold onto it, you have to just let it flow.
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense. I know that feeling of waves that you're talking about. I think that is a pretty common emotional experience, that they sort of roll and then they've recede, and then they roll and then they recede, and if you breathe your way through it.
Speaker 2:Life is everything. Breathe your way through it, and because we have a thousand dollar microphone in front of our face, you know you really can't skip the breaths. I have a request I want to hear you do Speakeasy. Yeah, we went through it real fast. We did Just through the opening, but now this time, take your time and see what you discover in the rhythm of the writing.
Speaker 1:And you have mentioned a couple times about the difference in the character's voice because of the time, yeah, yeah. So with something like this, I would usually play around with it a whole bunch over the course of several days or like a week, find a cadence and I don't even know how to describe what I'm thinking of here Like a set of vowels that works like placement in my mouth and like not trying to find the placement but just talking enough to kind of find how To let it fall into that place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I get you. That's a great way to go about it. If the voice of this character sounds like someone that you knew or saw, like oh, this is my great aunt. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:You know I'm thinking more just like movies I've seen of the 1920s. But I know that there's a really good chance. I'm not going to do that, well off the cuff.
Speaker 2:Don't worry about the judgment, just invest in the investigation of it. Gotcha, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:Oh, here's a question for part one Panther Sweat Check in. Are those an announcer different voice, that's just separate from the character or is she saying those?
Speaker 2:No, she's saying them.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think that, as I started, I'm going to just keep trying to kind of feel it coming into the place, so it's probably going to sound a little all over the place.
Speaker 2:Explore and I'm not interested in judging an exploration.
Speaker 1:Part one Panther Sweat. Check in, check in. There's this ragamuff in city out east, do you follow? Sitting pretty with a river on each arm, lit up in her gladdest rags in 1624. I'll tell you, she's seen it all, boy howdy, the deep down and the high up, champagne and syphilis, pearls and puke. Oh, she's a cynical doll. Nothing new to her, don't you believe it? Treat her right and she'll open up to you. As innocent as Eden and twice as naked. She's got secrets. Sure, who doesn't Pour me a snort and I'll spill? Mister, got me a meal and I'll show you the goods. If you go looking for it. Just about halfway uptown and halfway downtown there's this hotel, stuck like a pin all the way through the world, up on the roof of the Artemisia. It's heaven in a handbag Green grass and golden chickens laying golden eggs under the. Oh, sorry, you're going to have to tell me that word again. Telephonograph, yeah, okay, how am I doing? Good?
Speaker 2:Again, we're not judging the exploration, this is just exploration Okay, gotcha, where should I go back? To Up on the roof Like line 17, up on the roof.
Speaker 1:Up on the roof of the Artemisia. It's heaven. In a handbag, green grass and golden chickens laying golden eggs under the telephonograph wires 500 if there's one. They got Chinese ducks the color of nose powder. 12 she goats descended straight down from the girl who gave her tit to a titan. A couple of Jersey cows giving milk as sweet as maple syrup. Bees like gold buttons closing up the clouds. Sheep just bursting out. Fleece that spins better than silk Ever got drunk on a tomato, hopped up on cucumbers. Well then, you never ate out of the garden. On top of the Artemisia, and I swear, up there in the sky, they got a little black bear as tame as a kitten. I hear Telly goes by Rutherford and learned himself to growl. I love you. That's how you know it's heaven. The goats don't eat the sugar peas and the ducks don't fly off, and even the fellow with the claws knows about love. Should I keep going there? Should we go? Oh yeah, no, keep going, keep going. Okay Again. Ooh, I haven't read the rest of this, though. I stopped there.
Speaker 2:I always have to muck around in the mud for a while before it takes me where it wants to go.
Speaker 1:Okay, now, this is actually just a complete cold read, though, because I haven't read past that right. Well then, you won't want to rush All right, nope Down inside the Artemisia. It's this mortal coil all over. Many delights on every floor Says hotel on the neon, but most folks live down there on the permanent, or what does that mean?
Speaker 2:Most folks live there on the permanent.
Speaker 1:They're permanent residents like a residents hotel Gotcha All right Says hotel on the neon, but most folks live there on the permanent or as permanent as anything could be in a city that had eat itself just to grow another block. So girls on nine, jasmine on four, starlets malls and Debs on seven, abortionists and poisoners and bankers all shuffling together on three and the real heavy sugar up high Baseball players and bootleggers and bought cops who never busted a joint of who since the emit. What is that?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny, I have that written down somewhere, but it's I don't have it like with me today.
Speaker 1:I'm going to guess that joint of I think a Jew is actually a speakeasy. Yeah, and it's like what is is who and the amendment joint of the day Could be, and I think it's the place.
