07.41: Audiobooks with Julia Whelan

Summary

Podcast Summary: Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People Episode: 07.41: Audiobooks with Julia Whelan
Host/Author: Fated Mates (Sarah MacLean and Jen Prokop)
Release Date: July 1, 2025

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Introduction

Jennifer Prokop and Sarah MacLean kick off the episode with excitement about Sarah’s upcoming book release, “Summer Storms,” set to launch in six days. They introduce their special guest, Julia Whelan, a renowned audiobook narrator celebrated for her work with authors like Taylor Jenkins Reid and Emily Henry. The hosts express their enthusiasm for Julia’s participation, highlighting her status as a superstar in the audiobook industry.

Guest Introduction: Julia Whelan

Sarah MacLean warmly welcomes Julia, praising her extensive work in audiobook narration. Julia Whelan shares her excitement about collaborating with Fated Mates, reminiscing about a previous interview involving one of Julia’s characters, June French.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [04:25]: “I love this job so much. It's why I'm doing it.”

The Evolution of Audiobooks in Romance

The conversation shifts to the transformation of the audiobook landscape, particularly within the romance genre. Jen Prokop emphasizes the growing ubiquity of audio formats in romance literature and how it has become a powerful medium for storytelling.

Notable Quote:

Sarah MacLean [02:21]: “The audio has become so ubiquitous in romance.”

Julia Whelan’s Journey into Narration

Julia Whelan narrates her transition from a child actress to a celebrated audiobook narrator. She explains how a friend’s introduction to audiobook production led her to create a demo reel, ultimately launching her successful career in the field.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [09:44]: “I read the manuscript, create two lists—one for pronunciation and one for character voices—and start building distinct voices for each character.”

Challenges and Changes in the Industry

Julia discusses the early days of audiobook narration, where narrators often worked together in studios, fostering a collaborative environment. She contrasts this with the current trend of narrators using home studios, which she believes diminishes the collaborative learning experience.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [14:00]: “The home studio setup takes away from the process of learning from others and figuring out how to interpret and perform texts.”

Dual and Multiple Narration

The hosts explore the complexities of dual and multiple narrations in audiobooks. Julia explains the logistical challenges, such as coordinating schedules and ensuring consistency in character voices. She expresses a preference for live duets, where narrators perform together, over the more common method of separate recordings stitched together.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [22:35]: “I would rather do duet only if it's live because I can work with someone in real-time rather than coordinating over email with multiple narrators.”

Introduction to Audio Brary

Julia Whelan introduces her innovative platform, Audio Brary, designed to revolutionize the audiobook industry by implementing a royalty-based payment system for narrators. She critiques the current model where narrators receive a fixed fee without ongoing royalties, arguing that her platform offers a more equitable solution for both authors and narrators.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [24:53]: “Narrators don’t get royalties. It’s outrageous that as the industry grows, narrators aren’t benefiting proportionally.”

Features of Audio Brary

Julia outlines the key features of Audio Brary, including:

• Profit Sharing: Authors and narrators receive a share of the profits, promoting fair compensation.
• Direct-to-Consumer Distribution: Bypassing traditional retailers to ensure higher earnings for creators.
• Exclusive Bonus Content: Offering unique features like interviews and behind-the-scenes material available only on her platform.
• Rental Options: Allowing listeners to rent audiobooks at a reduced rate, making them more accessible.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [29:51]: “We offer rentals at a third of the purchase price and give a 25% discount if listeners decide to buy after renting.”

Sponsorships and Book Promotions

Throughout the episode, sponsors are introduced, featuring authors like Ma Wardell with her novella “Stirring Spurs,” Chelsea Fagan with “The High Dive,” and Alexander Harvey with “A Deal with the Devil.” These segments provide brief overviews of each book, highlighting their unique storylines and availability across various formats.

Impact of Technology and AI on Audiobooks

The discussion delves into the implications of technological advancements, particularly AI, on the future of audiobook narration. Julia expresses concern over AI potentially overshadowing human narrators, emphasizing the irreplaceable emotional depth and authenticity that human voices bring to storytelling.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [85:46]: “AI is a different product, but the human storytelling aspect is what Audiobrary is here to protect and promote.”

Recording Process and Challenges

Julia provides an in-depth look at her recording process, detailing how she prepares for complex narratives with multiple characters. She explains her method of annotating manuscripts, researching pronunciations, and developing distinct voices to ensure clarity and engagement for listeners.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [43:37]: “I create a word list for pronunciations and a character voice list to maintain consistency throughout the narration.”

Final Thoughts and Future Projects

In the closing segments, Julia Whelan shares her upcoming projects, including narrating the “New Camelot” trilogy by Sierra Simone. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining high-quality, human-driven audiobook production in the face of increasing automation and industry changes.

Notable Quote:

Julia Whelan [85:09]: “New Camelot is going to be that gateway for people new to audiobooks, providing an intimate and authentic listening experience.”

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with heartfelt thanks to Julia Whelan for her contributions and insights, reinforcing the podcast’s commitment to supporting both authors and narrators in the romance audiobook industry. Listeners are encouraged to explore Audio Brary and the featured books through the provided show notes.

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Key Takeaways:

• Audiobook Narration’s Evolution: Transition from collaborative studio recordings to individual home setups.
• Audio Brary’s Impact: A new platform advocating for fair compensation and sustainable practices for narrators and authors.
• Dual Narration Challenges: Logistical complexities and economic considerations in producing dual or multiple narrations.
• Human vs. AI Narration: The irreplaceable value of human emotion and authenticity in storytelling.
• Future of Audiobooks: Emphasis on curated, high-quality productions to maintain the integrity of the medium.

Recommended Actions for Listeners:

• Explore Audio Brary: Discover and support sustainable audiobook production through Julia’s platform.
• Pre-order “Summer Storms”: Experience Julia Whelan’s narration of Sarah MacLean’s upcoming novel.
• Support Featured Authors: Check out the books sponsored by Ma Wardell, Chelsea Fagan, and Alexander Harvey.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Julia Whelan [04:25]: “I love this job so much. It's why I'm doing it.”
• Sarah MacLean [02:21]: “The audio has become so ubiquitous in romance.”
• Julia Whelan [09:44]: “I read the manuscript, create two lists—one for pronunciation and one for character voices—and start building distinct voices for each character.”
• Julia Whelan [14:00]: “The home studio setup takes away from the process of learning from others and figuring out how to interpret and perform texts.”
• Julia Whelan [22:35]: “I would rather do duet only if it's live because I can work with someone in real-time rather than coordinating over email with multiple narrators.”
• Julia Whelan [24:53]: “Narrators don’t get royalties. It’s outrageous that as the industry grows, narrators aren’t benefiting proportionally.”
• Julia Whelan [29:51]: “We offer rentals at a third of the purchase price and give a 25% discount if listeners decide to buy after renting.”
• Julia Whelan [85:46]: “AI is a different product, but the human storytelling aspect is what Audiobrary is here to protect and promote.”
• Julia Whelan [43:37]: “I create a word list for pronunciations and a character voice list to maintain consistency throughout the narration.”
• Julia Whelan [85:09]: “New Camelot is going to be that gateway for people new to audiobooks, providing an intimate and authentic listening experience.”

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Further Engagement: Listeners are encouraged to visit the show’s website for links to Julia Whelan’s Audio Brary, pre-order “Summer Storms,” and explore other recommended audiobooks. Engage with the podcast community through their Discord to submit questions and feedback for future episodes.

Transcript

[Jennifer Prokup]

It's July, Sarah.

[Sarah MacLean]

It's July, Jen.

[Jennifer Prokup]

But this episode we recorded in June.

[Sarah MacLean]

We did in the past.

[Jennifer Prokup]

In the past.

[Sarah MacLean]

Who knows? Who knows what it's like out there today?

[Jennifer Prokup]

Let's not talk about it. We're here for hopeful romance. Good things only.

[Sarah MacLean]

It's six days before my book comes out.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I know.

[Sarah MacLean]

So I'm vibrating at a fever. Bitch.

[Jennifer Prokup]

You know, we recorded this a month in advance, but we do know that that is.

[Sarah MacLean]

That is true. There's no. And I'm not vibrating unless I'm. I might be dead, but I'm Sarah Maclean. I read romance novels, and I write them. Welcome, everyone, to Fated Makes.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And I'm Jennifer Prokup, a romance reader, editor, and audiobook listener, which is important because this week.

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh, wait. I just got a Book of the Month Club notification. So, everybody, if you're a Book of the Month Club subscriber, today's your day to order storms in your box.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I know. It's so exciting. So you're a superstar.

[Sarah MacLean]

It's happening. It's happening. Anyway. It's happening. But Julia Whelan is here. Yes. And I'm so excited about this because we've played around with Julia Whelan a few times. Yeah. And we're going to talk about that as part of this conversation. But everyone knows Julia Whalen is, like, the superstar of Superstars of audiobooks.

[Julia Whelan]

Yes.

[Sarah MacLean]

You are all. I mean, she's an absolute rock star.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

You've heard her as the narrator for Taylor Jenkins Reid's books. For Emily Henry's books. Schwab's books.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

And next for your books, actually, today, you're gonna get a sneak peek of her narrating the first chapter of my upcoming novel, these Summer Storms.

[Jennifer Prokup]

It's so exciting. So basically, the way it's gonna work, in, like, a second, we're gonna kind of start. Roll the tape with Julia, and then we had a great conversation. You know, it's really interesting. We don't recommend a lot of book, really are talking about, like, the audio landscape and how it's changed. And she's just really fascinating person. So even if you are not yourself an audiobook listener, I think you will actually find the conversation we had super interesting. It's fascinating.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. Because the audio has become so ubiquitous in romance.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah. And we talked about, like, sort of the romance landscape and recording and how books are changing because of the popularity of audio. Like, we really cover a lot of ground. And she is, you know, an expert. She talks to us about her app, Audio Brary. Which does really cool things with getting audiobook narrators paid on a royalty kind of schedule. So if you are an author who's thought like, hey, maybe I want to, like, launch into audio, that might be really interesting for you to listen to. If you're a listener, it might be a way that you're like, hey, if the book I'm interested in is on audio brary, then maybe that's a place I can like, sort of spend my dollars and help these narrators out. So there's a lot of really cool things happen.

[Sarah MacLean]

And also, if you are still out there and feel like you want to head over to St. Louis to hang out with us next week. No. In six days, on release day of these summer storms, Jen and I and Kate Claiborne, our favorite and couple hundred firebirds are all getting together. It's going to be a great time in St. Louis. Hopefully there's still tickets. If there aren't, there are probably still tickets to some of the other tour dates that I'm doing over the course of the next couple of weeks. Please come out and visit me. I will have fademate stickers. I'll have Faded Mates pins. I'll have Jen with me in a couple of places. Who knows what you'll find.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Exactly. It's really exciting.

[Sarah MacLean]

Cool people. It will be very fun. Please come and hang out with me, because I've never done this before and I'm scared.

[Jennifer Prokup]

So join me. It's gonna be amazing. My job really now is to just talk Sarah down. So that's it. I understand. I understand. I have a job and I'm really good at it. So. All right. So everybody, without further ado, Julia Whalen.

[Sarah MacLean]

Welcome Julia Whelan, to Faded Mates.

[Julia Whelan]

Thank you. I am so excited to be here. It's like a longtime listener, first time caller, you know what I mean?

[Sarah MacLean]

But we've sort of. We've had an interesting path. Fademates and Julia Whelan, because we are in, we are extra content, and we're gonna get to the whole audioberry of it all. But I. But. But we're very excited because you came to us with a very cool project at one point where we got to do a trailblazer interview with one of your characters, which was so fun.

[Jennifer Prokup]

It was really fun.

[Sarah MacLean]

I felt like David Letterman on, like, a movie. In a movie.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah. You know, I think that's what was hilarious about it is I had this idea on, like, one of my walks or something where all of my either best or worst ideas come from. And I Was just like, before I can second guess this, I'm going to just send Sarah a message and say, hey, I have this absolutely bonkers idea. Any chance you and Jen would want to do it? Because I love the Trailblazer episode so much. And again, if we're going to get into this later, but the whole conceit of Casanova llc, which was my third book, is that it was written by this fictional iconic legendary romance author. And so I was like, wouldn't it be great if June French could have a Trailblazer? A Trailblazer episode?

[Sarah MacLean]

And she was so great too. She, like, smoked through the whole thing.

[Julia Whelan]

That's right.

[Sarah MacLean]

We haven't had a smoker on Trailblazers. Besides June French. She was terrific.

[Julia Whelan]

Part of the trivia. See, that can be part of the fated mate's lore. Moving forward.

[Sarah MacLean]

Only for the live, we should.

[Julia Whelan]

The deep fans only know the one person who smoked.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah, that would be really fun for Faded Maids live to do a.

[Jennifer Prokup]

To do like a trivia show. We would fail our own trivia show. That's the part I'm like, did I say that? What?

[Sarah MacLean]

We need the listeners to build the questions.

[Jennifer Prokup]

You know, it's funny because right around when that happened, I was sitting around. So everyone knows I have a day job where I'm a middle school teacher. And we're sitting around at lunch one day. And kind of sometimes people like, if you're not a romance reader, I don't really talk. I'm not like, proselytizing out there, everybody. And. And so. But I sort of mentioned that, like, someone was talking about, like, an audiobook they really liked, and it was like, one you'd done. And I was like, oh, yeah, we did this really cool thing. And like, as I was sort of trying to explain it, they were just like, wait, what do you do again? And I was like, well, up on the second floor, I teach children about literature.

[Sarah MacLean]

But also down in the basement.

[Julia Whelan]

Down in the basement in the red room.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And you know what? I honestly was great. I felt really famous. And I'm for gonna be sending several of my co workers who are not romance readers this episode when it airs. I'll be like, see, look, I know her well.

