CassAsks - Bailey Carr (Patreon)

One of the most exciting aspects of both my professional and personal life over the last year has been getting to know some more people in the community.

Relevant to this post, Monica and I met Bailey Carr in P-Town for women's week, when she, Lori, Marisa, and Quinn did the live readings for our books. Since then, we've gotten to know her a lot better, and she is - frankly - a delight.

She has over 600 titles under her belt with different nom de plumes, (including the hugely acclaimed A Good Girls Guide to Murder US series). But, as a lesbian, she's been actively working on making a bigger name for herself in the sapphic romance world in the last couple of years.

I am (personally) excited to see her flourish (and... mayhaps... there will be a collab on patreon...?)

You can follow her on IG here.

She's a peach, who decided to both answer the prompts in audio and then did the transcription here as well:

1. I knew from a young age how much I loved to write and that I wanted this to be my world.  Can you tell me more about how you got into narrating?

Sure! So I studied acting at NYU Tisch, and Audible Studios which is based in Newark has a relationship with NYU where they’re always looking for new talent, so they held a workshop for graduating seniors, and going to to that workshop guaranteed you an audition out in Newark at their HQ, and I got my first book from that, and the rest is history! 

2. What was your first fandom you ever joined (if you were into a fandom)? Did you read fic for it?  

So yes and no. So I was the kinda girl who would go at midnight for release days to Borders (RIP) for releases of (Harry Potter) books. Obviously I find the author’s rhetoric horrendous and have lost affection for the series because of it because Trans rights are human rights! But I would devour those books, gotta say, they were a formative part of my childhood. I never found fic for it though so I really missed out. 

3. What have you learned about yourself through your work?

Ok so I’ve learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to admin. So like writing, narrating is really running a small business and you wear all the hats. It requires a remarkable number of nuanced emails! And scheduling, and attention to detail, and script prep. Not to mention bookkeeping, and keeping up with social media and promo. So yeah learned a lot about myself and juggling everything that it takes to run a business. But my favorite part of my work is what I get to do at the mic. 

4. What is your favorite part about narrating?

So big picture, getting to perform as a full-time job is just such a privilege! But in the day to day, I’m the type of reader who “sees” books cinematically in her head, so I love when I can get into the flow state and sort of watch the show and direct it as I’m creating it. Also getting to play so many characters I’d never be cast as in any other performance medium is so fun. 

5.  What is the most difficult part about narrating a book? Making sure you get the correct tone, doing different voices… I can only imagine. 

I would say the most difficult part is sort of just technical because voices are so weird and unpredictable. Like you know those few times a year when you catch a cold, or worse, those are you know times that are are an inconvenience for most jobs, but it can really fuck your life up as a narrator! Also sometimes you can feel 100% better and your voice is still MIA for a week. Also, some days I have less access than others to my lower register, which makes me have sort of like a start and stop process and I have to re-do lines more often for certain characters. Also, I always say audiobook narration is athletic acting - it’s a marathon and it requires a lot of physical and mental stamina, I can’t have the TV on or scroll while I work. And also in film and theater, you get to workshop the material or deliver several takes, but most of the time I have to deliver all the words in order with nothing extra, so there are all these million micro decisions when I’m narrating, and I have to make sense of every sentence, and I really try to put my back into it! So yeah, I think it’s a little more challenging than some people might imagine. 

6. Do you ever read a book and think something along the lines of damn, I would love to narrate this? If so – and if you are willing – which book(s)?!

Ok this feels like a trap, because all of my colleagues narrate all the books that I would read so I would never want to take anything away from anyone, there are enough books for everyone! But… if pressed, I would honestly say I woulda loved to narrate SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO! I listened to it, and my friend and colleague Robin Miles did a fucking legendary job, it was amazing, please listen to it… but I’m big on authentic representation so I do wish they’d given a queer person a shot with that title. And I would do a delicious Celia St James.

7. What is your favorite food/meal of the day?

I wake up hungry! So I like breakfast. I will never turn down a breakfast sandwich or anything with a biscuit. Or a bean burrito from Taco Bell. 

8. What was the first work you ever voiced? 

The first project I ever got to work on was for Audible Studios and it was a novella called WORTH THE RISK by Meryl Sawyer and it was in a collection called Stories of the Heart. But please don’t listen to it! I have almost no recollection of recording it, I think I blacked out, and narration is a skill you sharpen through hundreds of hours of doing it. But yeah, I recorded it almost 14 years ago at the end of 2011. 