Speaker 2:It's the speakeasy where people are drinking that has not recently been busted by the cops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just look up real quick. I just want to know who is you.
Speaker 2:The only way means you in French yeah, and I think the amendment is prohibition, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um all right, when would you like me to start again?
Speaker 2:Let's do line 27 down inside, down inside.
Speaker 1:Down inside the Artemisia it's this mortal coil. All over Earthly. Delights on every floor says hotel on the neon, but most folks live there on the permanent or as permanent as anything could be in a city that had eat itself just to grow another block. Showgirls on nine, jasmine on four, starlets malls and debbs on seven. Abortionists and poisoners and bankers all shuffling together on three and the real heavy sugar up high baseball players and bootleggers and bought cops who never busted a joint of who.
Speaker 1:Since the amendment All the doors stand double wide to wedge in pianos, card tables, bathtub stills, real bodysoppers and down dirty desks bouncing and shaking those red halls. Rushing composers on rolly skates, outfielders, toot and saxophones, tenors, practice and archery on big buck, glass eyed deer heads, riders shimmying in bare feet, poor lambs. But the rent and the drink they do come before the shine and the shoes. Some damned body rolled out a golf course in the East ballroom, flattened out that green with an iron like it was Pan's own shirt front. Ain't nothing out there in the city. Some fool didn't drag in through the service entrance. Everybody said one of these days the moon COD come rolling in like. I don't know what that means either.
Speaker 2:Cash on delivery. Cod Cash on delivery. Okay, so you don't pay for it until it arrives at your door.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Everybody said one of these days the moon and COD come rolling in like a dining table, cod up on her side, boys, mind the chandeliers. You never saw girls like those glitter jeans with their sequined crowns. You never saw boys like those velvet fellas getting their edge. Neither.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice, nice, nice. See, your instincts are taking you to the right place. Do you feel how, all of a sudden, you're starting to get into a little bit of a pattern?
Speaker 1:But I do, and I also feel like I'm falling into a southern accent. Is that not happening?
Speaker 2:I don't think it's necessarily southern. When I first read this, one of the things that came to mind was May West as a ragamuffin city out east.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty with a river on each arm, lit up in a gladus drag since 1624. She'll tell you she's seen it all, boy Howdy, you know like that, that smart, and she's sarcastic as hell. Yeah, and that's what I. One of the things I love about this is the sarcasm is written into her character in the text, especially like when you got to that line and I think it really started to open that part of it up.
Speaker 2:You said Eve went door to door with her apple Not a soul in the autumn ease, it would not grabbed it, planted a kiss on old mama fig leaf and had that shiny red temptation turned into the applejack and you put a vase in it and did it with an anaw. You know what I mean. So there's some, there's a lot of attitude in this. She's playful and she's from another era. And the more you were reading, the more you started to develop a speech pattern that came right out of what the author wrote in the text. So I spend so much time on opening chapters because that helps me find the footprint that's going to carry me through the rest of the book. Or it's like a tow rope for a skier. You know it's pulling you up the hill. Once you're up the hill you just got to ski down.
Speaker 1:Robin, I look at this and I legit and like and like. We can't necessarily do that. Well, I want to know, I want to know if you've ever done this with anything with an audiobook Like I. Look at this and I see a monologue. Like I see a monologue that requires marking out beat changes and looking up stuff. Like I, this would be something that if I were doing theater, this would take me like days just to look through and work through this and it reads like a monologue. It does, but we don't usually have the opportunity to spend as much time as we would on something. Have you ever had something where you feel like this section or this chapter or whatever is like so vital and important or such a lynchpin or such an introduction that, like you actually treated it like you would? Oh, I rehearse it Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I had one of those books. You know you get one. It doesn't happen a lot, but you get one of those books and you turn the page and you go. There's no punctuation. The entire page has no punctuation. There's no period. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad to say I've never had that experience. It sounds like a nightmare. It sounds like a literal the actors nightmare is being on stage with no lines, that you don't remember what you're saying. That to me is the audiobook narrator's night. You turn the page. There's no punctuation.
Speaker 2:There's no punctuation. Well, I have to now plot my way. How did these thoughts come out of this person and this, oh okay, cause and effect, I see. Oh, of course she said that after that, because that follows. And then, oh right, we're taking a completely new tack here. Hash, I make a hash mark, right, okay? So something catches my head, my mind, my attention and sends me off into another way. So I just put in the thing that catches my attention so that it effectively does it for me. Do you know what I mean? So I'm always trying to embed it into like some kind of organic experience, like reading, reading, reading, look up, look out the window. And then she said to her mother I'll never do that again. And then I realized that I have to take it off of looking out the window, which stimulates the next thought.
