One of the fun things about having a new book come out is that you learn about new media. Recently I received this email invitation:

“Join our collection so that students and teachers can hear from you when reading your books. You don’t need to have a difficult name to participate—just a fun message to help readers get a sense of who you are.”

To hear how your favorite fellow authors give their messages their own personal touch, see the entire collection of over 1,300 name pronunciations here.

I did record my own name to be posted soon. But first I took a few minutes to listen to the recordings of some of the Hamline faculty. Did you know that one is named after a game show host and when another one leaves a phone message people sometimes think that two girls have called?

Now I invite any of you out there with books to record your name, too. Or when you truly deserve a break from writing, check these recordings out.

TeachingBooks is an online database of multimedia resources about books and authors and is used in over 26,000 schools, reaching 13+ million students – pretty cool and a wonderful resource.