Ever had a tale so quirky it could only happen to you? Well, pull up a chair and join the laughter as Mac and Kelli share the whimsical dramas of everyday life—think alpacas at housewarmings and the teenage job hunt. As we chat about the warmth of workplace friendships and Maccoy's driver's ed escapades, you'll feel right at home with stories you didn't know you needed to hear.
Step into the intimate booth of a voice artist and discover the authenticity that breathes life into every story with our guest, Xe Sands. We're peeling back the curtain on the narration world with a personal touch, from the surprise of being recognized by voice alone to the emotional toll of embodying characters that stay with you long after the mic is off. And if you've ever wondered how accents and pronunciation shape our identity, we've got anecdotes that will have you nodding and chuckling in equal measure.
Finally, gear up for a heartfelt cause as we gear up for the "Shoot for the Moon" event by the Mary Moon Foundation. It's about more than just fun and games; it's the spirit of community and giving back that drives this festivity. Don't miss our next episode with an insider's take on planning this meaningful gathering that promises to touch hearts and tickle funny bones. Join us, bring a friend, and let's make memories for a good cause.
Ever had a tale so quirky it could only happen to you? Well, pull up a chair and join the laughter as Mac and Kelli share the whimsical dramas of everyday life—think alpacas at housewarmings and the teenage job hunt. As we chat about the warmth of workplace friendships and Maccoy's driver's ed escapades, you'll feel right at home with stories you didn't know you needed to hear.
Step into the intimate booth of a voice artist and discover the authenticity that breathes life into every story with our guest, Xe Sands. We're peeling back the curtain on the narration world with a personal touch, from the surprise of being recognized by voice alone to the emotional toll of embodying characters that stay with you long after the mic is off. And if you've ever wondered how accents and pronunciation shape our identity, we've got anecdotes that will have you nodding and chuckling in equal measure.
Finally, gear up for a heartfelt cause as we gear up for the "Shoot for the Moon" event by the Mary Moon Foundation. It's about more than just fun and games; it's the spirit of community and giving back that drives this festivity. Don't miss our next episode with an insider's take on planning this meaningful gathering that promises to touch hearts and tickle funny bones. Join us, bring a friend, and let's make memories for a good cause.
Hey guys, welcome back to honor best behavior. I'm Mac. You're here with Kelly. I forgot to do it. I couldn't think of it.
Speaker 2:Hi, it's Kelly, and are you Kelly or Mac today?
Speaker 1:I'm Mac. Oh, okay, hey Mac.
Speaker 2:Sorry, what's up? So today do you have anything to talk about?
Speaker 1:I don't know what to talk about.
Speaker 2:No stories, no drama for your mama.
Speaker 1:No drama.
Speaker 2:That's a good thing, though, so I know it is good, but I can't believe that nothing happens ever for you to talk about, Like nothing happens at school it's baseball, not really. Like nothing dramatic happens, Mm-mm no.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:I have some drama for my Mac-y.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:It doesn't rhyme as well.
Speaker 1:What is?
Speaker 2:that I totally spaced out your orthodontist appointment today.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I never do that, and all of a sudden they were calling me and I was like, oh, they must be calling?
Speaker 1:What time was it originally for?
Speaker 2:Today it was supposed to be like 3.45.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:But they're calling me. I'm like oh, they're probably calling me to remind me about your appointment tomorrow, but no, they were calling to say hey, we're calling you because you missed your appointment. I hate being that person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know you do.
Speaker 2:So then I had to call them and hope they could get you in, because you get your braces on next week.
Speaker 1:When I get them in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, A week from Thursday and yeah so. I'm excited for your mouth to hurt. Maybe you won't blab so much.
Speaker 1:No, I will always figure out a way to yapp.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you are the yapping always happens.
Speaker 1:You are a good yapper.
Speaker 2:Let's see, let's see. So I thought this was a fun story. When you grow up, what you wanna find at work is a workwife. What Do you know what a workwife is?
Speaker 1:Yeah, someone that has the same job as you. I can't hear you Someone that has the same job as you, that you love.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's kind of it, and they take care of you. I'm impressed you knew that.
Speaker 1:It sounds exactly what it is.
Speaker 2:So when I was in Florida, one of the girls were just saying, like we wanna tell you a funny story. When you were gone, they thought I was the one who made the coffee every morning. So then, nobody, there was no coffee made while I was gone. And so then they were like saying we had to try to figure out how to use the coffee pot and how to make coffee. And I was like, oh, I'm like, well, it's good that you figured that out, but I don't make the coffee every morning. My workwife does. So Wendy is my workwife, and every morning when I get to work she usually gets there before I do, and so she, and she doesn't even drink coffee, but she always makes the coffee, so that when I get there it's just ready for me to go.
Speaker 2:Isn't that the sweetest thing? Yes, I mean, that's one of the million of sweet things that she does for me. But get yourself a workwife. Yeah, yes, get a job Of course someone have a job. Are you gonna apply at Dunkin Donuts this summer? I don't know.
Speaker 1:You could walk there, probably not.
Speaker 2:No, what are you? Are you gonna try to get a job at all?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where are you gonna try to get a job at?
Speaker 1:I don't know somewhere.
Speaker 2:You haven't put any thought into it.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:You're just hoping to like skate under the radar and not get a job. No, would you think about getting a job on your own if I didn't ask you to get a job?
Speaker 1:Probably not.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:But I know I have to, so there's not a point of trying to skip over it.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, this weekend Jen had her. Jen is one of my besties. She had her house warming slash birthday party. So we finally got to go see her new house and it's so nice. And let me tell you what she lives really close to. And now pack a farm, oh my God. So, I'm driving, we're like looking for Jen's house. I got her address on the GPS and all of a sudden I like see all these alpacas and I'm like, ah, really. I'm like, emily, do you see those? They're alpacas, oh my.
Speaker 2:God. And so I was like oh my God, I wanna pet those, so bad I love them. So we get to Jen's house and I'm like Jen you need to figure out who lives there, you need to be friends with them, and then you need to invite me over so I can pet them all. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:Oh, kelly. So then she told me the story about the alpacas and she said I'm a little traumatized by the alpacas because the other day I was on my way home from work and two of them were humping and she said the hump tower was so tall. I've never seen alpacas hump but one's tall, the one gets on top of the other one and then it's even taller. She was saying that was stuck in her mind and I said that is a great thing, because there's gonna be alpaca babies.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:So anyway, it was a lovely time at Jen's. Her house is lovely, yeah, I'm so happy for her. And she's been engaged. So now I'm like you gotta start planning this wedding. And she said it might be out of state. So you know I love a vacation. Then at her party, you know I have been really jonesing for a baby fix, a what?
Speaker 2:Like I get the baby fever. You know, like I want somebody to have a baby so that I can hold them and cuddle them and feed them and just kind of get that fulfillment that I need. I don't want to have a baby and I don't want you to have a baby, but I do. I mean, maybe in 15 or 20 years I'd be okay with being a grandma, but not before that. And yeah. So I got to hold this baby and she was so cute and her name was Everly and she was just the sweetest, cutest, happiest little baby I ever did see. So I love that. Then on the way home, jen's like grab some carrots for the alpacas Cause. I'm like, oh, yeah, I want to try to feed them, oh my God. So then we were leaving and I was looking and like the fence, the way it was set up like you couldn't get to the alpacas.