Speaker 1:You know who I'm going to have to remember to ask this question to, if I ever have him on the show is? I think Sean Pratt narrated Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and I QC'd it and I remember that there's like David Foster Wallace has sentences that go on for like pages, If I'm remembering this right, if I'm remembering this right. So I want to ask him to and see. One of the things I love about getting to talk to different people is it's kind of what we were talking about before Like you can have one emotion and everyone's going to express it in a different way.
Speaker 1:There's so many different ways to skin this cat and I would be so interested to see if he remembers when he was reading that book, like what he did to make sentences that were three pages long Make sense.
Speaker 2:It's hard. I know it's really hard when you get into complex text.
Speaker 1:Do you ever mark like? Do you have a like a? Okay, so the first audio book that I ever got, katie Kellgren had said let me know if you need any help with anything. And I got this book. It was a young adult book, I don't even remember what it was, but it had a bunch of different characters and she kind of walked me through a very extensive set of tools that she used to mark her scripts with different characters, and I don't mean the characters in the in the book, I mean like different sets of markings that she would use, how she used her color system, how she would use underlines, how she would use circles, how she like all these. What, what do you use to approach anything like that? Do you have like a codified system, or is there something that you share with others or I'm interested to hear about that? I do.
Speaker 2:And I always teach it to my my classes, my students, but with the caveat that you have to treat your script in a way that you easily respond to it. So I remember doing a book that the two communities that were in, constantly in scenes with each other were Afri Connors, you know, and so I had that community and then they were in dialogue with Cosa speakers click language speakers and how do you approach a dialect like that that doesn't even have like a sonic translation into English?
Speaker 2:Well, you have to learn the sounds that don't occur in English, that do in their language, which means you've got to be able to do well. You have to know what consonant is a substitute for what sound Like the X is.
Speaker 1:I know that.
Speaker 2:And I have a South African speaker who's a friend of mine and, as she said, there's like a voiced and an unvoiced. So instead of just three click sounds, there's actually kind of six. But the big I said large gesture that's different for the two and that's Afri Connors tends to be very tight in the jewel, very tight, and so you don't have much space between your molars. And then if you want to do South Africa, you have a dropped jaw, more of a dropped jaw and more of an opening for somebody who is doing Cosa or Cosa actually. So going from those two jaw positions back and forth was really challenging.
Speaker 2:So the only way I could do it was to use my IPA symbols and to draw the symbols over the sounds. That changed that. I wanted to make sure I didn't get wrong. So in the dialogue I had to write it in, but the symbols above the words. Now that has meaning for me. If you haven't studied IPA, you're going to have to come up with a way to remind yourself every time you get to an ah sound to do eh, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I want to speak to this for a moment just because, like, okay, one of the things that bothers me most like in the world and life is when people get gatekeeper about stuff and people are discouraged from kind of even starting to try because they feel like there's way too much, I'll never understand, it'll never be good enough. And I want to stop for a moment here to ask how important do you think it is for people to know IPA, to be able to start in audiobooks?
Speaker 2:To start in audiobooks.
Speaker 1:You don't need to know any IPA in terms of that's what I thought you were going to say.
Speaker 2:What I do find, though, is it's tremendously helpful for well, two things Getting it consistent, a and B. Being able to share what is that sound with your editor, because if your editor is supposed to catch when you slip, but the editor can't hear the difference between an, uh and a, yeah, they're not going to catch when you slip and I slip, I slip, you know I slip, and I do this all the time. I teach accents and I slip Because you're in the experience, you have headphones on, but you're in it, and staying consistent with the emotion and the actions and the drive and the who am I takes precedence over any accent that you do. I think, if you're on your game and you're doing things with truth, you can't get away with egregious stuff. You can't but, um, make me care about that character and get anchored down, and there's a lot of forgiveness that comes with that.
Speaker 1:All right, can you just read me a little bit of this in that May West voice again?
Speaker 1:Oh sure, this is the kind of thing where, like it was nice to get feedback from you that what I was doing was starting to work, but I don't know what I did. Like I could feel it, but I don't know what it sounded like and I'm not really sure how to do it again. So like if I were working on this at home and this were my book and I were just doing it, I would be going back and re listening to myself to kind of feel that out. I also, as I've mentioned earlier, that I would take like a few days beforehand that I'd kind of get this, the feel of it and all of that, and I wouldn't even really start until I had that. But since we're doing this kind of on the fly, I have no idea what I did. That worked and I really enjoyed hearing you do the May West thing and I kind of want to see if I hear a little bit of that, if it'll kind of like kick me back into it.
