When I negotiated the contract with Tantor Media for them to produce the audiobooks for my Rylie Sunderland cozy mystery series, I made sure that I got to choose the narrator I wanted, and I chose the fabulous Nicol Zanzarella. 

     One thing that was very important to me was finding a narrator who could properly pronounce the bits of Italian that are spoken in Vengeance in the Vines by Rylie’s Italian boyfriend Alex and his family. I also wanted a narrator that would use a distinct voice for each character and who would do a good job speaking in the various accents that some of my characters have. 

     I planned to choose the narrator who spoke the best Italian, so I would have chosen Nicol based on that alone, but I also preferred the cadence of Nicol’s voice over the other narrator who auditioned. So I chose Nicol, and I’m very happy that I did. 

     On Nicol’s website, she mentions that she loves cooking her grandmother’s Italian recipes for company. That made me curious as to whether Nicol was, in fact, Italian and whether she grew up speaking Italian. So I reached out to Nicol to learn more. 

     It turns out that three of Nicol’s grandparents are Italian-American but they didn’t speak Italian with her when she was growing up. However, Italian culture has always been a big part of Nicol’s family life. 

     Nicol told me she’s always been interested in learning Italian. She took a few semesters of Italian in college and since then, so she has a strong working knowledge of Italian. She hopes to someday take an Italian language immersion course in Italy. 

     Nicol and her partner Martin live in Pennsylvania with their McNab dog named Zookie. Zookie came into their lives when Martin was in northern California attending a wedding. A few of Martin’s friends there were fostering some dogs including a puppy named Zucchini. Little Zucchini (now called Zookie) crawled into Martin’s lap, and the rest is history. Martin called Nicol right away and told her that he’d just found “their dog.” 

     Nicol enjoys stories in all forms including live performances, books, and interviews. She studies the characters in the books she narrates for clues as to how they would sound when they speak so she can portray them authentically. Sometimes a book will state that a character has a deep voice or a soft voice or some other kind of voice. But sometimes she has to get clues as to how a character would speak based on their characteristics such as whether they’re tall or short, portly or slim, energetic or slow moving, or shy or outgoing. 

     Other times, authors give her a real life person to use for reference or notes about what they have in mind for how their characters speak. Then there are the characters that just come through to Nicol in a certain way, so she gets out of their way and lets them take the reins. 

     Nicol is an award-winning narrator of over 350 audiobooks. She’s recorded books across genres for Penguin Random House, Blackstone Publishing, Brilliance Publishing, Macmillan, Harper Audio, Hachette Audio, Weston Woods/Scholastic, Tantor Audio, HighBridge Audio, Podium Publishing, Dreamscape, and Audible Studios. 

     She’s also an accomplished actor. She’s had leading roles in award-winning independent feature films and has numerous TV commercials and voiceovers to her credit. She’s been part of two distinguished theatre companies: New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre and Los Angeles’ A2 Ensemble. 

     Nicol’s acting experience enables her to give each character in the audiobooks that she narrates a unique and distinctive voice. Listening to an audiobook that she’s narrated is truly an immersive experience. Thanks, Nicol, for being my narrator. I look forward to working with you for years to come.