This past May, I attended the Audio Publisher’s Association Conference where I participated in a panel on Listening Community Reviews. I was fortunate to meet and visit with a good number of narrators we know and love including Patrick Lawlor, the voice of Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooter series. Patrick got my attention after the panel discussion by saying to me, “I want to narrate more romance.” At that moment, I knew we had to make a big deal out of that statement and give this well-known male narrator some serious attention. There are a good number of romance listeners out there who, like me, want to hear more proven male narrators take on romance audio.
Not only do we have Patrick’s recorded interview today but we have several Patrick Lawlor happenings planned for this week. Tomorrow, Melinda’s It Takes Two article goes up in which she discusses dual narrations featuring, in particular, Suzanne Brockmann’s books. Melinda’s subtitle? A Riff on Dual Narration and Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooters and Some Other Stuff. On Thursday, Melinda reviews Suzanne Brockmann’s Headed for Trouble narrated by Patrick and Melanie Ewbank and Friday, Brenda reviews Brockmann’s Infamous narrated by Patrick and Angela Dawe.
Now it’s time to listen!
Patrick and I recorded the official interview and then Brenda joined us (our technical Gal who records and directs these sessions) and we all talked together informally for some time. The final part of today’s talk with Patrick contains a number of outtakes from our casual talk “after” the interview. You will see we keep saying “bye” as we all thought someone else should hang up first!
Be sure to check out Patrick’s Page here for a bio and a list of his romance audio titles to date.
Thanks to Patrick for joining us today at AudioGals! And many thanks to Brenda who directs, records, and edits these talks. We couldn’t do it without her.
Lea Hensley
Terrific interview with a terrific audiobook narrator and all-around great guy!
Imagine you’ve written a romance novel. And now imagine that the guy you’ve helped choose to narrate calls you up so you can talk about the characters in advance of the recording!
That talented guy, Patrick Lawlor is/was a dream come true. He “gets” fiction and romance, and best of all he “gets” my writing voice. When you listen to my audiobooks, Patrick delivers the story EXACTLY the way I heard it in my head when I was writing it! (And as a writer, that’s the ball game!) He instinctively knows the right tone, the right emphasis, the right everything. I love him pretty madly.
Cool trivia #1: I wrote the character of Izzy Zanella specifically for Patrick to read. I write from Izzy’s deep point of view for the first time in INTO THE STORM, and when I was writing his scenes, I sat there laughing to myself, because it was Patrick’s voice I heard in my head! (Izzy also appears in INTO THE FIRE and BREAKING THE RULES. Oh, and he appears in HEADED FOR TROUBLE, too.)
Cool trivia #2: I didn’t retain the rights to my audiobooks until FLASHPOINT, the 7th book in my Troubleshooters series. Before that point, audiobooks simply showed up on my doorstep — I had no input into the narrators or the production. But with FLASHPOINT, I slowed the process down a bit. Since I owned the audio rights, I was able to shop around and find an audiobook publisher open to my (at the time!) crazy idea to use both a male and female narrator to read my books. I also got to “approve” the choice of narrators — three seconds in to Patrick’s audio sample, and I was sold!
But back to dual narration: Patrick explains my deep-point-of-view writing style very concisely in the interview — and it’s because I don’t head-hop (move around from different characters POVs in each scene) that the dual narrator approach works with my books. It would be much harder to record, if the narrators had to switch in the middle of a scene. Those places would need to be marked in the manuscript — it would be a whole lot of extra work for someone — either author or narrators.
Because I write one scene/one character POV, there’s absolutely no head-hopping in my books. So all I needed to do was provide Brilliance with a list telling them which characters (male or female) should read which scenes. And after working with Patrick for such a long time, I no longer do even that — I completely trust him to know, simply from reading, whose POV owns which scenes. (He’s a keeper!)