Speaker 2:OK, I will plop into this. You never saw girls like those glittered chains with their sequined crowns. You never saw boys like those velvet fellas getting their edge, neither. If Eve went door to door with her apple, not a soul in the autumn easier wouldn't have grabbed it, planet a kiss on old mama fig leaf and had that shiny red temptation turned into the applejack of good and evil within an hour. And down below oh baby, it's dark down there in the underworld. Oh baby, it's dark down there in the underworld. So to me that's like it feels somewhere like it's influenced by May West, although the other thing is that influences me, I know in this is Catherine Hepburn, uh-huh, but a misbehaving Catherine Hepburn, snarky and an underworld Catherine Hepburn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be so cool to get a chance to just like watch some of her movies before I jump into this, but I'm going to give it another shot. Uh, part one Panther sweat Check in. There's this ragamuffin city out east you follow, Sitting pretty with a river on each arm, lit up in her gladdest rags since 1624. She'll tell you she's seen it all Boy howdy, the deep down and the high up, champagne and syphilis, pearls and puke, good, good.
Speaker 2:I just want to mention one thing. It's an observation that this author does like to use alliteration yes, pearls and puke. And then there's another one that comes up later. It's like B, b, b yeah, it's baseball players and bootleggers and bought cops who never busted a joint. Um, it's just allow yourself to have a little fun with it. Okay, you know, that's all, um. And then the other thing is what was I going to say? I didn't write it down. Oh, yes, um. One of the other things that I play with sometimes is I want to heighten the intimacy, uh-huh. So I take my microphone and I move it back a few inches and then I lean forward into the microphone as if I'm talking right into somebody's ear.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to see if I can do that.
Speaker 2:And that gives it a different feeling, but without you having to jump through hoops.
Speaker 1:I kind of feel like I'm almost tightening my throat to try to make it. Oh no, no, we don't want that Baller, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just just move the mic, Okay, About four, five inches forward. Then lean forward as if the two of you are on chairs right and you want to reach their ear. So you lean in and you're really just talking right at their lobe of their ear.
Speaker 1:All right Park 1.
Speaker 1:Yes, panther, sweat, check in. There's this ragamuffin city out east. You follow, sitting pretty with a river on each arm, lit up in her gladdest rags since 1624. She'll tell you she's seen it all, boy howdy the deep down and the high up, champagne and syphilis, pearls and puke. Oh, she's a cynical doll. Nothing new to her, don't you believe it? Treat her right and she'll open up to you. As innocent as Eden and twice as naked. She's got secrets. Sure, who doesn't Pour me a snort and I'll spill Mr Spot, me a meal and I'll show you the goods If you go looking for it. Just about halfway uptown and halfway downtown there's this hotel stuck like a pin all the way through the world, up on the roof of the Artemisia. It's heaven in a handbag green grass. And okay, I need to stop because I feel like I'm playing a caricature instead of having any actual intention.
Speaker 2:Right, you have to have a reason for speaking, yeah, otherwise I mean, that's why that first person idea of anchoring into. Why do I need to talk about this for 10 hours? This feels to me like an insider's view of this hotel, and this hotel is for badly behaved people, people who don't follow the rules. So you're part of that crowd and you're kind of helping to welcome me in. I had one note, second line of that paragraph. You say, if you go looking for it, just about halfway uptown and halfway downtown there's this hotel. And you really framed the word hotel because you're introducing a vision, an image or something into it. Now, right, there's this hotel, stuck like a pin all the way through the world, but you haven't told us the name of it yet. So now you are up on the roof of the Artemisia. It's heaven in a handbag.
Speaker 2:So, that thing you mentioned before hotel. This equals hotel, and now you've introduced the name of it.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me what it means, stuck like a pin all the way through the world? I don't understand what I'm saying there.
Speaker 2:Well, I can't say that I understand it in the way it was meant, but what I see when I talk about it is it's anchored down into a planet, okay, like a hotel, that's just, and it ain't going nowhere because it's anchored.
Speaker 1:Okay, I guess, because it's got all this stuff going on in the basement.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure she's explained it yet. She gives you that quality, but then she goes on to talk about stuff. Yeah, and she talks about these things that are essentially magical, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, I get it. Okay, all right. So Artemisia, the top is heaven, the inside is the mortal coil, normal earthly delights, and then the basement is where the Bosch painting yeah, the Bosch painting. Okay, all right, I get it All right.
Speaker 2:So they're all things that aren't possible. Yeah, they got Chinese ducks the color of nose powder, two sheep, 12 sheikots, descended straight down from the girl who gave her tit to a tit Like that's not actually possible. And you ever get drunk on a tomato, hopped up on cucumbers Should I say tomato?
