Written by I recently flew to Ottawa to record the narration for my second book, Alice and Bob Learn Secure Coding, and it was a LOT of work! From September 1st to to 7th, 2025 I recorded 6 hours a day at The Cave recording studio. Focusing on reading highly technical content (including tons of code), and speaking absolutely perfectly, for hours at a time is…. Exhausting!
If you are going to be speaking for hours at a time, it is best to preserve your voice. Not speaking in the evenings means for solitary evenings, and a lot more typing than usual. As I was recording in Ottawa, a city I lived in for many years, it was hard not to speak to all my friends! I also drank quite a lot of something called Throat Coat Tea, which is extremely helpful for ensuring your throat doesn’t hurt, your mouth isn’t too dry, and the tone of your voice is as normal as possible.
I’m a person who makes a lot of ‘mouth sounds‘. You might not realize it, but when we open our mouths, move our tongues, saliva gathers, etc. we make very quiet sounds. Guess what? The mics pick it up! You would be surprised to find out how easily you run out of breath while reading, or suddenly your mouth seems to have way more saliva in it than it ever previously did, right after the sound engineer says “we’re rollin’!”
The sound engineer that I worked with was GREAT. His handle on X, Instagram and other platforms is @TheIncredibleLJ. He had such incredible focus. I would make a mistake, stop reading, take a breath, and he would already have edited my mistake and started playing back the previous sentence so I could pick up right back where I was immediately. The last book recording was… Not like that.
Since it was summer, the studio was HOT. They had a great air conditioning system, but because an audiobook requires absolute silence, we couldn’t run the air conditioning while I was recording. It sounds weird, but reading out loud is somewhat strenuous. Not the same as running; think of it like gentle, continuous walking. Now imagine doing gentle walking, for hours at a time, in a tiny room, that is very well insulated, on an extremely hot day! Normally I don’t sweat very much, but at one point I could feel a drop of sweat run extremely slowly down the inside of my arm, down to my elbow and WOW that was distracting! Every time we paused for a break I would say “May I please have some air?” and LJ would turn the HVAC on full blast, to my absolute, overheating delight.
For those unaware, your voice is a muscle. It can be strong or weak, AND you can exercise it. When I used to be a professional singer, it was very strong. I used to do vocal exercises regularly, both for my mouth (to pronounce things perfectly) and my throat (to make the correct tones and notes). Our voices are capable of being extremely expressive, if we exert effort towards that end. As someone who was a professional singer, actress, comedian, professional public speaker and trainer, and now narrator, I am intentionally extremely expressive. The way I speak is important to me, and I try to use my voice carefully and with purpose. To me, the tone of someone’s voice is a big part of how I identify or remember someone. People’s voices are important to me, thanks to my various professions over the years.
Re-reading my own book was quite interesting. When I wrote it, I had to re-read various parts constantly, and at the end when we did the language and layout edits, I had to read it all again, but I remember the timing was absolutely awful for me. I was in New York City for an AI Native conference, and I had taken 3 extra days in NYC to visit my cousin who lives there. Unfortunately, I contracted the flu and was quite sick (I was bedridden almost the entire week), except for my talk (which I did with a fever, sweating on stage, but I was told I did quite well in spite of it). There I was with terrible brain fog, trying my best to find corrections in my own work, which is difficult on my best day, having both dyslexia and ADHD…. Not exactly a fun week!
Re-reading my book out loud was… Surprisingly fun. I got to experience all the stories as I told them out loud to the sound engineer. I sort of imagined I was reading to him. For those of you who are not aware, I am Alice AND Bob. Almost all the stories happened to me (about 90%, some are ones that happened to friends or colleagues). Bob is me age 16-30, and Alice is me age 31 to present. Although sometimes I have changed the stories to have happier endings than they really did (what I wished happened, instead of what did), almost all the stories are true.
It was super fun to read a part, then take a break and discuss it with LJ or some of the artists that would hang around the studio. They were recording other people as well while I was there, for a few hours here or there. They had R&B, Rap, and a metal band. It was pretty cool! I overheard one of the singers saying I had a nice voice, and I blushed super red. What a compliment!
As a read the book, I got to relive my research, my discoveries, my experiences, and all that I learned along the way. Writing that book was 2.5 years of my life; there were a lot of ups and downs. I wasn’t expecting the experience to be emotional, just a lot of work. Boy was I wrong.
Another thing I wasn’t expecting was… Becoming lonely. Because I couldn’t speak after hours (having to save my voice for the recording), that meant I couldn’t talk to anyone. Every day. For 5 straight days (the 6th day I broke the rule to have dinner with my friend Jesse, the one who builds robots, he’s been in the blog before), I spoke to absolutely no one except for brief comments to the sound engineer. As someone who is rated 100% extrovert on the Miller-Briggs scale, that was rather difficult. Buy Sunday night, the last of 7 days of recording, I was desperate to talk to pretty much anyone! My job is generally very social. I have meetings with all sorts of cool people, I travel and talk to people at events, and I often work from home where family is so I can talk to them. That means that although I do a fair amount of deep, solo work, I also get to talk to lots of people, every single day. On the Monday after recording, I got to have quite a few meetings, and teach for a client that I adore, so that was good, but then my BEST FRIEND came over that evening and I was right back to normal, happy, Tanya again. Phew!
Advice for those wanting to write a book
Quite a lot of people ask me about writing a book, and I thought I would take this chance to offer a bit of advice. If you are thinking of writing a book you should know that it will be A LOT OF WORK. I would say that each of my books was more effort than my college computer science diploma was. It took many, many, many hours, and you must carve time out of your life, on an on-going basis, to make it work. If you have a family whom you live with, you should talk to them about it, because it will affect them too! Writing a book is a large sacrifice, and you should do it because you want the book to exist, and hopefully not because you think you will make a lot of money from it (spoiler alert: you probably won’t, I certainly haven’t). Writing a book is a huge commitment, think about it seriously before you decide. If you aren’t sure, my advice is to not do it. Do something else smaller that you know you will finish. There are way more half-written books in this world than finished ones, so please think carefully before you take on such a huge project.