[Julia Whelan]

I mean, this is honestly. You guys were so important to the. To thank you for listening to that process. Because I had been. And I'm sure we'll get into, like, my origin story of how I found myself narrating romance. But I had taken a break from narrating romance for about five years when I or Maybe not that long, maybe a few years. But when I decided it was time to write thank you for Listening, which is romance audiobooks, and I was like, I need to, no pun intended, bone up on this subject that I have been very much out of the loop on. And I just started listening to Fated Mates, and I was like, I'm gonna let. They're gonna tell me everything I need to know about what's going on in romance right now. And from your recommendations, I just created, like, a reading list for myself, and I. Oh, my gosh.

[Sarah MacLean]

That's amazing.

[Julia Whelan]

So you both are very much all over both of those books. Thank you. And Casanova.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, we're very flattered.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And that's often actually for sort of people who are, like, kind of curious about romance, but maybe not sure about, like, I often recommend thank you for Listening because it's a great romance, but it's also, I would say, like, you know, rated G. Yeah, it's gateway.

[Julia Whelan]

Yes. It's a fade to black.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Exactly. Exactly. So it's like all of the delicious, awesome parts of a great romance, but without somebody worrying that they're going to be driving down the Kennedy and hearing about, you know, balls or whatever. Sorry.

[Sarah MacLean]

I'll just say it couldn't be me. Okay, so for those of you who live under a rock, Julia Whelan is.

[Julia Whelan]

I don't think that's fair.

[Jennifer Prokup]

In the book world. You would. Living under a rock.

[Sarah MacLean]

Listen, if you listen to Fade of Maids, you should know Julia Whelan is, I mean, the gold standard of narrators for. I feel like all books.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah, right. All books. Not just romance.

[Sarah MacLean]

There is. But your path to. I want to. I want to talk about your path into narration. And then, of course, in romance, because you were in romance before you. You were Sophie Eastlake before you were Julia Whelan. Correct.

[Julia Whelan]

In audiobooks, I think they happen pretty simultaneously. Well, actually, that's a good question. I have to. I'll come back to you on that. I have to do math, so give me a half an hour, and then.

[Sarah MacLean]

I' but let's start kind of at the beginning. So you are an actress first. Yes. And so can you tell? Just take us through the sort of how Julia came to be the superstar audio narrator who we are all desperate. We all put on our vision board to narrate our books.

[Julia Whelan]

Some of us more than others. Sarah. I mean. Okay, so, yeah, so I was a child actor. I had been working since I was nine years old. I kind of hit the peak of my career and fame. And working life when I was in high school. I then decided to take a break from Hollywood and go to college where I focused. I really put aside the acting, and I focused on creative writing. And I graduated with an English and history and creative writing degree. And one of my best friends there, her mother happened to be an audiobook producer and director. And so she came to me at my literal graduation and said, you have a unique set of skills that I think might be suited to this job. And I had never heard of audiobooks. I'd never listened to one. And, you know, I'm like, books on tape, like those things. Right, right. And this was 2008, and I fully intended to, like, go back to Hollywood and get my old job back, Just get right on another television show and just, you know, and super easy. And I didn't realize that, like, a. No one cared that I was. That I had left or that I was back.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I was.

[Julia Whelan]

The entire landscape had changed in Hollywood. Movie stars were doing TV now. HBO was really cranking. Netflix was just kind of starting, and it was just a completely different business than the one I had left. And so about a year of knocking on doors. After about a year of knocking on doors, I called Laura and I was like, okay, so wait, what is this job and how do I do it and how do I get into it? And I put together a demo reel for her. She sent me a past muster with her company. She sent me a couple of YA not pulls, because at the time, YA was just beginning to boost huge.

[Sarah MacLean]

Huge.

[Julia Whelan]

And it was the golden age of YA and they needed younger voices. And so just because of that accident of timing, I slipped into the industry, and I did. We can actually look this up because I don't remember the year at this point. I don't trust myself to remember years, but my very first romance was Dragonbound by Thea Harrison, which, I mean, you.

[Sarah MacLean]

Guys have talked about, which re listened to last week.

[Julia Whelan]

Oh, it's. Oh, God. Okay, so here's the thing. No, but, like, here's the thing. There's a few. There's a handful of books I wish I could record and, like, because Thea and I are very, very close now. And I love these books so much. And A, I just wish I'd done them under my real name, but B, I wish I could go back and do it again because that book, that audiobook was actually nominated for an Audi. But I think that's actually the perfect representation of how far the industry has come since then and how the difference in, like, none of us knew what we were doing. We didn't know what we were doing.

[Sarah MacLean]

For what it's worth, I found it to be still a banger. So.

[Julia Whelan]

Well, the book is so good. The book is so good. But it's like, you know, I had never done anything. I remember actually being in the studio and I was self recording, but I was borrowing like a room from an engineer and I was having a tech problem and he came into the room to help me with it. And up on the screen, just in mortification, up on the screen was my Miriam Webster lookup for how to say clitoris. Because as I was recording this book, I was like, I just want to make sure I'm wrong. Right.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Could you imagine you got that one wrong.

[Julia Whelan]

People will. Exactly. And so he's looking and he's like, what are you recording? And I'm like, don't ask. I mean that, I think shows just how we were. No one knew what we were doing at all.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I am really curious maybe to hear you say more about that because I. And I don't know why, but when I have kind of hit old, like older audiobooks.

[Sarah MacLean]

Right.

[Jennifer Prokup]

It does feel like there's something different about them. And I don't know what it is. I don't. You know what I mean? I just can't figure it out. I don't think I have the language or the, you know, sort of industry knowledge, but they like recorded books from kind of before 2010, just feel different.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, it's a good question. I honestly, I don't know that I have the answer to it. Certainly not from like the business perspective. I can just say that from the performance perspective. I think something that has happened in audiobooks over the last 15 years, let's say, is the difference from just reading the book to performing the book. And this was a job you could only learn at that time, I believe by doing it. And the greatest gift that I had early in my career was that we were still going into studios then. Like now everyone has a home studio. And it's kind of expected that if you want to get started in this industry, you have to have a home studio. And the thing that that takes away from the process is like just being around other people doing it and water cooler talk and figuring out how to interpret a text and perform in a way feels native to the medium, which is already a kind of difficult, like contrived. You have to get your ears around it to, you know, feel you have to. There's always that orientation process when you're listening to a book of like, okay, what are these voices? And so it's already a kind of. It's something that people have to acclimate to and just finding that balance and figuring out what audiobook performance even sounds like, like, what is that was a process that I really only came to by working with other people. And we were all directing each other and veteran narrators were directing me. And so we just learned from each other. And I kind of lament that that's not the path anymore.

[Jennifer Prokup]

This week's episode of Fated Mates is brought to you by Ma Wardell, author of Stirring Spurs.

[Sarah MacLean]

I'm so into this. Okay, ready? In the heart of Oklahoma's sprawling Rainbow Ranch, Boone Adams thrives as the vibrant soul in the kitchen, tirelessly whipping up meals that warm body and spirit. So I'm already in. But if I weren't already in, this next bit is really going to lock it down for me. He is the younger twin to brooding Bo, and Boone kind of embraces a role as, like a real caretaker. So he's in the kitchen. He cares a ton about his family. He is like the sunny, bright force in the ranch because Beau is obviously the opposite, and he's just sort of longing for someone to care about him and somebody care for him. Well, everything changes when Wiley Anderson arrives. Wiley is a rugged cowboy who is battling some demons, so check that for Sarah as well. Drawn to the ranch to earn some quick cash in the local rodeo, Wiley has no intention of sticking around like he is a guy who rolls into town, breaks a few hearts, it sounds like, and then heads on out. Well, when they're passed into town, Boone can't help but nurture him. And Wiley finds that his hardened exterior begins to crack as Boone gets a handle on some of those demons and starts to send them away. So the question is, like, will Boone, like sunny Kindness, be able to really harness Wiley's tough facade and keep him in this town and convince Wiley that it's worth putting down roots and ask the question, what if I didn't have to quit you?

[Jennifer Prokup]

So I love Ma Wardell books and this is a great. The first novella in a little series, all of which are written by different authors that feature queer romance stories set on the Rainbow. Rainbow Ranch in Oklahoma. So if you would like to get, you know, get a hop on or some other rodeo term I just made up.

[Sarah MacLean]

That's not a thing, is it?

[Jennifer Prokup]

I'm sure it is not a thing, everyone, if you would also like to hop on to this awesome Rainbow Ranch series, this first book comes out July 1, and the rest of them are releasing this month. It is. The books are all. Will all be available with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thank you to Ma Wardell for sponsoring this week's episode.

[Sarah MacLean]

Recently, it has felt so present, the sort of dual narration that kind of. There are multiple narrators working on a book at one time. But I. My first Julia Whelan book was Gone Girl because it felt so transformative. And everybody talked about that book because, you know, I mean, I feel like I'm allowed to spoil Gone Girl this far down the path. But I remember the moment where the third voice comes. I had not read the book. I read it for the first time in audio. And that moment where I suddenly, you know, there are two voices. And I had never read a book where there were two voices before. And then you get to the third voice sort of appearing in the text and it just blows your mind, right? And I think that that moment. So I guess my question about it is, is in the earlier days when there were multiple narrators in a book, were you all together? This is one of the questions from the discord too. Like, how much do you do together?

[Julia Whelan]

So this is. And you're right, this is very much indicative of the evolution of the industry. So Gone Girl, for instance, the number of people who tell me that was their first audiobook is incredible. And I think it's because, first of all, that book was such a juggernaut. And it also. It coincided 2012, with the audible boom. Like, really the beginning of it was the first time that people audible put so much. They'd just been, I think, acquired by Amazon or if it had been prior to that, they were just kind of getting rolling with their Amazon money. And they put out this dictum saying, okay, we wanna put every book ever written on audio. That was the kind of, like, grand plan. And that's when we were working 24 hours a day in studios, like sleeping on couches, like swing shifts, getting things recorded. And that's when a lot of people broke into the industry, realized they could make a living doing this. And we all also collectively burned ourselves out. But Gone Girl, because of having the two voices on it, it was so suited to the book. And I think people just. That confluence of, like, being able to listen to audiobooks on your phone for the first time with, you know, it just was the gateway for a lot of people into audiobooks because Kirby, the other narrator on that, Kirby Haber, were not doing duet, where you have each individual narrator Reading their own lines. We were doing dual, so alternating chapters. We were not actually in the studio together before that time. Duet, what we would now call duet was really more like radio plays. Right. So like LA TheatreWorks does live recordings, where, you know, everyone's kind of standing in a studio together, reading through the play. The modern idea of duet narration, which I did with Casanova llc and I'm doing again with Sierra Simone's new Camelot trilogy coming up, is a lot of people are trying to do due duet. We know listeners love it, especially romance listeners. But it's a very expensive process to get everyone together to do it. Even if you're not in studio, even if you're just on zoom listening in, doing it live and synchronous, it's still a prohibitively expensive process because syncing up narrator schedules and that time and having an engineer on board can be prohibitive. So a lot of times what happens is you just have narrators, like, reading their own lines and then an engineer is cutting them together. Yes. And I mean, look, something is inevitably lost when, you know, that's the process. But that is the thing that is more feasible for most authors or small presses to do it that way.

[Sarah MacLean]

Even dual narration in romance, for example, feels like you all have to be kind of on the same page. And how's that go with a bunch of men?

[Julia Whelan]

Oh, what are you talking about, sir? I love all of my colleagues. No. So, yes. Okay. So actually, we have. So we are most people. Most narrators are Screen Actors Guild union members as well. And so the union actually kind of came up with some standards around collaboration and particularly dual narration. Because, as with all group projects, usually the work falls on one person. And what we. You're right that when there's multiple narrators, forget two. Even if you've got four or five people, different chapters from their perspectives, there's coordination on pronunciation, there's coordination on character voices. I like to send character samples back and forth with people so I know what they're doing. We're never gonna sound like each other, but if there's certain things I can latch onto, like this person up talks or this is a slower, drawlier character, I just want to give a nod toward what other narrators are doing. So. So it is a logistical. At this point, I'm of the opinion that I would rather actually not do due dual. I would rather do duet only if it's live, because then I can be there working with someone at the same time than having to coordinate over email with multiple other narrators. All of whom are way too overworked and busy. And yeah, in romance particularly, there's the kind of gender politics of it all is like the men are these superstars and the women who are so immensely talented, so incredibly, incredibly talented are just always forgotten about in the reviews. It's a very male dominated field. Romance.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Well, I want to lay down now. We'll be back in 700 hours.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, wait, but, but let's talk about. So since you brought it up, let's, let's. Or since we're in this sort of industry piece of it, let's talk about audio barrier because you're doing something incredibly powerful with your, with your power in, in this space. And I wonder if you could talk about that with everybody.

[Julia Whelan]

Oh, sure. Yeah. I will take any opportunity to talk about audioberry. So yeah, okay. So a couple of years ago, I kind of hit a termination point in my own patience with this industry to go back to kind of the arc of the industry. What I had seen happen and how much it had grown over the course of the 15 years that I had been in it. Double digit growth year over year for a decade. And narrator rates were not going up the same kind of way. We're not raising our rates double digits every year. And the thing that has always just stuck in my craw about this industry is that narrators don't get royalties. And I could never understand how we were coming out of a SAG AFTRA on camera model of I still get residual checks from Lifetime movies I did when I was 12. And publishing that is built on royalties. And yet somehow we're at the center of that Venn diagram and we are benefiting from neither. So I always joke that my villain origin story is that speaking of Gone Girl, I was paid $2500 13 years ago to do Gone Girl, period.

[Sarah MacLean]

That was it.

[Julia Whelan]

That was it.

[Sarah MacLean]

And also, not for nothing, you are also the narrator of about a dozen of the 15 biggest books of the last five years. Right. And so there's that too. Right.

