Authors Electric

The Audio Version The first choice was only partly mine. Publisher Adlard Coles was planning an audio version of Stars to Steer By . Who would read it? They suggested three professional narrators which I put to the family vote. One, whose voice was rather light (and pleasant, I thought) was rejected by all except for myself and my oldest granddaughter. The other two -- stronger, more assured, more (or less?) flexible -- split the voters entirely: Francis, who listens to a lot of audio books and who spent a generous amount of time researching samples beyond  the clips we had been sent, headed one faction but the Adlard Coles editorial office AND an equal number of family voters, preferred the other. I began to feel both protective and shy. Stars to Steer By is non-fiction, it’s historical, it’s researched but it’s also, occasionally, personal. My thoughts, my history, my words. I discovered that I wanted to speak them, some of them anyway… the opening for instance: ‘One early eve...

Peter Duck and me in Felixstowe I was passing a traffic lights where there were two primary school girls waiting. My car window was open and I heard what they said. "Oh, it's the orfer!" I waved like crazy and they waved back. You can keep your red carpet and your paparazzi, popping flash-bulbs and I really can't be bothered with a paving slab in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. To be identified as an author by a couple of Felixstowe primary school kids (who almost certainly won't have read my books) made me deeply, deeply happy. It happened last year as well. I was walking to Felixstowe Library to help give out the medals for the summer reading challenge and there were three or four children playing in a street nearby. No chance they were going to be getting a certificate for reading their six books over the summer holiday but still I heard them say, “That's Julia Jones. She's an Orfer. She came to our school.” That was what had mattered, nothing...

I realised that I would probably feel uncomfortable about Julia being able to see my face as I worked. I am an actress and in seven years of narrating audiobooks there had never been an author present at any time. Recently I have been asking to have all the lights turned off in the studio so I could turn the iPad screen up to its brightest, but this made my eyes blur after about seven hours so now the lights are on again. And this meant my face would be lit. So I placed myself rather carefully at the microphone on the day I invited Julia to the studio. The Salt Stained Book is a wonderful adventure story with a strong theme of sailing and with references to Swallows and Amazons . I was very happy to be the narrator for the audio version as I knew the author Julia Jones, and had already read and loved the book. But I had not really anticipated how anxious I would be about her listening to me interpreting her work. I had already phoned her to check up one or two things...

The Salt-Stained Book was my first published novel. When, in 2011,  I saw its words on a page, in type, I felt an unexpected rush of emotion. I'll be honest, I cried. The story itself had come easily -- with conviction and delight -- but it had been a long struggle to get it into print. I love books and once the words were there, fixed and ready to read, it felt like one of the greatest moments of my life. An electronic edition came later and was exciting but less profoundly moving. I'd got used to seeing the physical shape of the words away from my own screen. What I hadn't fully experienced was their sound. Yes, of course I'd read it aloud in my mind as I was working. For a brief couple of terms, many years ago, I had the poet, Charles Tomlinson, as my university tutor. He required every undergraduate essay, however nitpickingly abstruse (or, more likely, naively tendentious), to be read to him in his rather large room from the other side of a grand mahogany t...