Speaker 2:So I was like kind of looking. I wanted to like just go knock on the door. So bad, but I Emily's like Kelly, let it go, not today. So anyway, if you live up in Zimmerman and you have an alpaca farm and you want to invite me to come pet your alpacas, or any, if you have alpacas anywhere and you are going to allow me to come pet them, shout out because I will be there Of course you'll be there. No, do you have anything to add?
Speaker 1:I have alpaca. That's all I have to add. Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. So with that I mean, I honestly haven't really had much going on. I worked on Saturday, so I came back from Florida and I worked Monday, Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday. I cleaned on Sunday and then I went back to work on Monday, so I've just been a busy, a busy bee just trying to make money, and it's never enough. I can't make enough money, all right, so ready for your driver's ed. When does try three start?
Speaker 1:It's just in like two weeks.
Speaker 2:Oh, are you getting nervous for driver's ed? No, are you feeling good about driver's ed Because I've been preparing you for so many weeks? No, okay.
Speaker 1:I feel like there's like you do, like a test almost every day or like a quiz every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's miserable, but it's for there's a really good prize at the end. You just take your permit test and get your permit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right With that. Here's your question. Okay, at night, when you are within 1000 feet of an oncoming vehicle, or if you're following another vehicle within 200 feet, you must A use your emergency lights. B use high beam headlights. C not use your headlights Okay, so I'll see. Or. D use low beam headlights. High beam headlights Okay. So if you're coming, if someone's coming at you, do you want to turn your high beams on? Oh, no, lower Low beams low beams.
Speaker 1:I didn't they understand. Yeah, low beams.
Speaker 2:Well, just so you know, that would have been a eh on your test, you might not get your permit. No, I'm going to All right. Are you ready for our guest today?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I'm ready.
Speaker 2:It is XC Sans. She is my favorite Audible book narrator and let me tell you, interviewing her was I mean I don't even have words for it I just was. I just felt like I was like in glee the whole time and she was just one of the nicest humans I have ever met in my life, actually, and I it was so neat to hear her like have a conversation with her because I know her voice so well, but then when she was actually like talking to me with me, not reading me a story, it was just surreal.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good, All right.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, all right, all right. Are you ready for this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's get to it.
Speaker 2:Welcome, xc Sans.
Speaker 1:You're listening to another episode of On Our Best Behavior, and today I have a very special guest.
Speaker 2:She is an accomplished narrator with a number of awards to her credit, including an audio award, multiple voice arts awards, multiple audiophile earphones awards and a publishers weekly narrator of the year award. She is a great voice actor. She's a great voice actor. She's a great voice actor. She's a great voice actor. She's a great voice actor. She's a publishers weekly narrator of the year award. She is a voice artist and personally my favorite audio book narrator. Her award winning audio book narration is natural, authentic and engaging. Today I have XC, sans, hi, xc.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm blushing over here. That's that I'm so glad we're not doing video. I must look ridiculous. Thank you so much for that very kind introduction. I thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:It's lovely to be here with you.
Speaker 3:I'm very honored to be here.
Speaker 2:I was just telling you, before we started this, like it is so amazing to me, and a small dream come true, to have a conversation with you, because I have listened to your voice for countless hours. And, to be honest, when I started doing Audible for reading because I could just get more than one thing done at a time and multitask the first book I ever listened to when I heard your voice was the Wife by Alefair Burke. And when I heard your voice, I was just so captivated and I started just searching all of your narrations, like whatever she has narrated, that's what I wanna listen to.
Speaker 3:Oh well, that is wonderful to hear. I feel very excited to talk to you because I'd never get to hear. I'm just alone in a foam padded box and we don't ever get to see or hear from talk to people that we actually talk to all the time. It's just not live.
Speaker 2:Right, it's a one-way street. I don't know if it helps you.
Speaker 3:But I have that reaction when I meet narrators in person at conferences and whatnot. I have to, because I'm actually in front of them and they can see me, and I have to contain myself, but there are times in my head that I'm thinking oh my God, I'm talking to you. It's very exciting. It is interesting when we get to meet someone that we've who's been talking to us for a long time and has been. We've gone on journeys with them. That's how it feels sometimes.
Speaker 2:And don't you think too like for you. It's nice to know that we share this experience of excitement. But then sometimes, when you hear the voice and you're not seeing the person, but you hear it in the distance, and then you're like I know that voice. I know that voice. There you are.
Speaker 3:And it all lines up. It does. That has happened to me.
Speaker 3:It happens to me when I'm watching things and I think I'll hear an actor will come on and I, having never seen them, will think I know that voice. Oh, oh, I know that voice from this book or that project or something else. And I did have that happen to me once. I went to an author reading and I had come in late, so I was just sitting in the back and he and I knew each other, that author and I. But he called on me to answer some questions and several people in the room knew me from a different one of his books and just kind of turned around and like because they recognized my voice, which I thought was funny. I didn't think they would recognize my voice because I don't know why I thought that. And then afterwards they said I could hear Shayna. Suddenly Shayna was in the room and I was like, oh, I hadn't thought about that, that you'd recognize me by sound, because they didn't know what I looked like. And I don't think any of us we don't look like what we sound like.
Speaker 3:I don't think it matters what we sound like, no, no, I mean what we look like.
Speaker 2:we shouldn't same with authors, right, I think everyone I've tried to envision, oh yeah. Everybody does try to envision it Right, everyone you like try to envision it, and then you see them and you're like, oh, that's not it. No, of course. Not. Of course I had in mind.
Speaker 3:So I think that if you're spending any time thinking about like what do I look like or who am I, I am not doing my job right because I should be disappearing. It should just be the character, and that's what you should be hearing, hopefully, if I'm doing it right. Right, you're just seeing things through their eyes.
Speaker 3:Exactly, I'm just a conduit, for you know the author's description of whatever it is Sometimes when we're miscast, or it feels like we're miscast. That weighs on me as I'm going through the book and I think I don't sound anything like this character. Oh, I wish I could, but I don't, so that's hard.
Speaker 2:So I kind of introduced who I think you are. Tell us who you think you are, oh my, I don't know.
Speaker 3:No one's ever asked me that. I think that I am a voice artist because I'm an artist in general. This is just sort of the audio part who just wants to just like the reader or the listener. I just want to lose myself in the story and what the author has designed and become the characters and whether that's just as a third person narrator or first person or whatever it is and just live the experience with them. I mean, the characters don't know they're in a story, they're just themselves and so just going along in their journey with them. And so that's what I think of myself, that I am just going along.
Speaker 3:I'm just another character, if you will, and as an artist, I really want things to be as authentic and natural as possible. That doesn't mean I achieve that, that just means that's what I would like and it's what I like in all kinds of art. I like the messy and the imperfect, and to me, the perfection is in the imperfections and the angles and strange bits and bobs and pieces that aren't polished, and I think that's prevalent in most of the fiction that I narrate and definitely in my favorite pieces is the characters. That are just not all one thing. So to me, who am I? I'm someone who's trying to be a conduit for that authenticity that the author was hopefully going for, and if I succeed, then that's what you hear.
Speaker 2:I think you do a great job. So on this podcast, I do it with my son and we'll loop him in.
Speaker 1:Okay, I wasn't trying to ask him if he was going to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's what we do. We kind of record and then edit him kind of in. So we always talk about what do you want to be when you grow up? He's in ninth grade now, so we're really trying to figure out what his future may hold. So growing up for you was a voice or talent. Did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? Did it involve any of this.
