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Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-rator™

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Recordings

The Christmas Present

11 December 2016

My super-talented and energetic narrator friend Xe Sands had this wonderful idea:

December…the time to give thanks for those things that have sustained us through the past year. For narrators, a huge part of that is YOU, the listening community! As we wind down 2016, we want to give back to you, our listeners, who help make our job so rewarding, and who travel with us on each audiobook journey. SO! Over 60 narrators have partnered to bring you FROM THE HEART – recordings of poetry, essays, stories, excerpts, songs, etc. – throughout the month of December.

I’m so thrilled to be among this group of exceptional narrators and offer you a free reading! Today, I present “The Christmas Present” by Richmal Crompton. In this short (11:55) Christmas tale from 1922, Mary learns that the best presents don’t cost a thing.


Thanks to Xe for spearheading this project and to a favorite audiobook blogger Jennifer Connor at the Literate Housewife blog for her generous publicity of this project throughout December. I encourage you to visit Jennifer’s site to catch up on narrators and their readings from earlier in the month, as well as those to come.
Happy holidays!

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Narrators, Recordings, Short stories Tagged With: audiobook, Christmas, From The Heart, Jennifer Connor, Literate Housewife, narrator, Richmal Crompton, short story, Xe Sands

Bly vs Bisland: The Story Behind the Story (Part 1)

16 July 2015

Every now and again, we get a Divine whisper of an inspired idea. Such was the case about a very special and exciting audiobook I created and produced earlier this year.

In 1889, Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland were female reporters in New York. Each went on a daring solo trip around the world at the same time. Nellie wanted to beat the time of Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s fictional character in Around The World in 80 Days. Rival reporter Elizabeth Bisland left on a solo race around the world hoping to beat Nellie’s time!

Nellie sailed east to England in the morning. That night, and unbeknownst to Nellie, Elizabeth took a train west to San Francisco. In Bly vs Bisland: Beating Phileas Fogg In A Race Around The World, I combined the narratives from both women into a single book with 1 timeline! Who will win the race?!


My journal entries tell Part 1 of the story behind the story between idea and implementation.
[Read more…] about Bly vs Bisland: The Story Behind the Story (Part 1)

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Books, Narrators, New releases, Recordings, This Date in My History, Voice-Over Tagged With: 1889, audiobook, Elizabeth Bisland, inspired idea, journal, journalists, Jules Verne, Melissa Reizian Frank, Nellie Bly, New York, Phileas Fogg, race around the world, reporters, solo female travelers

How to Embed a Soundcloud Sample in a WordPress Blog

29 November 2014

With more voice artists sharing their recordings on Soundcloud, I thought it might be helpful to share some steps for embedding the Soundcloud player in a WordPress blog.

First, go to the user’s profile on Soundcloud.

Click the Share button (circled below) on the track or playlist that you want to embed.

On the next screen, choose the Embed tab and check the box for WordPress code. I choose the large player on the left of the 3 sizes shown and make a modification to the code pasted in WordPress, which I’ll explain shortly.

Copy the code from Soundcloud and paste it in the Visual tab your WordPress post.

Note that this code gives you a large picture and player like this:

If you pick the middle player on the Soundcloud embed screen, your player is smaller, but your image may not look pretty.

The player on the right side of the embed screen displays a thin strip of the artwork and is so unsatisfactory in appearance that I don’t even want to include it here.

My blog would crash on an iPad if I had more than one of those large players.

I therefore manually change the code for the large player in my WordPress post so that my player looks like Soundcloud’s original small player. I also like that the cover art is fully represented in the small player.

To make your code for the large player look this way, make these 2 changes to the Soundcloud code that you pasted into WordPress:

&visual=false   (default was true)

height=166       (default was 450)

For an example of a finished post, check out this article, which includes 3 small players.
 

Filed Under: Business, Marketing, Narrators, Recordings Tagged With: recordings, Soundcloud, voiceover, WordPress

Winter 2014 Audiobook Releases

7 May 2014

I’ve got several recent releases to post, so you might want to get a cup of coffee and relax!

Earlier this year, I published The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, one of the leaders in the New Thought movement in the early 20th century.

This short book was first published over 100 years ago, but Wilcox offers advice for living a better and more spiritual life that is still practical today. Wilcox suggests ways to change your thinking and specific actions to take in order to feel better about yourself and improve your life.

For instance, have you ever noticed that the more you talk about being sick, the illness worsens and stays with you for a longer period of time?

I’m especially proud of this book because it is the first publication for my new audiobook company Jewel Audiobooks! Jewel Audiobooks will specialize in self-development and travel treasures and long-hidden gems of fiction.


