A few months ago I announced the exciting news that my Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries were being made into audiobooks.
Since then, my publishers have been working to hire an actor and set up the recordings, and yesterday I was lucky enough to be able to go into the Penguin Random House recording studio, to listen to my books being turned into audio.
I’m completely delighted to be able to tell you now that the stories are being read by Gemma Chan (you might know her from Fresh Meat, Sherlock and Doctor Who, and she’s going to be in Channel 4’s Humans next). She’s pretty much the perfect Hazel, and she makes my books sound unbelievably classy.
My agent, my editor, my publicist and I all descended on the studio together and had the best time possible. We got to see how the recording process works (it’s so much more careful than I was expecting – sometimes each sentence is repeated three or four times, to make sure that each word is clear and the intonation is correct, and the actor is directed to help them get the most out of each phrase), and to listen to Gemma as she read the murder scene from Arsenic for Tea.
Hearing the text spoken was a surprisingly wonderful experience. It suddenly sounded so big and real, like a proper book by a proper author, not one written in bits and pieces on my commuter train and the sofa in my living room.
Below are some pictures I took of the afternoon. The first two audiobooks, Murder Most Unladylike and Arsenic for Tea, will be out some time in the summer, with First Class Murder following soon after – I’ll alert you all as soon as they’re available for purchase! You’re definitely going to want to buy them, even if you’ve already read the books – they really add something amazing to the stories.
