UPDATE 3/24: All roles have now been cast. Thank you so much to everyone who auditioned—making final casting decisions was extremely difficult!
I'm looking for a narrator and voice actors for an audiobook version of my novel, Readjustment. I will be producing the first three chapters as a proof of concept for the novel (possibly more, depending on the response).
Payment rates will be:
- $75/chapter for the narrator
- $35-50/chapter for main roles
- $15-25 for minor roles
For more information, the book site is live at: readjustmentbook.com
Good-quality recordings with minimal static are appreciated. More roles will be added as the project gets underway. And please be aware that most parts will have lines with some level of profanity.
BOOK BLURB:
Helen Bach has everything an aspiring supervillain could ask for: a tragic backstory, a talent for building murderous automata, and very little in the way of a conscience. An engineering prodigy, Helen joins up with Steel City—a once-powerful shadow government that has employed her family for generations—with plans to restore the technocratic oligarchy to its former glory.
But this is the City, a metropolis where masked vigilantes run rampant, and Helen finds herself targeted by a group of self-styled heroes with a penchant for experimenting on human brains. The vigilantes abduct, imprison, and subject Helen to involuntary neurological “improvements”—paralyzing her with fear and physical pain if she attempts to build complex machinery. Unknown to the vigilantes, however, their added attempt to wipe her memory fails, leaving Helen with hobbled engineering skills and a rapidly deteriorating mental state, but a desire for revenge that’s stronger than ever. Supposedly reformed, Helen plays the part of faithful assistant to her captors, all the while plotting to overcome her debilitating reactions to machinery and get back to her promising career in evil. But when one of the vigilantes decides he’d like to “save” the City the way his friends saved Helen, the aspiring supervillain might just have to act the hero herself to stop him taking over the world.
That is—if she doesn’t lose her mind first.
I will be re-casting the roles of Helen Bach and !N — please consider auditioning again if you weren't cast the first time! Here's the link to the new casting call: https://www.castingcall.club/projects/readjustment-sci-fi-audiobook-paid-recasting-2-roles
Casting Update:
The roles of Rex Riptide and !N have now been filled, but new parts have also been added and I encourage everyone who has already auditioned to check them out.
Men: There are several people who auditioned for Rex and !N who I would like to ask to read for some of the new parts; look for a message from me within the next couple days!
Women: I am putting together a callback list and will get back to you in the next couple days as well!
Main role.
Helen's uncle and a long time Steel City agent; sly, smooth, bitter. Default expression is a sneer. Sinister.
Must sound plausibly older than the other male characters.
The mayor says whatever we tell him. It’s not my fault everyone knows he’s a stooge. Maybe you should have been a bit subtler with the whole murdering-his-predecessor thing. And you know… I did tell you so.
You don’t approve of my tactics? I am shocked. Well it doesn’t matter—I require neither your machines nor your permission. You may find this difficult to believe, Helen, but you are not the only person I take orders from. And I have been directed by these higher powers to smooth the path for the land leviathan at all costs. Anything that threatens our strike at the Summit must be eliminated. Those are my instructions.
(vicious) Yes that's the Grays, isn't it? No balls but plenty of cunts.
Main role.
!N's closest friend, Rex likes to consider himself a scientist. A "super-scientist," to be exact, with the requisite secret labs, mysterious sources of funding, and insufferable self-righteousness shared by !N and all the City's vigilantes. Rex has convinced himself he's an idealist, but in reality he'll do anything, however horrendous, if it's an intellectual puzzle.
Tenor voice; can switch rapidly from optimism and encouragement to impatience and irritability.
Right! Your amygdala perceives certain stimuli—machinery, specifically—as threatening, and triggers a fear response. The idea is that this will condition you to find the creation of destructive devices both dangerous and, er, unpleasant.
(impatience breaking through) You’re not going to hurt people, Helen. With the successful memory adjustments, !N’s fear conditioning seems redundant. Besides, if you can handle tools and assist with my projects you’ll be much more useful to me. I mean... to society.
(indignant) Excuse me? She is not, in point of fact, the most powerful being on this planet. I’ve halted the expansion of the cosmos themselves! In terms of sheer energy release, if you plot my achievements and hers on a log-log plot—
These are very small roles with 1-3 lines each, at most.
Will be paid as a minor role if both are performed by same individual.
(judge)
“I have to be honest with you, Miss Bach. I don’t know that I can, in good conscience, emancipate a minor under the age of sixteen.”
