For years, people have told me that I had a good voice.   I've generally smiled, thanked them, and left it at that.  Not entirely out of modesty, either - for a very long time I had a genuine dislike for the sound of my own voice.  It was probably bred from the usual alarm that most people feel on first hearing their own recorded voice played back, fed by the insecurity of having been a nervous stammerer when younger.  At any rate, I did nothing much about it for a very long time.

I'd done the occasional voiceover job since starting the attempt at professional acting, and these had been received well.  About a year and a half ago, however, I was invited by a  friend of mine, the very talented Ben Leto, to narrate a story of his, "The Lonely Tale of King Furciel", for Arthur Fowler's Allotment.  It went well (though I still cringe a little at the thought that I managed to completely skip one of the key lines, in spite of reading the thing from a script). Many nice comments were made, both about the wonderful story itself, and about my reading of it.  Ben's subsequently put together a film of the tale, complete with the illustrations he made (and "operated") for the performance.  I heartily recommend that you watch it.
Well.  I was very flattered to have been asked to read it, and equally flattered at all the nice things people said about it afterwards.  By this time I was starting to believe that maybe my voice wasn't so bad after all...  (trying not to sound disingenuous, honest!)

Last year, when all the savings ran out, I started doing some casual work at a call centre, doing market research.  Please don't hate me.
Supervisors, listening in to the calls, as they do, would sometimes say things like, "have you ever done any radio work? You should"
On one occasion, while doing a phone survey, I apologised to the lady at the other end of the line, for how long the questionnaire was taking, and she replied she didn't mind how long it took, she was just enjoying listening to my voice!

So, I made it my business to see if I could get some proper, paid, voice work.  Signed up for some voice talent websites, and, amazingly, almost at once landed a commercial job, voicing a corporate video for Osram, all about their developing of eco-friendly lighting technology.  Paid rather well, too.  A couple of smaller jobs have come along, as well, and I've spent many many hours recording, editing and emailing voice auditions to a plethora of people all over the world.   I find that I now actually quite like the way my voice sounds (I originally wrote, "like the sound of my own voice" but I fear that has other connotations!)

And now?  On Tuesday I drove up to Peterborough for an audition with the RNIB, for their Talking Books service.  Seemed to go well, very nice bunch of people.  Yesterday, they told me they wanted to add me to their panel of readers.  Chuffed to bits.
Ok, not going to make me a fortune - they're a charity, and their rates, though perfectly respectable, do reflect that.
But oh...  what a wonderful thing. To be paid to read books.  Any and all kinds of books - their library's very diverse and eclectic.  I find myself quite excited at the prospect; more so than I've felt for quite a while.  I wonder what the first book will be?