Speaker 2:Well then, you never ate out of it, it's all good, it's all I just did that, because I know that I did that last time, okay, well then you never ate out of the garden on top of the Artemisia and I saw up there in the sky they got a little black bass, james and kitten. So there's all these magical things that can't really be.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I tell you it goes by motherhood and learn themselves to growl. I love you, that's how. You know what to say I just I feel so far removed from the voice. I'm trying to put it into.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing is it's not meant to convince you to do it the way I did. I'm just saying for me, I just like the way you did it so much, Robin.
Speaker 2:I just think that it was helpful to me to have somebody that was iconic from this era, that felt like that could be this person, and then I could just start to play around with that person. But really still, it comes back to the who am I of that character? She's snarky, she drops lots of hints, really independent. There's certain qualities that just sort of come out through how she talks about, what she talks about, and I make sure that I really take them on as part of who she is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Just saying this is also. It's like the language is so, it's like you're saying like half of this stuff can't happen and the language is so like stylized.
Speaker 2:Very.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think if I were having to perform this, this would be a book that would take me a lot of work. This would be not something that I could just go on instinct.
Speaker 2:This isn't you will be able to go on instinct. But I think, process wise, if you first take your time, read it through, read through the opening again, but don't rush. And then I just practice this part one until you figure out where does this lady live, where does this character live? And then, when you start reading the book and you know you're adding, making choices about other characters, it always stays anchored in the narrator. Making sure that the the narrator is anchored in who you are is really important. And then, once you're past a certain point, I find, like once I'm past maybe the first third of the book, I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:I've been reading it aloud long enough that whatever rhythm and pace is in the writing, it's now in my body. It's in my body, it's not going away. And if it's a really difficult book, I try not to be juggling two things at once because they're going to pull me in two different directions. So I'd rather like get this done, record it, get out of the way and then move on to the next, so that I'm not caught between impulses. It really lets this, the one that you're concentrating on it, it gives it the opportunity to I don't know possess you. Yeah, I guess that's what I'd call it. It possesses you and if you're comfortable enough to give over to that possession gosh, that sounds very woo-woo. If you're willing to give over to the possession of that energy and that drive and that, who am I? That's not actually you then it does. Isn't that what we want? Like yeah, yeah, I'm willing, and you got it.
Speaker 2:And you got it, and you don't ever need to question yourself again once you got it. I think.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to try this one more time, and I'm not going to pay much attention to trying to do it in a certain voice. I think I'm just going to try and Well, what is your?
Speaker 2:narrator doing. I want to paint the picture of this place for you. What is it really like? You can't imagine it. Let me tell you.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm even trying to imagine where she is and like in relation to what she's talking about, and it's telling that she says out east, because I feel like that puts her in a different place than in the city. That puts her in a different place than I don't know. It feels like she's I don't know. I think that when I was looking at it before, I was imagining her like there with it, but she's away and talking about it.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes, she's trying to make this place clear for someone who's never been there.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it makes me wonder where are they and why is she making it clear for them? Do we have any information on that, or am I? Do I just make that up?
Speaker 2:I think that's what you have to just sort of make up or anchor down and again keeping it simple. So, sitting in a cafe, sitting in an Irish bar, in a pub, so why doesn't she just say Boston, new York, whatever, and then she says, with a river on each arm, could be Boston, could be New York because we got the Hudson River, east River and the I was thinking New York, and then that also changes the Chicago paint line, because it's not about Chicago. I don't know, not at all.
Speaker 1:It's a whole Chicago paint. It's like of this world but not this world. Yes, blood, yes blood.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, and being sure that you know what the reference means. And if you can't be sure, then pick something and commit to it. Okay, that's the part that.
Speaker 1:I'm like I want to look all of these up because I don't understand at least like 20% of them.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you got to do that work Also.
Speaker 1:sorry, I have a move around in my chair because it's squeaking and bothering. I like to sit with my knees sort of like parallel and with my feet on the floor in front of me, but I can't sit for longer than about 20, 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:Without moving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but when I sit cross-legged I can sit for a really long time, but then that feels weird trying to narrate. So I've now pulled my legs up and I'm sitting cross-legged, so we'll see if that changes anything. This is not how I usually narrate, but we've been sitting here for a little bit of time, for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say too knowing, because she switches a lot and she talks about things metaphorically, right. So this ragamuffin city, sitting pretty on a river, she'll tell you she's seen it all. It's the city and it continues. Treat her right and she'll open up to you as innocent as Eden and twice as naked. And then poor Mia Snortna's spill, mr Spot, mia meal, and I'll show you the goods. She could literally be that, could just be narrator talking to you, or could she be referring to the city, because that's where it starts.
