His name may not seem familiar, but if you read audio books or have ever watched soap operas, there is a good chance you have heard his voice.
On our next Books And Beyond we will talk with narrator John Haag. Before he began recording books for several companies including Audible.com and Recorded Books of America, John was already enthusiastically narrating books distributed by the National Library service. With his extensive background in theater work and television soap operas, Somerset, Ryan’s Hope and One life To Live, Haag was prepared for the work of narration of audio books when the opportunity presented itself.
How did he become interested in this work? What types of books does he particularly enjoy? How did both theater and previous experience in television prepare him for this wide array of narration? What is it like working on a soap opera and what types of characters did he portray?
Join us on our next show to hear from one of the new voices in the world of audio books. John Haag is a delight, and I look forward to your attendance of and participation in the discussion with him. Below, you will find information about him followed by details acquainting you with how you can attend this exciting upcoming Books And Beyond.
Since breaking into audio book narration a little over three years ago, John has recorded over 60 books and magazines for the National Library Service at Talking Books in New York and at Minuteman Talking Books in Nashua, New Hampshire. Possessing great versatility, John has been assigned a wide variety of genres and styles for NLS: murder mysteries, action adventures, black comedy, historical fiction, westerns, romances, thrillers, and youth literature in fiction; political exposes, histories, popular science, memoir, and self help books in non fiction. Titles include City of Dreams, Done Deal, The Legacy, Heart-Shaped Box, Dublin Noir, The Rising Tide, Living Well, Richter’s Scale, Blackwater, Nixon and Mao, and The National Geographic Magazine.
This year John has broken into the commercial side of the audiobook business. He just finished recording Total Recall, a book about how e-memory technology will change the culture, for Recorded Books. Before that John recorded two books for Audible and one for Christian Audio.
With a warm, expressive voice, John has the ability to talk with authority, while at the same time utilizing a conversational, natural delivery, as if the listener were sitting with him in the booth. John is seasoned enough to locate the heart of the piece, reading with a variety of pace, tone and inflection appropriate to its purpose.
Originally a stage and film actor, John also has the acting chops to carry long narratives. A skilled character actor, with a great ear for tone and dialect and a voice flexible enough to convey the broad range of action, John can juggle a dizzying array of characters of both sexes. John finds the line between action and narration, reading from inside the characters’ heads, yet capturing the narrator's voice in every piece he reads.
When John asked his audiobook coach, Robin Miles, what fiction genre(s) he might be best suited for, her answer was, “Mainstream fiction. You like to tell a good story from the heart.” Give John a good story and he’ll tell it from the heart.
Bonnie Blose, Host,
Books And Beyond,
E-Mail: bookmaven1@frontier.com
