Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 02/10/25

Listen to your heart and find your passion. Voice artist Colby Elliott is the founder and talent behind ​​Last Word Audio, a company that produces audio books based on such such properties as the fantasy novel Greenbeard which was recently nominated for audio book voice narration by the Society of Vocal Arts and Sciences. Though that prize was won by yet another chapter in the Star Wars saga, Elliott continues to be quite literally a sought after voice when it comes to bringing fantastic characters and stories to life. As you’ll read, he followed his own inner voice to attain the success he is enjoying now.

JWK: So, how did you get into the audio book business?

Colby Elliott: Performing has kind of always been a part of who I am. I sang in choirs a lot when I was younger, then I was in musicals in high school, then I was in operas and plays when I was in college. I was going go to be a vocal performance major. I was going to be an opera singer but I had a real tough time with music theory. So, I switched over to being a theater major and just kind of kept on performing.

I was a theater teacher for about 12 years. During that time I kind of learned all the equipment sound decks, microphones, filtering and that kind of thing and I figured out how to produce an audio book in that amount of time. Then when I started staying home as a stay-at-home dad with my kids I had some time when they would go to preschool or grade school or when they were down for nap time and I would want to create some stuff. That was just something that I found that I really enjoyed doing.

I had loved audio books for such a long time. I was that one kid that found the corner of the library that had all of the zip-lock bags in it that held the books on tape over there. I had my little Sony Walkman that I would walk around (with) and listen to books on, books like Treasure Island and Edgar Allen Poe and all those kind of things. So, it’s always been something I’ve really loved.

Then when I was (in college) I would occasionally go back to my home town which was in Western Nebraska about two hours and forty-five minutes away…and I’d listen to audio books all the way there and all the way back. It was just something I just had a real love for. I loved the idea of playing all the characters. I loved the idea of telling a story. I loved the idea of being the teacher. You know, when I was doing something that was a nonfiction book, I’d be passionate about it in the same way that the author was in telling their story in a way that would help amplify their message.

JWK: So, you had this childhood passion that you turned into a career.

CB: Yeah. It was kinda crazy. When I looked at my undergraduate work that I did at (in college) I did a degree in English with an emphasis in literature, I did another degree in speech communications and theater arts and then I did a third degree in language arts and education – and I started teaching with it. It was great! Then when I started doing audio books I went like “My gosh! This is like everything that I ever studied all together!” Then I did my Masters in applied communication which was like directly into this too. So, it sort of all kind of led down this funnel into what I’m doing now.

JWK: What is your process? How do you do it? How do you choose the projects and what is your process for producing the books – and the voices?

CB: When it comes to choosing a particular book, what I do is I just find something I’m really passionate about but has no audio component to it yet. I sort of (see this as) being akin to being a literary archeologist. I’ll go into a used bookstore and look around, just find things and I’m like “Oh! That’s kind of cool!” Any sort of secondhand bookshop is just this wonderful kind of treasure trove of things that you could find. You’ll find things from small local publishers. You’ll find things from big publishers that were just kind of passed over because, at certain times during the 1970s and 80s, it was ridiculously expensive to produce an audio book. You didn’t do it very often unless you were a big company. So, a lot of those books just kind of lie there until someone comes along to pick them up and say “Hey, this is really neat! This is a really great book!”

I would contact the rights holders. Sometimes that won’t be the author because it would be the publishing company or the agent. Every single time they’d be like “Oh, wow! That was like a long time ago! Yeah, that sounds really great!” It’s always kind of tricky because sometimes our culture may have moved on where it’s like, you know, it’s not really a thing anymore – or the literature may have moved on so it’s not really as current as it once was (particularly with) nonfiction books – but sometimes you’ll find some real gems in there.

I find those and then I talk to the authors. Sometimes it’s something that can work and sometimes it’s something that won’t. I had one where I talked to a publisher and I said “Hey, can I talk to the author about this?” It was like “Well, no. They passed away about 10 years ago.” I went “Okay, well…” I understand that that happens.

Then it’s mostly about what I have a real passion for. When I grab that book I’ve got to be really drawn to it and really see a way for it to be produced into an audio book because I’m going to be spending anywhere from three to five times the amount of time that the finished runtime of the book is. If you’ve got a 10-hour audio book, that’s gonna be 30 hours – or maybe even as much as 50 hours of production time – to get that thing ready to go. So, it’s a lot and you’d better really love it because if you’re bored with it, boy, your listener is gonna be able to tell. Your energy level won’t be there. It won’t really spark off the page like it needs to.

