All Things Radiance & Rider
Meet Guy Barnes.
…In which I open my audiobook up for auditions and hit the ding-dang jackpot.
I am sitting on the sofa with my oldest son (17) and we are listening to audiobook auditions. As I’m scanning a long list of auditions (and laughing at some), I come to the sixth one in and see a little message that says something humble like, hi I hope you like it.
Luke and I open it and click straight to the action sequence to get an immediate feel for the narrator. And out of my computer speakers comes… “DRRRRooooP. THE. RRRRROOOCK-ah.” My oldest son and I look at each other and just went “WHOA” at the same time. My younger son (14) put his Nintendo Switch down (I know guys, this is serious) and went “Mom, you wrote that?” — Ok. I immediately know this is different, my kids who are chronically embarrassed of me, now think I’m cool for about 5 minutes.
This guy nailed every accent, every bit of emotion, every cozy piece of general narration. Unlike every other audition he got the ferocity in Hector’s voice, and the underlying emotion that was driving him. It will be a moment I will never forget, because a character who exists only in my head was suddenly coming right out of my speakers.
So who was it? Guy Barnes.
A native of Worthing, Sussex, Guy had his start in music at an early age. “I saw Elvis on the telly when I was 4 years old in the film Fun In Acapulco I fell in love with music and knew I’d have a lifelong affair with it. I got my first real guitar in 1980, it was this beat up old nylon string and I tried taking guitar lessons at school but the idea of having to learn scales and classical music for grades just wasn’t something that interested me, I wanted to be Elvis— and Elvis didn’t play Bach. Of course I would come to regret not sticking with it but I was young and stupid so my education with guitar playing came from playing along to records in my bedroom.”
All that homegrown practice would pay off as Guy can now melt your face off on guitar.
Within a few days of receiving completed chapters I started noticing that Guy has an incredible vocal range. He can hit the guttural depths of Hector’s voice, and the lilting vulnerability in Cara’s. If you investigate Guy’s YouTube channel you’ll see what I mean. His narration is haunting, his singing voice is powerful, and his ability to engage with an audience is a gift. (See video below, I had to smile. I think we’re seeing a bit of his actual personality shine.)
In addition to being an incredible vocalist and musician (stage name, RIDER), at his heart, Guy—like me—is a writer.
“I wrote music from the moment I could hum a tune and I knew from a very early age that I wanted to write big chorus driven songs so naturally my biggest passion was the big rock bands and I soaked up.
“Bon Jovi, Deep Purple, Europe, Ozzy, but also loved the great singer songwriters like George Michael, Burt Bacharach, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Elton John and as such seemed to end up writing songs that were rock but very singer songwriter at the basic level and learned early on I wanted to write songs that in their barest form stood up by themselves, I seem to write depending on mood and guitar based songs tend to be rock and piano based songs tend to be ballad.”
So who has he written for? Independent artists, Universal Records, Warner Brothers, Sony Entertainment…to name a few.
In his spare time, Guy is an actor, and of course, there is his narration. He received the 2023 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award Narration for Max and the Spice Thieves by John Peregine and the 2021 Audiobook Adrenaline Award for Best Historical Fiction Narration for A Brothers Oath, The Hengest and Horsa Trilogy Book 1.
So how on earth did I score Guy to narrate Radiance?
I’ve got no idea. That’s the honest truth. You see, Guy lives in Portugal. He’s not local. There’s no way in any imaginable scenario that we would have ever crossed paths. I guess that’s the beauty of living in the internet age—but also that’s the amount of trust I’ve put in God as I’ve walked through this process. You see, a few days after posting my audition I was a bit discouraged. It is a challenging piece of writing—Scottish, French, and Irish accents, a lot of hard to pronounce words, and well—it’s not fluff. It’s grit. It’s my own story. The monstrousness in Hector, his greatest mistakes, and the trauma in Cara, her pain and desire to overcome. I heard some great auditions, but it just wasn’t what I hoped for.
Guy and I messaged back and forth before I selected him and it was there I came to learn that, like me, Guy’s a little broken, too. He’s overcome some hard stuff and lived to tell the tale, and it comes through with tremendous power and direct precision in the way he gives Hector a voice. The heartbreak he’s survived is resonant in Cara’s voice, and in her longing to be complete.
I heard it. I felt it. I understood it. That is what makes Guy so rare and special.
Not only that, but he’s just a cool person. The man is a motorcycle enthusiast (to put it mildly), he’s tattooed (like yours truly), he’s jammed with guitar legend Scotty Moore and played the actual guitar Elvis palmed off Scotty during the ‘68 Comeback Special. He’s got the edge I’m looking for. The kind of person who would probably not be chosen by Christian publishing to narrate my book. He’s got something to say, not just a voice, but a message. And that’s what I wanted.
Not to mention we have pretty similar taste in music, which I feel like is a good foundation for most friendships and partnerships (when other kids were learning Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, I knew all the lyrics to Father Figure and Faith by George Michael—I felt like his mention of George and Elvis was a sign. Will I be able to talk him into learning some Marshall Tucker Band, Juliana Theory, and Biffy, we’ll see. I’ve got 9 books to persuade him).
There’s literally no one more perfect to narrate this series. And I really do believe in this—just like in everything else so far—God found him for me. And somehow we were able to create a partnership, and a burgeoning friendship.
As much as I would love to keep him all to myself—the man’s gotta eat. So please, author friends, if you’re looking for a tremendous narrator please contact him at:
Love always—
Ashley
“You lift me up on the wind; you make me RIDE on it,
and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.” — Job 30:22
