Joshua Saxon, Narrator

JOSHUA SAXON passionate about literature and working with authors, publishers, and artists to help them deliver their story utilizing his voice. Storyteller of over sixty novels and short story collections, the combination of his passion for words and dialects gives him a unique ability to bridge the 

gap between the prose on the page and the ear of the listener. 

NO SHARKS IN THE MED: Prior to the first American publication of Brian Lumley's ground-breaking, dead waking, best-selling Necroscope in 1988 - the first novel in a long-lived, much-loved series - this British author had for 20 years been earning an envious reputation writing short stories, novellas, and a series of novels set against H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic Cthulhu Mythos backdrop. In addition, and for a further 20 years, Lumley's non-Mythos fantasy, SF, and horror stories have been appearing on a regular basis in some of the world's most famous publications; for example The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Weird Tales, along with anthologies such as Karl Edward Wagner's Year's Best Horror Stories, Charles L. Grant's Final Shadows, and Kirby McCauley's Frights, among others.

BLACK CITY SAINT: a gang war is brewing between Prohibition bootleggers, but it may be the least of Nick's concerns. If Nick cannot prevent an old evil from opening the way between realms, then not only might Chicago face a fate worse than the Great Fire, but so will the rest of the mortal realm.

BOON: Boonsri Angchuan travels the trails, riding from town to town with her one and only friend, a portly Arkansan drunkard named Edward Splettstoesser. She has done nothing else for years, her only goal being revenge upon the one man who should have protected her but instead sold her and her mother into bondage. From Texas to the New Mexico Territory, from the filthy backstreets of San Francisco’s notorious Barbary Coast to the ghost town of a depleted placer mine, Boon and Edward navigate corrupt lawmen, hostile Kiowa, a mad judge, and countless gunmen aiming for their heads in Boon’s dogged pursuit of answers - and vengeance. 

Jonathan Lowe) How did you get started narrating, and what drew you to Brian Lumley?

Joshua Saxon) I was working construction and a friend of mine who was a producer for an online education company had his VO artist call in sick and he needed someone to stand in for him. Even though I didn’t have any VO experience, he liked my voice enough to ask me to do it. It was only a couple of lines but after I did them he asked me if I had ever thought about narrating audiobooks, and pointed me to ACX. He helped me record some samples and put together my first budget set of recording gear. I’ve always been an avid reader so for me it was like a dream come true.

As far as Mr. Lumley is concerned, I had recorded an audiobook for Crossroad Press by author Stephen Mark Rainey. I saw an audition notice for Brian Lumley’s “A Coven of Vampires” from Crossroad. I had read the entire Necroscope series and had read all of Mr. Lumley’s short stories since I was young and thought that it would be an honor just to audition for him. I sent in a sample reading to Crossroad and got an email back from them asking if I could perform some different accents for it. I did so, sent it back, and they hired me. I have to say. Lumley’s works have always been inspirational to me, not only because of his writing style, but because in the midst of the horror he is able to conjure up, there is always a thread of grief or longing in them, which makes the humanity of the horror that much more relatable.

Q) What is hardest and what most rewarding about reading books for a living, and how did David at Crossroad Press find you?

A) The hardest thing about reading books for a living is knowing when to say “no” to a book. Whether it is because of scheduling, or content, or knowing that you are the wrong voice for it, there is an innate desire within me as a reader to simply want to read anything put before me, and I have to keep in mind at all times that I’m also running a business. Every author I’ve had the honor to work with is amazing and I always want to narrate their books, but often times, I’m not the right person for them when I read that. That’s a very difficult thing to overcome. However, the most rewarding thing is also in line with that same idea. It is amazing and incredibly humbling to be trusted with the works of an author. To have them entrust their story to you and for you to bring it to an audience as their mouthpiece, so to speak, is an incredible level of trust that’s not to be taken lightly and to have been the recipient of that trust reminds me every day how lucky I am to be able to do it.