Speaker 3:No, as a matter of fact, there's no world where I would have believed you if you told me but first, that I'd be doing this. Second, that people would in any way want to listen to my voice. Read anything. So, matter of fact, when I told my dad when I first started doing this not even professionally yet he just was trying to find a very nice way of saying people want to listen to you, which was very funny he did not say it that way, but he did. Shortly thereafter, when I was playing something that I had recorded, he asked me who it was. I said that's me, and he's like. It is not. I'm like no, in fact, it is me, I can do this.
Speaker 3:So, no, I would never have thought this. And I was thinking about that. What did I want to be when I grew up? And once we were at the age of your son, I had no idea. I had no idea, and way back in the dark ages of when I was in ninth grade, which was an extremely long time ago. At that time, really, you just had to get yourself to college. You didn't even have to know why you wanted to go unless you had a plan, Like if you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or anything professional.
Speaker 3:Of course you had to have a plan, otherwise you'd be wasting a lot of time. But for a lot of us, we were the first in our family's first generation to go to college and it was just exciting that we were going to college. I remember getting towards the end.
Speaker 2:You just had to get there, yeah, and then oh, we have to pick a major, okay.
Speaker 3:And then you're going to graduate and you think do I have enough credits in that?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I am an English major with a focus in British literature, and that's. I had no idea what I was going to do with that whatsoever. So when I came out of there, I for until I was 40, really I did not know entirely what I wanted to do just before 40. I just kept hoping that a passion would present itself. I had no idea how to find that thing, what to do. I did a lot of artistic stuff on the side. I did just stuff as a hobby and had no idea how to make that into any kind of professional gig.
Speaker 3:And then, eventually, because I read to my daughter and since she was tiny, I used to read to her to go to bed and to get her to get up in the morning, and she got more and more exacting as not that she said that, I just mean her tastes got more refined. So I had to up my game a little bit and I finally realized well, this is actually I like doing this and this is a job. This could exist Like this isn't. I don't know how to make a living doing all the other things I like to do. So when about trying to figure out how do you do that? How people? We listen to so many books on tape, and I mean on tape like actual tapes, cassettes that she would hand me right.
Speaker 3:Exactly. She would hand them to me from the backseat when she was six, seven, eight years old and we put them in the car and tape would flip over all that good stuff that after her generation they don't know what I'm talking about, but I know they're lucky to never have to have to. Mix tapes are such a retro thing. This is so funny to me. So, yes, so I knew that it was a job because we could hear people doing it. So I went about trying to figure out how do you do that? I want to be that person. How do you get to be that person? Well now, many years later, I am that person to a certain extent. Sometimes.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're too modest.
Speaker 3:Well, as soon as you start believing the hype, you start not doing as good a job. I mean, I don't mean that you have to not believe in yourself. You have to stay humble, but should you have to always be open to learning and remembering that you're all that and you're not all that. So kind of both All right.
Speaker 2:so you said, like, how do I make this like a reality? How can I do this and make a living? So how did you find that?
Speaker 3:At the time it was a totally different world, even though it was only 13 years ago. It's just such a different world technologically speaking. So at the time you still sent out actual burned CDs to publishers, you know, with your demos on them, and asked them please, oh, please, oh, please, don't throw this away, please could you listen to this. Sometimes you would have someone you knew, knew them and could introduce you. That's actually how I got my first sort of more regular client, and before that it had been. I honestly I think it was because I had sent my very first publisher, tiny little company I don't even know if they're still here, they're out in Spokane, washington and I had sent them a CD. When they heard it and thought yeah, we want you and that was great.
Speaker 3:So I got my first book or two through them and after that that helped, possibly, but they were such a tiny publisher I don't know that it had held any sway with the company I eventually started working with who was more of a mainstream publisher, and that was because I knew someone.
Speaker 3:I went to a conference and actually in New York and met a dear friend of mine who actually only lives 20 blocks from my house here in Shoreline, just north of Seattle, but I met him in New York because we were both ancient people who did not know how to use our cell phones back in 2011. And he was trying to figure out how do I deal with this text from my wife, which was very funny and I evidently seemed like a very safe person to ask and he just randomly was like you, how can you help me with this thing? And it was just so funny. And then realizing wait a minute, where do you live? And I told him I love your fence. I've driven. He has these beautiful glass things in his fence. I just thought what world do we meet?
Speaker 3:2000 miles away from each other. So he knew the publisher and introduced me and I still work for that publisher to this day. So that was how you do it. Otherwise, larger houses like Penguin, random House or McMillan or any of the names you might recognize from print, they were at the time very much saying we only work with professional actors and celebrities, please do not contact us, basically at the time. And so you had to kind of work your way up and go to conferences and meet people and, like any other industry, face to face interactions, someone vouching for you. Those things mean so much more than a random thing someone receives and they don't know you when they're inundated with such things. So as a lesson to your son, to anybody, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:It is so hard because.
Speaker 3:I most of my industry, just like the for writers. We're introverts, many of us. We are voice actors who are not on camera for a reason. We are by ourselves or with one other person. We're not on camera and it is hard to go fling yourself about in person. But in small you can do it in tiny settings. Whatever it is in person interactions or a personal connection with someone, it doesn't actually have to be face to face, but a personal connection with someone will always be better than kind of just throwing all your energy scattershot into the universe and saying please help me, someone notice me. Trying to build that up from a grassroots is usually going to get you further, even though it's very scary and it's very hard to do sometimes.
Speaker 2:And don't you also think, like, like, like you said, for you, you know, you are in a, in a small booth and you are talking to I mean, it feels like you don't have an audience, right, but then you have such a huge audience, but you never have to really be face to face with them, and so it doesn't feel like you know, it doesn't feel like what?
Speaker 3:it is, that's right. It's just like when I'm talking to you right now, it's just you're, just I'm really. When you're in my job, you're really only talking to one person and you're just sitting there with them telling them a story. You just didn't realize they were recording you and sharing you with millions of their friends. So but that's, that's that's you know that's what it is.
Speaker 3:It's a very intimate medium and it is unlike, and in that way it's like on camera acting. In that you're you're not, even though there's a million people around you on the set. It's you're not performing like on a stage where you can literally see the audience, like out there.
Speaker 2:That I can't even imagine. I think we're terrifying.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's right up there in third grade where everyone had to turn around in their desk so that I could do show and tell yes, no, oh, let's just hate it.
Speaker 2:All right, it's your turn. Bring your project up to the front and present it. Oh, that was so humiliating.
Speaker 3:It was so awful it was so awful and I, to this day, have performance anxiety. So no, I prefer to work by myself where no one can see me, especially when you have to do funny voices. You're like, okay, I can't do this. If you're going to look at me, I got to hold my cheek sideways and be weird and squinch my face. Maybe I have a prop. I have a fake whiskey glass. You know I can't do. You can't watch me.
Speaker 2:But your daughter loved that one.
Speaker 3:She was younger, I didn't do it. I probably did the funny voices and she's. I sort of channel my dad for all of his goofiness to make her laugh and do all the funny accents and all that stuff. And as a professional you can't just decide everyone has a different accent because you don't want to do differentiation, Like that's what I did with her and I was like, well, let's see, he can be French, so we know who's talking and my bad French accent. But professionally you can't do that.
Speaker 3:So if you have five brothers, all from the same town and they're all there together and they all have deep voices and they're all going to have their own romance lead in the next book or something you're like. Okay, I don't know how to make all you guys sound different.
