Beyond the Sling, Now on Audio Book – Kveller
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Beyond the Sling, Now on Audio Book



Beyond the Sling
, my sweet labor-of-love book about our family’s journey into the belly of attachment parenting came out in March. I did a ton of publicity for it including Barbara Walters asking me where my husband and I have sex, Kveller threw me a book release party at Cafe Blossom in Manhattan with most of the Maccabeats there; it’s been really really good.

Imagine my thrill when I got an offer to release my book as an audio book! So much fun, right? The thought of getting to have readers/listeners hear my book with all of my tone, inflection, and humor was very exciting. However, the offer came in in the middle of my Big Bang Theory work schedule, and they needed something like four or five full days blocked off for me to record it. I had already gotten off a week from Big Bang to do publicity for the book, and since I don’t schedule recording stuff on Shabbat, it was pretty much impossible for me to record it myself.

That I have been offered more money to record someone else’s book as a voice-over actress was besides the point; I really wanted to be the voice of my own book! But I’m not.

However… it’s still really cool. And choosing the woman who would “be me” for this recording was very interesting and sort of bizarre. I was given audio samples of three talented voice-over actresses reading excerpts of other books. I also got to read their bios, which discussed the types of books they are typically hired to read. Think about it: some voices might be best suited for soft-core porn novels, while others are good for books about the history of the crock pot in French cuisine, right? Right.

I honestly didn’t think I would care as much about the voice I chose as I did, but once I heard the three samples, I knew that I was going to have a lot of opinions. These samples all sounded way too… matronly. I mean, I know I’m closer to 40 than 30, but I could not picture any of these women reading my birth story, or describing my breastfeeding struggles, or detailing how sweet it is to sleep next to my sons. They all sounded way too weathered and mature. I wanted my book to have a funky eccentric raspy voice reading it! Is that so wrong?

I sheepishly emailed my book agent and told him I didn’t mean to be a diva, but I just could not picture any of these voices reading my book! Thankfully, he agreed (guess he’s a bit of a diva, too!) and we got three new choices of younger, perkier voices. All were actually really great, but one “spoke” to me very clearly and she is the one you will hear on the audio version of Beyond the Sling.

This being my first book, I learned a lot about the publishing world, the publicity world for books, and even the audio books voice-over world. There’s always more to learn in this life I suppose!

P.S. We’re giving away three copies of my audio book. Get all the details here!

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