Charity Terry-Lorenzo

Middle-grade fiction, 1st person POV; tween girl, young boy, mom; narrative and dialogue.

Could their new house be haunted?

Middle-grade humor, fiction, 3rd person narrative, multi-character dialogue.

Four siblings agree on an outing.

Humor, fiction, 1st person narrative, FF dialogue.

Corporate piracy meets real piracy.

YA Mystery-Thriller, fiction, 1st-person narrative.

Dia meets someone unexpected in the woods.

Mystery-Thriller, fiction, 3rd person narrative.

An alarming discovery on a quiet morning.

Mystery-Detective/police procedural, fiction, 3rd person narrative and dialogue.

An interview takes a turn.

Self-help, 1st person.

Commentary on aging and the positives about middle-age.

Action-Adventure, fiction, 3rd person narrative.

Harrowing moments in a kayak in the Arctic.

Religious, nonfiction, 1st person.

A non-Muslim’s experience of the Qur’an.

Social Sciences & Gender Studies, nonfiction.

A surprising motivation to perform empathy.

The long version of my Audiobook Narrator Origin Story:

When I was in fifth grade, a storyteller visiting our San Diego classroom. I don’t remember what story she told, but I remember her billowy shirt and the way that she leaned in as she spoke, making it seem like she was telling the story to each of us individually. I thought, “I want to do that, too.”

So I, a child often rendered speechless by my shyness, set about trying to find a way to be a storyteller.

First, I turned to writing. I enjoyed writing my own stories but aside from writing workshops, I rarely found opportunities to read them aloud, which was what I really craved. In high school, I joined the Forensics team but between my self-consciousness and my allergy to direct competition, I didn’t stay with it for long. I auditioned for plays in high school and college and was always on the fringes of the drama crowd, but my reticence to be vulnerable in acting classes during my adolescence made it difficult to build my skills.

In my early adulthood, I kept writing and in my work and volunteer roles, finagled my way onto committees that allowed me to engage in public speaking. I found that although I needed to wear a blazer whenever I spoke to hide how much I sweated, I really enjoyed the rush of eliciting emotion from a crowd with my words.

Then I became a parent, and I funneled my nascent love of performing into reading books aloud to my offspring.

The first book I ever read aloud to my elder kid was The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara by Janet Lang and James Blight, a nontraditional pick to read to a four-week-old, perhaps, but somehow it made sense in those first weeks postpartum. After the fog of the postpartum period faded, I moved on to more traditional picks for children: Beverly Cleary, Sandra Boynton, Linda Sue Park, and on from there through babyhood, toddlerhood, and into big-kidhood, moving onto more complex tales as my children matured.

When I wasn’t reading aloud, the three of us listened to audiobooks, and this exposed all of us to the art of audiobook narration and the skills of many incredible narrators, and I took those lessons into my read-alouds with my children and later as a volunteer with classrooms of early elementary students.

After my children were older and more autonomous, I decided that I wanted to get serious about building a career out of audiobook narration and voice acting. I started supplementing what I’d learned from listening to audiobooks with classes and coaching from skilled professionals. I found that there’s always something new to learn and so many ways to deepen and improve my performances, which helps keep the work new and fresh even after long hours in my home studio.

I love getting to know a text intimately and exploring ways of experiencing the emotions of the words and conveying that emotion with my voice. My favorite parts of narration at the moment are voicing arguments between two or more characters and finding all of the many ways of saying, “ugh!”

I’ve found—somewhat to my surprise—that even in my home studio without the immediate feedback of a live audience, I get a similar sense of satisfaction to speaking live but without as much of the rush. And since I still love the rush and it’s a great way to build my skills, I attend live narration and voice acting workshops at least once a month.

I enjoy narrating cozy mystery, closed-door romance, and middle-grade and YA stories. I also love domestic horror and the paranormal (I was the kid in elementary school who read all of Poe’s works, including the weird “buried alive” stuff), and would love a chance to narrate some scaries!