Speaker 1:That's what I was thinking. She's got secrets?
Speaker 2:Sure she does, paul. It could be poor her a Snortna, she'll spill Mr Spot Mia meal, but she doesn't say that unless she's like quoting the city speaking to the guy. Paul Mia Snortna, spill Mr Spot Mia meal and I'll show you the goods.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to try again, probably going to stop halfway through and be like wait, I just don't get this. All right, panther sweat, check in. There's this ragamuffin city, out east you follow, sitting pretty with a river on each arm, lit up in her gladdest rags in 1624. She'll tell you she's seen it all, boy howdy, the deep down and the high up, champagne and syphilis, pearls and puke. Oh, she's a cynical doll. Nothing new to her, don't you believe it? Treat her right and she'll open up to you as innocent as Eden and twice as naked. She's got secrets. Sure, who doesn't? For me a Snortna spill, mr Spot Mia meal, and I'll show you the goods If you go looking for it.
Speaker 1:Just about halfway uptown and halfway downtown there's this hotel, stuck like a pin all the way through the world, up on the roof of the Artemisia. It's heaven in a handbag. Green grass and golden chickens laying golden eggs under the telephonic graph wires 500, if there's one. They got Chinese ducks the color of nose powder, 12 shea goats descended straight down from the girl who gave her tit to a titan. A couple of jersey cows giving milk as sweet as maple syrup, bees like gold buttons closing up the clouds, sheep just bursting out fleece that spins better than silk Ever got drunk on a tomato, picked up on cucumbers? Well then, you never ate out of the garden. On top of the Artemisia and I swear up there in the sky, they got a little black bear as tame as a kitten. I hear Telly goes by Rutherford and learned himself to growl. I love you. That's how you know it's heaven. The goats don't eat the sugar peas and the ducks don't fly off and even the fellow with the claws knows about love. Down inside the Artemisia it's this mortal coil.
Speaker 1:All over earthly delights on every floor says Hotel on the Neon, but most folks live there on the permanent or as permanent as anything could be in a city that'd eat itself just to grow another block. Showgirls on nine, jasmine on four, starlets malls and Debs on seven, abortionists and poisoners and bankers all shuffling together on three and the real heavy sugar up high baseball players and bootleggers and bought cops who never busted a joint of who. Since the amendment All the doors stand double wide to wedge in pianos, card tables, bathtub stills, real bodysappas and down dirty despots bouncing and shaking those red halls, rushing composers on rolly skates, outfielders tootin' saxophones, tenors practicing archery on big buck, glass eyed deer heads, riders shimmying in bare feet, poor lambs. But the rent and the drink they do come before the shine and the shoes. Some damned body rolled out a golf course in the East Ballroom, flattened that green with an iron like it was Pan's own shirt front.
Speaker 1:Ain't nothin' out there in the city. Some fool didn't drag in through the service entrance. She said one of these days the moon COD come rollin' in like a dining table COD up on her side, boys, mine the chandeliers. You never saw girls like those glittered james with their sequined crowns. You never saw boys like those velvet fellas gettin' their edge. Neither.
Speaker 1:If Eve went door to door with her apple, not a soul in the Artemisia wouldn't have grabbed it, planted a kiss on old mama fig leaf and had that shiny red temptation turned into the applejack of good and evil within an hour. And down below, oh baby, it's dark down there in the underworld. Barrels of strike me dead ski rollin' in full and out, empty stills workin' full time, tricklin' out aqua mortis, like the fountain of youth meant to call in all her debts at once. Every hour some long black doosomebergs blows up right into the basement full of Canadian bust head, mexican tea, or girls like a matched set of earrings.
Speaker 1:Down there in the shadows the dandies got themselves swippin' pool like a lake of tears, decked out with silver lanterns on every wall and red silk cabanas full of bathhouse. Boys felt sibles and pomade and not a whole lot else. Those kids will have you opium or coke on a gold plate before you know and want it. Night that pool's gonna look like a Bosch paintin' you follow. The water will fizz black with running mascara. Fifteen minutes in the basement is a lifetime up above, and the closer you get to the basement the more you get confused on the matters of swell and dastard. Just one little floor up in the grand green guilt lobby they fixed a series over turtle soup and pernode In front. One of them hired heaviest, turned his gun on himself and sprayed the glass doors with Chicago paint the basement do like her little nightcaps.
Speaker 2:Ooh, that was exciting.