Speaker 1:That's too much.
Speaker 2:So when I was looking into, you know, being a voice actor or being a narrator or all these things, I stumbled across that there's a narration directors. What does a narration director do?
Speaker 3:So a director. Many projects are not directed, many of them are self directed, but especially higher profile ones definitely celebrities, I think, do have directors. Often Director is someone who is following along with the text. So first, they're keeping you word perfect. Because we do have to be word perfect. We're going to get a huge list of corrections. I have two sets to do actually this weekend where they send you back.
Speaker 3:Someone has listened to the book while you were reading and every time you make a mistake they make a note and they send it back to you and say do it again. And you just really have to hope that that doesn't happen in the most beautiful, wonderfully acted ever emotional scene because, well, they're going to redo it. So the first thing, their practical purpose, is they're going along and making sure that you are staying true to the text. On an artistic level they're also trying to make sure that you're staying true to the text. So, depending on their level of engagement, directors come in all flavors. So some are very hands off, some are very hands on. They're trying to listen for character consistency, they're listening for the authenticity of an accent. Maybe they're trying to kind of make sure that you're not, that whatever you're doing is actually working for the listener, and they have different ways of deciding how much they're going to interrupt you and ask you to do something over, or if they want to hear a different take on something, or that's on their side.
Speaker 3:If you're working with a director, then you can stop and ask them. You know be like is this working, what do you think of this? Does this sound? Okay? I don't know if this is coming across all right, and that gives them a chance to kind of give you feedback and sometimes, when I'm working with a director, I'll just ask them okay, what do you think you? What are you getting from this? This like, is it coming through? What is this feeling like? And they can tell me because you're in your own head and you may think you're doing X, y, z, but that's not how it's felt by the person listening. So they're essentially acting as a sounding board, a word engineer, if you will, an artistic feedback, and it all depends on their personality and their style of directing.
Speaker 3:Many books, like I said, don't have them. So you're doing all that yourself.
Speaker 2:And I suppose that comes with like excuse me experience like the more you're narrating books, the more you kind of have figured out what you need to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it definitely gets easier because you have been doing it for a long time so you have more confidence in yourself. When I first started, one of my mentors had said that for her. I think she said her whole first year that she hired a director and on her own company. So basically all of her fee went to the director and just so that she could really get an idea of how to do this herself.
Speaker 2:All right, so you're going to do a new narration. How do you prepare for narrating a book? Do you read the book before you perform it, or how does that work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you definitely have to do it before there's such a temptation I think to not. There is, I think, the idea that you can that then you'll have the element of surprise, then you'll be surprised too and it'll be authentic and it'll be in the performance and all that stuff and A there's the practical concern that not everything is revealed right at the beginning of a book. So you can find yourself most of the way through the book and then you realize the character had an accent you didn't know about and now you have to go redo all their lines and that's very unfortunate, or any number of things could be revealed that would change your impression and your interpretation of a character. Besides accent, just anything, there could be anything describing them. There is also a broader sort of conceptual idea that I have that you are creating a safe space by you knowing the whole story and you holding that. You are sort of creating this space for the characters to have their journey and you're going to hold that whole thing so that they can be free to do what they're going to do. And I don't find almost ever that that in any way impacts your ability to be surprised right along with them.
Speaker 3:Because two things happen when you're reading. That was not the way to say that, and it's not going to be two things that are going to happen, but not what you're reading. So one thing while you're reading it, you know you're reading and you think, okay, now I know the story and who the bad guy is, all this stuff. That won't be surprising to me. However, it's going to feel totally different when you're actually reading it out loud and if you're doing your job right, from my perspective, you are inhabiting those characters every time they open their mouths or have a thought or anything else. So that's all fresh for you, because you haven't done it the way they're going to do it. You haven't been in their skin and saying their words their way. You were just an omniscient reader out here, seeing all the pieces at once, but the characters didn't get to do that.
Speaker 3:So when you, if you are really allowing yourself to be present, when you are actually narrating it, it's going to be fresh for you too, because you're going to be experiencing it differently and you're going to actually end up with different ideas than you did as just the reader.
Speaker 3:That has happened to me so many times, so many times, especially if a book has made me very angry and I've been very upset. Once you get to, when you're experiencing it, as the characters are, it changes your perception of how things are going. So I find that you need to read the book for practical purposes and so that you can find out from the author how you pronounce any number of things, because you're almost always going to guess incorrectly if it's anything that is particular, but also because you want to be able to have the entire thing sort of in the in the back of your mind, but also so that you can allow them to have space and so you can be free to also experience this as you go. Plus, if there's a big reveal about a villain, you kind of need to know this. You need to be able to as a narrator.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and as a narrator, you're in a horrible position of you. You can only disguise your voice so much without full on lying to the listener, so it does create a little quandary. Now, all of that said, I've had maybe two times. I think that I can remember, purposefully, one time I did read the book, of course before I recorded, but I realized that because the last chapter and the first are mirrors of each other, that they're almost identical. It's just now you understand what was happening when you read that prologue. It was actually the end of the book.
Speaker 3:I, because it was so important not to know that I left. I had done the prologue as an audition and I left it the way it was Because in that case, not knowing every time, I tried to record it, knowing I knew too much and gave away too much. That's so rare. It's just so rare in the structure of the book to have that happen. The other time was a time where I was so upset.
Speaker 3:It was a very, very hard, emotional book.
Speaker 3:It was a first person romance novel but there was a sexual assault was very integral to her story and I had to live through that.
Speaker 3:And that's in the first half of the book and it's all very detailed and narrated and that's hard as it is, but I was so angry with how this had happened that I thought I need to narrate this first before I know how the author and I'm only sharing this because I did share this with the author but I didn't know how she was going to handle. That was the first time I'd worked with her and I didn't know how she decided to have the character recover from this horrifically traumatic relationship. It was that kind of assault within a committed relationship. So it had many layers of domestic violence and everything else. And yet this was a romance novel and there was going to be recovery, and with a different person, not with that horrible monster. And I didn't know how she was going to do that. And it was really important to me that that she do that Realistically, that that is not an instant process. You know that's a very long process in a life and that's hard.
Speaker 2:So I yeah, and you need to really have like that raw emotion dealing with.
Speaker 3:And I thought, if I, if she doesn't- if she handles that with, you know light and rainbows, and the new guy comes and he's perfect, and so she has no issues. I don't know how to narrate that authentically, especially first person, and I've already taken on the book and I'm already doing the book and it is due very soon, and I cannot do this authentically unless I just don't know how that's going to go.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do this part first.
Speaker 3:And so that's my memory of how I did this. I hope that's least that that is how I remember this happening. So I did that and then then I read the rest of the book to see, to see, okay, okay, now I think I can emotionally handle it if. If this is just handled and she was, I felt, within the context of the genre. Let's be clear here, it's fantasy, so you can make things go a little easier than real life really is. But it was not just, it was not swept under the rug, it was not any of those things I felt. She dealt with it within the context very well. So then I. It was perhaps a bit of an emotional, reactionary thing to have happen, but it was what I needed to do in the moment to stay present with this very difficult material.
Speaker 2:And I like that because I think that you know when you're, when you're reading a book, you're really pouring your heart and soul and your imagination into what's going on and you almost do feel like it's it's happening to you or your friend or you're living through it.