[Julia Whelan]

And it's a compounding problem.

[Jennifer Prokup]

You're like, yeah, her villain origin story. Go ahead and pump up the Sarah.

[Julia Whelan]

She's my hulking out. I'm hulking out. Yeah. No, I mean, and it's one of those things where like, I love this job so much. That's why I'm doing it. It makes no financial sense to be doing this job because the only way you can make more money is to do more volume, more books. And as I get older, that's not possible. Like, everything is breaking down. I can't be in this booth this long. I can't. And it just. It's so offensive to me. Like, I also come from a labor union political family, and so this kind of stuff just riles me up. But it's so offensive to that everyone continues to make money on this product. As this industry continues to explode, as more and more listeners are coming into it, and narrators have a cache now and a following, we drive listeners to books that they wouldn't normally find. And we know as authors that discoverability is a huge issue. Who else can you get that kind of discoverability from other than your narrator? And yet, Right. So I just had this like, fight or flight kind of moment where I finally was like, I'm either quitting and writing full time because I just can't. I'm too resentful getting in the booth, or I need to try to change it. Because I had asked publishers for years to do the right thing and just kept getting the corporate policy of, you know, we don't do that. So I realized that the only way to really fix this was to become my own audio publisher. And that's what audiobrary is. So we are an audio publisher that licenses audio rights from small presses, from authors, backlist, front list, whatever, and we do a profit share model with the authors and then we give the narrators a royalty on the way to the forum. The thing that I started to learn when I was like, sure, I could be an audio publisher and just put my stuff everywhere you get audiobooks. But the other kind of looming problem in this industry is that the distribution percentages that retailers take off the top is more than in any other form of digital media. So somebody like Audible, especially for indie authors, could be taking upwards of 75% off of every sale of an audiobook. Plus they can price it at whatever they want. And it's such a. Again, the way that other people, except for the people who actually made the thing, are making money in this industry is egregious. And so while I was doing the audio publishing part of audiobrary, I also decided to create a direct to consumer distribution channel. So people go to our website, they can buy our stuff directly from us, which benefits the authors and the narrators and audiobrary so much more. And then it goes directly into the audiobrary app for them to listen to. We also just. That said, though, all of our projects are available wide, so you can get them anywhere. Libro, Audible, libraries. But we always have bonus features that are available only on Audiobree, like the June French interview, for instance. And we also implemented rentals, which is another thing that I thought was missing from this industry. So people can rent our projects for about a third of the purchase price for a week, and then if you decide you want to buy it, you get a 25% discount. So it basically makes the rental cost a wash.

[Jennifer Prokup]

This week's episode of Fated Mates is brought to you by Chelsea Fagan, author of the High Dive.

[Sarah MacLean]

Alexandra Onassis, the heroine of this book, hates two things. She hates austerity politics and Daniel Azad. She and Daniel knew each other and they enrolled together back in college at Columbia University when they were the only two scholarship kids in their group of ultra wealthy friends. They, they banded together and they bonded and they had a pretty heated dynamic which ruined forever by one fateful awful night just before graduation. Ten years later, they are so completely different. Alex is now a social media campaigner for an ultra progressive political party and candidates. And Daniel is a rising star at a notoriously savage private equity firm. Yeah, so two of their college friends decide that they're going to get married, Jen in a kind of like millionaire Mediterranean extravaganza and they're gonna host. They decide they're going to host the old crew on a 10 day private yacht trip before the wedding. So Alex goes and realizes she is going to have to face Daniel and also the very sobering reality that like this life that she's built for herself, which makes which she's really proud of, makes her the only middle class person and full outcast in this ultra wealth crew of old friends. So this feels like a book that is going to really examine this issue of like what happens when you are just absolutely different than all these people.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Who you are with.

[Sarah MacLean]

And not only different, but they live a life that you are really critical of. So she's having to deal with like the difference between her beliefs, her desire for Daniel, which she's never kind of shaken, and learning to swim in these kind of like really emotional, challenging waters with her friends. And this sounds like a book. I'm gonna really read the shit.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah, talk about a book that really meets our moment, right? So if you are interested in reading the High Dive, it is available in print, ebook and in audio if your podcasting app supports it. You can click on the chapter title right now to be taken to buy the book. Thanks to Chelsea Fagan for sponsoring this week's episode.

[Sarah MacLean]

I don't read a ton in audio and I sort of, I'm very perplexed by how people afford to read an audio because it does seem wildly expensive for the reader and I know that the numbers don't bear out on the back end for authors or narrators.

[Julia Whelan]

So. No, I mean you have to be selling so much volume to really notice the audio. I mean it's different for me because obviously as an author because I'm traditionally published, you know, I over index in audio because especially with. Thank you for listening in a book about audio, like I think 60% of my sales are audio. But it just. There are so many, there are so many problems and there were so many things to try to fix and it was a little bit ridiculous to try to do all of them at the same time. But now that we are a year and a half in and everything's kind of working, working, it's. I suddenly don't, I don't regret this trying to do this.

[Sarah MacLean]

No, I mean I think one of the fascinating things, and this is sort of, this is a piece of audio history is in the early days, like my first books with, well, my Scholastic book never had an audiobook. I think it does now and then. But the, My early romances, they were. Harper Collins didn't have an audio team. They were sold to specific audio companies which then held the rights for a number years. And now, and now the sort of. They have to be renegotiated publishing is.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, the big five are like kind of buying them back once those options are expiring from.

[Sarah MacLean]

Or trying. Right?

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, or trying. And now, I mean also that was the other thing is that again, this is just the kind of over the overreach that creep that always happens in industries where, you know, 10 years ago you could negotiate out your audio rights. Sometimes a publisher didn't even want them. Now, now you will never get them to give up audio. But again, I think that's changing also from some kind of upward pressure from indie authors who now are moving over into trad and are able to dictate their own terms and say I'm keeping audio. So publishers, they're going to adjust, they're going to figure this out. But my main thing is just trying to create an alternative to the way that it's working now because I have, I had zero. As we've said, I'm a writer. I would really like to just be. I'd really like to just be writing my books. But there was no point, no point in throwing over my life and my husband's life and doing a home equity line of credit on our house just to create another audio production company or do something that had already been done. I have no interest in doing that. I need to try to fix it. And if I can't, then I will know it's unfixable and. And I'll be fine.

[Sarah MacLean]

But it seems like it is able to be fixed, so. But you have all that. You have so many big projects now. You have authors who have really come to the table with audiobrary and they're backlist, like Sierra Simone at the end of July.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah. So Sierra Simone, which is another author who I might have found through fated Mates, actually, the way that you all talked about her. But. But I know how I found these books, which is another story CD Reese, she's at fault. But I went to Ciara when I was coming out with Casanova, and I just had some indie author questions for her. And then I kind of mentioned in passing, if you have anything, you always do really well with your audio. You make really good decisions. They're really well done. But if you ever have anything where you want to do something with audio Brewery, I would love to partner with you in something. And she had come back saying, well, the new Camelot trilogy, those options are coming up. And I really have wanted to do something as a duet. And I was like, oh, my God.

[Unnamed Speaker]

These books are so perfect for it.

[Julia Whelan]

Because it's so intimate. It's the three. It's Rumple. It's so intimate. And those books are just. They're crazy.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I mean, they'd be perfect, right?

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, perfect. And in fact, I just sent a sample to one of the narrators, to Teddy Hamilton, and he sent me a message being like, oh, my God, that sample. He was like, it sounds so present. And to talk about, it's like an advertisement for doing something live, for doing this kind of thing live. Like, you can just tell it's three actors working off of each other, and it's great. So anyway, yeah, I put together all three books and we actually shot, quote, unquote, we recorded. Because the only way my brain, my Hollywood brain, is that I organized the recording, I broke the books apart, kind of like batch shooting it. Like the way they did Lord of the Rings, where I just created all of the scenes between, you know, Ash and Embry, all the scenes between Greer and Ash, Greer and Embry, the three of us, and structured it so that we recorded in order of the character and relationship arcs so that, like the boys, their entire arc was recorded over three days before I ever came into the picture. So that we got as much like we could just stay in the mindset of where we were over the course of those three books. So it recorded over like three and a half weeks. We had a director, we had an engineer, we were just.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Wow, that's amazing.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

Incredible.

[Julia Whelan]

Did it as I wanted to treat those books because I think Sierra is a beautiful, beautiful writer and sometimes the explicit nature of her writing overshadows the fact that, that these characters and the story is incredible. And I wanted to treat it like Chekov. That was my thing. I was like, we're gonna meet the texts where they are. That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna treat this seriously and see how good we can make it.

[Jennifer Prokup]

That's really incredible. I mean, and that I think for me, I think is kind of why I prefer Full Cat, like kind of all or nothing.

[Sarah MacLean]

Right.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Because it does feel in some way like, I don't know, it feels like I can maybe I can't tell. Maybe I just think I can tell, right. That you know, when people are room together there seems to be like a magic that comes through that people are acting with each other, not just like reading lines that get, you know, cut.

[Julia Whelan]

Together later or whatever. And I think, and you know, I think like that's. This is why there's so much behind the scenes stuff that happens in this. And this is another reason where for audiobrary, like my selection process of the books that we acquire have been I want a great story, but I also want if there's a story behind the story, that's really what I want. Cause it gives me an opportunity to put on that English major for former writing tutor hat and get into the weeds on the writing process with the authors, the recording process. So for instance, with new Camelot, pre orders are up everywhere. But then again with audiobrary we have a discount going on the bundle for all three books plus the bonus features which at the end of each book there's gonna be interviews with Ciara, the cast bloopers, an extra bonus epilogue that Ciara wrote for us. So you know, it's like I just kind of get to be queen of my domain.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah, that's so fun. So we'll put links to all of that in show notes everyone. So you can go and pre order and check out audiobrary too.

[Julia Whelan]

Oh, thank you.

[Sarah MacLean]

But so let's get into. Can we go back to thank you for listening though? Which is actually. No, you did my Oxford year too. So yes. Can we talk about one of the questions that was on the Discovery, and it's something I wanted to talk about, too, is how does it feel to do your own book? Let me tell you something, Julia Whelan. I've never read one of my books.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, understandable.

[Sarah MacLean]

How do you do that?

[Jennifer Prokup]

Why would you do that?

[Julia Whelan]

Why would you do that?

[Sarah MacLean]

Terrible.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah. You know, it's funny, someone asked me to comment on, I guess, like, Melania Trump is using an AI voice for her audiobook or something, and someone wanted me to comment, and I was like, first of all, I just don't want to. I don't want to wade into anything to do with that name and get my name mixed into that. But I was also just thinking about that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I'm like, well, it's because she hasn't.

[Julia Whelan]

Read her own book. Okay. So very different experiences for all three books. With My Oxford Year, it was terrible. It was a horrible, horrible, horrible recording experience. Because, first of all, just on its face, it's a very difficult book. If it had just been sent to me, it would have been hard to record. It was first person present. So emotions are very on the surface, and you have to be just very immersed in the character's head. Plus, she's the only American in a cast of 13 Brits. And so doing all of the. I had done some accent coaching beforehand just to make sure that I could differentiate enough to keep that many characters spinning, plus add into that debut imposter syndrome. Like, just reading my own book, being.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Like, why did I write it like this? This is stupid.

[Julia Whelan]

Like, ugh, wanting to edit everything. So that was the. Since that was the first time I'd had to do it, it was brutal. And I have not listened to it the second time around with thank you for listening. What I kind of learned from the bad experience of my Oxford year was to read every draft out loud. So it's not that by the time I started recording, it's not like I'd made certain performance decisions. A lot of those choices were made kind of embarrassingly late in the process, but at least I felt comfortable with the text. Like, it felt very much in my voice, very easy to translate, and it was just a blast to do with Casanova. The interesting thing was that doing it duet, where suddenly I had other people in the sandbox with me, and these were men that I'm very good friends with, I wanted to bring into this because they knew how important it was to me. And so that was really fun because that was working with other actors again and finally just letting someone else read My stuff and really fulfilling. Like, remarkably fulfilling, where I always thought I'd be like, no one else gets.

[Unnamed Speaker]

To touch my shit.

[Julia Whelan]

And instead, like, it was great, and I want to do it again.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Well, I would imagine it's a great feeling if to have another person at the top of their game engaging with your writing that way has to be thrilling. I think that'd be really cool.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, it was. It was very cool.

[Jennifer Prokup]

You know, what is the ideal way in which you take to prepare a book like Storms, for example, that has. Right. You're the single narrator. There's lots of characters.

[Julia Whelan]

What.

[Jennifer Prokup]

What does that process look like for you?

[Sarah MacLean]

Okay, wait. But before you answer that question, can I just say so I have not heard the audiobook of Storms yet. Although we are adding.

[Julia Whelan]

We are.

[Sarah MacLean]

Everyone will get to hear the first chapter of Storms after this episode. But I have seen Julia sent me.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Me.

[Sarah MacLean]

She. Having Julia be your narrator is the greatest because she sends you little, like, audio clips.

[Jennifer Prokup]

A little clip, and it's so. Okay, what was the one she said that we all listened to?

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh, and I. She sent me one where she is, like, six people in a scene. Because this book, I apologize, has a lot of scenes where lots of people are talking.

[Julia Whelan]

I've had worse.

[Sarah MacLean]

And it's unreal to watch you. And also, you sent me a video so, like, I could see you really just, like, seamlessly doing this work. And I know that you're a professional, but it is an unreal, like, absolute joy to watch somebody at the top of their game do something like this. And I also have to say, like, all my other books, I can't listen to them because I'm like, it never quite feels the way that I think it should feel. But, like, this scene, it was just wild to me hearing you. And I knew it. This is why you were on my vision board. But please go on and talk about how you prepare for a book with a million characters.

