Driving with Dashti
For information about our July 19 Writing for Charity event, click here.
Full Cast Audio has done it again. They produce the audio books for all my young adult books, and I've never been anything but button-bursting pleased. This time they tackled book of a thousand days. This one was unique because it's my only book in first person, and since Full Cast does age appropriate casting, that meant that the entire book would be narrated by a young voice. Who could be up to that challenge?
Chelsea Mixon, of course. She took my breath away with her wonderful performance as Enna in enna burning, now her Dashti is equally brilliant. And yes, she is a teenager. What a talent. In addition, she had to sing Dashti's healing songs, which she did beautifully and lovingly.
It's always an extraordinary gift to get to listen to the audio book of one of my own. It's like seeing it for the first time as a reader instead of the writer, really getting to experience the story for the first time. I loved it. What a relief to hear those words and not cringe with regrets. I worked very hard on this book and I'm still inordinately pleased with how it turned out.
Listening to the audio book, I was reminded again about what a huge risk it was to do this story in the first place. I mean, start a book by locking up the main character in a windowless/doorless tower? Are you insane? And leaving her there for nearly half the book? That's a Creative Writing 101 no-no. I remember during those years when I was thinking about this story, outlining and taking notes, really questioning myself if I could do this. I knew it was a stupid idea. But the story haunted me so much I had to try. One of the trickiest parts of the rewrites was finding a balance, how much time to spend in the tower, how much of their daily lives to tell. I could have written hundreds of pages. I knew so much about Dashti and Saren, I was so interested in their lives. Finding how little to tell can be more challenging than writing volumes.
It was a challenge, but ultimately this story was a joy to write and experience. And re-experience thanks to Full Cast Audio.