David J. Gatward's Blog

( I ended up getting quite a few questions for Aubrey and a couple for me too. So I’ll start with the questions for me first and then move onto Mr Parson’s interview!) Questions for Dave How do you choose your narrator?  Back in the day, I put a sample from Grimm Up North on the platform used by Amazon for audiobooks. A number of different voice artists, at least a dozen, then upload an audition. Aubrey was the clear winner. Do you give him instructions or ask him to correct things, a bit like a director in films? When I send a new manuscript to Aubrey, I can provide additional notes if I need to, such as voices/accents of a new character. So, a little like a director, but Aubrey is so used to the main cast now that he pretty much nails each book! * * * Questions for Aubrey How do you go about the narration? Do you go to a studio or not? Everyone has different ways of approaching narration. Some narrators like to give dry reads (where the narrator just reads the book aloud without a

Now, flapjack recipes are a dime a dozen on the Internet, so I took  this one   from the good old BBC and adapted it a bit to include the honey, raisins, chocolate and cashews (I’ve put measurements for these but you can just add them in whatever quantities you like). I initially made this by replacing the sugar with honey, but this made for a very squidgy flapjack, so I’ve left the sugar in here and just added a bit of honey for extra sweetness! Ingredients 175g/6oz butter      175g/6oz golden syrup 175g/6oz light muscovado sugar 1-2 tablespoons of honey 350g/12oz porridge oats 65g/2.5oz of raisins 50g/2oz of cashew nuts roughly chopped 100g/3.5oz    of chocolate roughly chopped Method 1. Preheat the oven to 150C/130C Fan/Gas 2 and line a 20cm/8in square baking tin with baking paper 2. Melt butter in a medium pan over a low heat 3. Add the golden syrup and honey to the butter and heat gently 4. Once the syrup and honey is dissolved, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the porridg