[Julia Whelan]

Okay, so let's start with this. This is good. So your book is actually a perfect example of this. Okay, so I never have a chance to read the book ahead of time before I agree to do one, because the producers don't have time to wait for me to read it. I don't have time to read something I'm not going to record. So I have to just go on synopsis, author, vibes, whatever. Obviously, with you, I was like, no brainer. I want to do this because I would never be asked in any world to do your historical romance. And so I just always. You were like, I just never thought I'd get to do one of your books. So the fact that this happened, I was so excited about, and I just said, absolutely, of course, yes, I'm in. And at that point, once I get the manuscript, I read it, and I create two lists. One is a word list of anything I don't know how to pronounce. So some of it will be author invention, like the piece of technology that he invented, the kind of tablet. I was like, how do you want me to say that? Some of it is technical, geographical locations where I just need to make sure.

[Jennifer Prokup]

All those Rhode island names.

[Julia Whelan]

All those Rhode island names. And you can't take it for granted. You can't just assume you know how. How to say it. There was an Algonquin word that ended up no one knew how to pronounce. And we went down that rabbit hole and talked to everyone. Yes. Which I've had a lot of experience with over the years, and it's gotten so much better. That's a side note, but just how much more research has been done in resurrecting some of those dead languages? Now there's so much more to do, which, again, to your point about the quality of audiobooks, earlier on, we didn't know what we didn't know.

[Sarah MacLean]

And a producer in that scenario, the producer really, like, was doing a bunch of side work, too, looking for it.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah. So, because. And again, your producer, who is Linda Korn, who is fantastic. She's at prh, and she started as an audiobook director there. And so we've known each other for my whole career, and she's just one of my favorite people. So I'm able to have a very good conversation with Linda, where I just go, this is my list. Can you. Can you. What can you do about this? But I always do my own research anyway and try to find out, you know, where we're at with the characters. What. I'm basically, I'm keeping a list of any speaking character, and I'm looking for, obviously, any vocal traits that the author gives them, whether that's an accent or a timbre or, you know, some kind of some signature, some vocal signature. I'm also looking at any biographical information that I think is important. And then once I've got that worked out, the whole roster, I kind of then hone in on who are my main characters that are constantly in conversation with each other. If it's the same four or five people, and in this case, perfect example of a family trapped on an island together, this is the Cast. This is the main cast. So then I start creating voices that are distinct enough between those six characters or so that the listener will always know who's talking at any given moment. So there's kind of a repertory theater company in my head of, like, I'm gonna pull in this person to play this character, and I just start building out, building out the world based on what the author has given me, and then what I know needs to happen in the translation process for the listener.

[Sarah MacLean]

This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Alexandra Harvey, author of A Deal with the Devil. I want it.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah, I mean, me too.

[Sarah MacLean]

Done. Sold.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Exactly. How about, okay, so Kitty is our heroine. And her reckless father, who's just like this gambler, he's constantly like, you know, making bad decisions, has agreed to sell her sister into marriage to a cruel nobleman who is rumored to have previous to murdered his three dead wives. And so Kitty is like, I need to save my sister not just from marriage, but from, like, save her life. And so what she does is she essentially blackmails the most dangerous man in London. And Earl everyone calls the Devil of Mayfair. Fine. He has built an empire collecting secrets, inheritances, and broken reputations, and no one crosses him, Sarah. Until Kitty.

[Sarah MacLean]

Of course they don't, because he's the devil of Mayfair.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Jen, she is just a bookseller with a sharp tongue. She has a literary side hustle and a serious talent for stirring up trouble. How is this woman have the mock seat across him? Well, she wants to stop a murderer, and she's pretty sure that he's the only one who can help. And so if you would like to see this blackmail turned into an alliance also result in an hea, then A Deal with the Devil is the book for you.

[Sarah MacLean]

I would like to see that. And if you also would like to see it, then you can read this book right now in print and ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited, if your podcasting app supports it. You can click on the chapter title right now to be taken to buy the book. Thanks to Alexander Harvey, as always, for sponsoring this week's episode.

[Jennifer Prokup]

When you're recording, like for prh, you're still recording in your studio, though. So is that something where you just then are sending files or are you getting on with Linda?

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, so in this situation, I just record on my own. Sometimes I have a director. It depends on the project. Sometimes I'll ask for a director. Usually that's in actually nonfiction, where there's such a word list or there's pronunciations or something where it's very nice to have someone there just listening along, being like, nope, you did not nail that Dutch word or whatever. But when I'm doing fiction, I really like to. To not have a director because I like to be able to stop and go back and tweak things exactly the way I want and make sure that the character voices are. I just don't want to be wasting someone else's time, if that makes sense.

[Jennifer Prokup]

No, that totally does.

[Julia Whelan]

So. Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

And do you have one of the questions that was on the Discord is this, you know, what does it actually look like? Are you working from. You're working from an ebook or, you know, is it highlighted? Yeah. What's the visual of the script?

[Julia Whelan]

So I. Okay. Oh, my God. Seriously? Okay. So back in the Jurassic period, when I started.

[Sarah MacLean]

The Discord is gonna want screenshots. I know.

[Julia Whelan]

We can do this. We can do this. We used to have. They would send me the printed out manuscript.

[Sarah MacLean]

Sure.

[Julia Whelan]

And I would take a physical highlighter and highlight the characters in different colors.

[Sarah MacLean]

Like a script.

[Julia Whelan]

Like a script. And then I realized that that was insane because books are 400 pages long and you're not just playing your character, you're playing every character. And the, like, translation process that would have to happen in my head of like, who was the blue highlighter again? Who was the green high? Terrible. Slowed me down. I don't do it. So now all I do. And this is again, just getting. Just familiarizing yourself with the process. But I only highlight intention. So if there's a whispered or yelled or something, I will. Just so that my eye can catch it before I get to the dialogue.

[Sarah MacLean]

And do you still work on paper?

[Julia Whelan]

No. So now it's a PDF and I have it on an iPad right behind my mic in front of me. And I'm reading off of an iPad with paper. You used to have to pause for page turns. Oh, sure, of course. I mean, it was a whole other.

[Sarah MacLean]

Okay, wait.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I have a question, though. So do you have. You're not scrolling. Do you have it set up to essentially like, scroll automatically?

[Julia Whelan]

You scroll and sometimes you'll hear my wrist crack. It's the only exercise I get. Very strong wrists.

[Sarah MacLean]

And so just to give people a sense of timing, this is. And this is why Audio Barry, is so important in the work that you've done to advocate for other narrators and yourself is so important. How long does it take to record to do a full book? Yeah. Like my book.

[Julia Whelan]

Right. So for me, I. I cap myself at 2 finished hours per day because I feel like my voice and my brain just kind of fall off after that. But that's about four hours in the booth. And none of that has to do with the actual prep time. So audiobooks are paid and budgeted for on a per finished hour basis. So a 12 hour book, which I think is about what storms was coming in at 10 to 12, is about 40 hours of work for me. Right. All told. So I did this and again with audiobrary and running a company and everything, I've even cut that two hours. So I think I did this over about a week and a half. And sometimes are better, like weekends. As much as I love them and they feel sacred to me, they're also really good recording time because it's quiet in my neighborhood. And so I sometimes have to take advantage of a Saturday and do like a really long record.

[Sarah MacLean]

I just think it's a massive amount of work. It feels overwhelming and incredible when you.

[Jennifer Prokup]

When you're trying to get the results.

[Julia Whelan]

And I think to your point about the video part of it, which is like, I don't know, I'm just in here doing my job and I don't think about that a lot. But every time I post a video of me recording, like in the booth, like people, they want now, they want like video books, like they want to watch.

[Sarah MacLean]

So they just want to watch you do it.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, I'll do it live. Like I'll do it live at a library or an event or something. And I mean, it's just old fashioned storytelling. Yeah, yeah, it's a one woman show sort of situation. And. And the response is always, yeah, it's very interesting.

[Sarah MacLean]

No, it's very cool. Cause when I sent the video of you doing six voices all in one scene to my sister, she replied and she was amazed. And then she said, I guess in my head I just thought she did all of them separately and then pieced them together.

[Julia Whelan]

Most people do.

[Sarah MacLean]

That's wild.

[Julia Whelan]

That's a question I get. I get that question a lot. Yeah, yeah. Because I think, you know, and sometimes there have been a couple of books where I have done it. Not character voices, not lines of character dialogue. But when I'm doing a dual novel with myself so that there's alternate chapters from characters, points of view, and the voice is a little different depending on which character is the narrative voice. I have in the past then recorded the book straight through with like just one character's chapters and then gone back and done the other character's chapters just to stay in the voice.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Do you think that writing has changed in response to the rise of audience audio? So I had somebody once say, like, you know, do you think people are using dialogue tags more or less or write things like that?

[Sarah MacLean]

And.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And I. I don't know the answer. I. Sometimes I feel like I read a book and I think this person was thinking about audio, not about, like, someone reading with their eyes.

[Julia Whelan]

That is a really good point. I think that authors, certain authors who love audio, I definitely know, they have told me just anecdotes that it has changed the way that they write. Yes. Getting rid of dialogue tags. There's also, like, in, for instance, the new Camelot series and anything I have control over, like, if it's an AudioBerry project, I'm cutting those dialogue tags, like, all over the place because they slow down rhythm. They, you know, unless they're there for rhythm. Like, sometimes that's knowing. Like, you just have to know that he said in the middle of the sentence is there to let the reader listener down what has just been said before going on to the next thing. Right. It's like a bridge. So I do think that certain authors have definitely brought that kind of audio awareness to their writing. I talk with Emily Henry about this, actually, where she has said publicly, I'm not like, outing the conversations we have on our little walks that we take occasionally. She has said that she's seen comments and reviews where people will be like, I started beach Read, but I didn't. It was funny. And then I heard the audiobook and I understood how it was funny, and now I love it. And Emily's point is that sometimes humor is just really hard to nail on a page, especially for a generation that maybe has grown up with texting and doesn't have that ability to read tone. So, so much has changed in the last 15 years, let's say societally as well as in publishing and audio that, like, I can't. I can't pull apart what. What is really the driver of this. But something is different for sure.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because it feels like if you have. If you're a writer who has a really strong kind of authorial voice, then audio can really like a narrative. The narrative voice in your. Your book can be really boosted by audio. And I feel that way about. You know, my historicals are. Are narrated by Mary Jane Wells now, who I didn't get until my most recent series.

[Julia Whelan]

Interesting. She's amazing. Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

She's incredible.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

And now I feel like my historicals, the audio, the Audiobooks in my. On my historicals are so much more powerful, I think, because she gets the narrative voice in an interesting way.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah. I mean, there's always. This is why when you find an author, when an author finds a narrator, like that collaboration becomes to me so important. And again, another reason why it should be honored, economically speaking, because there are narrator. There are authors who. And now it's changed. Right? But at the beginning of, for instance, Taylor Jenkins Reid's career, okay, I did her first books. Like, she didn't have audio for the first couple of books, and then they were sold to Dreamscape, and then they hired me to do a couple of them.

[Sarah MacLean]

This was in the past, before she.

[Julia Whelan]

Was Taylor Jenkins Reid, before she was Taylor Jenkins Reid. But we became friends because I knew she was in la. I called her up and I was like, you are punching so far above your weight. Like, these books are so good. And I'm telling you this from a fellow writer, not even as your narrator, just, I love what you do. And that created this kind of bond between us where I will get messages from her as she's writing saying, like, I don't know what you're gonna do with this character, but I just, I gotta keep her in there. And like, we'll talk about it later. She'll give me heads up of like, this character makes no sense. But I'm doing it. Cause I trust you to figure it out. And we, you know, having that kind of long standing relationship with someone and understanding their work on that level. And that's the gift of this. And that's what keeps me doing it. And at a moment in her career where people were finding her books because I was narrating them, which now seems ridiculous because who doesn't know her books? And they'll find me because I'm narrating her books. But at the time, and same with Emily, that was a shift in the industry. Your narrator will get you a lot of mileage depending on who the narrator is. But more importantly, when they understand your voice and what you're trying to say and they get the. The tone that you're going for, that is the truest adaptation process an author will ever get. Hollywood will never give you that. The audiobook is the first and truest adaptation you will ever have. And that's why the narrator is important.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I'm an anxious listener if I don't know what's about to happen. So I almost always reread an audio. And I was telling Sarah this week, I was lucky enough to get an advance audio copy of the new SA Cosby book, which will be out by the time everyone listens to this. I really like the narrator a lot. He's got a terrific voice. And about a quarter of the way through the book, I was like, I need to switch to an arc that I can read with my eyes because I cannot. Like, I. I'm too nervous.

[Julia Whelan]

Too much.

[Jennifer Prokup]

It's too much. I. I need control.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Control. I just need to know what's gonna happen to be able to edit. Right. Exactly. But it's really funny because someone was like, well, you could speed it up. And I was like, oh, that's. I like to listen at, like, a slow speed because.

[Sarah MacLean]

Good for you. I like to listen to normal pace.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah. I like to listen at talking speed. Right.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And I think partly, though, that's because I. I mean, I think I've heard really interesting, you know, compelling sort of reasons people like to listen faster. Like, I'm. It's not judgment. Like, I. But I'm like, yeah, I like to listen at 1.0, and sometimes if I'm feeling really sassy. 1.1. I don't know.

[Julia Whelan]

Slow down there, Speed Racer.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Exactly right.

[Julia Whelan]

Here's. I. I will weigh in on that, because I used to be the person. I used to be the person that was like, no, listen to it at the speed I read it to you. There were very specific performance choices made.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah.

[Julia Whelan]

And then someone made the point very compellingly that it's especially for someone with neurodiversity, diverge. Like, the ADHD brain needs to go at a certain pace or we lose them. And I'm like, okay, then fine, then set it to the speed of your brain. I actually. I relinquish this argument. I give it up. However, the people who are listening at three times speed just to, like, get through it. I'm like, how is this fun? How is this. What are you. Would you watch a Netflix show at three times speed? Like, I'm so confused by this, you know, but they just want to, like, mark off their TBR and, like, get their goodreads count up.