There was a a third part of your question. What was that?

JWK: It was about the voices. You do every character yourself, right?

CB: That’s correct, yeah. A lot that sort of stems from my background in music. When I get a particular novel, especially (with) fiction, you start out with what I call a character bible and you start making a bit of a spreadsheet. You look at who are the male characters? Who are the female characters? What are their ages? What might they sound like? What are some of the clues that the author has given you by the way that the character is written? What can you throw in there that’s going to make them more recognizable? And how are you gonna do that so that two characters that are in the same scene together that are roughly the same age are going to sound different? That is definitely something that you have to think about. It can be super tricky, absolutely.

One of the things I try to do is, first, I start off by thinking about it musically. In choral music you’ve got soprano, alpha, tenor, base. Each one of those is subdivided in two with a lot of choral performing. So, you got soprano one/soprano two, alpha one/alpha two, etc. So, you try to think of where that particular character is placed. You start off , it might be like (in a high-pitched voice) “Well, this character speaks up here in kind of a higher voice and (in a deeper voice) this character speaks down here and has got a little bit more of a gruff voice. He’s got more of a baritone.” Then you start thinking about where it’s placed (and) how much intensity they speak with. It can be a really interesting kind of character study as to where that person comes from. That’s even before the author ever lets you in on certain secrets. They might say like “He said in his Tennessee twang” or whatever it was…All of those things are stuff that you have to kind of map out before you start.

You know, you start talking about that 30 to 50 hours of production time. A lot of that is soaked up in the prereading that you have to do. If it’s nonfiction, you’re looking at how to pronounce those names or those very complex like medical terms. If it’s character you have to really look through it and comb through it to find out what the clues are that that author has given you about that character.

JWK: I would imagine that people sometimes come to you with projects now. 

CB: It’s mostly the publishers that I’ve worked with many other times that will come to me with something that is on the table. It’s like “Oh, this is something that is kind of like what you did before!” Or it’s an author that I’ve worked with many times before – like there’s this author named Bill Fitzhugh. He is just so funny and such a good writer! He’s sort of similar to Carl Hiaassen in that the situations that he writes about are incredibly hilarious. They’re very, very well-written. He also has this wonderful frame of reference within music because he was a DJ on SiriusXM for a while. His work is really great!

So, started off with a lot of his first books, Pest Control. Then I did Cross Dressing, Human Resources and Fender Benders. All of them are kind of like small puns on the particular things that they’re about. They’re super fun. So, for him, it was just kind of natural that when he had a new book that would come out he would he would say “Hey, I’ve got this new book that’s coming out. What do you think?” It would usually be “YES!” Or, with some of the other publishing companies, it’s like “Well, you really excelled on this one here. I think this is one you might enjoy.” By and large, I don’t really get general offers where someone says “Hey, I’ve heard your other work. I think this is gonna be good!” because, honestly, I don’t have the time. I’ve got my next three or four books usually ready to go.

JWK: Why do you think audio books and scripted podcasts are experiencing such popularity right now?

CB: You could go back to the primeval if you want to on that one. You could just say a long time ago we were these humans sitting around the fire telling stories to one another. Take it up a little further and your parents probably read stories to you or that kind of thing. Having that wonderful spoken word where you’re that audience of one, I think there’s a certain intimacy to that that’s really, really nice. When I’m out going on a walk and I’m listening to a book and that one narrator is just speaking directly to me, it feels incredibly personal. So, it’s primeval, it’s intimate and it’s very personal. I think all of those things really are important as to why audio books are experiencing this kind of growth. They’ve experienced, I think, double-digit growth for like the last 10 years. It’s one of the only parts of publishing that’s been really growing. It has a lot to do with those aspects, I think.

JWK: I guess people also get to sort of be their own movie makers. They can picture the story in their mind.

CB: The casting is always perfect when it’s in your mind. It was really funny. I was talking with this friend the other day. We’re reading this series of books by Joe Abercrombie, this kind of fantasy/sorcery kind of thing. One of the first questions he asked me was “Who did you cast in your mind?” for this particular character – because he’s like this hard-edged warrior with scars all over him and everything like that. We talked about who we would cast in it. It was really fun. Casting absolutely goes on in your mind. When you’re doing the audio book part of that is in your mind as well. I’m saying to myself “Who does this person sound like?” The thing is if you do an imperfect impersonation, where people can’t tell who it is, it’s just basically is an original character but you have a nice marker in your mind for what that character is and who they sound like.

