Stacy Gonzalez
Stacy Gonzalez has performed over 300 audiobooks, under several pseudonyms. She loves work where she can connect with her Colombian heritage. Stacy’s mother immigrated to the United States after meeting Stacy’s father, a Finnish American, as pen pals, trying to learn each other’s language. Stacy loves to exercise her conversational Spanish in her narration.
The Writer’s Dossier 10/6/2025 – The Stacy Gonzalez interview
DOSSIER: Regarding your process for delivering exceptional quality in your audiobook narration, how many times do you read through the book and how much book/author research do you do before you hit that record button?
GONZALEZ: My answer to this definitely depends on the book. Absolutely, at least once do I read through the book. I’m not a person who likes to do a lot of marking up and highlighting and note taking. It puts me too much in my head. If the book is very dense or has a lot of characters, I stop and start a lot while recording to re-listen to character samples that either I or a co-narrator created or to look up pronunciations and meanings of complicated words. Or just to make sure that I am in the moment and that I have made sense of the sentence. I would rather stop and start while record than do too much ahead of time.
It’s not intentional
DOSSIER: Although you skillfully craft your narration around your interpretation of each book character, do you have a particular style you save for certain kinds of books or specific authors you work with on a regular basis?
GONZALEZ: I don’t intentionally do this. I try to live in the moment and just let the text guide my style.
Get in that booth, kid
DOSSIER: How many people can comfortably fit in your recording booth?
GONZALEZ: From time to time, my 13 yr old kiddo has a voice over job. He and I can kind of comfortably fit into my Studiobricks booth. But I don’t think this will be for too much longer! He is bigger than me now and still growing.
Romance or erotica?
DOSSIER: What’s the biggest mistake you made in recording an audiobook and how did that work out with the author and/or audience?
GONZALEZ: I got my first audiobook job through a pay-to-play voiceover site that mostly did commercial work. It was five romance books that were sold to me as “cutesy romances.” They were straight up erotica. I made many mistakes, and I was definitely not prepared. I was open with the hiring people that I had never done an audiobook before, but I had many late nights trying to figure out what I was doing. It was actually a good pay rate and paid for my new kitchen floor, but they are definitely not performances/productions that I am proud of, unfortunately. To say that I’ve come a long way is an understatement.
Great advice to writers
DOSSIER: What’s the biggest message writers (or listeners) need to hear from audiobook narrators about the whole audiobook process that would help you produce the best possible rendition?
GONZALEZ: Every now and then, read a bit of what you are writing out loud. Do you like how it sounds? Are you using enough contractions? We are meant to be 100% accurate, so if you write “I did not do it,” we are going to say it exactly like that. Think about the names you use. Maybe it looks cool written, but (especially for foreign language names in English or fantasy/made up names) will it sound clunky or like some other English language word and be confusing?
Discover more about Stacy on Instagram and at Stacy Gonzalez