INTERVIEW OF SUZAN HENNEN
Suzan, it was a delight working with you as you produced Courage Is a Redhead in audible form. Since then I’ve wanted to get to know you a little better. Thanks for agreeing to let me interview you.
It is a pleasure, Mary, to be a part of this interview and to have worked with you on your book, Courage Is a Redhead. It has a special place in my heart. It was my fist audiobook which was the beginning of my voiceover career. I too was thankful to get to know you during this project.
1. Where did you grow up?
I was born in Dublin, Texas, but lived in Dallas, Texas, as a young child and moved to Irving, Texas, with my parents around the age of 4 or 5 years old. When I was 11 years old, my parents moved us to Garland, Texas, and we lived there until I got married in 1972 to my husband John. All my siblings are still alive and live in the Dallas-Ft Worth area. My father died at the age of 76 from complications of Alzheimer's. My mother lives with one of my younger sisters in Garland, Texas, and is not in the best of health, having had several heart attacks, and needs some assistance due to her weak heart.
Tell us about your childhood and teenage years.
As a child, I grew up with an older sister, two younger sisters, and a younger brother. I was the next to oldest and was for some reason identified as the “little mother” to my younger siblings. Both my parents worked, my father at night and my mother during the day, and it was somewhat difficult for them raising five children two years apart in age and both working opposite shifts. I developed an interest in art during my teenage years and studied and practiced art from the 7th grade through high school.
We’d like to know a little about your immediate family.
I am married to the love of my life, John, for 47 years. I have two sons, Justin, and Trey, and a beautiful daughter-in-law, Jessica, with my grandson Jack, 7 years old. We live on 98 acres East of Dallas and love the woods and farm life. Both our sons have a home on our acreage as well which keeps us close to each other. My husband jokingly says we have our own little “commune.”
What values are important to you?
I grew up in a Christian home, and I became a Christian at the age of fourteen at a church across the street from my parents’ home. I feel that I value what Jesus and God value…truth, honesty, integrity, doing the right thing, loving others no matter what. I value my relationship with God more than anything else in my life. He has made me who I am today no doubt.
Why did you decide to become a voice actor?
This is an interesting question. Becoming a voice actor was not something I just one day said that is what I want to do, nor is it something that I have always wanted to be neither. My youngest sister had been doing voice acting for years before I decided to give it a try and to audition with ACX.com in 2013. I really did not receive any offers during that time and with my beautiful grandson being born in August, 2013, it would have been difficult to do any voiceover work then anyway. My daughter-in-law worked at a pharmacy as a pharmacy tech, and with my son working for us in our Hardware Sales company, my son and I took care of our little Jack during the day in between working. It was very grand to say the least! I could go on and on about this, but back to why I decided to become a voice actor. So in 2019, I got a notification through ACX.com from you that you had listened to some of my auditions (from way back in 2013), and wanted me to do your book Courage Is a Redhead for you. I was really blown away at the offer and decided I would take on this challenge as I had no experience in voiceover. And what an experience! It was a learning process from the get-go! I thank you so much for the offer and what I gained through my first voiceover.
What experiences have helped you learn to read and dramatize novels?
I truly cannot identify any experiences that helped me to read and dramatize novels, except that I listened to some books on tape, and really enjoyed audiobooks. It just seemed easy for me to read and express myself through that. The dramatizing was a little hard as I am a softer-spoken kind of person, and I had to listen to training audios through ACX. All the training tools they offered were so helpful to me.
Recently you’ve recorded a large group of books. Would you please tell us about them?
After finishing Courage Is a Redhead, I was contacted by PureReads Books to audition for an audio six book set, Molly Grey Christian Cozy Mysteries, and was awarded the contract to produce those books. That was a real challenge with so many different characters within the 6 books, and I felt that I grew tremendously in my voiceover skills producing these books. And it was fun!
Besides recording books, what else do you enjoy doing?
As I mentioned earlier, I love to draw, but I have not had as much opportunity to do that with a 7-year-old grandson who is in my life almost six days out of seven every week. He is the joy and light of my life. Plus, I still have a role to a small degree in our Hardware Sales Rep business of 35+ years, keeping up with some of the accounting responsibilities which I enjoy.
What were some of the difficulties you had recording Courage is a Redhead?
I would say that one difficulty recording Courage Is a Redhead was just relearning the Audacity software for recording after three years. And I was doing a lot of digging in ACX for how to do all the necessary things to make an audiobook great. Also, changing characters was a real challenge as I had to practice more than if I had been doing this for a while. It was challenging but a fun project. All in all, Courage Is a Redhead was a giant stepping-stone for me in the voice acting world. I am so blessed to have gotten to know you during this project that God brought into my life and would say that I enjoyed voice acting a clean, fun book as Courage Is a Redhead! God bless you in your many new books that you are and will be writing!
Suzan, I would have never known you were a new narrator. Your recording is well produced.