Patrick mentions LETTERS TO KELLY in the interview — that actually is a book that both he and Melanie narrated. It’s one of my earlier Silhouettes, and somehow Brilliance got their hands on it, and did the recording — and offered me input. This book happens to be one of those “books of my heart.” But it’s an earlier work, and I hadn’t developed my one scene/one character POV style of writing yet. So I DID flip around the POV from hero to heroine and back inside of a single scene.
But and I petitioned Brilliance to record this book with both Patrick and Melanie — and to let me go through the manuscript and mark all of the places where those POV switches took place. (The hero of this book is an historical romance novelist, and excerpts from the book he’s writing are included. Melanie reads all of those sections with a slightly British accent — it’s just too awesome and funny!)
But because I did that with this particular project (my undying thanks to Brilliance for letting me do that!), I know exactly how much work is involved to prepare the manuscript for all of those narrator switches. An author’s gotta really want to do it!
Thanks again for this great interview with a really brilliant audiobook narrator!
When I first saw dual narration for some of the Troubleshooters books, I was a bit hesitant about the concept. Now I think it is one of the best narration choices ever! Thanks, Suzanne, for sharing some great insight into how this came about. Especially loved the Izzy/Patrick voice connection.
I am such a fangrrrl here that you need to give me a minute to process.
[SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!]
OK – first, WE LOVE PATRICK LAWLOR READING BROCKMANN. And by “we” I mean me of course. Re: retaining your audiobook rights, I hope those earlier rights expire so that in the future we can get excellent redos of the first few in the TSS, which – you will learn tomorrow – I have some not-so-impressed opinions about. Diana Gabaldon had a similar audiobook issue – they did abridgements of Outlander with some stipulation that the abridgements be given priority in retailers or something, meaning it was almost impossible to get the unabridged, much better version narrated by Davina Porter of certain installments. The abridgements rights expired some 10 years after release, and now all of them are expired.
thank you for doing all that work for your fans – it really makes the audio experience extra special, and when compared to the earlier ones you can really hear and appreciate the difference.
And yes, Lawlor = Izzy = Lawlor in my mind sooo clearly!
I touch on the subject of other audiobooks that work with dual narration in my “riff”, but I think you make a good point – your writing with its deep POV and lack of head hopping (thankyouthankyouthankyou) works with dual narrations where many others would not. A really good narrator – like Lawlor, like Ewbank and Dawe and Raudman – can narrate an entire book and make it work; with TSS, it is an enhancement to use 2 narrators only because of the way you write it!
and to Patrick – DOUBLE SQUEEE because Brenda made me a ringtone of your voice saying my name. Hey – I’m a romance audio geek, what could be cooler than one of my favorite narrators saying my name?
[Must. Stop. Playing. Ringtone. At. Work.]
Really – audio fans – Lawlor not only gets the romance, he gets the suspense, the action, the humor, all the emotions that your mind can only touch on while reading in print, and delivers them right to you, personally, in your own home. Win-win-win-win.
Suzanne – thank you for stopping by and letting us in on your audiobook process. I’m thrilled that you enjoyed the interview!
Honestly, I didn’t understand the deep POV in my first listen to a Troubleshooter dual narration (which was Flashpoint – I haven’t read the series in order but love it all the same). I wondered why Patrick and Melanie didn’t just perform the male and female characters. That was two years ago. Melinda has explained the deep POV narration to me since making me a believer. I hope more listeners grasp this concept now.
Now I am rereading/listening to the series in order. I’ll be reading four of those first six entries instead of listening as I think the narrations lessen the magnificence of these books (I really think they are THAT good). Then I’ll listen from book 7 on. I have missed out on a number of the later entries.
I, like Melinda, hope those first six books can be rerecorded some day with Patrick and Melanie/Renee/Angela (all great choices). Out of Control and Over the Edge are two of my all time favorite books – I want to love them in audio as well. :)
When I met Patrick at APAC, I was surprised at how funny and humble he is! Truly! A talented guy who enjoys laughing and narrating romance! I couldn’t resist inviting him.
Oh, and I can’t forget Gone Too Far and Breaking Point – two other extreme Brockmann faves!
I love details – insider details are even better. :) So thank you for a look into the audiobook process from your perspective Suzanne!
