For Kenneth Obi, Narrator and Friend

I have to say last week was one of the hardest weeks in a very long time. On the 10th my friend, and the narrator who has done all my audiobooks to date, passed away suddenly.

I first met him when I was looking to get Secrets in the Dark put into audiobook. I’d had a terrible time finding any narrators who wanted to take a chance on the book. But Kenneth surprised me by not only being polite and happy when I contacted him but being willing to audition for it.

The part that still makes me smile was that he really hadn’t looked through the description of the book carefully enough, so he had no idea what he was getting into. He always laughed when he talked about that audition. He said he had to do the whole thing twice because the first time he read through the scene he said it sounded like a straight guy reading a gay story and was terrible.

Listening to my own books has always been very weird to me, but he made my characters come alive. He had fun exploring a world he was very unfamiliar with and his joy came through in every book he narrated. He always said Cooper was one of his favorite characters.

I won’t go into details about his personal life, but he always said that our books (in the mm community) gave him a better understanding of his son and helped him to understand him in ways he might not have without them.

Here’s a shot of Kenneth and me together.
He had a huge heart and will be greatly missed.

To help celebrate his life and all the books he narrated for the mm book community, there are some great giveaways in the Facebook groups of the authors he narrated for. Come join us and celebrate. Start in my group, Shaw’s Playroom, and I’ve got links to the other authors who are participating.