Great news!
The Loudest Meow: A Talking Cat Fantasy is now in the process of distribution. For this project, I worked with the audiobook company, Findaway Voices. One of the reasons why I wanted to work with them was because they have the largest audiobook distribution network in the world. The Loudest Meow is currently available at the following locations:
https://www.estories.com/audiobook/257016/Wendy-Ledger/The-Loudest-Meow
https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/395980639/The-Loudest-Meow-A-Talking-Cat-Fantasy
https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/loudest-meow-a-talking-cat-fantasy/366424
In the weeks to come, you will be also be able to find it at Audible, Google Play, Walmart, Storytel, and numerous other companies. I will keep you posted.
Findaway also helped me find a wonderful narrator, Kae Denino. If you sign up with Audible and need a narrator, they will take you through an audition process, where you fill out a questionnaire on what you want, and then they select candidates, and you can read their bios and listen to their clips and chose who you would like to audition for the book. Through that process, I found Kae Denino and soon realized that she absolutely needed to be the narrator for this book.
After we had finished production on The Loudest Meow, I asked Kae a few questions via email about her work and the project:
Kae, when I listened to the different voice talents and their clips, I was immediately blown away by your zest and enthusiasm in your samples. You definitely convey your love of the work. Can you talk about how you got into this business and your wonderful approach to things?
Wendy, it’s all my parents. Listening to them talk to anyone…they do it with such respect, such love and humor. They’ve both been in customer service their whole lives, and are truly “people people.” And they read to my sister and I since before we were born. So speaking with kindness, respect, and love for a good written word has been with me my whole life. Growing up I was always the one grabbing the microphone—plays, speech and debate, poetry readings, weddings and funerals, and about issues I love to help, such as fighting human trafficking.
For the audition, I was happy to discover that Findaway would let me choose my own excerpt (with a certain word limit). I selected a passage where my four main cat characters were in high-voltage dialogue. I wanted to hear all of the really important voices. I wanted to make sure that my narrator would be comfortable in operatic situations. What did you think when you first encountered the cats?
What can I say? I LOVE THE CATS! When I first learned about it, I counted them up—there are roughly fourteen—and walked around telling everyone, “I’m going to be fourteen cats in a book, all with different voices and personalities!” I was excited but didn’t really believe I could do it. It was only when I really delved into the text that I learned how each cat was so different, so rich in character. Even how they talk by the end is different than how they talk in the beginning, because they grow so much throughout the story.
Do you want to say anything about what it was like to work on this particular project?
This was the first story I ever worked on that seriously got out of hand. Every other story has had parameters—it’s going to have this kind of feel, it’s a classic romance novel, it’s going to follow this kind of course. But by the time the cats are literally on a beach, creating and destroying all kinds of things and jetting off into space, the reader knows all bets are off with this story. It has a wild, feline mind of its own. There are no good guys or bad guys, just fully formed beings trying to navigate unforetold circumstances, just like real life. It was a true pleasure to narrate and I missed the cats as soon as we were finished.
As you know, I am so thrilled with your work. It was such a pleasure working with you. I hope we can continue to collaborate. Thank you so much, Kae.
I love working with you, too! Thank you! Let’s get some more books out there! I think The Loudest Meow would make one heck of an animated movie. Looking forward to the mewture.