As part of the reading process I create character voices and figure out how many different voices I need to have. In The Hot Mess I had 46 different characters (yes I counted) to create. Now to be fair this does include the narrator and all the characters who just had one line, like the gardener who found a body and said "Dios Mio!"
One more thing I have to do before I start the recording process is to make sure that I know how to pronounce all the words. Before I started this job I had no idea how many words that I know the meaning of, that I have no clue how to say. Words like autumnal, lasciviously, and obeisance. Another challenge is if the words are in another language. In Learning How to Swim, the chapter titles and a few scattered words were in Gaelic. In this case the author of the book, Annie Cosby, helped me out and sent an MP3 of someone saying all the chapter titles in Gaelic correctly. All I had to do was listen and copy what they said.
Up next recording...