The Joy of Audiobooks - and the Wonderful Julia Franklin

It's always exciting to receive copies of my books. Most recently, I received copies of the audiobooks of A New Home at the Wartime Hotel, narrated by Julia Franklin.

 Here they are - in MP3 and CD formats.

It is enormously important to me to have my books available in audio. I firmly believe that we never grow out of enjoying being read to. When I was a teacher, I read to my class every day. I always have two books on the go – a print book and an audiobook. As well as having favourite authors, I also have favourite readers and sometimes I choose a talking book by an author I have never read, simply because I know I will enjoy the reader’s performance.

Listening to an audiobook adds an extra dimension of pleasure. Narrating a story is a truly specialist skill. The narrator has to tell the story so as to convey character and atmosphere, but without his/her voice intruding on the listener’s consciousness. That’s quite a tall order.

I am proud that all my novels, under all three names, are narrated by the talented Julia Franklin, who has been a favourite reader of mine ever since I heard her read Our Polly by Anna Jacobs back in the early 2000s.   Here she is recording one of my books.

A lot of work goes into Julia's preparation for her narration work. It isn't just a matter of reading the book. She has to consider all the characters and gain a full sense of what they're like as individuals, and decide how best to show their personalties in her performance.

One of the best compliments I have ever received as an author came from Julia - when she said that, in preparing to narrate The Railway Girls, there was a point in the story where she had to stop reading and simply sit quietly on her own and come to terms with an incident in the book.

Including the two I am currently writing for, I have written for a total of five publishers of print books, but I have always been with the same audiobook publisher and I've always had the same narrator - Julia. Both these relationships are very important to me.

I don't know whether authors are supposed to listen to their own audiobooks, but I love listening to mine because I know that Julia will add a new dimension to what I've written, and I love that. She is truly the best in the business and I'm proud that my books share a stage with her.