[Sarah MacLean]

So I guess my question for this. And this comes from the discord too, but it's the reverse of Jen's question about, like, do writers write differently for audio? But do you feel like you. The compulsion of a lot of readers to read, to listen faster? Does it impact the way you think about the work? Yes.

[Julia Whelan]

Oh, my God, Yes. So this is, again, another thing that I think has changed a lot in audio over 15 years. Since I started, I remember I have an explicit memory of being in the studio on God and having the director keep saying, you gotta slow down. Like Kirby had already recorded his sections. And she's like, you gotta slow down or it's gonna sound so out of pace with what Kirby did. And I was like, yes, but I wanna do this at the speed of Amy Elliott Dunn's brain.

[Sarah MacLean]

Right.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Stress.

[Julia Whelan]

She's a psychopath. She's 10 steps ahead of Nick. That's the entire point of the book. If I have to slow down. First of all, it just doesn't feel right. And coming from an on camera and a character background, I was like, I just couldn't understand why this was important. And I think now, all these years later, with the speed at which people listen to think TikTok and everything is just people talk faster. And I think that that was the gap is that the listeners started just the speed of conversation has increased over the last generation, for sure. And so the. The old way of narrating audiobooks does not really work. And now look, there's also a technical issue of like, I can't read that fast when I am just reading text without making mistakes. And we're not allowed to make mistakes. But I find that we did this with Casanova. We're doing it again with New Camelot. My husband, who is an incredible acting coach and voice and speech guy and comes out of New York theater and like, that kind of brain. He does all of the directing and editing on these projects. And he will go in like with New Camelot. He just kept coming after us when we were recording, being like, faster, faster, faster. Keep it at the speed of conversation. And then he goes in afterward and gives space where you need it to be able to for the listener. Again, it's usually not in the sentence. It's usually between the sentences.

[Sarah MacLean]

Mm.

[Julia Whelan]

And that allows this really like, intimate. You feel like you're in the room kind of feel when you're listening to this stuff, because it feels like it's real people talking. Yeah. So it has changed very much my approach to things. And I. But whenever I hear a clip back of myself, like if someone makes a reel or something and they like attach a bit of an audio that I've done to it, and it's at one and a half or two, I just like muted so fast because I'm like, I don't sound like that. And I had a moment. My best friend had to like, I had a breakdown for a minute at some point a couple years ago. Where I was like, what if the only reason that I'm popular is because I sound okay at two times speed? Like I don't sound like Minnie Mouse? What if that's the only reason I'm successful? And she was like, you need to go touch grass. Shut up.

[Sarah MacLean]

This week's episode of Fated Maids is sponsored by Avon Books, publishers of Alexander Page's An Irish Summer.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Boston is the perfect place for Chelsea. She has her best friend, her family, a great job, and ever since graduating from college, she has been living and working at the same bed and breakfast. And she loves it. She loves that feeling of stability. Until she is informed that o' Shea's bed and breakfast is going to be sold. And she has less than a month to find a new job and an apartment, which seems like a problem in.

[Sarah MacLean]

Boston, frankly, very expensive there.

[Jennifer Prokup]

So she takes a summer gig at the BNB Sister hotel in Galway, Ireland, convincing herself it will be an adventure. But when she gets there, in fact, it's everything she hates. It's non stop rain, there's no iced coffee, shifts to share a bathroom.

[Sarah MacLean]

This is unacceptable.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Unfair labor practices. Clearly. So working at this place might, you know, kind of pad her resume, but it's not going to really solve her problem. So her co workers, however, are determined to change her mind. Especially charming, handsome Colin. So these two strike up a deal. He's going to show Chelsea everything Ireland has to offer, and only then will she be able to pass judgment. And as she finds herself warming up to the charming Irish lifestyle and her charismatic new friend, she can't help but wonder what's going to happen when summer comes to an end.

[Sarah MacLean]

Oh boy. Everyone loves an Irishman. You know, it's hosier summer here in in our house.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Name your hot Irishman.

[Sarah MacLean]

Exactly. Cillian Murphy. We. I can keep. I could go on everyone. But anyway, if you love a hot Irishman, this book is definitely for you. You can find it right now in print, ebook or audiobook. And if your podcasting app supports it, you can click on the chapter title right now to be taken to to buy the book. Thanks to Avon Books and Alexander Page for sponsoring this week's episode.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I'm fascinated though. I mean I know that you can listen to the podcast at two point speed and, and again, I think like you when people were like, as someone who has neurodo, you know, I have a neurodiversity and I need to listen to speed my brain. I was like, oh, that totally makes sense. Like I just sort of, I, you know, I didn't quite get it up until that moment, but I am sort of fascinated by. I mean, I feel like I already talk pretty fast.

[Julia Whelan]

Well, and there is a difference. There is a difference. I mean, look, I will put a lot of TikTok videos or even podcasts. Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I'll bump it up.

[Julia Whelan]

Because there's a difference between extemporaneous speech and people doubling back on what they're saying and starting sentences over and. I mean, I've done that about a hundred times so far in this conversation alone. But when it is written out in front of me and I am reading text that actually, actually exists and is scripted for me, I am doing it at the pace I think it should be done at. That's not a mistake.

[Sarah MacLean]

So I have a question, which is, is there anything. What is the most challenging part of the work? I mean, I. Obviously, you do not. You. You narrate both romance and other types of books. And obviously, like, it feels like the sex is probably a more challenging piece because. Whatever. But is there something that you.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Well, how about SA Cosby making me on Somebody's going to Die.

[Sarah MacLean]

Sarah. Yeah, what about. Like, that's what I mean. Like, what is the most challenging piece of the text? Or is that. Is it just different Per. Is there something you love or don't.

[Julia Whelan]

Love or, you know, honestly, the thing I don't. This is like the text I get from Taylor. You'll fix it.

[Sarah MacLean]

It's. It just. We'll fix it in post.

[Julia Whelan]

Here's. Look, the thing I don't like about the job. And again, this goes back to the compensation issue. Not to harp on this, but it's the kind of root of all of this is the volume issue. I became such a better narrator when I wasn't having to do 70 books a year to keep my head above water.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Right.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah.

[Julia Whelan]

And it's because that focus is so stripped. I'm just prepping things very quickly. I'm getting in the booth, being like, especially with romance. And when I was. Had a good, solid career under the Sophie Eastlake name and I was working with these indie authors who are machines and are like the most reliable, responsible. I mean, they're the inspiration for June French. And they would book me like, a year out, and they'd be like, I'm gonna have this, my spring book, my summer book, my fall book, my Christmas novella. Like, they would know exactly when I was.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Yeah, they know.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah.

[Julia Whelan]

And I would sometimes sit down with those books and be like, wait, which bodyguard is this? Like, no idea what you're sitting down to. So volume is really the. Was the worst part of the job, which is, of course, when you're starting out what you want, you want as many books as possible, and then it becomes a curse. But in terms of actual performance and doing the job, emotional scenes are difficult because I actually. We did a project for Audiobrary called Animal Bodies, which is an essay collection. And it's about death desire and what is it?

[Unnamed Speaker]

How does it go?

[Julia Whelan]

It's so good. Death desire and other complications or something like that. And there are some stories in there that would just like, bring me to my knees. And as actually one of the bonus material pieces, I wrote a little mini essay with the author's permission, obviously, about. I just broke down while recording one of these stories and I recorded straight through. Normally, if it had been any other publisher, I would have stopped, gotten my shit together, gotten back in and started over. But I was like, no, this is.

[Unnamed Speaker]

What we're trying to do at Audiobrary. We're trying to be human and it's.

[Julia Whelan]

Just going to be whatever it is. And so I recorded the whole thing and then I gave it to Jeff, to my husband. And he was like, the problem is that you've centered you and not. Mm. And that was such a worthy. So we made a bonus feature out of it where I was like, this is why I went back and re recorded this story. Because it was self indulgent for me to have the catharsis and the breakdown that you are meant to have. You the listener. But I'm gonna play for you a minute of what that really raw recording felt like. And so that's why emotional scenes are difficult. Kristin Hannah. I have to record like a page and a half of her at a time. And then I have to get up and walk around for. And come back in. It's an incredibly long recording process. Her books, because again, trying to find that balance between. I want it to feel authentic. I never want it to feel like I am putting something on for the listener, but I want the listener to be able to have enough neutrality that I'm not pushing them into something. So, no, the sex scenes are not difficult. The sex scenes are just like the climactic scenes of any book. It's like a background or like a chase scene or, you know, pick your.

[Sarah MacLean]

Genre for me to write.

[Julia Whelan]

Very difficult for you to write. Well, yeah, and me too. I did not. I'm not gonna be writing Casanova again. I was like, okay, I'm done with that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Thank you.

[Julia Whelan]

That was fun.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, speaking of writing. You're obviously. You have so many things going on. Are you working on. No, no, no. I want it.

[Julia Whelan]

I know. Well, then someone needs to come run audiobrary for me. Um, I. No. I am currently in the process of figuring out what the next thing is gonna be, and my goal is that by the new year, that's gonna just start getting worked into the daily schedule. It's gonna. I have to do it. Cause I'm starting to. It's a mental health thing for me more than anything else. And. Yeah. So, like, things are just coming out now almost like, you know, some, like, secretion where I, you know, sit down to work on an email and. And then I'm like, my word doc is sitting right there, and I'll just be like. And get a thousand words out on something. So, you know. But no, not in any serious capacity.

[Sarah MacLean]

But you do have a movie coming.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah. Which, again, would have been great timing wise. I've been waiting for that movie for 13 years to happen, and it would have been great if I could have had a book ready to sell when that thing came out, but, you know.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Sometimes that's not the way it goes.

[Julia Whelan]

Nope. But. Nope. Just selling other people's books. Yeah. So my Oxford year is getting the Netflix treatment coming out on August 1st.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Oh, that's so exciting.

[Sarah MacLean]

So exciting. Have you seen.

[Julia Whelan]

I haven't. When do you know?

[Sarah MacLean]

It feels like it's time.

[Julia Whelan]

It does feel like it's time. So because of the way that this book came about, I talk about this in the author's note, which is weirdly, not in the audio. I acknowledge that I forgot to record it in the audio. We weren't really recording audio, like author's notes at the that time back in 2018. And so it just didn't occur to anybody to do it. But I talk about this in the author's note. I was hired to work on a screenplay. This started as an existing screenplay set up at Sony. And I was hired, along with a friend of mine, to come in as the Oxford specialists, because I had spent a year there to punch up the screenplay. And then that turned into a kind of page one rewrite of. We were the first women who had been working on the screenplay. It had been. It had started as kind of a drama and then become a ROM com. And so, like, tonally, it was just kind of Frankensteined. And so we spent over a year in, like, 25 drafts, like, doing a version of this screenplay. So the producers got to know my opinions about the story and what I wanted to change, and what they wouldn't let me change. And then they said they came up with the idea, like, do you think this would make a good. And I was like, oh, my God.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Please, let's do this as a book.

[Julia Whelan]

So that's how it happened. And there was a cast attached back then. So I was writing very quickly, trying to get this book out to be the movie that ended up not happening. And just typical Hollywood process. But so as a result, I don't own the book. They own the book. So I've had nothing to do with the production. This is all there hard work. I've had nothing to do with it. So I have not been involved in it, I think, in the way that a normal author would be involved. But it's all copacetic and it's all fine. But as a result, I'm not banging down their door being like, I need to see a cut. I'm like, just show it to me when it's actually ready to go. I'd love to see it. I'm excited to see it. But I think the typical Hollywood excitement that a lot of people. I just don't have, like, I'm over it.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, and as you said, I love what you said about the first and purest adaptation is the audiobook. And you've done your own audiobooks, so.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah. And have the Hollywood treatment better. Exactly. And I think, like, that's part of it is. I'm very excited to see their version because that's what's actually really unique about this story is. I mean, someone had made a comment. Cause they. Sophia Carson, who's lovely and who's playing my character, Ella, but they renamed Anna for the project. And there was an article in Elle about the project, and she was saying that they changed the character to match her identity more. And someone had kind of DMed me and was like, does this bother you? And I was like, you don't understand how little this. I'm actually. This makes me so happy because in the grand tradition of this project, the way it started, like, every writer has had a different version of this character. I have worked on many different versions of this character, and the book version is mine. She is named for my great, great grandmother. She is a lot of my identity put into her. I love that the lead actress is getting a stab at that, too. It just feels right for this project, you know? So it's a very. It's a just unique collection collaboration sort of situation.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Julia, before we move on, there's a topic I Want to come back to for a minute, which is you mentioned that you had worked under a pseudonym before, but the question of pseudonyms and audiobook narrators, I know is something that can be a bit of a hot button topic on social media. Can you just take a minute maybe to talk a little bit about this issue in particular in the audiobook industry and kind of how it plays out? We're all.

[Julia Whelan]

We can, like, understand why authors use pseudonyms and pen names. But for some reason with narrators, people are just very casual about outing them. And I've seen videos recently where someone will be like, I just found out that this one narrator also records under.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That this is their real name, and they record under this name.

[Julia Whelan]

And I get why you're doing it. It's actually very flattering because it's like we just. I found this new treasure trove of new audiobooks by the same person. But just do your due diligence, please, as a human being, and check and see if this person is out about the fact that they record under multiple names, because some of them are. Some of them are very, very clear about that, but some of them aren't. And it's usually for very, very good personal reasons. And by dint of explanation here, I can only share my personal reason, which is back when I started the Sophie Eastlake pseudonym, I was still doing on camera acting, and I had made a kind of red line in my career that I wouldn't do nudity. And it was costing me my career. It was actively. I was losing out on every big project at that time. I would be second choice. And then they would say, but you'll do the nudity, right?

