Honestly, Wordpress, I am the owner of these words, please let me back in.
Its'a me! TobyVO!
*furiously writing that down*
Hello again. I sit here having not written a blog post about my voice acting in over 2 years and am struggling to find a punchy (well, funny, really) way to start it. I thought it would probably be better to just come clean and tell you that straight away. I seem to have succeeded in starting writing though, and may well delete this bit later.
Where were you?
I HAD A BABY OK! Well my wife did if you want to be all persnickety about it, but I WAS there and am told that I did a very good job. It's our second and boy (but she's a girl), does the second one make life harder than the first... That's my roundabout way of excusing myself for not having written a post or recorded an audiobook since then. The 6th installment of Skullenia petered out for me around then - a combination of a lack of motivation for the story and a lack of motivation for anything but gaming, TV and sleep proving the deciding factors. Sorry if you were waiting for it, but more likely, sorry if I've just taken your time up telling you about a thing you weren't.
It's not like I hadn't auditioned for anything, OK!? I've auditioned for a grand total of 23 books since Skullenia volume 1 in fact. Let me tell you, rejections get really tiring! I hope you can't sympathise. I hope you have succeeded in everything you have ever tried, truly, for rejection is a worrisome business, not to be engaged in by the faint of heart. I'm pretty well-versed in the aforementioned rejection industry through my involvement in stage acting circles (though I've been lucky to play lots of fun roles - being male does help), but it would be wrong to say that each one doesn't destroy a tiny bit of your enthusiasm. I got into the habit of sending off simultaneous auditions for different books any time I felt compelled to do one, thinking this would double my chances of success (this has actually worked recently, but more on this later...!). More often it has returned a double portion of misery. This is the nature of the business, and it's been an important process to learn from and toughen up through.
Am I the Eye of the Tiger?
I...I'm not sure I know what that means. So... no?
My energy levels have been buoyed recently by my applying for taking a move down to working 4 days a week at the school I teach science at. I did this last year too, though nothing came of it (cozzi livs am i right?), and likely felt a similar buoyancy then. I would dearly love to spend a day a week at home spending time developing an online presence, becoming a social media wiz, and auditioning so hard that Audible HAVE to give me something eventually, just to stop me asking (see the parable of the persistent widow for full details of this plan; Luke 18). Being able to spend circa 5 hours a day recording an audiobook would vastly speed up my process and enable me to record lots and lots of books (providing I find a willing victim/author).
Such was the great enthusiasm come upon me I recorded another batch of two auditions for books I liked the look of this week. One set in a magical school where mystery abounds (Drako's Fire: The Aura Dream Book 2), and another in a questing, fantasy land (Of Liars and Thieves: The Raymara Chronicles Book 1). I liked both very much and received some encouraging feedback from the authors, which was a rare thing and very welcome!
It's been nice to do this blog thing again. Watch this space (and cross your fingers) for not-too-future related announcements about one of them...
And I'd ask that you honour and respect my decision to leave that bit I did at the start of this as it is, you know, for....for the historians.
First published 13th March 2023
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