Guest Post: Tami Charles on Recording the Muted Audiobook
Guest Post from Tami Charles, Author of Muted!
Confession: When I wrote Muted, I never intended to actually do anything with the lyrics in the book. Why? Because I don’t sing anymore. I’m a mom and a wife who happily writes books in my basement with the occasional spider.
But, when I was a teenager, I was in an all-girl, R&B singing group. Those were the days! We had our moment. It was fun. When we didn’t hit the big time, we packed it up and started “adulting.”
Life went on. . .
Enter the bully. AKA my best friend, fellow author, Steph B. Jones. She was there from the beginning. She did my hair when my singing group performed for Boyz II Men, styled me to the gods for my photo shoot with 112, and knew every lyric to every song on my singing group’s demo. Stephanie was there for the rollercoaster ride that my singing group and I experienced in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Her: You better sing the songs for the audiobook! I said what I said!
Me: long, melodramatic sigh…
So there I was, during the pandemic summer of 2020, in my parents’ Shohola, PA basement, writing song melodies…just like Denver Lafleur. It was the gift I didn’t realize I needed. An escape from the hurt that ravaged the world. A welcome embrace of nostalgia of the sweetest years with my girls.
Of course, I had to sing the songs and share it with readers. This was my art. My literal “heartbeat” in a beat.
Writing (and performing) Muted stretched me in ways both uncomfortable and beautiful. I enjoyed every second of recording with Scholastic Audio. The folks at John Marshall Media understood my intention from the beginning—to make Muted feel like part spoken word, part album.
Add in their superb Covid-safety practices and I was right in my comfort zone. I hope you enjoy listening to Muted as much I enjoyed recording it.
And last but not least: Thank you, bestie, for always bullying me to do my best.
You can listen to an excerpt of the Muted audiobook and download your copy here!