Speaker 1:I still have no idea what I was saying for like half of the last paragraph.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that, though. Okay cool, I did not know that. That's neat. But you see how this almost has a drive. She's quick-witted and so it can't. I don't think it can be so laid back, otherwise it would start to feel draggy. She, a quick-witted person, is like. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and I feel like I feel like if I had more time to do this again some more, I want to open up more again. I want to do your like wrists on knees thing and because I could feel the more that I went through it and the more that I was like, oh shoot, this pace is. It feels almost breakneck and I can't slow down or else it will be obvious that I'm stopping to look ahead. But I also can't keep like the you know that thing of like when you're narrating you're kind of looking ahead to see what's coming next at the same time as you're on. I call it the read ahead. You have to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this piece has so many twists and turns that it felt impossible to do at that speed. And I was. I felt like I was about to just like fall apart. I can't be as I was going through that. So it's really cool to hear that I like made it through without showing that, but it was like taking the full capacity of trying to understand where I was about to head with whatever I was saying.
Speaker 2:It's. It feels like it's down two layers into yourself now and that you may be able to find a couple more layers. Sure, of course, but even doing the read ahead, my eyesight stinks. So I wear big, thick glasses or contacts when I work, but when I have something like this, that feels like, okay, this has a pace. It's a little faster than my normal. The wit is such that if you slow it down, you kind of ruin the jokes. All right, what do I need to do? The answer for me is enlarge my text. Oh, like to put it on the screen and put it in such a way that I can read bigger chunks of it more easily.
Speaker 1:Oh, that feels like it would make a huge difference with this.
Speaker 2:Now the way I word processed this. You have it in landscape, don't you?
Speaker 1:I do, but I think there's something about it being in landscape that it's almost like harder, because the sentences feel like they go on forever, forever. They've got weird punctuation all throughout them.
Speaker 2:I would agree with both things. And when, when I looked at it, I printed out and I went, oh, this won't do, and I changed it from landscape to portrait. So sometimes the way the words are arranged on the page can make it easier or more challenging to actually read.
Speaker 1:Have you used, have you tried that? There's like an app now that it will change the font from sort of like a blue to a red, from left to right, and it's supposed to make it easier for, I think, people with print disabilities, like dyslexia, to be able to follow from left. It sounds like it would be disorienting, but when I've looked at it, it actually makes you much more easily tell where the start of the next line is and to keep going with like it's.
Speaker 2:I'm not aware of it but I do make a lot of my adjustments in I Annotate and I just I take my iPad and I just kind of hang it off the back of my monitor, so it's physically in the booth while Pro Tools is running on my screen. I've been doing that for years and I've just recently started taking my marked script from I Annotate, throwing it back up into Dropbox and then downloading it onto the studio computer.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you just have it on the screen. That's what I usually do, and it's just because I never could kind of situate the iPad or the tablet when you want it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. It's challenging, but I will say that was a really good read through the characters becoming more defined, more clarified, and I think you get your first impressions. You know, as you read these scripts and that's the first thing you go with. But as you're doing your prep read and you're getting further into the story, you're learning more and more about all your characters, plus, I think, the narrator as well, and then you've read the whole thing and you go back to the beginning and then you can add the nuances of the stuff that you learned as the book went on back into the potentiality of that character at the top. You know what I mean? It's like that's one of the things that's bundled into who she is. It's just not going to come out until it's at the right point in the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, robin, are you ready to wrap up, or?
Speaker 2:Oh, I am, I am definitely ready, I'm crispy now.
Speaker 1:All right, sounds good. Well, thank you so much for doing this, and I just absolutely love talking to you. I never want to stop, as evidenced by the fact that we've now been doing this for hours, and 15 minutes is how long my thing has been recorded. So if that does and we just caught up for like three hours last week so if that doesn't tell you how fun it is to talk to Robin Miles, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:Well, I had a good time too.
Speaker 1:Just before we wrap up. Obviously this whole entire thing has been such a delight because you are an excellent and long time coach of audio book narration, so the email that people can go to is ourmiles at voxpertisecom.
Speaker 2:It's voice, vo or voiceover, vox for voice or vo expertise.
Speaker 1:And what kinds of coaching do you do, like what would someone come to you for, and how would that be structured?
Speaker 2:Audio book technique coaching, a diagnostic. Sometimes I'll do like I'm a narrator and I'm not booking as much as I ought to be. Maybe I want to know what could I do to change that Accent coaching I do do that, although I don't do every accent. I don't do Australian, I don't do New Zealander. That's just not in my back pocket.
Speaker 1:That is so surprising to me. I just always think of you as the accent queen.
Speaker 2:Those two for me are really challenging. And Welsh.
