Hi there!  Well, I suppose, as is tradition, I should take this moment to introduce myself: my name is Greg Tremblay, and I’m a storyteller.

I know I share that with many authors, especially those who feel more like a conduit for the story than the creator of it; telling the tale that they find in the aether that the writer’s brain tunes in like a faint radio signal. For me, the conduit is more tangible as I work from words on a page, and translate them into the spoken word in my job as a narrator.  (I think it’s a bit funny actually, as I know some of you will be familiar with my voice, but not my words.)

I’m so thrilled to be asked to add my voice and ideas to the site!  

A little biography perhaps is in order.  I am a Yankee born and bred, raised on the lovely but chilly shores of Maine. Circumstances far too obscure to go into led to me attending college in Colorado, where I studied Theater, voice and computer science.  (The 21st century answer to the factory job).  While working a variety of jobs to keep bread on the table, I’ve been a stage actor and voiceover artist ever since.  

Over the years I’ve lived on a sailboat, been a blacksmith, worked as an EMT, shod horses, led whale watching tours, managed server and network teams, and I with my wife and daughter live on a small farmstead in central NY where I raise sheep, keep bees, and have a voice studio.

Two years ago I found myself introduced to a new venue for producing audiobooks, which have been a passion of mine for over 20 years, and I’ve had the most delightful and rewarding job in recording books ever since.  (For those keeping score at home, yes “Dirty Kiss” by Rhys Ford was my very first audiobook.)  At present I am a freelance narrator, on the talent roster with Audible Studios, Deyan Audio, Common Mode, Listen 2a Book, Penguin Audio, and an independent studio through Amazon’s ACX program.

As a listener, I go back a while. The first audiobook I remember listening to was recorded for me by my mother, created for long car trips as a child.  (She read “Stuart Little,” patiently speaking into a little tape recorder.)  I listened to mysteries like Ellis Peters’ “Brother Cadfael” and the “Lord of the Rings” books, carefully flipping tapes, until the amazing day when I had a tape deck that would reverse ITSELF. I loved some, hated others (honestly, many of the ‘Reading Eyes for the Blind’ books were dire) … and then came the day when I listened to Frank Muller read Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger” which is now known as “The Dark Tower, book 1”

…. Frank was so dramatic, so present, so in-your-face and in some ways over-the-top in that book, that frankly (ha!) it should never have worked.  

But it did.  It was perfect and I loved it.  From enthusiasm, a passion was born.

I have listened to many thousands of hours of audiobooks in that time, many stories, many voices. Romance and SciFi, Mystery and Fantasy, humor and drama.  Now, many years later, I get to contribute to the same tradition Frank did (he sadly passed away in 2008 following a 6 year battle with injuries sustained in a horrific motorcycle accident).

Audiobooks have come into a new place in the last 20 years, from a time when there were few being produced and the prices were pushing a hundred bucks.  Sure they’re not for every reader, and people have always claimed there was a cheating element in the audio format of a book… as though a book heard isn’t REALLY read. (Spoiler – it totally still counts as reading!)

But for those of us who love the medium, I think many stories are even better as audio than they are in print. I think of print as our solution as a species to not being able to sit around the campfire at all times, and to take the fire with us… and with audiobooks we get to bring that tradition full circle: from oral tradition, to written word, to oral tradition once again.

As a reader, my heart has always been most at home with fiction of all forms, the fantastical and the gritty among my very favorites.  In my short but rewarding career thus far in narration, I’ve been blessed to work with some amazing books in a number of genres.

I struggled a bit with the choice of talking about books that are outside the same-sex-romance theme, and the fun of preaching to the choir about these amazing books… so forgive me if I cover a wide range of topics during my time here!

I can’t help but start by saying this: The world of LGBTQ+ Fiction is frankly, amazing. I see in these stories a microcosm of the ENTIRE publishing world, thriving and growing and breathing and changing all on its own.  Romances and mysteries and SciFi and fantasy and humor and action; and that notion that just as humans live our varied lives regardless of our sexuality – so do fictional characters.

Unsurprisingly, these are stories that have been marginalized and ignored, or directly attacked, by mainstream publishing.

… gosh, what DOES that remind me of?

So, I am honored to join the ranks of some amazingly talented and beloved narrators like Sean Crisden, Tristan James, Mark Westfield and more, in bringing voices to these vibrant, amazing characters, who also happen to be gay.  

I look forward to talking about stories and storytellers, life and other random happenings over the coming months.  

Thanks for having me!  Please feel free to reach out on social media, or via email… I love to talk books, stories, acting, food, music and more!
-Greg T, November 2015.

Find me online:

facebook.com/gtremblayvoice

twitter @gtremblayvoice

www.gtremblayvoice.com

greg@gtremblayvoice.com