![]() ![]() She’s found success and satisfaction from the inside of a sound booth and it allows her to care for her beloved, ailing grandmother. “These were conscious decisions that I was making.From the author of My Oxford Year, Julia Whelan’s uplifting novel tells the story of a former actress turned successful audiobook narrator-who has lost sight of her dreams after a tragic accident-and her journey of self-discovery, love, and acceptance when she agrees to narrate one last romance novel.įor Sewanee Chester, being an audiobook narrator is a long way from her old dreams, but the days of being a star on film sets are long behind her. ![]() “A lot of the reason that I was recording 70 books a year at the time I was caring for my grandfather is that it was allowing me to get on a plane every few weeks to go visit him and make sure that things were okay,” she says. That’s something Whelan has experienced as well. “Money is not a non-issue and we don’t write about it enough,” says Whelan. Plus, Sewanee’s desire to care for her grandmother prompts career choices that move the book’s plot forward. “I couldn’t think of a better sad version of the tension between fantasy and reality than someone slowly disconnecting from reality in the form of dementia or Alzheimer’s,” she says. Ultimately, though, she thought this experience tied in well with the themes of this story. I thought it would be its own book entirely,” says Whelan. “That’s an experience that I definitely wanted to have the space to write about at some point. Similarly, Whelan had cared for her grandfather who had dementia. “This was this perfect marriage of the things that really animate me,” she says.įor Whelan, one element in “Thank You For Listening” that does draw from her own life is the relationship between Sewanee and her grandmother as the latter’s memory is fading. It was a way she could merge both her actor side and her “book nerd” side. It turned out that Whelan, who had studied English and creative writing in school, was a great fit for the medium. and pounding the pavement, auditioning and tutoring to make ends meet, I was like, what is this job and how does it work and what do I need to do?” ![]() “I knew nothing about audiobooks and I had never listened to one,” Whelan says. Then, at her college graduation, the mother of one of her friends suggested Whelan give audiobook narration a try. People were curious about my job and it seemed like an area that could support an entire book.”Īs a child, Whelan was an on-screen actor she had a starring role on the TV series “Once and Again,” the 1999-2002 series that also featured Evan Rachel Wood, Shane West and Sela Ward among the cast. I felt that audiobooks had become popular enough that I was, as a narrator, getting the same questions all the time. “In the last few years, I felt that had changed. “My one concern was that people didn’t know enough about audiobooks to care about the people that make them,” says Whelan, who initially conceived of the plot – a rom-com set against the romance audiobook landscape – roughly a decade ago. Having spent years narrating audiobooks has given Whelan loads of insight on a world that many may not recognize, however. Related: Sign up for our free newsletter about books, authors, reading and more But they are things and worlds that I know,” says Whelan by phone from the studio at her home in the Coachella Valley, “I’m doing the old adage of writing what you know, but that doesn’t mean that I’m writing me.” “Both books have had a component to them that could be seen as biographical – and they weren’t. But the confusion between the fictional world she creates as a writer and her real-life work as a narrator is understandable the same kind of confusion also came up with Whelan’s first novel, “My Oxford Year.” She’s read hundreds of titles and has won multiple awards for her work. Like the protagonist in her new novel “Thank You for Listening,” author Julia Whelan is a star narrator of audiobooks. ![]()
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