[Unnamed Speaker]

And I would say, no.

[Julia Whelan]

And my agent had quit and I was dying on that hill, and I didn't want someone to then see that I was like, recording romance and saying, oh, so you'll do it in audio, but you won't do it on camera? And I didn't want to have that conversation. I also had as a former child actor, some very creepy fans like stalkery situations. And I didn't want those men to be able to hear me read this naughty stuff to them. And so I had a good reason. At this point in my life, I don't care. I'm old and I'm over it. And I think I've outlived most of those guys and they're not interested in me anyway anymore, so I don't care. But some people, some narrators are, for whatever personal reasons, you know, they're in a Custody dispute or they live in a conservative town and they're just.

[Unnamed Speaker]

They don't want their kids to be.

[Julia Whelan]

Subjected to any bullying that might happen should someone find out, like, it's just not your information to share. And I just ask people to be a little bit more conscientious about that whenever possible. When some of us started in this industry, it just didn't have the fandom that it has now. And I don't think anyone thought then that someone would be comparing our voice to another audiobook. We did. You know, it just. They seemed like romance wasn't what it was, and now it's just. It's massive. And I think a lot of people, if they could go back in time, would. Would probably not record things under two names. Just pick a fake name from the beginning to start with for privacy reasons. But that's not the world we live in right now. So just a little bit of grace and I will get off my soapbox.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Now, before we go, I was wondering if you. I mean, we haven't really talked about, like, recommendations or referrals at all. I mean, obviously, Sierra's book, I think our listeners will be very interested in checking out. I mean, maybe, I don't know, like, are there audio? Do you listen to audiobooks yourself? Do you have people that you think are great narrators that people might check out? I mean, what. Of course, you know, can we make some.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. Are there. Or are there narrators who you wish got more attention?

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a very good question. I don't listen to audiobooks all that much, as you can imagine. But I will say that there are. The book that made me. That I listened to, that I suddenly understood, understood why people love audiobooks was Edoardo Ballarini's performance of Jess Walters, Beautiful Ruins.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Oh, what a book. I've never listened to it.

[Julia Whelan]

Oh, my God. And he's so good in it that that's why I wrote the Jacopo character in Casanova LLC for him to do, because there's a scene in Beautiful Ruins where he's playing like five different old Italian men fighting with each other. And it's just. My God, it's so good.

[Sarah MacLean]

I gotta get that.

[Julia Whelan]

So that was the book where. And I love Jess, too, as a writer. And so I just was like, oh, this is why everyone loves audiobooks. Bonnie Turpin is one of those narrators to me. Mary Jane Wells is honestly one of those narrators to me. And she actually. We just, on Memorial Day weekend put up. She had Written a one woman show and turned it into an audio called Heroin and it won the Audi a few years ago for best original. And she's an amazing writer and performer and like I love her work. So that's now on audioberry too. Dionne Graham, Simon Vance, they're just. It's a really. It's an industry dense with talent and I love, I love that.

[Sarah MacLean]

Are these. Do you find that now obviously at the beginning, beginning there were a lot of actors who were coming to audio. Do you feel like now there are people who are specifically audio people?

[Julia Whelan]

I think so. I mean I. People ask me, you know, how do we get into it? And I'm always like, I don't know, man. Because back when I got into it, we all just fell backwards into this profession. I don't know what it's like nowadays to have to go and try to build a career in it. I really don't. I'm not the person to ask about that. But I do know that there are people who now very intentionally come into this and say, I mean I've been asked to like teach classes at a college level for this. You know, like this is now which given, I don't know, given advances with AI and you know, I think it's gonna be. It's a very hard road now to distinguish yourself enough in the oncoming zombie apocalypse that you will survive it. Like getting started now I feel is that's.

[Sarah MacLean]

This is how I feel about writing. Yes. It just feels like.

[Julia Whelan]

Right. Are we actually going to tell people like, yes, definitely. Bet the farm on this industry. I don't know. But I also think another good audiobook, if someone doesn't. Hasn't listened and is interested. I think the other. The audiobook of Daisy Jones and the Six is so good.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Right.

[Julia Whelan]

It's very gateway because it's written as an oral history. So it sounds like a podcast. So I always recommend that one for people who are just getting started because it's like it's the closest thing they're already used to listening to. And I think there's probably a lot. I mean I've heard Leather and Lark. I've heard Lights out. I've heard, you know, especially in the romance space. I think New Camelot, frankly is going to be that coming up. I really do. I'm feeling really good about how it's coming together. We actually have. If anyone wants, we have a explicit. Seriously? Seriously.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, it's serious where you're.

[Julia Whelan]

I couldn't find a page that wasn't that so that's what we have. It's in the audiobrary app. You don't need an account or anything. You just like log in with an email, create a password of your choosing, and it's right there in the Discover section if people want to hear like a two minute, spicy, little steamy sample. Plus there are samples on the webpage for each book. But yeah, it's, you know, I'm putting a lot of energy right now, obviously into trying to. I'm not stemming the tide with AI. Like, that's gonna happen and it's gonna take over the industry. This was always going be to. To happen. But I feel like while everyone else is kind of focused over there, I want to try to fix the human part of this, to try to make it sustainable for the future. Because to your point, it's like authors getting into this now. How are we protecting these people against this? And I want audiobrary to be a place where people who are just still interested in human storytelling, to me, they're two totally different products. I'm not combative against it. It's just like, that's a different product. I'm not competing with it. It's a completely different thing. I'm worried about this. It's the human storytelling. That's what I'm in here for. And I want these people to be paid appropriately.

[Sarah MacLean]

Yeah. It's interesting that you say that. Last night I was with some people and we were talking about AI, and that's sort of where I netted out after many glasses of wine was this sort of sense of like, if we can't stop it, then we have to establish ourselves as, as a different.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, yeah. The analogy that I make around this is, you know, when electricity happened, we didn't stop using candles. We stopped killing all the whales to use the fat to make the candles. But now candles are still this very elemental human thing. We give them as gifts. We still like to make them. They create atmosphere. We have a relationship to them. We watch them get smaller and smaller and smaller. Smaller. It's a. It's a much more intimate sort of experience than just flipping on a light.

[Sarah MacLean]

But we still have a relationship to it, framing it. Yeah.

[Jennifer Prokup]

See, I am a middle school teacher and I think nobody should be using.

[Julia Whelan]

AI, but I don't think anyone should be using it.

[Sarah MacLean]

I mean, I hate it, but. Right.

[Jennifer Prokup]

No, but I mean, for me it's like really different. Right.

[Sarah MacLean]

Because.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And like the analogy, and this is not my analogy, but I've seen it on social media and it's like really perfect is like if you're trying to convince students not to use it, which is where I live. It's like, you know, at the gym you could bring a forklift and move the weights from one side of the room to the other. The weights don't actually need to be moved. Right. Like the work is within you.

[Julia Whelan]

Yes, right.

[Jennifer Prokup]

And so that you know, and, and I understand that, but like, I for sure am a person who's just like, I'm not interested in machine, machine created art. I'm interested in human art.

[Julia Whelan]

Completely agree. I don't care. I mean, it's not art. Again, it's a different product. But I mean, yes, I think that. And again, we can have this conversation because we grew up knowing the difference. We have a comparison. It's a paradoxical experience for us. We can compare and contrast these two things. I worry about children who may not have that other side of it. And so for them this is going to be normal and the everyday. And that's the part where I don't have kids. So that's your problem.

[Sarah MacLean]

Thanks.

[Julia Whelan]

I'm out. I don't know how to talk to the children about this. I'm just saying that in my specific corner of all of that.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Well, and I do, I think models like that, mental models for how to think about it, can be really important. And it's useful to hear the way other people are kind of thinking about those different differences. So.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah.

[Sarah MacLean]

Well, it's interesting because, you know, during this conversation, somebody was playing devil's advocate, or maybe not. Maybe he was just into AI but he was like, you know what? You know what if it could be as good. And I was like, but I find it difficult to believe that it could ever be as ferocious as humans can be like that it could ever have the fire, the understanding, the knowledge, the passion, the joy, the ferocity that somebody like Julia brings to.

[Julia Whelan]

I'm gonna go ahead and see. In those conversations, I like to take the position of saying, okay, let's fully accept that it is going to be exactly the same and it is going to be just as good. Let's say that they can get there. Cause I wouldn't surprise me, to be fair. But if we know the difference, does it matter? And that's where the audio brewery part of this comes in. Cause it's like people can go get our projects on audible and that's fine. And I don't wanna to gatekeep that. But when they know that if they come to audiobrary, it means so much more to the people. Then it's like, what are you choosing? And so that's kind of my end game to that argument, is let's say you can't tell the difference, but if you know the difference, does that change your behavior? We solved nothing.

[Sarah MacLean]

A bummer.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Well, to be fair, it really wasn't our goal to solve it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It wasn't.

[Sarah MacLean]

It wasn't her job.

[Jennifer Prokup]

It wasn't her job.

[Sarah MacLean]

But I'm glad we're all worried about it.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, yeah. No, and I mean, yeah. I mean, look, the.

[Jennifer Prokup]

I think if you love storytelling, you are. Of course you're worried about it.

[Julia Whelan]

Right? You should be. And I think that, again, this is always what it comes down to so much, is like, we can have the conversation about the art and how it's impacting the art, but it's also business. Like the fact that right now, because of the glut of everything, you know, everything's gotta change. Like the way the Kindle Unlimited payouts happen, where now you've got so many AI books in that system that real authors are just not getting any, reads like it comes. It's becoming impossible to find anything. And again, it's like, discoverability is. Discoverability is. And I mean, what are again, above my pay grade. But I'm just gonna keep trying to do, like, a curated model on audiobrary, and we're gonna see how it goes.

[Sarah MacLean]

Julia Whalen, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us today.

[Jennifer Prokup]

Also.

[Julia Whelan]

Wait, can I wait before we do this? I have to. Cause I don't think you're probably not gonna do it justice. And no one will believe Jen, but your book is so good. And I wanna. Someone needs to be out there saying that to people who. Cause you're not gonna do it yourself.

[Jennifer Prokup]

She barely lets me talk about her books.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I know.

[Jennifer Prokup]

It's terrible.

[Julia Whelan]

And it is so, so good. I enjoyed it. Made me as excited to get in the booth as I feel with Emily's books. That's how my drive was. I was like, oh, I get to go back in on this one. And it is just so much fun. It's so good. I sent you a message saying that I love that. It is everything I love about your historical voice, that very sly, very knowing, great turn of phrase, like, just incisive wit that you have in your historical voice brought to bear on a totally contemporary situation that just reveals your true strengths as a writer. And I love it so, so, so much.

[Sarah MacLean]

Thank you.

[Julia Whelan]

You're welcome. You had to Sit there. And you had to take that.

[Sarah MacLean]

I had to take it. But I will say, and I've said this before, I mean, I've said it, I will continue to say it forever that like the one thing on my vision board for this book was Julia Whelan narrating it. And I, the day I got, ah, I heard from you.

[Julia Whelan]

Yeah, I thought I gave them enough time to get back to you. I wasn't trying to scoop.

[Sarah MacLean]

I would rather hear all good news from you.

[Jennifer Prokup]

That's true. You should. You know what, you could have like a little call in service. You're like, I'll record your messages, I'll deliver people good news.

[Sarah MacLean]

And I, the day I heard that, I was, I mean, I immediately just texted the whole world, I was like, holy shit, it's happening. And now I, like I said, I'm just, I don't listen to my books, but I cannot wait to listen to this one. In fact, I sent an email to Linda this morning saying, hey, Linda, where are they able to see my book?

[Julia Whelan]

Well, I just, I just sent them final QC pictures.

[Sarah MacLean]

I never sent that email ever. I don't ever want it.

[Julia Whelan]

That's great.

[Sarah MacLean]

So this is amazing. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for storms, thank you for what you're doing for writers and for narrators and for audiobooks and for all the work that you're putting into and we. I'm so happy to know you. I'm so happy.

[Julia Whelan]

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Well, it's delaying the next book that I've actually written.

[Sarah MacLean]

We will wait. We will wait. Yeah, we gotta prioritize, everybody. We're gonna put links in, show notes to audioberry, to all the books that Julia recommended, to all the books that are there on the audiobrary site, pre order the new Camelot series. And thank you so much.

[Julia Whelan]

Thank you.