My first Patrick Lawlor (Angela Dawe too ) experience was Infamous – I love that story and the narration makes it that much better!
Out of Control is my favorite Troubleshooter title (admittedly I’m not caught up right now). I’d be thrilled to hear Patrick and one of these talented ladies voice it as well as the others from the beginning of the series!
I’m glad your ringtone is getting a workout Melinda. :D
Yeah, those earlier TS audios are… well. Yeah.
After I got control, I tried to explain to Brilliance what I was looking for in a female reader. (They sent me Patrick’s audio sample first — it was love at first listen for all involved!) But some of the earlier books had been read by female readers with “Round Tones. Round Tones.” (Think of the elocution instructor for Lina Lamont in SINGING IN THE RAIN.) (I remember getting the CDs of one of the earlier books and being unable to listen to more than a few paragraphs before my head exploded, because I’d made the fancy lady say the f-word over and over. I believe the line was “We’re gonna f*** the f***ers first.” Hee hee hee! In those Round Tones!)
And I remember writing to my contact at Brilliance, and saying, “I’m looking for a female reader who doesn’t sound as if she has a hair-do, and a purse that matches her shoes.” LOL! Somehow they understood that, and we found Melanie. (Pretty early on, though, she vanished to have a baby. Guess she couldn’t bring an infant along for those week long recording studio marathons!!!)
Anyway, I care pretty passionately about the product and it was nice to finally have input.
As far as Deep POV goes, think of it like this: The entire scene is from the eyes of the POV character. Everything is a thought — it’s like writing with a first person sensibility in the third person. The descriptive words are the POV character’s. The things he/she notices or doesn’t notice. And the observations are subjective. So it really gets the reader into the character’s head.
And Patrick was the perfect narrator for that. He really is special — I’m so lucky to have found him, as a reader and as a friend!
I’d absolutely love to re-record the first 6 TS books with Patrick and Melanie. That would be a dream come true.
And don’t get me started on abridgements. My books are about 150K words long — imagine having to cut them down to 50 – 60K words — and then having to “approve” that. Yeeks. I’m so glad that digital recordings have made abridgements a thing of the past!
Love,
Suz
P.S. I can’t wait to come back tomorrow to read your blog, Melinda!
We keep an ongoing Wish List here at AudioGals. When a book we have wished for is released in audio, we mark if off the list. The Gals decided to add a rerecord of the first six books in your Troubleshooter series. I don’t know how realistic that is since you don’t (or didn’t) own those rights but we can wish!
If anyone is interested, here’s the link to our Wish List. http://bit.ly/17vz0sQ We are in the process of updating it once again as members of our Romance Audiobooks Goodreads group have been giving us their wishes as well.
I love Patrick! It’s his reading of Suz’s books that have made me an audiobook lover!
Fabulous interview Lea! I really love listening to Patrick, he is one of my favorite narrators!
Enjoyed listening to this interview and Suzanne’s comments! I am a huge a fan of the TS series. One day I was in the library, grabbed the most recent book at the time (8 or 9) on audio, and instantly fell in love with Patrick’s and the gal’s narration and exclusively listen now!
Patrick – your photo in the “love chair” (above) is perfect for this site!
Thanks everyone! Elizabeth – we thought the same thing about the chair. When we had the love chair in the Coming Soon box, Brenda and I were admiring it and she said, “We couldn’t have a better look for our site!”
Great interview. I love Patrick Lawlor’s narrations and it would be fantastic to hear him read more romance novels. I’ve enjoyed very much listening to his readings of other authors also. He’s one of my favourites.
I absolutely adore Patrick Lawlor. The love I have for his narration has no bounds! I sing his praises to the point that I am basically the South East President of the Patrick Lawlor fan club (or at least in my own home!)
When that petition gets started for the ‘proper’ recording of books 1-6 of the Troubleshooter series let me know as I will be one of the first to sign it. I really want to hear those stories read by the true voices of the TS series: Patrick, Melanie and/or Renee!