Latest News
Latest latest news: (5/30/09): Quick update - 'Great Expectations' won an Audie at the 2009 awards ceremony which took place at the New York Historical Society last night. That makes three Audies in four years and caps a wonderful couple of days in NYC....
(5/29/09): As I sit consuming a breakfast of single shot grande latte and a protein plate (hey, it looked interesting) sitting in a Manhattan Starbucks at 52nd and 8th, having just spent yesterday at the Audio Publishers Association Conference and looking forward to the Audies ceremony tonight, I think it is safe to now reveal that I have been elevated to the hallowed status of AudioFile Magazine 'Golden Voice'.
I believe they'll be taking a cast of my vocal chords for gold plating later next week.... or not. Seriously, this is a very great honor and I am more than thrilled to be considered among the best of narrators alongside my heroes Derek Jacobi and Martin Jarvis, not to mention my good friends Grover Gardner, Scott Brick, John Lee, Simon Prebble and Wanda McCaddon. As I look over the list of Golden Voices I am again taken aback at the sheer talent I can now stand shoulder to shoulder with... and that's probably enough as I'm drooling (or maybe that's the effect of the protein plate). I think I'll go and lie down now.
(4/25/09): Lost out in the 'Tournament of Audiobooks' on Audible to the very worthy Neil Gaiman. I have no idea by how many, as long as it wasn't just one (my wife forgot to vote)!
Busy weeks ahead as I look forward to recording the second in the Millenium series by Steig Larsson: The Girl Who Played With Fire. I've also been approved to narrate another book by Guy Gavriel Kay (Tigana was the one I narrated earlier in the year). In fact it's a series of three: The Fionavar Trilogy. I think they'll be split over the next three months concluding in July or thereabouts for release later in the year.
Finally I am finding time 'with a little help from my friends' to make some changes to this website, as there is much too much non-essential material in the whole arrangement of pages, and indeed some stuff that I still haven't added to the site when I made the original changes some years ago.... I hope to get the focus much more clearly on audiobooks and make it easier for me to update. I may also add comment sections, video and possibly at a future date the ability to buy and download audiobooks from this site. It's all very exciting stuff, but, knowing how things have gone in the past, do not expect all these things to happen particularly soon!
(4/1/09): I know this is April Fools' Day but seriously... if you have an Audible.com account, and enjoyed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I implore you to go to Audible.com THIS WEEK, log in and click on the 'Tournament of Audiobooks' on the home page (if the main banner is not apparent there's a smaller link at the bottom of the left column) - I'm in the final against the wonderful Neil Gaiman! It's going to be a close one and I'd like you all to go in there and vote for ME... Hey, even if you've never heard of the book go and vote... it's your constitutional duty!
Forgot to mention before that I also received an Earphone Award for Kushiel's Mercy, one of the three books I recorded last year from Jacqueline Carey's historical-fantasy-romance saga.
Finally for now, I have also been recognised in a very special way but exactly how I am sworn to keep to myself until the end of May (and no, it's not a knighthood). I shall reveal all...
(2/22/09): The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Highbridge) received an Earphone Award from Audiofile magazine this past week, and Great Expectations (Tantor) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (Blackstone Audio) both received 2009 Audie nominations - the awards ceremony is at the end of May.
I've been juggling with a slight throat infection and the need to squeeze in, at very short notice, the recording of two excellent new books: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Penguin and BoT) and Stone's Fall by Iain Pears (also Penguin and BoT). I'd narrated this author's The Portrait some while ago and just couldn't turn down the chance to narrate his latest... even if I'm only doing one third! John Lee begins the story, the wonderful English actor Roy Dotrice picks up the middle and I come in with the final 8 hours or so (It's a long one!). It would be an understatement to say I'm busy as I'm also continuing my stage career.... David Copperfield has taken a back seat and will be resumed at the end of this week.
(1/26/09): Now deep in rehearsals for "A Girl's War" which opens in mid February for Golden Thread Theatre company in San Francisco. And yet at the same time managing to squeeze in more audio book recording!