JWK: You had a big success recently with Greenbeard which was nominated for an award from the Society of Vocal Arts and Sciences. A Star Wars book took the award in the category but that must have been a nice experience.

CB: It was so wonderful! We got to got out to the Beverly Hilton which is actually where they have the Golden Globe Awards and be in that space. I got to meet a couple of people in the audio book industry that I had had interactions with online or in Zoom calls and that kind of thing. I got to actually meet them in person, shake hands and meet up with a lot of people in the industry. It was really, really wonderful. It is one of those situations where you say to yourself “Well, a lot of people say ‘It’s an honor just to be nominated – but is it really?'” I can definitely say it absolutely is.

I mean I knew going in (that) our particular category – Science Fiction – was being shown before the whole award ceremony started off. It was out in the main area where we were having the drinks (that) they were showing our particular category. A badge appeared and it showed that the Star Wars book had won. I looked at some of my other nominees and I was like “Well, I guess at this point we just enjoy ourselves and enjoy the evening.” And it was absolutely wonderful. It really was. Mahershala Ali won the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award that night. I got to listen to him speak about his career and some of the things that were inspiring to him – and talk with some people in the industry. It was really wonderful. It was a really great experience.

JWK: A lot of your books, though not all of them, really lean into fantasy and escapism. Why do you think it’s important to people to kind of escape reality sometimes?

CB: I don’t know if it’s necessarily that it’s reality that they want to escape. I think everyone wants the world to be as big as it possibly can be, cosmically speaking. You know, you sort of look out into the stars and you think “What all is out there?!” and that kind of thing. You have that kind of internal journey too, that spiritual journey that you might have. I think there’s that notion of that extra desire, of wanting a little bit more of that and you find that in the heroes that are there. You find it in the antagonists. I wouldn’t necessarily call them villains – but the antagonists – who don’t necessarily have the right idea and…get foiled.

I think it’s important also to see that there is some sort of poetic conclusion to things. You know, life isn’t always going to be super neat and tidy. Good people don’t necessarily get the things that are coming to them. The bad people in the world don’t necessarily get punished for the things that they do that are wrong – but, in literature, in stories, you can make that perfection. Maybe that’s something that you could say about almost all art too. In film you can show that perfect scene. You can show that perfect sunset with the camera – and only maybe have that (happen) two or three times in a lifetime. It’s that struggling for finding that sort of aesthetic perfection, I think, is what people struggle with.

JWK: I see what you’re saying. So, what are you up to now?

CB: Well, I’ve been doing a lot of press for Greenbeard. There’s been just a ton of interest in it. It’s been really, really fun talking all the different people in the media.

Next up is a book that I have called The Lazy DMs Forge of Foes which is a game master’s handbook for integrating interesting antagonists into tabletop role-playing games. I credit role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu as a big reason why I wanted to perform – because character, story creation, plot structure and dramatic beats, all of that were things that I learned through role-playing games. You know, you’d sit around the table and you’d go storm the castle and try to rescue the fair maiden and vanquish the dragon. That’s all stuff that we were doing when we were playing role-playing games as kids. So, this next book – The Lazy DMs Forge of Foes – is a handbook for doing that.

Then I’m also going to be putting out an anthology of my podcasts, along with some shorter pieces that I’ve written about being in the audio book industry, called Geekery and Wine: The First Case. I pair an element of geek culture, a comment or a video game or a role-playing game, with a bottle of wine. Then I kind of discuss those together. Then, as sort of a third piece to each one of them, I do liner notes for my first few audio books – breaking down how and why they were created and some of the lessons that I learned along the way.

JWK: When can we expect to see The Lazy DMs Forage of Foes?

CB: The physical book is out now but the audio book will probably be coming out I would say some time in May (or) April.

JWK: I was going to ask you how people can contact you for projects but, after speaking with you, it sounds like you’re not looking for projects.

CB: Well, I do have a lot on my plate but if people are looking to get in touch with me – or just to check out some of the things that are going on – they can check out LastWordAudio.com.

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.