Audioboooks After Dark Episode 20 – Author Tom Abrahams & Narrator Kevin Pierce
This podcast originally appears on Audiobooks After Dark.
Dec. 6, 2018. Duration: 1 hr 10 min.
Tom has traveled places most people would avoid.
He’s braved the stinging winds of a category four hurricane as it pounded The Gulf of Mexico, living and working without power for days.
He’s picked his way through the Amazon jungle, trekked across the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, Ukraine, and climbed the crumbling, high-altitude stone steps leading from the barrio Tacubaya, Miguel Hildalgo, in Mexico City.
He’s been evacuated in an ambulance from the barren Badlands of western Canada.
Tom is a veteran television journalist and author who’s spent the last 20-plus years telling the biggest stories of our time.
He’s reported from the East Room of White House and Capitol Hill, interviewed Presidents and presidential candidates, and was at the Pentagon while smoke still rose in the hours after 9/11.
He’s writes post-apocalyptic thrillers, action adventure, and political conspiracies.
Tom lives in the Houston suburbs with his wife, Courtney, and their two children.
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I had a career path of radio and TV in the 70s, 80s and 90s and full-time voiceover work after that. Near the end of 2012, I read a blog post that mentioned ACX and I checked it out. Armed with confidence in my related narration and production experience and a copy of the ACX production guidelines, I accepted my first offer, completed the production and got rights-holder and ACX approval. I, Kevin Pierce, was officially an audiobook narrator and producer. For the next 100 days straight (weekends and holidays included), I was in my studio auditioning, reading and producing audiobooks, managing as many as 10 at a time. My Thanksgiving Day schedule was to put two 24-pound turkeys in the oven, read and produce two one-hour chapters, then serve dinner for 50. On Christmas Day, my kids, wife and I opened presents before I started opening audio files. I was the ideal designated driver on New Year’s Eve, because I would be having a Happy New Year’s morning in the audio booth. Best of all is what’s in the amazing books I’ve read: the history of Spain and the military history of Iran, how to give a TED Talk and how to keep a beehive, why filibusters belong in the U.S. Senate and why the American economy might need to stop growing. I’ve channeled a fictional voodoo priest, UFO experiencers and a science fiction protagonist with multiple personality disorder (who had voices in his head, just like me!). I doubt I’ll ever have the chance to test my knowledge against Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! but I will never run out of material at a cocktail party. I’ve had the pleasure of repeat business from publishers like Berrett-Koehler, University Press Audiobooks, Crossroad Press and Callisto Media, as well as a number of authors both self-published and those who have regained audio rights to their previously published works. All the recording was done my own state of the art, room-within-a-room studio, the audio from which, one delighted outside producer called “pristine.” More important, I’ve done enough business (and see enough ahead of me) to be able to move into audiobook narration and production full-time (which provides an answer for the wife and kids to the question, “What exactly does your husband/father do?”). So now, as an Audible-Approved Producer and narrator (a recognition I inquired about and received after I pressed “I’m Done” on number 50), I’m looking forward to the second 50 and the second hundred and the hours and hours of fascinating storytelling in the months and years ahead.
Audio Samples | Website | Audible
BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE VOICE OF THE APOCALYPSE