Speaker 3:If there's authors to write it right, right then yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there's been times where I have a read a book and I cannot like, I'm like sobbing because it's, you know, so sad or or so happy or or whatnot, and I, yeah, I can't imagine like having even if you've already read it once and now you're performing it like to get over it. Not get over, like to keep your emotions in check, but just still express that it's emotional.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's very much so, and so, and like I said, you're you're living it again with the character, and so there is always going to be a newness there, but it's. That was tough, that was. That was a very hard one, and it was the rare time that I thought I can't. I just need to be able to make it through this. I need to. I know everything's going to work out fine in the end because that's the structure of that genre. That's fine, but I don't know how it's going to be handled. And this particular topic is very important to me that it's handled with as much authenticity and honesty and grace as it can be. And the author did a beautiful job.
Speaker 3:She always had there's quite a few difficult things that appear in a lot of her books, and it was still hard and that's something listeners bring up that it is a really difficult book to listen to that one, because it's it. There's just a lot of brutalization in it, and doing that first person is always really hard, and there are times in books where, if the scene is just too too, too stressful, that way, I will sometimes I mean, I know what's happening but I will skim those sections because I think, okay, I might only be able to take this once to really involve myself and I need to be fully present. And I might only be able to do full on, fully present one time, and I want to do that for the character when I'm in it, but to live through it multiple times would be too hard. So I skim the section enough to know what's happening. That's rare but it does happen. Everyone has their when I would call trigger issues that are just difficult for them.
Speaker 3:And you don't always get to know they're going to be in a book. That's the hard part. They whatever they may be. For some people it might be that cheesecake appears in the book. Who knows? It's just. Things can be tough and you don't always know which things are going to be tough or when they're going to appear.
Speaker 3:So it can be it is challenging and not everybody reads this way. I like to say that I'm a method narrator, for good or ill, that I become the character and you know, to the extent that my daughter, my daughter, will say, because invariably I will call her periodically and say some either I'm so sorry for this fill in the blank parental thing that I did, or are you doing this or fill in anything? Are you safe with this? Are you okay? And she'll be like Are you reading a book about this?
Speaker 2:No, I'll have to say you know this I am.
Speaker 3:She'll be like Okay, so I'm fine, you're fine, it's all good, so it is funny. So I tend to always find something that's personally resonant in any character or book and not everybody does that and that doesn't. It's not required to do this job, it's just how I do my job. So it can sometimes make things psychologically tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So you know, I feel like you're. You don't have like a nine to five up, right. So you, what is your work day like? Like, how do you handle long recording sessions? And still like, maintain vocal quality? Are there days where you're like Well, today I can only get this much out, and then today I could get 12 hours out. How does that go?
Speaker 3:That's exactly right, that's what happens. Okay, you don't like? There are days when I sit down and I think there are some things going on. I have only mid range. I can't get what is going on, like something's. My voice is being weird and if I have time I might choose. Well, I'm not going to record today, that's. I'm just not getting the tone.
Speaker 2:I want.
Speaker 3:So I'm not going to do it. I do set my own hours and my own schedule. The problem is, every day that you do that, there's more to do the next day. It's not like it's, it's right so and that's true.
Speaker 2:Somebody else doesn't do it for you. It's waits for you.
Speaker 3:Yes, In another lifetime. I've been a receptionist many times in my life and variety of other office jobs and many of those jobs, you know, if you didn't do it, someone else did do it because, like, literally, the phone had to be answered so you won't have those phone calls, will not be waiting tomorrow, like if you didn't answer them today. So some jobs, this is true, and some jobs it's not. In this job, it's absolutely true that whatever you put off for tomorrow is now double tomorrow because tomorrow's work is still sitting there too. So you can get yourself into a bit of a pickle and that has happened to me where you suddenly have a lot of hours that have to happen on one day and your voice gets tired. As anybody, any of us know, when we've talked a lot, we get tired, our voice gets tired, our throat gets tired.
Speaker 3:I am not great about vocal care. I would like to be better about vocal care. It's a little tough. You know, the vocal care is rest and when you have to do it, it says you have to do it. You have a. You know, if you get into too much of a pickle, you need to tell your client that this is I cannot deliver the quality that I would like to and that you want me to, that is, brake glass in case of emergency. You don't want to miss your deadlines, obviously, so it proves you to. You spread out your schedule based on what would be your ideal thing. And ideally, you know, if I'm in a very beautiful world where I have all the time that I need and I actually pay attention to schedule and I don't procrastinate out of anxiety or the blank page syndrome. We'll just pretend that that never happens.
Speaker 3:If none of those things happen, then you know, working recording for four to five hours a day is great Is great. That's a nice amount of time and that usually means you get two to three hours out of yourself, depending on your ratio, Because for every hour you hear, I always plan on two hours to actually do it. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's a lot less. It all depends. It depends on any number of things how difficult it is to read normal old words out loud one day where you just can't seem to say anything right.
Speaker 2:Your accent's not coming out right, it has to be all the time. Your brain and your mouth are not on the same page.
Speaker 3:Yes, and you're like you find yourself cursing the author and you're cursing the microphone. You're cursing everything because you can't say the words right. And it's really just you, because you just didn't sleep enough for you decided to eat, like you know, a whole bunch of cheese before you got in the studio. It's a bad idea.
Speaker 2:So you know usually Things you don't even think about.
Speaker 3:No, you know there's a joke in among many narrators where it's like the cheese hour. That's when you get to quit. It's like the cheese hour. I have cheese now, because Dairy is not usually your friend when you're going to sing or read.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:So it's a. It can be a. Yes, you know, when you take care of yourself in non vocal ways per se, everything is better. So your vocal cords are better. Your eye, your eye, vocal cord coordination you can actually say the words that are written and not whatever you want to say. Instead, all of that is better when you get more sleep and you know all the good things, just like every other part of your life. So you, just you try to do those things.
Speaker 3:Lay off the dairy Lay off the dairy until you're done. That is very true.
Speaker 2:One of the other things I love about listening to books is some of the names. I never know how to pronounce them, and then the narrators have to figure it out for you. And so you're like oh, my gosh, I would have never like. When you actually see it written down, I'm like oh, I would have never pronounced it like that Well and sometimes I think the listeners think, oh, the narrator is so stupid, why did they do that?
Speaker 3:And you're like, because that's what the author actually wants it to be pronounced as and I have no way to tell you that. But that's actually what it is. And you are incorrect in your head, just as I was before I asked them. But since you're, can I mention where you're from? That's not a secret, is it? Yeah yeah, absolutely, since you're a Minnesota.
Speaker 3:It's not a secret Is there this happens all the time in our job is that there a book is set somewhere, and let's say it's set somewhere in Minnesota, and I'm not from Minnesota, I would have no idea how to say anything except for Minnesota itself. So are there times when you're listening? Have you listened to something that's set someplace? You know, and they've said that we always try to get it right and that does not always happen. Nothing is more jarring than hearing a local place mispronounced. I've noticed that here for Washington, and then I'm just completely irritated. Has that happened to you?
Speaker 2:So what I think is funny is us, us Minnesotans we don't think we have an accent. So, excuse me, I have this terrible call. I'm so plugged up right now. It's such a lovely accent, but we don't think that we have one. And so whenever somebody is like where are you from? Like you have an accent, I don't have an accent, you have an accent, you know. So if somebody, if somebody like when you? I don't know if you've ever seen the movie.