9. Do you have any favorite characters you’ve voiced? Why?

Ok I’m gonna give you 3:

Liz in JUST AS YOU ARE by Camille Kellogg, I will stump for this book forever, it’s billed as the L Word in NYC and it’s just so fresh and contemporary and plugged-in to sapphic culture in NYC today, and I just loved it. Even if you don’t listen to it, read it!

Samuel and Frances in a book called LOVESICK BLOSSOMS by Julia Watts, it’s a sapphic historical fiction set in 1950s Kentucky that will break your heart.

And then my forever fav is not sapphic, but it’s a character named Pip, Pippa Fitz-Amobi, in the book A GOOD GIRLS GUIDE TO MURDER by Holly Jackson, it became a Netflix series last year. It’s a 4 book series and it is a true crime mixed with sort of like a meta-podcast in the series, it’s really cool. Also I justget Pip and her hyperfixations and unwavering need for justice and her sort of like Chaotic Good alignment. Love that series.

10. What book got you into reading sapphic romance? Did you start reading the genre as a sapphic reader who enjoys romances or as a narrator?

So the downside of being a narrator is that it sucks all the life out of reading for pleasure, and I started narrating right out of college, so I really got into the genre as a narrator. I think the first sapphic romance I narrated was SOME GIRLS DO by Jennifer Dugan, love that book. I had just had my heart absolutely demolished by a beautiful woman, and narrating that really helped me through. My favorite part about narrating sapphic romance is that I wish I’d had access to these stories as a kid, it would have changed my life! So it feels purposeful to narrate these stories now. And to lend authentic lived experience to these characters and the stories of my community.

11. What is your process when you’re preparing for a day of work? What does that look like?

Ok so it depends on if I’m working in-studio or from my home studio. If I’m working in-studio that means I wake up early, take care of my pup, maybe shovel down some oatmeal, and commute the hour and a half-ish to a studio in NYC. Sessions usually start around 10am, and we break for lunch around 1ish, and we end anywhere between 4 and 5pm with some breaks in there. But the commutes are totally worth it, I get to work in commercial-grade AC in a commercial-grade quiet booth, I have an engineer who pushes all the buttons for me, and I get to focus on just storytelling. It’s a dream. But I will say it’s also nice to skip the commute and work from home. I have what they call like the Cadillac of booths, it’s called a Studiobricks, but the con is that because of neighbor noise, even in the suburbs, I have to record on the night shift to get reliable quiet. So that means I have my days available for my pup and emails and errands, and then I usually get in the booth around 6 or 7pm and record til midnight, or usually a little later. Sometimes I’ll have a remote engineer on zoom who is on script with me to help me stay on task (aka: babysit me). I’m a fairly accurate reader as far as misreads, but I do have crippling ADHD and I’m very easily distractible. 

12. What is your favorite Taylor Swift song and/or lyric?

Ok so Taylor and I are about the same age and we both spent our teen years growing up in Tennessee both (separately) crying over our guitars. So I was an early Taylor adopter, and I have this one vivid memory of learning the chords to the song Cold As You. And my favorite line from that is “and you come away with a great little story of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you” it hit pretty hard back then. Oh and also cardigan has some bangers “your heartbeat on the Highline, once in twenty lifetimes” holds a certain memory for me, as does the classic  “and when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someones bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite” 

13. Do you ever work on more than one narration at a time? How hard is it to switch between works when you’re done with one?

So I only do this really when I have in-studio projects that are scheduled tightly with home studio projects. It usually only happens when books are sort of under-estimated in their word count, so I have to add time and add days and they overlap. But at the same time I’m always prepping a book or two ahead, so I’m pre-reading and I have a couple stories on my brain burners at all times. It can be a lot of mental juggling but I thrive on variety.  

14. What would you title your auto-biography?

Late With Iced Coffee 

(I heard this somewhere, I stole it from the internet but it’s always felt very fitting)

15. Would you ever consider writing a book? Would you want to narrate it if you did?

Never say never! But I’ve always felt like more of a performer than a writer. 

Ok I think that’s it! This has been CassAsks with Bailey Carr. Thanks for listening! Or wait, I guess - Thank You For Listening! (or reading)