Over the past year or so, I’ve listened to a number of recordings by Mary Jane Wells, and she has very quickly become one of my “go-to” narrators. The first time I listened to her was in Simone St. James’ Silence for the Dead and I was seriously impressed by her vocal characterisations and her lovely, naturalistic manner of delivery, which really brings the listener into the story. I very quickly began looking for other recordings by her and will now snap up practically any audiobook with her name on it! So I was delighted when she agreed to speak to me for AudioGals about her background and her work as narrator and actor.
CAZ: Mary Jane, thanks for taking the time to chat to me.
MARY JANE: I’m honoured to be invited!
CAZ: Beginning with the obvious questions – How long have you been narrating audiobooks and how did you get into it?
MARY JANE: About 3 years. My friend Alex Hyde-White who runs Punch Audio got me started – and I began with the worst cold you’ve ever heard!
My background for acting in theatre and on camera is in a specific voice-approach, from my training at the RCS which has a very strong voice department and in depth work with a practitioner called Nadine George. Voice acting and narrating were a natural progression from this and I consider narrating to be as fun and as immersive as any acting job.
CAZ: We at AudioGals are devoted to our romance audiobooks. Are you a romance reader?
MARY JANE: I am a romantic by nature, but I tend to keep romantic comedy to my film choices. For reading I tend to go for biographies.
CAZ: What was the first romance title you narrated, and how did you approach that first romance recording?
MARY JANE: My first romance audio was The Amber Cross, by Meilin Miranda. As for how I approached it – Ms Miranda was very gracious and just let me do my own thing: fortunately it was only a short novella so I couldn’t go too far wrong. It was my first time producing however and that’s another story.
CAZ: Was the actual performing/recording process as you’d expected it would be?
MARY JANE: Well, I now know how long a 2 hour book is supposed to take. 3-4 hours. Not 50!
CAZ: Having narrated a number of romances by now, what advice would you give your “first time” self?
MARY JANE: Get an engineer, dum dum! Have snack breaks. Momentum is important so don’t put it down too long before you begin again – more than a one day break for me means I have to gear back into the pace again.
CAZ: Do you use a home studio?
MARY JANE: Yes and no. I could, but I prefer to get a pal to engineer – we can be solitary as VO (voice-over) people recording at home. The danger is that I could become a fossilised crazy lady who survives solely and happily off boxes from Amazon, and never breathes the fresh air. So, I’ll go to Zach at Mosaic Audio, Elan from Elovesound or the Deyans.
CAZ: I know from reading your website that you have a very varied career as an actor and voice artist. Can you tell us a little about some of your other projects?
MARY JANE: Thanks for reading! Sure. I am working on this right now – Heroine A Female Soldier’s Story. It’s a true story about a female soldier in the US Army who is now a personal friend. It’s the first time she is speaking out about her experiences and it has been a slow, careful and beautiful journey to walk with her through this unearthing. We got a Research and Development award from Creative Scotland earlier this year so did a week of development in Aberdeen with it, and connected into the community there. Next year we will be touring it around the UK and the US. We are in the lucky position of talking to the venues we like to see if they want to program it. Mostly there is great potential to see if talks can happen between the UK and the US, on the open pooling of resources and best practices on how to create zero occurrence and zero tolerance of sexual violence within our respective militaries.
I’m also working with a composer and an animator to create an online piece about it, a trailer that we will put out there for our kickstarter donors as an extra I didn’t tell them about.
The proceeds of the show will go to Protect Our Defenders.com and also it is closely linked to Joy House Sober Living, which was something imagined by the soldier herself when we first began to collaborate and talk and is now about to open in real life.
CAZ: What are you working on now or are you going to be working on in the near future?
MARY JANE: I have been invited to submit as keynote speaker for The Veterans Summit in California next March, and have chosen to create a panel with 2 experts in military sexual trauma and PTSD; Dr. Laurie Leitch (from the Oscar nominated documentary ‘Invisible War’) and Dr. Carole Patterson, a Fulbright scholar who works on base. We may be joined by David Morris, author of The Evil Hours, and an ex-marine and war reporter.
Also I would like to design something specific to the needs of female veterans at Bob Hope City Hall with Stephanie Stone, Chief Deputy for Military Affairs in California. It’s more about catering to exactly what people might want using performance, than anything that initiates from the inside creatively right now.
And Crazier Bitches, a homedy (surely the right word for horror comedy?) will shoot sometime in 2016.
CAZ: Having also listened to – and enjoyed – your performance in Lisa Kleypas’ Cold Hearted Rake, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to ask you about performing accents, which, as my fellow AudioGals will tell you, is something I bang on about endlessly! I’m also British, so I’m really picky about British regional accents, and you do lots of them (and very well – I was listening very carefully to your interpretation of Rhys Winterborne in the Kleypas because I know a Welsh accent can be tricky!) – are accents something you’ve always been able to “do”, or have they taken a lot of work?
MARY JANE: Oh, thanks so much :) Accents have always been fun and for me a part of fitting in, or satisfying some sort of neural circuit – exercise for the brain. It’s satisfying to talk in an accent and try on who you might be beyond cultural stereotypes – but as a child you are not aware of how this can come across. When my family went over to Ireland for summers when we were little to meet all our Irish relatives, I would – without shame – copy their accents all summer and try to keep them going when I got back home to England. I worked for BT (British Telecom) once when I was at drama school and so I try out a different accent for a call when I need a little extra motivation. Talk about thespy, right? I find a Boston accent tricky. Like Welsh, it’s one of the best to swear in.
CAZ: Hah! I’d never thought of that, but there are definitely some accents that lend themselves to more colourful language! :)
Mary Jane, thanks very much for taking the time to talk to AudioGals. Good luck with all your many and varied projects.
MARY JANE: Thanks so, so much for your interest! I’m walking off into the sunset now.
Caz
For more information:
A listing of Mary Jane Wells’ narrations at Audible
A listing of reviews here at AudioGals of books narrated by Mary Jane Wells
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Fabulous interview Caz. Thank you.
And thank you too, to Mary Jane Wells. I’m a recent convert to your work – I have 2 Simone St. James titles on the TBL which I’m even more keen to get to now. I enjoyed your performance in Cold-Hearted Rake so much. I think you made Devon more likeable and accessible to me.
Do you know if you will be narrating the next book in the Ravenel series (which I think is Rhys’s and Helen’s)?