View this post on Instagram
Guest Post by Jimmy MacGregor
Apparently, I Had a BookTok Voice
About a year and a half ago, some friends in a streaming server told me I had a “BookTok voice.”
I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.
Which is slightly ridiculous, because I was already an avid Dark Romance and Romantasy reader. I knew the books. I knew the morally grey men. I apparently just hadn’t discovered the corner of TikTok dedicated to them.
So, naturally, I went looking.
And that’s more or less where all of this started.
Spice-tok
I posted a few videos to TikTok, mostly for fun, a clip of Kingsifher from Quicksilver asking her to kneel.
People actually listened, commented, liked.
So I posted more.
Then came the lives, a Patreon, personalized audios and increasingly elaborate character content.
There was definitely a theme developing. It was all spicy.
And I loved it.
There was something addictive about creating a character with nothing but my voice and somehow making someone on the other side of the world blush.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I decided to write a book too. Because apparently I didn’t have enough hobbies.
Looking back, there was a fairly obvious connection between everything I was doing and audiobook narration.
It just took me a while to see it.
Then I decided to narrate properly
Short-form voice acting is one thing. Sitting behind a microphone with an entire book in front of you is something completely different.
I wanted to prove I could do it.
So I auditioned.
A lot. A lot a lot!
My first four audiobooks ended up being outside the genres I actually read and wanted to narrate.
Honestly, I was fine with that. I needed credits and, more importantly, experience.
Those books taught me things a thirty-second TikTok or 10 minute erotic audio never could.
How to maintain a character for hours. How to pace a chapter rather than a paragraph, especially when its not all spice. How to remember the voice you gave someone who disappeared six chapters ago and has suddenly decided to come back.
I built a proper home studio, treated it and learned punch and roll, editing, mastering and pickups.
There are significantly fewer seductive whispers involved in audiobook production than BookTok led me to believe, but doing the whole story is just … immersive.
Those first four books gave me the experience I needed.
But I was still struggling to land the books I really wanted.
Apparently Scotland isn’t in every fictional universe
I’d find a dark romance or romantasy casting call, get excited, open it and…
General American.
Another one.
General American.
British.
Except “British” generally meant English in the audiobook world, it would seem.
I’m Scottish.
Very Scottish.
I can perform other accents, but my natural voice is low, raspy and unmistakably Scottish. Ironically, the voice that had started this entire thing was now something I felt I had to work around if I wanted to get cast.
For a while, I concentrated on becoming more versatile, becoming more character led.
Eventually, I realized I was looking at it backwards.
Maybe I didn’t need to fit every book, maybe I needed to find the books that fit me.
Things changed when I stopped chasing everything
Over the past few months, I’ve started focusing much more deliberately on dark romance, romance, romantasy and fantasy.
Especially the darker characters and duet productions where I can really concentrate on the male performance.
And slowly, the work I’ve wanted from the beginning has started coming to me.
All Caged Up, a duet production, is due toward the end of September. It’s much closer to the kind of narration I imagined myself doing when I first started: darker material, MMF, strong characters and another narrator to actually play against.
Then there’s Only His Voice, planned for later in the year.
That one is particularly strange, it feels written for me. Based on a Scottish Voice Actor stalking a follower.
I’ve also signed another two audiobook projects due for the end of the year, which I can’t wait to shout about.
For the first time, my upcoming work is beginning to look like the career I was trying to build rather than simply the credits I thought I needed to get there.
View this post on Instagram
The spicy stuff wasn’t a detour
For a while, I separated the two sides of what I did.
There was the spicy voice actor on TikTok.
Then there was the “proper” audiobook narrator sitting in his studio.
I don’t really see them as different anymore.
Spicy content taught me intimacy and how much you can do with a pause, a breath or a change in tone. It allowed me to be myself!
Going live taught me to perform without hiding behind endless retakes, make friends and meet someone.
Writing changed how I look at dialogue.
And those first four audiobooks taught me the discipline of long-form narration.
Struggling to get cast probably taught me the most useful lesson of all.
Not every voice needs to fit every book.
I’m never going to be the right narrator for every romance casting call.
I don’t particularly want to be anymore.
I’d much rather be the Scottish voice an author hears when they’ve written a morally questionable man somewhere in the Highlands and thinks:
“Yep. Him.”
It’s taken four audiobooks, a proper studio, plenty of rejected auditions and a frankly exceptional amount of spicy audio to figure that out.
All because some friends in a streaming server told me I had a BookTok voice.
Turns out they might have had a point.
Upcoming Audiobooks
All Caged Up (Dancers for the Demons Book 1)
The audiobook adaptation of All Caged Up by Lavender Nicole is currently in production as an MMF paranormal-romance duet.
The audiobook adaptation of Only His Voice by A.B. Duncan is currently in production as a duet narration project.
View this post on Instagram
About Jimmy MacGregor
I’m Jimmy MacGregor, a Scottish audiobook narrator and voice actor specializing in Romance, Dark Romance, Romantasy and Fantasy. I found my way into voice acting through BookTok and Spicy audio content, and now work from my professional home studio on solo and duet audiobook productions.
You can find my demos, audiobooks and current projects at jimmynarrates.co.uk
Leave a Reply