I recognize that nasal stranger

I used Soundbooth to record myself reading the passage from Talion. Listening to my own voice was painful. Worse, the recording was peppered with electronic noise and distortion. Figuring I just needed practice using Soundbooth, I fiddled with the settings and made a second recording. More snap, crackle, and pop. I gazed at the pathetic toy microphone in my hand. Clearly an inadequate tool. I went online and spent another thirty-five bucks on a directional microphone, then settled into the task of not botching my own words. After twenty or thirty takes, I had a recording that I could listen to without cringing.

I hoped my voice would sound more impressive with the right background music. Soundbooth comes with access to lots of royalty-free music that can be remixed. These downloads are categorized according to type, so I previewed music composed to evoke horror, suspense, or mystery. Nothing was precisely what I wanted. After much fussing and fretting, I settled on a gothic piece with a creepy choral track that created the right mood, but even muted it had the potential to be overwhelming. I played the voiceover track while mixing the music to make sure that didn’t happen. It only took another ten hours.