(therapist)
"There may be mild cognitive side effects.”
Minor role.
A human weapon with a mysterious past, the Atomic Girl ("AG") is the only vigilante in the City with genuine superpowers—and probably the only one of Rex's gang with a conscience.
Medium-to-low voice; sarcastic but ultimately well-meaning, compassionate.
We never got into messes like this before you showed up, Rex. And don’t give me any of that ‘duty’ bullshit. You enjoy it. And you, !N—You encourage him! It’s like you feed off each other’s crazy. You do realize you’re putting your friends in danger, right?
Well shit. Rex is going to be a nightmare, isn’t he? Ordinary Rex is bad enough, but melancholy Rex? Maybe he’ll leave—I mean, Rex only moved in because !N’s work interested him. Although, with all the equipment Susan gets us… He might not want to let a good thing go just because !N… died. (pause, embarrassed) Oh, sorry, you’ve obviously been crying. I guess you’re pretty cut up about it too? You and !N were…Well, you knew him back when you were evil, or whatever.
Well, it’s like my pops used to say: ‘Men are scum.’ ... Look, Hel. I want you to know, if you ever feel like you’re not safe in the house… or with Rex… you can tell me.
These are very small roles with 1-3 lines each, at most. Will be paid as a minor role if all three are performed by same individual.
(heckler at a lecture; teenager)
“Crypto-fascist! I bet you like Hitler too! He made the trains run on time!”
(inebriated grad student 1)
"So I started dreaming about lexicography, right? And I realized: dictionaries are just a form of socially negotiated knowledge.”
(inebriated grad student 2)
"And we're all pretty smart, you know? But some people are really smart. This Rex guy—he’s like, super smart.”
These are very small roles with 1-3 lines each, at most.
Will be paid as a minor role if both are performed by same individual.
(lab tech)
“Engineer Bach? Are you okay?"
(grad student)
“And he said they were going to have a 16th century party, so pick a dress to wear and don’t wash it for a year.”
Minor role.
A vigilante of questionable humanity, !N (the exclamation point is silent) was an undergraduate computer science major before he started replacing pieces of his brain with circuitry and turned himself into a cyborg. And in an effort to stop her gaining control of the City, !N masterminded the brain surgery performed on Helen.
Baritone voice; monotone, precise speech.
Your levity is a screen for fear, but ultimately transparent. Our intercourse would be more efficient if you spoke seriously.
I have already updated my belief distribution, Rex. Even old man Bayes must have known he was probably a Boltzmann Brain. What I am not understanding is the motivation. What value system sees utility in simulating a universe?
Your response is purely emotional. You are not acting rationally.
Minor role.
Helen Bach's murdered mother, and the most influential figure in Helen's life. Would kill every man, woman, and child in the City if she thought it could help her daughter.
Any voice type; must sound plausibly older than Helen Bach, so if you have a higher-pitched voice be aware of that.
Oh my sweet girl. Oh my love, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to you ... But Ellie, this is an opportunity.
I’ll haunt you, Thomas. I swear it. If you betray her, I’ll destroy you. It won’t matter if I’m dead. I’ll come back. I’ll haunt you.
(forceful) I will only say this one time, Ellie, because if you don’t understand it by now you’re lost already: you do not need their approval. And if you so much as look like you’re waiting for it, you weaken your position. Tell them you’re designing weapons to fight ninjas, tell them you want to make sure they’re safe the next time they do something unaccountably stupid. Tell them whatever the fuck you want, or tell them nothing. You have social capital to burn, my love, and not a lot of time to do it in. So. You’re going to take this exosuit out to one of the test rooms. You’re going to adjust and calibrate it openly. And Ellie—you’re not going to ask anyone, not anyone, for permission.
Minor role.
A mediocre journalist who gets swept up in the City's vigilante activity. Nebbish, easily impressed; in awe of Rex; developing a creepy obsession with Helen.
Any voice type.
"So... Are you and Rex together?"
“Well, like I said, I overheard part of their conversation. Rex went: ‘Give me a time. If I can’t get a time, yours runs out.’ The other man, Gray I guess, looked like he was about to piss himself. He panicked and ripped some device from his belt, and then out of nowhere these… these things started shooting lights at Rex—lasers, maybe? I dropped to the ground, so I didn’t see much, but Rex took the things out and one of them… They were like something out of a nightmare. Metal spheres with graspers all over the surface. They looked military. I still don’t know what exactly they were.”