Speaker 2:Fargo or any anyone from like Canada like we're, like we don't sound like that. That's extreme. So no, I've never thought like oh, they're not saying it Minnesotan enough because we don't think we're Minnesotan.
Speaker 3:I was thinking more like there's a street name or a town name or something like that where it comes up. I think that they usually say it.
Speaker 2:You know they must.
Speaker 3:Like you said, they must do their homework or ask we call the town clerk, that's a call, the town and they're trying to business us on the road name you need or something else, and you call them and hope that the person can trust, like Apple Maps, because they don't say any sort of games, right?
Speaker 2:You can't trust that at all.
Speaker 3:And you can't. You can only trust. One of the resources I use a lot is Uglish. Uglish is a. It's a basically crawls through YouTube to find references and the exact point in the video of someone said something and that's wonderful, but many times they don't agree, like there'll be a hundred references and people are saying something like every which way, and oh goodness if they're.
Speaker 1:British.
Speaker 3:Well, all bets are off because they're going to say it totally different. So it is fun in this job to realize just how many things you have never been saying in any way correctly Mischievous.
Speaker 2:Or how many things can be said completely different, right? Yes?
Speaker 3:And then there are some. I still protest and still say them incorrectly because I just cannot with these words, not when I'm, when I'm when I'm reading for money.
Speaker 2:I say it correctly because I sometimes just say hey, if you want me, this is what you do, no no, we do not get to do that.
Speaker 3:You can't, you're correct yeah, and you're going to. Might not go well, yes, unless you can point to a Miriam Webster option that supports you, and you will not find one most of the time. So it's, it's fast.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be that person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but there are times with place names where we try, we try so hard to get it right and we don't. Or we think we do because it looks like a totally normal word, or we have that street here and you think, yeah, but you're not in Minnesota, so I bet you don't say it the same way they do in Minnesota. So that's why we have to check.
Speaker 2:I feel like whenever I read books that take place in Minnesota, the person that wrote them is either from Minnesota or Wisconsin, or it's usually like Minneapolis or Duluth, which I feel like everyone knows that that's true, those are easy ones.
Speaker 3:But every once in a while they'll, they'll have place names or street names are the ones that get me? Or something else. And you think, oh, oh, I didn't realize that was pronounced that way, or nobody would say that. Or the age age, age old debate, is it route or route? And that depends on where you are in the country, so and how you want that said so. Or caramel, caramel.
Speaker 2:So do you say?
Speaker 3:caramel. You know, I've been trying to figure this out. What do I normally? Say, and I think I say when I am, you know, alone by myself in a darkened room, I would say caramel, but okay.
Speaker 2:I would say caramel.
Speaker 3:I switch to caramel most of the time, because caramel is very long and drawn out and it tends to trip me up and sounds so fancy. It doesn't, or pecan I was. I used to call my dad up and say dad, how do you say this? Because I don't remember how I said it when I was 12.
Speaker 2:So is it pecan or pecan?
Speaker 3:I always thought it was. How did I used to say it? I don't even know. Now. I say pecan, we say I say pecan too, but it just depends.
Speaker 2:A lot of people in the south.
Speaker 3:I feel like say pecan, yeah, and that one totally floors me. Pecan is what I think I grew up saying. Pecan is okay. I don't know what to do with that. I just can't with that one.
Speaker 3:Nope, and now it's one of those words where you say it so many times no, I know, I just want to sound totally wackadoo because I won't know, but you know, the one that kills me and that I will protest forever, even though I perfectly well understand why it is pronounced the way it is and should have guessed as an English major is ogle. I do not like ogle. That makes it sound exactly like what it is A horrible thing, it's just icky and I've always thought it was ogle. Don't ask me why there are not two G's in ogle.
Speaker 2:I don't even know what that is. It's to ogle.
Speaker 3:someone is to lyric them and you know oh, I thought it was ogle. Well, it's like there's one O and one G, so I should have guessed it is. They're both short rates. It's going to be. I mean, it'll be low, it'll be not short, it'll be a long O because there's not two G's which would create the double, the A. But my husband to this day now says ogle in protest because he does not like ogle.
Speaker 3:And I continue to say ogle, just out of protest now. But I have switched to mischievous. I learned my lesson there's no mischievous, there's no extra. I know.
Speaker 2:See, that must be the Minnesota thing. I think we do say everyone says mischievous until they have to say mischievous.
Speaker 3:And then they realize it's mischievous because you get it as a correction and you look at it and you think, oh, look at that, there's no I. I know, because it really should be mischievous right? Doesn't that sound better? Yeah? It's a funner, as you can tell.
Speaker 2:I do not have an English major.
Speaker 3:Funner is just fine.
Speaker 2:More fun. I know I'm telling you, funner is more fun. Funner is much better. Funner, we know what you mean Exactly. Do you have a favorite genre of book, tannery?
Speaker 3:It's more the style. I don't have a favorite genre per se. I like messy first person. I like the hard to like characters, the difficult ones, the broken people, especially if I get to be super snarky, badass, that's much more fun.
Speaker 3:You're in your badass era the people who really wouldn't be very fun to know when you realize, wow, this person only got that way because it wasn't good. It wasn't good for them and now they are emotionally unavailable and would be a horrible friend entirely. But they are the much more fun people to narrate and read about because they're struggling.
Speaker 2:You kind of get to live vicariously through them.
Speaker 3:We all have those moments where we're not our best self. We do our best and our best is bad, it's just very bad and maybe we're not even trying to do our best.
Speaker 3:So it's bad, isn't even on the scale anymore, but they're struggling and they fail. They're struggling and they make bad choices. They do things that are mean, they do things that are self-destructive, and those characters, I find are they're the stories that are much more interesting and difficult and fun but fun is not quite the right word, but those are the ones I really like.
Speaker 1:It's intriguing right, I love those characters.
Speaker 3:I love them. Their stories are often very sad and don't go the way you want, but those are the ones I like. I love them. They're just much, much more fun. That and when I get to be funny. Being funny is fun.
Speaker 3:More fun when I get to be more funner that's right so there's a couple authors I have that are funny and they write a lot of humor. That can be a lot of fun. Most people don't think of me or cast me for funny, for humor, and so I enjoy it when I get to do it and the cold, emotional films.
Speaker 2:Those are really fun.
Speaker 3:I love doing weird horror kind of villain person. I do like that.
Speaker 2:Those are a lot of fun. Okay, it's interesting to hear your feedback on that. I read a lot of like psychological thrillers. That's probably my favorite genre, but every once in a while I try to throw something different.
Speaker 3:Well, the wife, when you mentioned that we said yeah, because she is not a nice person. She is hard, she is flawed. She did. I think she's a hard drinking in that she definitely is smoking, I think.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's why I fell in love with you in that role, because you were playing the role that you liked. I was reading the genre that I liked.
Speaker 3:People have a hard time with that one. They either love me or hate me on that book, but I loved voicing her. She was a tough character to like. She's tough to like. She doesn't have friends for a reason. I think she was married and she no longer married, I mean all of that thing. She's just not. She's alone for a reason and she's good at her job for a reason. I mean so she was interesting, she's yeah, so I like her. The emotional bad girls maybe that's the way to put them. That sounds horrible.
Speaker 3:Like the bad boys are always like the bikers with the leather and their mean and they're nasty and aloof and all that and that's fine. Yes, I love them as flawed as they are, but the female characters like that are, it takes a slightly different form for them and so I guess I like the emotional bad girls yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2:I think I do too.