 
Fans of Melissa F. Miller’s Sasha McCandless legal thriller series will be happy to know that book 5, Improper Influence is now in audio!

In this book, Sasha meets forensic pathologist Bodhi King, who asks her help in solving a case where young, healthy women in Pittsburgh are dying. In determining the cause of deaths, Bodhi also becomes a target.

Meanwhile, Sasha is working on a legal case involving corruption and another with a breach of contract. Could these cases be related to the deaths?

As if she didn’t have enough on her plate, her hunky fiancé is getting antsy about planning their wedding.

It’s never a dull moment in this series!


 
I had the honor of narrating Mary Potter Kenyon’s Chemo-Therapist: How Cancer Saved a Marriage .

When Kenyon’s husband David contracted oral cancer, she looked for books and inspirational stories to help them get through the experience. She lets the listener know early on that her husband DID NOT DIE from his cancer treatments as she wanted to provide hope to those who are ill or caregivers for cancer patients.

She wrote with honesty and frankness about the state of their marriage at the time of his diagnosis and their steps to become closer as he went through treatments.

She also discussed the effect that his treatments and the couple’s re-commitment to each other had on their 8 children.

I wanted to narrate it because so many people are in a similar situation. I think this book can offer hope and encouragement to people who need it most.


 
Just in time for pool season, I’m delighted to announce that the Dixie Divas — your favorite summertime companions — are back with book 5 in this funny, cosy mystery series, Divas Do Tell .

You’ve heard of the book The Help? Well, this isn’t that book….but Holly Springs, MS resident and sister to one of the Divas Dixie Lee Forsythe was inspired by that book to write one of her own!

Bitty Hollandale and other own residents were upset about the publication of Dixie Lee’s tell-all Dark Secrets Under the Holly due to its thinly-veiled descriptions of townspeople. They were even more upset about the movie version…..that is, until they found out they could be IN the movie! Of course, wherever the Divas are, murders seem to follow.

It’s a fabulous day when I get to voice the dialogue between the main characters Bitty Hollandale and Trinket Truevine! I’m thrilled to learn that author Virginia Brown is already at work on book 6!


 
My latest release is Two Shades of Morning by Janice Daugharty. It falls in the category of literary fiction.

A woman looks back to the early 1960s and tells us about her relationships with her next-door neighbor. At the time, our narrator Earlene was 19, married, and accustomed to being the prettiest girl in her little N. Florida town.

Nothing changed — yet everything changed — the day her friend and neighbor Robert Dale Sharpe brought home his pretty new wife, Sibil.

“Nobody ever believed much about Sibyl Sharpe, least of all that she would die, and yet death is the first thing I heard about her.”

With an opening line like that, you know there are secrets to be kept and others exposed!


 
All of these books are great listens for those summer road trips and lounging by the pool. Enjoy!
 

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Books, Narrators, New releases, Recordings, Voice-Over Tagged With: audiobook, Dixie Divas, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, fiction, humor, Janice Daugharty, Jewel Audiobooks, legal thriller, literary fiction, Mary Potter Kenyon, Melissa F. Miller, memoir, Sasha McCandless, Southern, Virginia Brown

Advice to the Love-Shorn Recorded for Going Public Project

27 December 2013

Advice to the Love Shorn, where celebrity characters dish about their relationships!

Today’s topic: How a Heroine Can Beat Up Thugs Without Emasculating Her Man

Author Melissa F. Miller, who writes the Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller series for which I narrate the audiobooks, recently posted this blurb on Facebook:
The always-entertaining Barbara Silkstone invites Sasha, of all people, to give relationship advice on her blog: 

http://barbswire-ebooksandmore.blogspot.com/p/advice-to-love-shorn.html

Luckily, the recipient of said advice is also a fictional character. 🙂

When I read this delightful interview between 2 heroines, I thought the audiobook narrators of these 2 series should get in on the fun and bring our characters to life!

Meiissa loved the idea and gave me permission to narrate her words, so I contacted Nicole Colburn, narrator of the Wendy Darlin Tomb Raider series. Nicole and author Barbara Silkstone also were very enthusiastic about Nicole voicing Wendy’s parts. My husband, director, and fellow narrator Drew Commins plays the emcee, Kraft Masterson.

The Wendy Darlin Tomb Raider series written by Barbara Silkstone and narrated by Nicole Colburn is available at Audible at this link.

The Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller series written by Melissa F. Miller and narrated by Karen Commins is available on Audible at this link.


