Today we’d like to introduce you to Marnye Young.
Hi Marnye, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
Growing up I was always doing plays or writing my little skits and recording them with my dad’s video camera. I even had a Cassio keyboard so I would play horrible music for these silly skits. I had a band too and was writing songs when I was ten. Just song lyrics and melodies. I couldn’t write real music. I was an entertainer from a very early age. In all honesty, I think I wanted attention and so I became an actor. I loved making people laugh and I recall my family looking to me to entertain them with my singing or dancing or my antics. And I loved doing that for them and of course the accolades that followed.
I always did theatre in school and acted in plays from elementary school through high school. I attended UET University of Evansville Theatre that at the time was one of the best programs for theatre in the country. While I did my best to maintain a positive facade I was falling apart on the inside not understanding that so much of it was linked to my father’s undiagnosed sickness.
He passed away the summer going into my 2nd year of grad school and I have no doubt that informed a lot of how I functioned in grad school where I also struggled but did my best to keep that facade. I didn’t tell anyone until two weeks into school when I had a complete meltdown. But I put that facade up again and kept pushing through. So much so that I managed to get representation straight out of the gate, a legit agent and a commercial agent and I was booking work and then I wasn’t. It might have had something to do with being drugged and raped by my broker while living in New York City after having just started therapy for depression. All of my grief and trauma rising to the surface while trying so hard to hold that facade. But after two years of not being cast or as someone at the time told me “I can’t even get you arrested” I was getting work again as I began to sort through all of those big feelings. I was getting a lot of work actually. I even broke into television a few years after I met my now husband.
We got married and shortly after I booked that television spot I found out I was pregnant with twins. Fast forward a few years after their birth and I am being told by a dear friend, the lovely and exceptionally talented Patricia Santomasso, you should try audiobooks. Because you can work from home take care of the kids and you get to do your favorite thing in the world. ACT.
Fast forward another few years when I got serious about becoming an audiobook narrator and later making a living doing it. I created a brand that was just me The Audio Sorceress (thank you Sean McMahon for that title) and then I created my company Audio Sorceress where I work with a team of 8 other people.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My journey has been anything but smooth. The learning curve has been so huge for me that there were at least two times in the four years I have had my company where I thought for sure I was going to have to close the doors. It was devastating. After working so hard to build something from the ground up and having a tornado whip through it not once but twice financially crushing us. And both were things beyond my control. Well, at least one was.
The other was something I waited too long to deal with so at the end that’s on me. But something you should know about me is that I am not a quitter and I don’t give up. I see things through to the end. I had a team I was responsible for and a family to support. I could not and would not let either down. And while I looked at those two instances as major failures than I now think of them as my First Attempts In Learning (FAIL) which is a completely different mindset.
I got that acronym from a teacher’s post on LinkedIn. The rocky road that has gotten me to where I am today is something I am grateful for because I learned a lot about perseverance and adaptation. I had a movement teacher when I was getting my MFA at Yale (now the David Geffen School of Drama) who said “ Champions adjust” and I guess you could say I learned how to be my own champion.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a SAG AFTRA stage film and tv actor and a SOVAS and Earphones Award-Winning narrator who has recorded and produced hundreds of audiobooks. I am also an audiobook coach, director, casting director, and a business owner-a mompreneur. I have my own audiobook production company Audio Sorceress an award-winning company that produces audiobooks for NY Times, WSJ, USA Today, and International and Amazon Bestselling authors. And I am a mom of two intelligent, spirited, and loving eight year old identical girls who challenge me daily in the most wonderful and not so wonderful ways. LOL.
I am proud that as a mom of developmentally delayed identical twins and navigating all that entails including specialists and various types of therapy over the years, I created and grew my very own company. In the beginning, it was just me voicing everything and an engineer and now there are 9 of us including a videographer and a production coordinator, an extensive roster of voice artists to perform the books, and a growing list of global clientele.
I am proud of the team I have assembled compromised of people I believe represent the best in the business. We all share a real passion for what we do as well as a deep desire and commitment to bring our “A game” to every project we work on. And something else we have in common is a real need to help others. We love giving voice to the underrepresented whenever possible.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
The audiobook industry is one of the few industries that has skyrocketed over the past few years increasing each year by double digits. In 2021 there was an increase of 25% in audiobook sales. That number is staggering. This is not only evidenced in the number of audiobooks consumed by listeners by the sheer number of companies that are sprouting up to help meet this growing demand.
And it’s not just narrators creating their own companies like I did. You now have authors as well. My prediction is the numbers will only continue to climb as more and more readers turn to audiobooks to get their “fix”.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.audiosorceress.com and marnyeyoung.com
- Instagram: Instagram.com/audiosorceress and instagram.com/marnyeyoung
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/marnyeyoung and www.Facebook.com/audiosorceresssaudiobookproductioncompany
- Twitter: Twitter.com/audiosorceress
- Youtube: YouTube.com/user/marnyenoyesyoung
- SoundCloud: SoundCloud.com/marnyeyoung