I have Assegai, Wilbur Smith's latest novel almost ready to go and I've listed it first although I'm actually going to start David Copperfield before it. Mr.Copperfield is going to be 35+ hours long and I'm starting it this week though I'll be slipping Assegai in next week before I go back and finish Mr.C... by Mr.D. Aren't you glad you asked?
Macmillan Audio have released a video that I contributed to last November about the recording of the Dune series by Frank Herbert. You can find it by clicking here to see it on You Tube.
(1/4/09): Happy New Year!
Wonderfully busy (as ever, thankfully) the year begins with me half way through narrating The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas. It's the first of the three parts that make up his second follow-up novel to The Three Musketeers (confusing, isn't it?). Suffice it to say that Louise de la Valliere and The Man in the Iron Mask will be following during the coming year.
After Bragelonne I shall be starting on Tigana - a fantasy novel of some repute by Guy Gavriel Kay. When Anne McCaffrey calls it "One of the best fantasy novels I have read" then you know you're in for a treat. Can't wait to get started.
And finally: I'm going back on the live stage with the Golden Thread theatre company based near here in San Francisco. The play is called "A Girl's War" and opens in mid February.
(12/12/08): Christmas is fast approaching but I've already received advance gifts in the form of three more Earphone Awards from AudioFile Magazine. These are for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (see the column to the left of this page for a description), The Art Thief by Noah Charney, and Great Expectations by my favourite author, the wonderful Charles Dickens. All three were great reads and I'm glad I did them justice. (click on the titles to link to the publishers' pages, the first two are also available at Audible)
I've also had the honour of being named among the best voices in AudioFile magazine's "The Year in Audiobooks 2008" issue. They've also listed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Victory of Eagles in two Best Audiobook categories.
In November I flew to New York and met with some of the other voices on the recent multivoice DUNE series (Frank Herbert's classic six book sci-fi magnum opus). The occasion being the recording of the final book in the series: Chapterhouse Dune. The publisher (Macmillan Audio) decided to film a short video promo (haven't seen it yet, watch this space) and so Scott Brick, Katherine Kellgren and Euan Morton joined me in studios near Times Square to talk about the series and to be filmed narrating short passages. The first book Dune won an Audie earlier this year.
(10/6/08): Okay, so this is completely off-topic - but this past weekend I saw Robert Plant and Alison Krauss in concert (the final concert of their tour promoting the album 'Raising Sands') and it was truly amazing.
I'm an old hand at concert going (first concert: Bonzo Dog Band, Family and Free at the Brighton Dome on February 19th, 1969) and if you'd ever told me I'd see Robert Plant (lead singer with Led Zeppelin if you hadn't heard) singing backup for a bluegrass band I think I'd have had to suggest you were dreaming. But there it was - and I have fuzzy photos to prove it. Hey, I was there the night in December 1973 when Mr.Plant returned to the stage after a Zep concert at the Brighton Dome, when everything had been switched off and the house lights were up, to lead the remaining fans in a rousing chorus of Jingle Bells...
On a tougher note I'm not sorry to see the end of the summer - had a bout with skin cancer and my vanity has taken a bit of a ding. Thanks to the modern wonders of plastic surgery, though, another few months and you won't even notice! Glad I earn my living these days from my voice.
On that note - check out the update to the left - I finally put in a few of the more recent books I've narrated. Gosh, I'm very lucky in that I loved reading them all!
And by the way - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (see left) has just received an Earphone award from Audiofile magazine.
(8/24/08): Complaining about not having enough time to update this website is becoming a tired excuse, but it's more than 6 weeks since I put something new here and much longer since I revamped the column of 'recently completed' books to the left of this page.
I love that I said I'd leave the 'Booklist' column (see below) for only 'a week or two". Yeah, right! Might as well face the truth and admit that I love what Joyce wrote and that what modesty I possess is not apparent on this page...