Speaker 3:That's a very, very, very gendered way to put that, but it's they're the ones I like, the difficult ones. Yeah, yeah, I like that too, especially from like a far you know, and then you can come out and just have you know my company, my dogs and my husband and you know, have my nice normal middle age life and so that's, that's my that's my, there you go.
Speaker 2:How many books do you think you narrate a year? Like on average it really depends.
Speaker 3:Usually, I'm doing like one a week so, and it can be more sometimes sometimes you're only doing part of a book.
Speaker 3:That's pretty common now to have a multicast, either it's split because a lot of romance novels are split and I do still do quite a bit of romance, or there you're. It's split between many different points of view and now publishers are kind of it's much more common to have even if it's third person, to have many narrators if it keeps switching off points of view yeah, so that you're only doing a piece of it. It actually is not that much less work, which is kind of funny.
Speaker 1:The actual yeah, because you still have to read the whole book right, you still have to know what the heck is going on.
Speaker 3:And you still have to do the character development and you have to voice the other people usually. So there's some coordination. That's going to happen there, hopefully. But your actual recording time is less. That part's true, so it's just, the prep isn't necessarily less, but that does. That's still so some of those projects may not be full projects and some years there's more than one a week. But yeah, usually I but they're still challenging and they're in a different light even if they're nonfiction, they they're challenging in a different way, Different kind of thing.
Speaker 2:What are you reading now for for fun, for more fun, for more funner. There's no reading for more funner. That just doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker 3:No, no, it doesn't happen anymore, Because you know, when you're reading a book a week, you're like that's all you're doing. Trying to stuff a book into your head. That's and it's not always your bandwidth.
Speaker 3:Your bandwidth for enjoying reading is sadly full sometimes, and for some people that's just not true at all. They just read other things, more things. And for me, yes, I love reading and I've always loved reading, but I was never in a just always, always, always with a book. I was more casual reader, perhaps, and I would go through phases where I really read a lot as soon as I started doing this job, like that kind of fulfilled that need to read. For me, that that desire because I'm reading a ton and I'm not always reading what I would choose to read even even if I love the book, even if I love the project, it's almost never what I would have gone out and gotten myself. And that's good, Because I read many things I would never have read otherwise.
Speaker 2:You don't feel like you're missing out.
Speaker 3:Sometimes, like sometimes, there's stuff and I think I wish I had time and the energy, the mental energy to go read that, or I wish I got paid to read that one, so then I could read it anyway. But no, I mean, I read a bunch of different stuff and I do tend to do some of the difficult, weird, hard to like literary fiction and whatnot that I would have chosen anyway. So those are kind of fun and I get to meet authors.
Speaker 3:I've never met, so to speak, through their books, and occasionally I'll eventually get to do their memoir or something that's happening right now. That's the next book I'm doing is the memoir of an author that I've read for several times and that's exciting, very scary and intimidating, but also exciting, so yeah that one that feels. That feels really neat I'm excited about that.
Speaker 2:One other thing I wanted to bring up before we wrap up here is I, when I was kind of reading about you to learn about you for this, your name is so unique and I learned that it is a family name. It is a family name.
Speaker 3:My cousin has the same name, the same, I mean.
Speaker 2:I guess I read that I go by my first and middle name for professional, professionally and she doesn't need so many.
Speaker 3:God, because we have the same first and last name. And how do you convince someone that we are not the same person online and social media, right? I actually had to fight that battle at one point, just because they thought I was the same person, because how many of me could there be? How many exes are there? Right, and she was. She's a much younger than me. She's about 12 years younger and well good, I'm glad you're older, so you could say like younger and prettier and swears a lot on Facebook and does some body positivity stuff.
Speaker 3:So occasionally there is lots more of her shown than I show and I'm like, okay, maybe if I look like that, I maybe there's. No, I don't mean that there's any news. She's tasteful but perhaps more than I have to be like, not me.
Speaker 3:I mean, I wish I looked like that, but not me. Just so you know, publisher people, my clients, that's that one's not me. You just need to believe me that. I know it's not a common name, but there are two of us in the family, so it's just very funny. But yes, it is a family name, supposedly Welsh, and I think we decided now that we used to think, okay, maybe we're not Welsh, maybe, like we maybe did, the Welsh part wasn't true. But now I think when we've been looking at it, we've been trying to figure this out the family for a long time. My great grandmother had the name and she was already here, so that side of the family has been here for several hundred years.
Speaker 3:Came over in the late mid 1650s I think a long time so it was like okay, now I think the Welsh part is true, but the name morphed. That's because there is no X in.
Speaker 2:Gaelic.
Speaker 3:It doesn't exist. There's no X, so what? It can't be Welsh Plus there's a.
Speaker 2:There's a constant and a valid to each other.
Speaker 3:That doesn't happen in Gaelic, come on, so sorry to all the Gaelic listeners. Of course it does. I'm just maligning it. However it's, we have not quite figured it out. It's why, what, the why and where for of the name is tough, so but yeah, it is family name.
Speaker 2:So do people botch your name a lot?
Speaker 3:Yes, People who have hired me, known me for years, and when your client introduces you as Z because that's most common you cannot tactfully correct them. Right then you can correct them and people can be empowered to do whatever they wish. But I often find that that just makes you look like a turkey. So you do have to find a tactful way of correcting them, sort of without them feeling very embarrassed, because you don't embarrass the people who pay you.
Speaker 3:usually you want to be right, tactful and help everyone along, but also stand up for yourself. So I usually people will ask how do you say that? They just say, they say the letters and then say well, I figured I shouldn't even try and I'm like actually you, you succeeded.
Speaker 1:Is that right?
Speaker 2:Exactly and when.
Speaker 3:I can. I write it out like I tell people. So if you go to my Facebook, you'll see that it has a little how to say like people do pronunciation. Yeah, so that yes and there's the occasional east coast person who has that oh, the dreaded G effect that when there's an X it's a G because, they do say exit out there.
Speaker 3:I do not understand it. My stepdad, my, my ador, he does say the G occasionally, but not with my name. He is very good, very good. There's no XZ, because that's, that's does not need to happen. I do not love that. He keeps his X's clear when it's me. So I appreciate that. I love it.
Speaker 2:I love that and I just love it Like XZ, it just sounds so. It just sounds so fun. I like it and I never hear it.
Speaker 3:I don't know most people don't love their own name. It's like liking your own hair.
Speaker 2:I understand. I do not love my own hair.
Speaker 3:Nobody likes their own hair and I hate my name, I just do. I've never liked it. And when I told my mom hey, I think I'm going to change my name to this sometime in the last I don't know adult number of years, and she was very upset. She doesn't get upset about many things, but no, this was a very deliberate choice on their part and luckily it didn't take, so I didn't have to fight that battle anymore. I tried, and then everybody called me something else because I asked them to for like a day and I thought, okay, that ship has sailed and I am just gonna stay with XZ because I just it feels too weird.
Speaker 2:It felt too weird to change, so my name is Kelly with an I, and so people are always like oh, is that Kelly with a Y, kelly with an IE, and I'm like it all sounds the same. I don't really don't care how you spell it. I'm like that was my mom. My mom spelled it that way. It all sounds the same. I really don't care and they're like oh, it matters. It's like, okay, whatever whatever you know that's Kelly with an I then it doesn't matter for you.
Speaker 2:Alright, then, like she just had to be difficult, you know, as mothers do.