 

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Going Public, Narrators, Recordings Tagged With: audiobook, Barbara Silkstone, characters, Drew Commins, interview, Melissa F. Miller, Nicole Colburn, Sasha McCandless, Wendy Darlin

“Dear Elected Official” Recorded for Going Public Project

4 October 2013

Before transitioning to fulltime voiceover and audiobook narration at the beginning of last year, I worked an entire other career with the federal government.

 

As a federal employee for over 3 decades, I was used to hearing about the bickering and being subjected to the whims of Congress. The federal government runs on an October-September fiscal year. Every summer, we would wonder when the Agency budget would be passed so that we could make our budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. Even simple things like supply orders to get more printer paper could not be submitted without funding.

 

Government shutdowns were threatened many times over the course of my long career. The news people say a 3-week shutdown occurred in the ’90s, but my friends and I don’t remember being out of work for 3 weeks. We only remember being furloughed for a few days, so we think our Agency appropriations bill was finalized ahead of others.

 

If you’ll pardon a tangent, let me just say that everyone I knew worked extremely hard and undertook their tasks with seriousness and great efficiency. Those who say that government employees are lazy and inefficient have never worked there! Most of the government employees have college or even advanced degrees and are doing highly specialized work.

 

Furthermore, the American public does not understand that the term non-essential employee does NOT mean that the employee does not have an important, necessary, and valuable job to do. (As the Washington Post reported last week, the term has cut deep into the morale of the federal workforce, which has been repeatedly trampled on by Congress: over 3 years of frozen pay, limited hiring ability, and numerous furlough days this year due to the Sequester.) It is really an old term used to indicate exceptions in the event of a furlough due to financial reasons or those who must report during an emergency. I saw a comment from a manager at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who is furloughed during the shutdown. He noted that your views of how essential his job is might depend on your proximity to a nuclear facility.

 

Anyway, while we eventually did get paid for the period we were unable to work during a shutdown, we had no guarantee of payment. We were always fearful that we wouldn’t be paid. We also wouldn’t know when we would be called back to work. It’s not like you would go on a vacation when a shutdown loomed. By the way, almost ONE MILLION people across the country are furloughed this week. The longer the shutdown lasts, the bigger the hit to the US economy from all those workers who are not getting paid and therefore not spending money.

 

In addition, even the threat of a shut down meant a tremendous loss of productivity, which is a complete waste of tax dollars. You can’t go about your day as normal if you think you have to shutter the operations for an undetermined period of time. I was in IT, and we had to take extra measures (which used more tax dollars) to do things like run back-up tapes early and ship them off-site before the regularly scheduled day. The fact that Congress invariably would pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) at 11:59pm on the deadline day would make you all too aware of your position as a pawn in their game.

 

To continue with our civics lesson, both branches of Congress have to enact a budget. However, they have not done so in recent years, instead passing successive CRs to keep the government operational.

 

Congress could pass a CR this time just like it has many, MANY times in the past, but certain factions in the House are insisting that the Affordable Care Act  (ACA) be defunded before agreeing to pass the CR. The ACA is a law, not a negotiation point in the budget process. If they want to change or repeal the law, they should follow established procedures like they have tried to do over 40 other times for this one law. The Supreme Court has even declared this law to be constitutional, yet some people are as obsessed over this one law as my dog is over chasing chipmunks.

 

Even before I left the government, I endured numerous rounds of these politically-created crises, though none seemed quite as contentious and divisive as this one. I didn’t voice my opinions to my Congress people for a few reasons:

 

1) I didn’t think I could make a difference.

2) I didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize my job.

3) Just thinking about Congress not doing THE MAIN THING it is supposed to do gives me a headache.

 

Since I am now a freelance voice talent, one of these reasons is no longer valid. I still may get headaches and not be able to make a difference, but I’ve decided I will be silent no longer!

 

As I was adding my comments to the Facebook page for Saxby Chambliss, one of my US Senators from Georgia, I found this letter from The American Taxpayer in a previous response and recorded it for the Going Public Project.

 

No matter how you voted or what you think about the current issue, we can all find common ground over the fact that taxpayers pay the salaries of those in Congress. Perhaps it’s time we taxpayers start looking for people who can work together to get the job done. If you agree, please share this message and recording with your networks.

 

I have always focused this blog on the topics of voiceover, audiobooks, and marketing. I promise to get back to those topics in my next article and truly appreciate your indulgence in reading my only political post in over 7 years of writing this blog.

 

Just remember:

“United we stand, divided we fall”

— Aesop

 

 

 

Filed Under: Away From the Mic, Going Public, Narrators, Recordings, Voice-Over Tagged With: ACA, Affordable Care Act, audiobook, Congress, Continuing Resolution, CR, Going Public Project, narrator, Saxby Chambliss

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Karen@KarenCommins.com

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