[Sarah MacLean]

So it was amazing having Julia here. A reminder, everybody, that if you hang on right now, you're going to get a sneak peek at the audiobook of these Summer storms, which comes out next Tuesday and has the magnificent, ineffable, incredible Julia Whelan narrating. I'm so excited. And here we go.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Chapter one. There was something about trains. If she marked the minutes of her life, Alice Storm would not be surprised to discover that she'd spent nearly a third of them in transit. The shiny crimson bicycle that had been her seventh birthday present and most prized possession until her brother had sent it flying into Narragansett Bay, never to be recovered. The white rowboat her father had captained into that same salty sea every Saturday in July for her ent childhood because he insisted on facing nature as God intended. The endless line of nondescript black town cars with silent drivers that ferried her from private school to private art classes to the Storm family's Park Avenue penthouse. New York City muffled and dim beyond the window. The skateboard she'd ridden into a tree one Sunday morning during her first year at Amherst, determined to prove herself a completely ordinary 18 year old resulting in an arm broken in three places. The helicopter that airlifted her to Boston to be pinned back together and returned her to school in time for a 9am Art history midterm before her classmates could discover there was nothing ordinary about her. The private jets that took her around the globe whenever her father issued an international summons on a whim. The commercial jet that had taken her to Prague 18 months earlier, diamond ring tucked into her boyfriend's caravan. Carry on bag. The subway car she'd been on that afternoon when her phone had rung and stolen her breath. Incoming call. Elizabeth Storm. Never Mom. All beige walls and harsh lights and advertisements for clear skin and uncluttered apartments. And that one William Carlos Williams poem about plums and iceboxes and forgiveness and the parts of us that will never change. And still there was something about trains, probably because she'd discovered those herself. All the other ways she'd traveled through the world had belonged to someone else, were shared with someone else. But trains. They were her secret. They did not come with flight plans. No siblings jockeying for position inside, no mothers calling for champagne, no fathers playing silent, silent judge. They did not come unmoored. Instead they remained locked into their path, weighty and competent, unchanging, unable to be sent over a cliff and into the sea, a marvel of modernity that ran counter to all the technology that came after them. Solid, even, stable. Constant. Alice dropped her suitcase onto the luggage rack inside the door of the train car and found the first empty row, tossing her worn olive green canvas satchel onto the aisle seat and sliding over to the window, hoping that a Wednesday night on the 9:32pm Northeast Regional would reward her with a row to herself in the last few hours of peace, before what was to come. Before she faced the barrage of family with one glaring, irreversible absence. Through the window on the train platform beyond, a group of 20 somethings tumbled down the escalator, laughing and shouting. A collection of duffels and weekender bags, bright smiles, sundresses, shorts and sunglasses as though night hadn't fallen outside. And maybe it hadn't for them. Maybe they were in that gorgeous moment in life when there was no such thing as the dark. Instead, it was all daytime, full of promise and empty of fear. Behind them, a freckle faced red headed family of five, a teenager and hoodie and headphones, twin girls no older than 10 and their parents loaded down with suitcases and backpacks and a Paris Review tote that might have once been for literary cachet but was now for stainless steel water bottles and organic snacks. A middle aged black woman in flowing linen, her tiny silver roller bag the only evidence that she was traveling. A tall, stern faced white man in his 30s, leather duffel in hand, backpack slung over his shoulder. An elderly ruddy cheeked man in a cream colored windbreaker pushed in a wheelchair by an Amtrak employee in a trademark red cap. One by one they piled onto the train. Alice had been wrong. The train wouldn't be empty. Instead it would be packed full laden with a few hundred New Yorkers headed north for a weekend of cobalt skies and gray green ocean during the most magical time of year in New England, when the rest of the world was back to school and work and Northeasterners were spoiled with one last week of sun soaked seclusion clinging to the promise of endless summer. She'd forgotten it was Labor Day weekend. The lapse in memory seemed impossible, considering she'd left her freshly painted, newly organized classroom in Brooklyn six hours earlier, planning her own final long summer weekend as she waited for for the subway Pilates that afternoon, the Grand Army Plaza farmers market for the last of the heirloom tomatoes, Governor's island on Saturday with Gabby and Roxanne, who insisted she leave her empty apartment a long Sunday painting in the last of the summer glow before school made the days too short for sunlight. Then her phone rang and she'd forgotten. Leaning back against the rough fabric of her seat, Alice focused on the train schedule, announced over a staticky loudspeaker, the conductor, voice thick with New England. Old Saybrook, New London, Wickford. Loud enough to keep people from the wrong train, Amtrak hoped. Providence. Back Bay, South Station. Loud enough to keep her from remembering. The train lurched into motion, the awkward first step before it gained speed and momentum, heavy and smooth. Familiar comfort. Next stop, no New Rochelle. She exhaled. Four hours to what came next. Is someone with you? It shouldn't have surprised her, but she startled anyway, straightening to meet the serious gray gaze of the man she'd seen on the platform earlier, tall and stern, taller now that he was close, sterner too dark brows rose, punctuating the question as he tilted his chin in the direction of the seat next to her where her ancient canvas satchel sat, forgotten. No one was with her. No. She grabbed the bag and shoved it to her feet. Sorry. The noise he made in reply was almost impossible to hear above the sound of the train on the track, the white noise of the air conditioning, the slide of his overnight bag onto the rack above. He folded himself into the space she'd cleared, knees pressed to the back of the seat in front of him. On another day she might have paid closer attention, but she did not have time for noticing him. In fact, she vaguely resented his presence for reminding her that she was single again, for filling up the seat with his long legs and the kind of judgment that came from strangers who had no idea that you'd had a day, that you were preparing to have. Multiple days. Five days, and then she was out. She could survive five days. She cleared her throat and adjusted her position in the seat, closing her eyes, trying to lose herself in the rhythmic thud of the wheels as the train shot out of the tunnel in Queens and they left New York City behind. An hour into the ride they pressed east along the southern coast of New England, and Alice, unable to sleep, phone dead and lacking capacity to focus on the book she'd shoved into her bag as she'd rushed from her apartment that afternoon, peered into the inky darkness outside the window where Long Island Sound lay still and flat and invisible in the distance beyond the saltwater marshland of the Connecticut coast. It would have been impossible to see anyway, thanks to the late hour in the dark sky, but the view had competition, the fluorescent lights reflecting the inside of the train car against the glass, casting a pale glow over the cluttered shelf across across the aisle full of sleeping bags and suitcases and a large tote bag with electric pink piping pickleball paddle jammed into the side pocket beneath the collection of travel detritus. Two teenage girls laughed at a curly haired boy hanging over the seat in front of them, a goofy smile on his face. On another night Alice might have smiled at the picture they made late summer perfection, but tonight it was a different part of the reflection that that distracted her, the bright shining rectangle glowing in her neighbor's lap. His phone was open to some social app, one with Endless Scroll. He should turn that off. Endless scroll rotted a person's brain. It had been rotting hers before she boarded the train, searching for the dopamine hit of makeup tutorials and cat videos, antidotes to her mother's call, the first she'd made to Alice and four, five years. Her seatmate paused, a headline impossibly large against the darkness outside. She had no trouble reading the text in the mirrored reflection, trailblazing genius Franklin storm, dead at 70. His thumb hovered over the link. Don't, she willed, not sure she would be able to look away, even though she knew the story. Story within, had known it since she was born. Franklin Storm had stepped into his parents garage in North Boston at the age of 17 and changed computing and the world with $1,107 and a dream. He'd made computers large and small, brought them into homes and schools and placed them in pockets and on wrists the world over. That was the first, first paragraph. The ones that followed would be about his company, his vast collection of art, his philanthropy, his charm, his daredevil tendencies. No one should be too surprised by a gliding accident, really. And then his family. There'd be photos, probably from his 70th birthday, taken that past April, the ones Alice had pored over in the style section of the Times. Captions a footnote about the child not being pictured, not invited, a reminder of why. Don't open it. He didn't, alice breathed again, swallowing the urge to tell him to read a book or something. She reached down and pulled a newspaper out of her bag. She hadn't held a print newspaper since she was a kid, when a stack of them would be delivered to the apartment every morning. Still, she smoothed her hand over the front page of that morning's New York Times, printed 20 hours hours earlier, rendered instantly obsolete in this world where allegedly breaking news came all day, all hours, directly to a person's preferred rectangle. There, then gone, turned instantly into the past to make room for the future, a shift so quick that the present simply disappeared. Why had she bought it? Alice rubbed a thumb across the words, tattooing herself with the ink of yesterday's news. The before. Tomorrow's paper would be the after. The top of the fold on the front page would be devoted to her father's death. The biggest story of the week of the year. Longer for Alice and her therapist. She traced a headline about inflation, another about unhoused New Yorkers, a third about the solar power revolution. Stories that were more important than anything the paper would say the next day. Stories she couldn't read because there in her peripheral vision, her seatmate had turned over his phone and the back of it gleamed smooth black obsidian without any reflection, its only mark a swirling silver S like the eye of a hurricane years ago when she was young. That insignia had words that came with it, repeated over and over on television commercials, radio plays, print advertising advertisements. The whole world knew them. Storm inside the world didn't know the half of it. Chapter 2 Before the Robber barons of the Gilded Age changed the face of American business with steel and banks and oil, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt changed the face of American American travel, snapping up and consolidating more than a dozen small railway lines and amassing a fortune that few had ever seen outside of royalty. Who needs titles when you can have trains? In 1870, Cornelius Vanderbilt II Nepo Grandbaby to Cornelius Vanderbilt Original Flavor did what rich young men have done for as long as they have been rich young men. He used his grandfather's money and power and influence to make it easier for him to have friends over for parties. With his brother, young Cornelius established the Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company, overseeing a mere three and a half miles of train track from the main rail line connecting New York and Boston to the port of Wickford, Rhode Island. A sleepy town with wildly desirable geography, Wickford was located on the western edge of Narragansett Bay, the 147 square mile estuary that divided the western mainland half of Rhode island from the eastern side of the state. An archipelago where New York City's wealthiest 19th century families built the over the top mansions that would remain a hallmark of Rhode island tourism and American film for more than a century. It was the Vanderbilts who put Wickford on the map, quite literally plucking valuable farmland and ocean views from unsuspecting Rhode Islanders. Eminent domain isn't just for present day billionaires and laying the track that would become the safest, safest, easiest journey to Newport for New York's elite, along with their dogs, servants and secrets, it also opened up access to a collection of small private islands peppering the bay. On that particular Wednesday before Labor Day, as Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 1603 crossed the Rhode island border, it occurred to Alice that if the Vanderbilts got one look at the train's worn maroon carpet and polyester blend upholstery, they would have bemoaned the seeding of rail travel to the common man and paid someone to set the whole thing on fire. Robber barons would robber baron. Of that Alice was certain she'd been raised by one after all. With a soft excuse me to the long legs in the aisle seat, Alice gathered her bags and headed for one of the three doors that would open to the elevated platform of the once again. Sleepy town, no longer a hub of travel for the wealthy, healthy and famous. Staring at her newly charged phone, she ignored the red bubbles at the corner of every app she used regularly. 14 new voicemails, 63 new emails, 121 new text messages. She swiped to a rideshare app, her thumb hovering over the green square as she waited for the SOS at the top of the screen to turn to bars indicating service and tried not to impart double meaning into that. That sos. This is my stop to she whirled to face the words and the man standing there. Tall, stern, long legs, rotted brain. Nice voice. Quiet and deep. The kind of voice that made someone want to listen. Alice hadn't noticed that before. Sorry, I'm only saying it so you don't think that I'm following you. It was a perfectly nice, nice thing to say, But Alice Storm, third child of trailblazing genius Franklin Storm, dead at 70, had spent a lifetime being followed. The train began to slow. That sounds like something someone following me would say. The corner of his straight, serious mouth tilted up. Barely. Scout's honor. Before she could respond, the conductor came through the automatic dramatic doors. Wickford. It came out like Wickford, and Alice couldn't help her smile at the sound of her childhood. Yes, nice place for Labor Day weekend, the conductor noted. Her smile faded. Sure is, the man who wasn't following her replied. Gonna get some lobster. Lobster? The train stopped and the doors opened with a heavy slide. A modern day pull portcullis. Sure are surprised by his use of the plural, Alice looked back. He wasn't looking at her. The conductor tipped his chin toward the train platform. Lucky. Have a good weekend. Thank you, alice said, stepping down onto the platform as her neighbor replied, you too. The words were lost in the rhythm of the wheels, steady and reliable, already headed north. Alice hesitated, watching the train go, and for a wild moment wondered what would happen happen if she ran after it like in a movie. Leaping from the end of the platform, catching the end of the last car, riding it all the way to Boston. Hero, Gabby would say. Alice sighed. The likelihood of her catching the back end of an accelerating train aside, zero likelihood for the record, doing so would change nothing. The news would still be the same. That, and her family was already expecting her not to show up, and she refused to give them the satisfaction of being right. Alice's phone showed two bars, thankfully, and she made quick work of summoning a ride. It was too far of a walk to the docks and too late to wait inside anywhere. Nothing in the Quiet town was open past 10 even on the last week of summer. She set her bags down in the cone of a bright yellow street lamp, staying outside the light to avoid the potato bugs that danced around an enormous no LITTERING sign, and settled in for the 20 minute wait for the driver she was been assigned, watching as the handful of other passengers piled into cars lined up along the street. A few happy hugs and excited hellos and slam trunks later, the street was empty except for two cars and an SUV parked on the far side, dark and quiet, leaving Alice alone. Or alone ish. 30ft away, her neighbor stood under a street lamp of his own, braving the potato bugs flying. Phone in hand, looking her way, he lifted the rectangle as though it meant something. My ride isn't here. It's okay. I don't want you to think that you're following me. He nodded once, firm. Right. You're doing a good job of throwing me off the scent. Good. A few minutes passed. Her driver, Benny, would arrive in 17 minutes in a gray Honda, which meant she'd be at the wharf in 25 minutes. On the island. In an hour, if she was lucky, everyone would be asleep. It would be almost 2 in the morning. Everyone should be asleep. Please let them all be asleep. A rumble sounded in the distance, far away and almost unnoticeable, the heavy promise of a nearby storm, the kind that came on summer nights by the water. Streaks of lightning and roaring thunder and rain that soaked you through the moment it started before it blew past, leaving clear skies and bright stars in its wake. Dad loved a summer storm. The thought whispered through her, and she sucked in a breath at the sting of it, an ordinary thought that had no place in her extraordinary relationship, such as it was with her father. Eager for distraction, Alice checked on her unlikely companion, still staring at his phone. He was in gray slacks, which was weird. Normal people didn't wear business attire in south county in the middle of the night, especially in the first week of September. 75 degrees and full of the humidity that came with being five minutes from the ocean. Nevertheless, gray slacks and a white button down. It was the only nod to the time or season or location. The way he'd rolled up his sleeves to reveal forearms. Alice Dark noticed as a student of the artistic form, not for any other reason. One of those arms boasted a spill of black ink that she couldn't identify at a distance. She wondered if the people he dressed for knew about that tattoo. Hiding pieces of yourself was something Alice recognized. Her gaze tracked up to his face along the sharp line of his jaw, unyielding. Distracting. She called across the wide expanse separating them.