Speaker 3:She said oh, I wish I had thought of ecstasy. This is just the letters, not she's thinking of the drug. This is a very long time ago. She said this and all I could think was are you kidding? No, no, thanks, mom, thank, I'm so thankful. Okay, I'm liking XZ now, because I that would have been worse. No. No, no, no the teasing was, you know in high school was I had many nicknames and there's only one word that actually rhymes with my name. And so yes, being called, you got called that often.
Speaker 2:I was wondering about that, mostly because sexy XZ? Yes, because I wasn't so.
Speaker 3:Had I been like you know the classic whatever is considered sexy, I do not think they would have called me that. But yes, so of course they did so. Yeah, that was yeah and no one.
Speaker 2:Your mom must have been a I love child, right? If she wanted to name you ecstasy.
Speaker 3:She was actually like the the beginning of tail end. She was a 49 baby, but I was born in 70 so she was in full but she was only 21.
Speaker 2:Full force, yes, so for sure, that's what I'm saying. Like her, like the, like the. Probably the peak of her life was when all that wood stuff was going on.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and yep, they were definitely flower power and all that, and oh my goodness Love it. Did your parents have hyrax? I still have some of that hyrax, but yes, you know I love.
Speaker 2:I'm such a sucker for that stuff I collect I love it.
Speaker 3:And oh my god, the day that I broke my four cup glass pyrex measuring cup was a sad day. Those are so expensive to get now. I love them. I still have a couple of very original corning. Wear too the little blue flower.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's great, all these silly things.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:Well, xz, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and chatting with me. This is seriously is a dream come true for me to meet you and I look forward to just continuing to listen to your voice for years.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for listening and thank you for having me on and say hello to your family. For me it's it's. I thank you for sharing time and space of the of your lovely podcast. I got to listen to some of it Not this one, obviously.
Speaker 2:It's not out there yet, but you and your son, and it was just so delightful, and I am honored to get to participate in that. However, I love it. Thank you so much. You have a lovely night.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you All right, don't go anywhere. Wasn't she lovely? Yeah, I told you one of the best humans ever. After our interview, we chatted for a while and it was just, it was lovely. I was honestly like I don't know if you noticed, but I was really sick when we did that interview, but I did not want to reschedule it and I was sick. Yeah, not right now, but when I did that interview and we didn't do video, so I just was like the whole time and I sounded all plugged up, and I mean worse than right now and stuffy, so I had to some of the editing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of the edits I like had to like just cut out the really the yeah, oh my god. So gross. Do you have a? Would you rather for me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not the best, but here.
Speaker 2:It is because you always put in so much work here. Yeah, okay, I do. Okay, you ready, I'm ready.
Speaker 1:I've been ready. I don't know if you guys know what the the cinnamon challenges. Okay, we'll explain it. So it's like a challenge where you like put like a spoonful of cinnamon in your mouth and it's like really dry so you can't like swallow or anything, and just really hard to like swallow. But you don't know that right when you put it in your mouth, yeah yeah, it's just kind of miserable, basically.
Speaker 2:You think it's like oh yeah, I could do this. Yeah, and it's really hard. It's like miserable.
Speaker 1:Basically, you can't swallow or anything because it's all dry, it is you like coach your mouth.
Speaker 2:and then, yeah, do you kind of like inhale some of the like?
Speaker 1:powder. Yeah, sometimes Does that make you cool. I mean sometimes yeah, you go.
Speaker 2:Okay, I refuse to do it so anyway, all right, so now you know what that is, so would you rather do the cinnamon challenge test?
Speaker 1:Cinnamon challenge or drink salt water. Salt water seems it's exactly what it sounds like. It's water with a bunch of salt in it and it's really terrible. It's a bad. I would pick the salt water. I'm doing a cinnamon challenge. It's not as bad as it is. You don't have to do. All you could do is just put it in your mouth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but do you have to rinse your mouth out? Do you get to rinse your mouth out as part of the cinnamon challenge test?
Speaker 1:No, you just swallow. All you got to do is just salt water is actually good for you.
Speaker 2:So I just what I would just how is it good for you I? Don't know it tastes so bad. It does taste bad. It's good for your sinuses too. Oh, all right, are you? Ready for the funniest joke you've heard in a long time. Yeah, let's hear it. Okay Now I just want to let you know. When I was reading this joke, when I was pre-reading it before we started recording, I laughed out loud. When I remembered the joke I was going to tell Okay, so you're ready for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm ready. What? Six inches long and has two nuts at the end.
Speaker 1:I don't know what is it.
Speaker 2:An almond joy. What Did you? Were you thinking it was a wiener?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's an almond joy.
Speaker 1:That makes sense though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a six inches long.
Speaker 1:It's a candy bar and has two nuts at the end. How does it have two nuts in it?
Speaker 2:Well it has a lot of them, but there's two at the end also, next time you have an almond joy and almond jaw. Next time you have an almond joy, there's like nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts. On the top.
Speaker 1:Huh.
Speaker 2:Like two nuts. Two nuts, just so you know. All right, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes don't. Oh my god, almond joys, have nuts mounts, don't Okay.
Speaker 1:Do you say mounts don't yeah.
Speaker 2:Mounds is the other.
Speaker 1:Can't you know what that is? Yeah, I know Mounds is yeah.
Speaker 2:They're like the same candy but one has almond joys have nuts mounts, don't yeah? That was a commercial when I was a kid. Actually, yeah, did you think I just made that jingle up? Dang oldie, were you probably were you thinking like damn mom, you should be a jingle writer, you're so good.
Speaker 1:No, I thought you were rhyming.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, well, that doesn't rhyme, but thanks.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know, just I don't, I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 2:Probably just. You're never surprised with me, so what I was.
Speaker 1:I didn't think you'd say that.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, all right. All right, we will be back next week and actually next we are going to be talking to.
Speaker 1:Actually, we probably will be back next month because oh yeah, because it's leap year this week. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Thursday is February 29th, and that only happens once every do you know?
Speaker 1:year, four years. Oh yeah, that's why it's called a leap year. Yeah, leap every other at work.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't want to have their babies on Thursday because they don't want to have a leap day baby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know yeah, do you?
Speaker 2:know anyone who has a leap day birthday? Nope, nope, all right Well.
Speaker 1:It'd be bad though.
Speaker 2:Well, you would age less.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You'd only turn one every four years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, it's miserable.
Speaker 2:So how old would you be? 15 divided by four? I'd be, I'd be like three. Yeah, almost, you'd almost be.
Speaker 1:I almost four yeah.
Speaker 2:Sixteen, you'd be four, oh yeah Before. Yeah, yeah, we're good at math over here.
Speaker 1:I mean it's three, four and five technically.
Speaker 2:Yes, sure, that's fine.
Speaker 1:So three and a half.
Speaker 2:So next week we have Christine and Peter O'Keefe from the shoot from, oh my gosh the Mary Moon Foundation, and they host which we need to talk about this the shoot for the moon event, the poop shoot, and that's where we go to Nickelodeon universe with the early in the morning with the wristbands. So you have to figure out what friend you want to bring, because we already got tickets.
Speaker 1:Jackson.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, you better figure that out with him and so we can get that scheduled. Because he's going to have to spend the night, we have to leave super early.
Speaker 1:He's a bum.
Speaker 2:I know, I know he's a bum. I love him. All right, see y'all later.
Speaker 1:Bye, have a great night.