Recently completed books include Gavin Menzies' first book '1421' on his interesting theories of how the Chinese sailed the world, discovered America, and seeded Europe with many of the ideas and inventions that powered the Rennaissance (I have already recorded his second '1434' which focusses more on the last of those theories). I've also just finished a book about the 'Road Hill Murder' that took place in Trowbridge in England in 1860: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective. It nearly destroyed the career of one of England's very first 'Detective Officers' - Inspector Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard. I also narrated a translation of the the late Swedish Journalist, Stieg Larsson's novel: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. An interesting take on the 'locked room' mystery where there can be only a limited number of suspects in a particular crime (the previously mentioned book could be considered a true version of this often used device). Larsson was a campaigning journalist who sadly died before this novel, the first of three published postumously, reached the public.
If you're a fan of Joyce Carey's "Kushiel's Legacy" series you'll be pleased to know that Tantor have commissioned all six novels over the next few months. I just completed 'Kushiel's Mercy' which is the six and final book (apparently the publisher's wanted it done now to coincide with the release of the actual novel). I shall record parts 4 and 5 in the coming months - my colleague Anne Flosnik has been asked to narrate the first three which have a female protagonist.
(7/3/08): Happy July 4th weekend from one of the newest citizens of the US...also just named the very first Booklist Magazine 'Voice of Choice'. For a week or so I'll reprint here the whole text of the article from the June issue (because I'm afraid my modesty has failed me):
Voice of Choice: Simon Vance. by Joyce Saricks
In a new feature to coincide with National Audiobook Month, we select our audiobook reader of the year in recognition of consistent excellence. Our inaugural selection, Simon Vance, exemplifies the best of the profession: a reader who performs a wide range of titles—adult and youth, fiction and nonfiction, serious and seriously amusing. He always exceeds our expectations and more than meets our criteria for outstanding work.
Vance is a prolific reader (more than 400 titles to date) for multiple distributors, including BBC/Sound Library, Blackstone, Books on Tape, Hachette, Macmillan, and Penguin, among others. He has been nominated for 12 Audie Awards, sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association, and was a 2006 Audie winner for his reading of Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces.
Born in Brighton, England, Vance studied acting from an early age and found his way into radio through the BBC and into audio through the Talking Book Service of the Royal National Institute for the Blind. In the 1990s, he moved to California, where his audiobook career took off.
Few narrators display such range and versatility. From fiction classics and best-sellers to fairy tales and fantasies, the range of titles is amazing and his coverage of nonfiction is just as astonishing. What makes Vance such a good reader? He says that he is “doing no more than simply telling the story.” And perhaps that is his greatest strength. His reading mirrors the words on the page, but he also expertly captures the intent of the author and the underlying mood and tempo of the text. In Vance’s reading of Eric Clapton’s painful and self-revelatory autobiography, Clapton: The Autobiography, his “tones vibrate with the energy of the madcap London arts scene in the 1960s,” and he “convincingly communicates the mood swings of an insecure musician.” In presenting the world and work of Shakespeare in Peter Ackroyd’s Shakespeare: The Biography and Charles Nicholl’s The Lodger Shakespeare, he sets up the background through his straightforward British accent, and makes the lyrical passages sing when reading excerpts from Shakespeare’s works.
Stories matter to Vance, and he appreciates a good tale. Most stories are revealed through the characters, and Vance inhabits characters with skill. In Elizabeth Nunez’s Prospero’s Daughter, he easily suggests “the ambivalence of the bright young British police officer,” and when portraying the dragon Temeraire in Naomi Novik’s Empire of Ivory,“Vance excellently conveys Temeraire’s unique personality, independence, and intelligence, reminding listeners of the dragon’s nonhuman nature,” while revealing much of its humanity.
Vance’s expertise also lies in his ability to reflect the author’s tone. In J. Maarten Troost’s The Sex Lives of Cannibals, he “wrings every bit of irony out of the sardonic prose,” and in Jasper Fforde’s pun-filled The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime, “Vance’s appropriately pompous accents and plummy tones emphasize the ubiquitous humor and constant flurry of literary allusions.”