[Julia Whelan]

You were a Boy Scout.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He looked over immediately, as though he'd been waiting for her to speak. He didn't miss the reference to his words on the train. With a dip of his head, something a lesser observer might call chagrin, he replied, I wasn't. Impersonating a uniformed officer is a pretty serious infraction, you know. He put a hand to his chest. I'm sorry. I'm not mad. Just disappointed. White teeth flashed and he looked away down the quiet one way street as though willing a car to come around the corner and stop him from making a bad decision. When it didn't come, he said, what if I told you I'm good at building fires anyway? An arsonist, then. Nah. He shook his head. I'm even better at putting them out. Considering Alice was about to walk into fire, it was the exact right thing to say. In that case, you can wait over here with me if you'd like. On a different day, at a different time, she never would have made the offer. Twelve years riding the New York City subway gave a girl a very real sense of self preservation around even the handsomest of men. And if the subway hadn't up until two months ago, the existence of the handsome man she'd been intending to marry would have made her tread very carefully around this one. But there was something reckless about that moment in the dark, in the dead of night, in that place somehow uncomfortably close to her real life and wildly far from it, with a man who might have been the last person she met for a while, who didn't know exactly who she was, exactly why she was there. What was the harm? The invitation hung between them in air heavy with salt water and the the coming storm. Long legs stayed perfectly still, time stretching until Alice thought he was going to decline and she would have no choice but to walk directly into the sea from embarrassment. Are you going to set a fire? I already did. You never know. When he moved, it was all at once with no hesitation, nothing but a long stride, claiming the space between them with even steady grace, and then he lowered himself to the bench next to her with a level of control that few people people had so late at night, like a train, like she was a scheduled stop. She smiled and he looked at her, curious. Is that for me? Another day, another time. I was just thinking about trains. His gaze flickered to the tracks behind her. Wish you'd stayed on it. How'd you guess? I might have feel the same way For a heartbeat she wondered why, but she knew better than to ask, knowing that her questions would summon his own. Instead, she spilled a new conversation into the silence hanging between them. Trains make me think of Duke Ellington. He was a I know who Duke Ellington was. Are you a musician? Are you? No. But my father she cut herself off. She didn't want her father there. The handsome stranger didn't notice. Why do trains make you think of Duke Ellington? He toured the whole country with a full orchestra and a private rail car, he said, the sound low and thoughtful. Alice liked it. Sousaphones don't really fit in the overhead on the Amtrak Regional. I don't think the There was a sousaphone. If you say so, he said, and she couldn't help her little surprised laugh. There was something easy about this man, smooth and competent, the kind of guy who made you want to mess him up a little, make him have some fun. Except there wasn't time for fun. She looked at her phone. Benny was 10 minutes away. She pushed away the messy thoughts and was left with jazz. Most people don't know that Duke Ellington's orchestra went straight stratospheric here in Rhode Island. Do you think that private rail car stopped here in Wickford? He exaggerated it like the conductor on the train, long and flat, missing the R. It did, in fact, a few times, and all we got were lukewarm hot dogs and day old coffee. The fall of civilization, she said softly, thinking of the many ways she'd traveled to this place, place in her life, expensive cars, helicopters, sailboats. She resisted the memories, turning instead to the excellent distraction before her, solid and tall, with those forearms that the tattoo was a compass, geometric and beautiful arrows extending in long fine lines to his wrist and elbow. She spoke to it. You're not local. He didn't, didn't have to reply. She was right. Anyone would see it. He was pure stranger comes to town. Nothing about him even close to homegrown by seaweed and salt and clam shacks on the beach. He was too serious, too smooth. He lifted a hand, hesitated. You have paint in your hair. She brushed the hair and his hand away, self conscious and unsettled by how easily he had identified, identified the paint, as though he knew where she'd been that morning, before she'd gone to her classroom, before her mother had called and everything had changed back when it had been a perfectly normal day, distant now, the past before he cleared his throat. I should introduce myself, he said, extending that hand that hadn't touched her, like they were normal people doing a normal thing. I'm don't. He didn't. Why not? Because then. Then she would have to introduce herself, and then he'd know, and then it would get weird. And this wasn't weird? Well, it was weird, but it wasn't weird in the way that every other interaction in her lifetime had ended up weird. Storm like Franklin Storm. Storm like storm technology. Storm like Storm inside. Yes, she'd answer, and always with a laugh, like it was the cleverest, most original thing anyone had ever said, when what she'd really meant was, no, not like that. That's my father. When what she'd really meant was, don't think about it, don't remember. Just let me be. Commonplace, common name. And then she'd pretend to be someone else, because someone else was always more interesting than the truth, which was this. No matter how hard she tried, the most interesting thing about Alice Storm had always been her last name. She had been an outline of a person, shaded by the stories of her father. Madcap, genius, daredevil, billionaire, visionary, world changer. And then she'd been shaded by the story of what she'd done to him. How she'd betrayed him. How he'd exiled her. How she'd either deserved it or was better for it. Another rumble in the distance. Louder. Closer. Of course, names make things complicated, she said, finally meeting his gaze, intent beneath a furrowed brow, like he was trying to understand. I know it sounds dramatic, but my life is complicated enough this week. Any chance we could just skip them? He understood. Sure. He nodded and looked down at his phone. My car is almost here. She mirrored his actions. Mine too, she lied. Benny hadn't moved since the last time she'd checked. It's late, he said. Are you going to a hotel? No. A hesitation leaves leagues long. Are you? I'm staying at the Quahog Key. Her brows rose at the mention of the motel that had been a Wickford landmark since electricity had come to south county with its blinking neon vacancy sign. No one ever stayed at the Quahog Key. Why? Why the Quahog Key? Or why, in a more existential sense, I assume you chose the Quahog Key for its clever name? He didn't hesitate. I can't resist alliteration. Alice smiled and tilted her head, warm from something other than the summer evening. Do you even know what a Quahog is? I assume it's not something to be discussed in polite company. She laughed. And the existential sense? Why are you here? Upon does work Superior Business center at the Quahog Key. I hear I prioritize a quality fax machine. When his smile flashed in the darkness, something coiled inside her. Desire. And then with a heavy thud, something else. Suspicion. She met his eyes. Are you a journalist? No. She had absolutely no reason to believe him and still Scout's honor. Should I build you a fire to prove it? A rumble in the distance and she looked to the sky. Think you can do it before the storm gets here? I'll have to owe you one. I'll hold you to it. When she returned her attention to him, there was something in his eyes that she hadn't seen in a while, that she hadn't realized she missed. Good. She liked that word, clipped and certain, as though this was a man who made promises and kept them, who'd be around long enough to keep them. Then he was closer and something had changed, making her wonder what would happen if she took a night for herself before facing the inevitable. Another rumble. A reminder that any wild thoughts about a one night stand with a perfect stranger were just that. One wild thoughts. And Alice Storm was simply not the kind of person who made good on wild thoughts. She had a father who did that and look where it got him. Dead at 70. The words crashed over her, discordant and unwelcome, and she hated them for it. Grief shouldn't feel like this, should it? It should feel like screaming and crying and rending of clothes. Not like this. Empty. Like she wanted to fill it up with anything but sadness. Like she wanted to fill it up with this man. With one night. A car door slammed in the distance. She cleared her throat and looked back to her phone.

[Julia Whelan]

Damn it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

What happened? She shook her head. The universe. My ride canceled. A gray SUV turned the corner from Main Street. Long Leg said, that's mine. Thanks for keeping me company. There was no reason for her to feel like this, like his departure was a loss, like he was a port in the storm. Are you okay? No reason for him to notice that she wasn't. And still it felt. Do you need a ride? That definitely sounds like you were following me. Okay, but what if I don't want anyone else following you? It was a really decent thing to say, the kind of thing she'd remember fondly in an hour or so when she recounted this bad day understatement to her best friend, a sort of and then a really handsome, very decent guy asked me if I would be okay by myself kind of memory, and I wondered what he would say if I said definitely not. You should stay and pray. Protect me and also let Me climb you like a tree. And Gabi would laugh and Alice would talk about the rest of the day, her ride bailing and the train being loud and packed with people and the missed calls requesting comments and interviews she was never going to give, and the calls that never came from the people who should have called, and somehow everything would seem better when she hung up the phone. Except this wasn't the kind of bad day that was made better by a phone call. This was the kind of bad day that came along once in a lifetime because the bad luck, the ride and the train and the texts and the missed calls, it was all layered on top of something worse. My father died. The words were a knot in her throat. My father died and we hadn't spoken in five years and I don't know how I feel. She couldn't say that them to the stranger. Instead she stepped toward him, tilted her head to the side, and tried for a different kind of feeling. If I let you give me a ride, what happens next? Something flashed in his eyes. Heat that felt good. The heat wasn't alone, though. It came with regret or some cousin to it, like that decent guy didn't want to be so decent but would be nonetheless. The car pulled up beside them. She tilted her chin toward it. I'll be fine. It was nice meeting you. We didn't meet, he said. No names, remember? Maybe we will, she replied. Someday they wouldn't, but Alice stored the idea away like a memory anyway. Like lightning flashed. She counted. One, two, three, four. A heavy rumble of thunder. Five miles, he said. She didn't look at the car this time. You should go before. Before I make a bad decision. You're right. He didn't move. They were so still, hanging like the salty humidity humidity around them. Was he going to kiss her? Was she going to kiss him? Surely not. That wasn't the kind of thing Alice Storm did right in public in Wickford, Rhode island, in full view of a thousand insects and the driver of a Kia Sedona rideshare timer counting down on the dash. And still she was tempted. One kiss, one out of character decision, one stolen moment, one last reprieve, a mad scramble to avoid giving the unavoidable another rumble, this one in his chest, lost in a much louder one above a wicked crack breaking everything apart. The sky rain suddenly everywhere, all around them in heavy sheets, the darkness a flash of lightning so bright and close that they should have felt the heat of it. And then her name shouted from what seemed like inches away. Alice. She turned the bright light hadn't been lightning. It had been a camera flash. Alice. The photographer shouted again, compact, wrinkled, unshaven, as though he'd been waiting for the train for hours, and maybe he had another shout, another man running from the far side of the street where the three cars had been sitting, dark, watching, waiting for something worth photographing. How had they known she would be there? How had she not known they would be there? There were two stories this week, after all. One storm gone, the other returned. Alice, were you and your father still estranged? Why didn't you come with your brother and sisters? Are they speaking to you?

[Julia Whelan]

Are you welcome at home?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Years of training kicked in. Head down, stay on course. But there was no course. Benny and his Honda had bailed on her and she was alone under the streetlight in the rain outside a closed train station, surrounded by the enemy, unmoored. Please. She held up a hand, knowing it was futile.

[Julia Whelan]

Don't.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Before she could finish, what had she been going to say? Even she was in motion, pushed behind the not a boy scout, but honestly, kind of a boy scout, her view blocked by his wide shoulders plastered with rain soaked white cotton. Get back, he said, his tone I unyielding. They didn't get back. Of course they didn't. Pictures of Franklin Storm's daughter today were worth this decent man's annual salary, and the paparazzi knew it. More flashes as the rain poured and Alice felt just slightly like she was drowning. Who's your boyfriend? Is it serious?

[Julia Whelan]

God damn it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

The man who was decidedly not her boyfriend sure sounded serious. Get in the car. A lifeboat. She turned to get her bags and he grabbed her hand, strong and sure. No. The word stopped her in her tracks. Get in the car, Alice. He said her name like he'd been saying it for a lifetime, and she obeyed him instantly, unsurprised to find the driver already opening the rear door behind her. She heard long legs growl. I said get back. Another rumble of thunder covering up whatever happened to cause a sharp shout and a high pitched what the. As she climbed inside the car, the driver looking past her as he said, those deserved that. Once inside, Alice ducked her head and waited as her unexpected rescuers shoved bags into the trunk and joined her. The driver turned around, excitement in his eyes. Guessing you don't want to head where the app is sending me. Not yet, came the terse reply from her companion, whose name she said still didn't know. She should ask him, but maybe if she didn't, he wouldn't ask her either. Or anything else. Anything like why Are paparazzi waiting for you in this sleepy Rhode island town in the middle of the night? Why aren't you speaking to your family? Come to think of it, who is your family? Think you can lose them? A big smile. This driver was going to get free beers forever on this story. Dumbasses are free from New York City. They know nothing about Rhode Island. Let's lose them, then. Yes, sir. The car peeled out of the drive, barely missing the man who leaped out of its path, the engine straining to live up to the full requirements of a getaway car. Then to the motel. We'll drop her first. It was a prompt, which she'd answer eventually, just as soon as she looked away from his hand, balled into a fist attached to that forearm that boasted the compass. Wet with rain and in the flash of the streetlights beyond, red knuckled like he'd hit something. Later, she would chalk it up to a wild combination of grief and loneliness that she liked. Those knuckles scraped and raw. But in the moment when he turned his fist over and opened his hand with a ragged here. She liked it for other reasons, especially when she recognized the small rectangle angles on his palm. A pair of external SD cards. Her eyes flew to his and he said, from the cameras, that was it. Nothing more. No pressing her for information he was frankly owed. Considering he'd committed some light assault for her, There was something powerfully appealing about a man who still didn't seem to care who she was or why she'd brought chaos into his life. Are you okay? He asked, the second time since they'd left the train. No. But this helps. Where to, sweetheart? The driver this time. Where was she going? She'd been so sure of her path, so certain she'd been on the right one, and now nothing made sense. Nothing. But at this moment she'd been in danger, and now she wasn't. And tomorrow everything would return. But tonight this made sense. He made sense. She reached out. Not for the SD cards. Instead, she put her hand in his, capturing the rectangles between their palms, reveling in the heat of his touch. Rough and firm, steady like the trap crane. Unlike everything else, the Quahog Key.