Latest News
Latest latest news (7/03/08): 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.
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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!