Rennie has a voice!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am so very pleased to announce that the search is officially over. My dear Rennie, main character of Drawn In has a voice!! I’m thrilled to introduce you to the sweet and talented woman who will bring Rennie to life via audio book: Julianne Lawson.

 

The last time I worked with Julianne, I think she was probably twelve. Although I haven’t worked with her since, I invited her to audition for the role and I was absolutely blown away by what she was able to bring to a simple reading. Her voice is sweet and pleasant with just the perfect touch of quirky, she understands the character(s) and really gets the style and the humor written into the text, and her pacing and instincts are just perfect for this. I couldn’t be more pleased with this match.

My top four choices made this an incredibly difficult decision, but in the end I had to go with my gut. And now we start making an audio book! So so SO excited for this project, I can’t even tell you! (Except I just did.)

Surreal on a Whole New Level

So… this happened.

Yes, that’s a friend of a friend (thank you Dana Yeoman for this!!! And Tom Webster for making this happen!) cosplaying as my main character Rennie. When she tagged me in the first photo, I was like “Hey, that’s cool, she’s reading my book! Probably because she’s also wearing yellow, like Rennie on the cover. So who’s she going as?” And I started looking… yellow sundress, red hair, dagger tied into the sash at her waist… and that’s when I started crying. I was at work, checking my email and facebook feed on my lunch break, sitting at my desk and crying. I was overwhelmed by this. Someone I’ve never even met loves my Rennie. She gets her. She loves her enough to dress as her for an Anime convention in LA, carrying my book around and telling people about it all day long as they asked who she was. How freaking amazing is that?? I never knew that this was on my writer’s bucket list, but seriously… if it’s not on yours, it should be. This is amazing.

I also have to share how she captioned that second picture of her reading in the forest. “In a weird Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey way, Paige (aka Rennie) is reading her own autobiography in the forest to figure out how to travel through parallel universes by using the pages of her book.” Not only brilliant, but she includes a Doctor Who reference. Rennie would be so proud.