(reporter voice; this is Gil narrating his own article)
NOWHERE TO HIDE! SILVER SWARM ATTACKS PARALYZE THE CITY
CITY HALL – At a press conference Thursday evening, the Interim Mayor refused to respond to questions regarding a new economic study, which argues that mass work stoppages caused by fear of the Silver Swarm have crippled the metropolitan economy and put the City into ‘a state of siege.’
Major role.
The narrator will read all prose that isn't dialogue, as well as Helen Bach's interior thoughts. This is the most labor-intensive role, as it's a lot of text; must be able to differentiate Helen's thoughts from the regular narration. For audition lines below, text in brackets [ ] are Helen's thoughts.
Medium-pitched voice, smooth and calm.
We were all going direct to heaven,
we were all going direct the other way.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Rex’s expression shifted to what he must have thought was nonchalance as he took a moment to compose himself, but there was a hard edge to it. Disappointment or annoyance, Helen suspected. [Did you really think I asked you here for a quickie in the machine shop?] she thought, disgusted. [Not even Good Helen would consider it.]
Rex pays the bill and leaves a tip of exactly fifteen percent, down to the penny. When he turns his back, Helen puts all the cash from her purse on the table. She thinks, wildly: someone in this City should have a good night. They ride back to the house, then, Helen sitting rigid behind Rex on his motorcycle. She stares at the streetlights and lets her mind untether from her body. [You can and you can’t, you shall and you shan’t, you will and you won’t.] She feels herself wrap her arms around Rex’s waist; she leans her head on his shoulder. [And you’ll be damned if you do, and you’ll be damned if you don’t.]
Main role.
A brilliant engineer and aspiring supervillain, Helen is the orphaned daughter of a drug kingpin and an illegal arms dealer—and accordingly ruthless in pursuit of her goals. A consummate actress, lying is second nature.
Medium-pitched voice; wide emotional range.
(rallying her troops) You’re the best minds in the City. Some of the best in the world. And when our leviathan takes the Summit in two months, there won’t be anyone, anyone, on this godforsaken planet who can stand against us. We’re done hiding underground. We’re done biding our time. We will say to all the would-be potentates of this wretched place: look on our works, ye mighty, and despair! We’re Steel Fucking City! And we’re fucking back!
(cool, confident) You should know, I have a dead man’s switch—for lack of a non-gendered phrase to describe it. I guess I could say ‘dead person,’ but it’s not nearly as evocative, is it? Regardless. It’s a weapons system. Long-range missiles targeted on Steel City outposts across the country, programmed to launch automatically if I don’t disarm them at specific intervals of time. Attempt to alter me, kill me, or keep me here against my will, and your organization will lose more infrastructure in ten minutes than you’ve lost in the last century. And from what I’ve seen... You can’t afford that.
(anguished, then desperate and furious) Why? Why? Why why why why why ...
You should have killed me! I begged you! I begged you to kill me! ... I’ll die before you touch me again you fucking psycho!
Minor role.
A graduate student who regrets her life choices.
"I'm sorry, I'm a little confused by your comment. What I seem to be hearing is that the difference between superheroes and supervillains is that the former only knock out electrical grids by accident. Let’s be honest, if Captain Do-Gooder or whoever’s the next big thing gave the City timetables as detailed as the Silver Swarm have, I’d be a little less afraid of being crushed by falling rubble in my sleep.”
“One, I think you mean Mussolini. Two, actually he didn’t. And three, can I invoke Godwin’s Law to close the Q and A session? No? Well somebody a little better-informed next, please.”
(frightened)
“I’m not expecting any money, okay? Just, please, tell your people it wasn’t my fault. It’s not like ‘Mr. Gray’ or whatever gave me a number to call if something went wrong, and if I’d tried to stop them it would’ve made a scene and I didn’t think you guys would want that. You do believe me, don’t you?”
Minor Role.
A vigilante in Rex's group, Susan (alias "NASA Lass") is a dilettante playing superhero while her daddy works at the Pentagon. "Our lady of perpetual self-righteousness," Susan sees herself as morally superior to Helen.
Higher-pitched voice; the goody two-shoes of the gang.
Jeez, Rex. She nearly blew up the City yesterday. However she’s feeling, she earned it.
(lying, poorly) It’s been hard on all of us. But we’re friends, Helen. If you move back in, we can look out for each other.
(unconvincing) It’s sad you don’t trust us, Helen.
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