Sound Salad Podcast Audiobooks New Zealand

Our first episode for 2023 features Rahul Rai with his new book: Repurpose Me, Your Path to a Contentment Mindset.
​​Do you take life too seriously even though you know it is so temporary? Have you found yourself postponing the things that you really want to do? Do you ever wish you could enjoy your work a little more or wonder where to find purpose, happiness, or just contentment? After a near-death health experience and living through the horror of the Christchurch earthquakes, Rahul Rai started to look at the bigger purpose of all we do. As always, thanks so much to @audiobooksnz for making Sound Salad possible!

We’re chatting about the impending doom that is the use of artificial intelligence and cloned or computer-generated voices as replacements for narrators and actors in the audiobook industry.
Join me as I talk through the nitty gritty with Theo Gibson, founder and head of AudiobooksNZ, who has a breadth of experience and opinion on the subject of AI and what it means for the audio publishing industry. We share some horror stories and what we can expect as we move ahead with the knowledge that AI is here to stay, we just have to learn to live with it and safely protect ourselves from being exploited as it continues to learn from the infinite melting pot of content and information available on it’s feeding ground; the internet. We’re hopeful the layperson - or indeed any human who enjoys listening to long-form content, podcasts, audiobooks and stories can become advocates for the continued use of human voices, instead of letting us be taken over by robots.

I was delighted to be the narrator for Minnie's autobiographical book Blindingly Obvious which tells of her travels and stories as a partially sighted woman and access advocate, and her quest to build a more equitable and accessible world. The book was destined to be the countries ‘most accessible published book’ to date - which I believe it is, given that it's available as a printed text, an audiobook, it's the first full non-fiction book to be translated into NZ sign language, it is soon to be released episodically as a podcast series and will be coming to a Braille and e-braille format as well. The next step is te reo Māori, other global languages and beyond.
Check out her work at www.minnieb.co.nz or contact her at minnie@minnieb.co.nz 

PmR3H4p0q91XTuRFestp

First ep of the year - woohoo! 
I was chuffed to finally speak with David Whittet - the author of recently released Gang Girl, who also happens to be a filmmaker and a family doctor to boot. When David came to Audiobooks NZ to have Gang Girl produced, I was lucky enough to be the narrator for his protagonist Alicia’s side of the story. It’s as good a listen as it is a read! Check it out on davidwhittet.com or AudiobooksNZ.co.nz

Linn Lorkin is one of our most notoriously successful musical treasures; singer, songwriter, actor and linguist, with residencies in Copenhagen, Naples and New York, she’s been accused of being ‘good at too many things,’ but most notably, fans appreciate her writing. 
Linn was taught to play the piano by her mother, and claims ‘if you train when you’re young, you never forget it.’ Hearing Nina Simone and feeling starved for artistic company or creative peers, she knew she had to get offshore. A scholarship from the French Government allowed her to do just that, albeit to explore the world of linguistic academia. 
Destined to be an artist, she made her way to London in the swinging 60’s and began making up for lost time, meeting and partying with the greatest of characters. Music followed her wherever she went and she performed extensively. By fluke, she got her first job in Copenhagen after asking to sing with the resident band. They offered her 20 crona for 8 songs a night. 
These weren’t originals however, and it wasn’t until an evening in New York, listening to Joan Armitrading while feeling a bit down on life, that she took pen to paper. She wrote 12 songs in a fortnight, established her prolific stance as a singer-songwriter within her communities and the rest, as they say, is history. For someone who was seen as a ‘junkie or a lesbian’ for wielding an electric keyboard at her performances - arguably one of the only women at the time doing so - this must have felt in some way vindicating.
Linn still loves to stand out in a crowd, and has always paired her flaming red locks with beautiful vintage garments that appear as a running motif throughout her memoir. As is her music; hand-picked from her extensive repertoire of original compositions that have seen their way into her shows all over the world, and lovingly reproduced as stings to begin most chapters, indicating the style or tone of the next part of the story.
From the front page of the NZ Herald, to a 6 month stint in an Italian prison, lovesick mishaps and rowdy celebrity riddled parties, Linn’s experiences and travels really do appear to rival that of Gulliver. And this is only the first installment of her story, with a second in the pipeline documenting her return to the NZ music scene in the 80s. 
She is consummate in her vocation as a musician and performer, and continues to be a stalwart for music and performance where she currently resides in Tāmaki. You can catch Linn at Epolito’s Italian Restaurant on Richmond Rd on the last Tuesday of every month from 6pm-8pm, or at the Pt Chevalier RSA with her band the K’Rd Quartet for the Auckland Jazz and Blues club on Tuesdays, and often at Botticelli’s restaurant in Takapuna. 
Check out her Facebook pages for more information about upcoming gigs and events
https://www.facebook.com/HeyPianoBarLady and  https://www.facebook.com/linn.lorkin

Season 2’s third episode of Sound Salad has us tossing it with Rosy Fenwicke. She’s made the shift from writing part time alongside a medical career, to working full time as a mystery and women’s fiction writer (The Euphemia Sage Chronicles; Hot Flush, Switched Up and Empty Nest, among other solo titles) and is the esteemed editor of ‘In Practise: The Lives of NZ Women Doctors in the 21st Century.’
Her recent cryptocurrency thriller ‘Cold Wallet’ is stocked on the shelves of your local bookstores and on Amazon, with the audiobook available through @AudiobooksNZ