Speaker 1:Oh, God, that's hard for me. You're going to have to listen to the upcoming episodes because Catherine Latrell is going to be live teaching me. I can't remember the exact order that we have, but Welsh is on the table. So yeah, but obviously I'm not going to learn these complete dialects in like an hour. We're just going to do kind of an overview of how she would approach teaching them and then I'm going to practice a little bit.
Speaker 2:The other thing I do is just straight up acting coaching. So if someone's working on a script or they have an audition, I've coached a lot of people auditioning for drama schools like conservatories Production coaching, meaning somebody's doing a production of the red and brown water and they need a Louisiana accent.
Speaker 1:I had no idea that you did that.
Speaker 2:And then the other one would be people who need to pitch, people who need to speak better, more concisely, with more power, with more confidence.
Speaker 1:So, basically, you are obviously a wonderful coach for audiobook stuff, but I think what we're learning here is that if you are a theatrical actor or an audiobook lover and listener who has no intention to ever perform, but has any sort of reason that they need to be doing public speaking, you might still be a really good fit for them for something. And then I think, the very last thing that I will ask you about, what is your pick for your road trip playlist?
Speaker 2:This is so easy Sarah Bareilles, brave, and it's tied with I Choose you. Both Sarah Bareilles songs, great drive on Brave, great drumming underneath it, so it makes you want to move in your seat, but it also keeps reinforcing for me to be wholly your own person. So it's kind of like a little therapy session in a song. Love it. And then the other one is I Choose you, which was actually my wedding song, second Marriage, and my friend who is a backup singer in Vegas, michelle Johnson, who is so fierce, she sang it at our Zoom wedding because it was during the pandemic. I love that song. It's warm and squishy and it just radiates love.
Speaker 1:Warm and squishy and radiates love. How could it get better than that? All right, well, robin, I just absolutely adore you. I am so, so glad that we got to do this, and I am even more glad that you were like I'm going to have to save that until next time, because that means there's going to be a next time.
Speaker 2:There'll be a next time. No, I so enjoy spending time with you, so anytime we can, whether the mic is running or not.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yes. I don't need pro tools to enjoy you. That's awesome, all right. Well, thank you so much for your time and I hope you have a great day. Thanks you too, all right.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye, that was so much fun. I'm so glad that I could share that most excellent of coaching with all of you. Let's just do a little breakdown of some of the great takeaways from this conversation. Number one the can opener great exercise for opening your body up when you're feeling a little closed off. Number two waves of emotion. Wow, what a great way to think about this in art and in life. Just let your emotions roll over you like waves. Sometimes they're going to feel like they'll knock you down, but they always eventually recede.
Speaker 1:Number three no judgment. Don't judge yourself when you're working. It only shuts you down from doing your best. Number four punctuation is your friend. Notice it, use it, be grateful for it. Number five alliteration is awesome. Have fun with frequent first letters and phrases.
Speaker 1:Number six play around with your mic, see if it feels better to lean in or lean out. You might not always keep what you're doing, but it could really inform the way that you want to work. Number seven you're allowed to be a beginner. Look, a background in acting is going to be really helpful, and if you want to expand your edge or have a really great career, you're probably going to want coaching. But you are allowed to just be a beginner figuring things out on their own. Because you want to give it a try, have some fun with it. Number eight first things first. If you're a narrator within a specially difficult project coming up, consider scheduling that as your only project until it's done and really let it take hold of you instead of trying to focus on a few things at a time. Number nine change your script, not the words, but the size or the layout on your iPad or your screen. It's just a really simple way to make this work easier on yourself, if you haven't thought of it before. And finally, number 10, robin is available at rmiles at voxpertisecom for audiobook coaching, theatrical audition coaching, dialect and accent work and public speaking for non-acting clients.
Speaker 1:I really hope you enjoyed this extra bonus episode and will visit our show page on Apple or Spotify to leave a good review or, even better, to share a link to the episode with a friend or on social media. This is the best way for more narrators or audiobook lovers to find out about the show and know to give it a listen. And now I hope that you will please go eat some turkey and get some rest and have an amazing rest of your day with family.
Speaker 1:This podcast was created, hosted and produced by me, emily, for Imperium Productions, expanding the universe of storytelling. Special thanks, of course, to Robin Miles for giving her time to be on the show, to our own podcast house band comprised of Jake and Mr Stewart, who recorded the show's theme music for us, and to our sponsor, second Skin Automotive, who contributed to the sound treatment of the mobile studio and is actually having a Thanksgiving sale right now. So anything on their website, secondskinaudiocom, is 20% off with code BF20. That's B as in black and F as in Friday 20, and that's going on through November 26th. Happy Thanksgiving, it's wonderful to have you here. So thanks for listening and I'll see you on Down the Road.