David Niall Wilson is an amazing author in his own right. I’m kind of amazed at the amount of plates he spins as a person. I had seen an audition on ACX for a book called “Blue Devil Island” by Stephen Mark Rainey is a WWII adventure/horror/Lovecraftian novel. I auditioned for it, was awarded the book, and made sure to turn it in as fast as I could. David and I struck up a lot of conversation after that about narrating, reading, and literature in general and we started looking for books, once I had gotten a good head of steam behind me, to begin expanding Crossroad’s audiobook library which was already filled with amazing narrators and novels.

Q) I assume you have a home studio. What kind of equipment do you use?

A) The equipment I use has changed over the years as my income from audiobooks has grown. Currently my mic is a Neumann TLM103 running through a Focusrite Scarlett Solo preamp to my PC which houses StudioOne and RX Standard for editing and post-production. I have a space that I built specifically for recording the audiobooks that I feel is never isolated enough from exterior noise. One of the funny things about isolating yourself from exterior noise is that, once you begin to do it, you start to hear even MORE specific noises and then you have to fight to block them out as well. Try turning off your air conditioning or heating in your home sometime and listen to all of the noise around you. It’s exasperating.

Q)  You are able to switch between genres and accents with ease. If I can give you a recommendation it’s “A versatile voice actor with both power and depth in creating character voices. From Horror to Western, as in BOON.” What audiobook are you most proud of narrating?

A) Thanks. The audiobooks I’m most proud of narrating are… all of them, to be honest. I would be hard pressed to be able to pick any of them out and say I’m less or more proud. All of them have taught me something about the efforts required to narrate. I would switch up the answer to the question here and state that there are certain books I feel both lucky and humbled to have been chosen to narrate. That I have been entrusted by Nikos Kazantzakis’ organization in Greece to bring his body of work to audiobook makes me feel truly humbled. I have been reading his works since I was a teenager and to have that responsibility and trust placed in me makes me feel honored. I would say that exact same thing about Lumley’s works as well. I can barely describe the feeling I get when a fan of his reaches out to tell me about how my narration of his works has made them feel. The fans and listeners will either email me or message me to tell me personal stories about how listening to his books on audio has made them fall in love with reading again and that’s always my goal. If I can get the listener to mine the gold of an author’s works after listening to me read them, then I have done my job.

Q)  What does a typical day look like for you, and what’s next?

A) A typical day for me actually follows my previous life in construction. I wake up early in the morning, get the kids off to school, and then pull up my GANTT chart of audiobooks I’m working on which I have broken down by start and end date, pages completed, and pages left to narrate, which are then divided into how many pages need to be read on that day and what page I left off on the previous day. I basically look at narration as a construction project. There are deliverables on a specific schedule so I put together a chart to track them. Currently I’m narrating a whole host of novels. I will say, never before in my life have I felt intimidated by a book, until now. I’m currently recording Kazantzakis’ “The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel”. When I read it originally I felt I had accomplished a life goal. Now I’ve been presented with another in that I am now its narrator. Homer’s “The Odyssey” contained just over 12K lines of verse. Kazantzakis’ is 33, 333 lines of verse. But aside from the sheer length of the book, it is almost fathomless in how densely packed it is with his philosophical points and rich prose.

David N. Wilson on Joshua) All voice actors and narrators have strengths and weaknesses. It might be the transition between characters of different genders, or limited accents. For some, it's a storyteller's voice all the way through, or nonfiction is the key. Joshua Saxon is one of the most versatile and talented narrators I have ever worked with. He can slip flawlessly between various accents, and hold them throughout a book length work. He was chosen to narrate Brian Lumley's books over native British voices. He has been narrating the works of Nikos Kazantzakis, author of The Temptation of Christ. He has done westerns, thrillers, you name it, and is always up for the challenge. He is deserving of much more notice than he has received thus far. (Update: David Wilson has won an Audiobooks Today INFLUENCER AWARD for 2022 in the category of Horror.)