Another skill that sets Vance apart is his facility with accents and language. His crisp British accent makes him a natural choice for titles from across the pond, but he is equally adept with French, Spanish, and Italian accents. Asked about dialects, he claims his skills are a result of “research and preparation” and a “good ear and a versatile tongue.”
Our talented winner is comfortable reading a wide range of stories. According to Vance, “The thing is to present the truth of the material, and this is found inside the text and not placed on top of it by external means.” He admits to possessing “a very active and creative imagination, confidence, a good knowledge of his range and abilities, and above all, stamina.” While Vance argues for sticking to the text, there is clearly magic in his storytelling.
First published June 1, 2008 (Booklist).
(6/5/08): Dune won an Audie Award in the Science Fiction category at the annual awards held in Los Angeles last Friday evening.
(4/17/08): Two more Earphone Awards from AudioFile Magazine - these are for The Terror (published by Hachette, and already nominated for an Audie this year) and The Lodger Shakespeare for Tantor Media.
(3/5/08): The latest addition to my list of Earphone winners from AudioFile Magazine is Under Enemy Colors by S.Thomas Russell: "Set aboard a frigate at sea off the coast of France at the height of British naval power, this gripping novel combines a simple war story with a tale of infuriating office politics, cowardly leadership, and one man's struggle to remain loyal to his king, an inept commander, and a seething crew". Lots of fun to read and I'm glad it gained this sign of appreciation. (also available for download at Audible).
(2/9/08): I am attached to four Audie nominations this year continuing a very good run in this particular area (now 12 nominations since 2002!). The multivoice production of Dune has garnered three nominations alone (SciFi, Multivoice and Achievement in Production) - the other is for The Terror by Dan Simmons, which is in the Achievement in Abridgement category. The ceremony is at the end of May - watch this space...!
(12/28/07): AudioFile Magazine has included China Road in it's list of the best audio books of 2007 - quite an honour and a fitting cap to end a very productive year: About four dozen books narrated, 7 Earphone Awards and another two Audie nominations!
(11/22/07): AudioFile Magazine has presented me with three Earphone awards (one shared with the cast of a multivoiced production) bringing my total up to 15. The books are - China Road by Rob Gifford (Blackstone Audio), The Quest by Wilbur Smith (Macmillan Audio), and Dune by Frank Herbert (Macmillan Audio - multivoice production). You can click on the title to go to the publisher's site or find all three by searching on Audible.
*********************
So, some things have finally changed on this site and the first thing you might notice is that over to the left side of this page you can see the book I am currently working on.
I have also included in a special panel, also to the left just below the current project, information about a few of the most recently completed books. Just mouse-click on the title and the panel will open to give you a fuller explanation of the book and it's publisher and perhaps whether or not it is yet available at audible.com or elsewhere (it uses Flash and if that is not working on your browser you'll probably get the default which is all the tabs open all the time and that makes for a loooong column!). If you are interested enough to try to find the book I have indicated an approximate publication date.
The only other thing I have changed so far is the page on award winners and nominees - I've tried to simplify this page as the number has grown somewhat over the past couple of years (he says, modestly!). I have removed the sound samples for now, but hope to reinstate those as soon as I educate myself enough to learn how to do it in the current, most efficient way.
As you can see I'm hoping to make this more of an audio book site rather than include much about other projects. My acting career has taken a back seat to audio over the past couple of years since demand has grown for audio books so much, but I've not given up completely. I find I get most response to this site from people who have heard books I have narrated and I want to address that audience first and foremost (they can be very loyal and I wish to return the favour).
With that in mind when I finally address the actual style and shape of the site I shall probably be losing a lot of the links to TV, film, etc. It takes up a lot of space, isn't going to bring in much work itself (my agent does that for me very nicely) and I think is of little interest at this point to audio book listeners.
That's enough for now - back to work getting this all straight - and if the gardener has finished leaf blowing next door I might even record a chapter or two!