Tongue Gymnastics with Holly Adams

A few weeks ago, I sat down on Zoom with the extraordinary actor and performer Holly Adams. Holly has narrated almost 200 audiobooks, including both the Mount Moriah Mysteries and the Deep Dish Mysteries. Holly and I covered a lot of ground during our chat, from the challenges of pronouncing made-up place and character names in epic fantasy novels to ways to subliminally make your audience hold their breath.

I “met” Holly in 2014, when I heard her audition tape for the Audible recording of A Murder in Mount Moriah. You can hear an excerpt of her performance here. Her vibrant personality just zinged out of my computer speakers. There was no question of hiring anyone else once I heard that audition. Everything about that audition tape was great, but one thing that absolutely blew me away was Holly’s ability to give each character an instantly-recognizable way of speaking.

I’ll be posting more soon, but here’s a sneak preview of Holly showing how she moves sound around her mouth to create distinct character voices without changing her accent.

Virtual Tour of a Virtual Book

Mount Moriah Mysteries Banner

This month, I’m going on an actual trip with my actual family of squishy little humans, the first proper vacation we’ve had in several years. I will bring a real book made of paper, and read it with my eyeballs while sipping a tropical cocktail and raking sand with my newly-pedicured toes.

I’m also going on a trip next month, but not really. There will be people there, but not really. And there will be books, but not really.

Allow me to explain.

Next month’s trip is a virtual audiobook blog tour kindly organized by Jess the Magnificent at Audiobookworm. The way it works is, Jess sends virtual copies of my audiobooks to reviewers and bloggers who agree to post reviews, interviews, excerpts, and other content on their blogs on certain dates. As the author, I make the rounds on social media and online, commenting and interacting with each blogger on the assigned day. No actual anything changes hands at any point. None of us ever meet in person. The reviewers never hold a copy of my book in their hands. We are living in the future, people.

For both kinds of trips, prep is key. On the blog tour, all the content has to be requested, created, and shared on a strict timetable for the tour to run smoothly. So while I’m frantically trying to make sure that we’ve packed swim diapers, sunscreen, and a bunch of those little pouches of pureed fruit that are like baby crack for the actual trip, I’m also trying to prepare Top Ten lists, photos, and publicity blurbs for the blog tour. Even with Jess as my virtual travel agent, creating a two-week digital trip is almost as exhausting as planning a family holiday that will please both my toddler and my teenager. (Both kids like sleep and melted cheese, so I’m building our itinerary around those things).

I’m SUPER excited about both trips, and I hope you will come along. On the virtual one, that is. You are totally not invited to the beach.

Audiobook trailer for A Murder in Mount Moriah

Slide5Just wanted to share a little snippet of Holly Adams’s brilliant narration of A Murder in Mount Moriah, available to download on iTunesAmazon, or Audible.

Even if you’ve already read the book, I guarantee Holly’s hilarious portrayals of the characters will tickle your funny bone all over again.