Lazarus Remembered:
The Creation of an Immersive Audiobook
A contemporary family drama that explores challenges within non-traditional family structures, Lazarus Remembered, is a twelve-hour immersive audiobook. Set mainly in Australia, it’s a tale of love and loss, forgiveness and redemption, and includes a soundtrack of thirteen original songs and production values similar to a radio play. The idea to create an immersive storytelling experience came during the first draft, and as my husband Andy is a musician and composer, provided a great opportunity for us to work together.
Lazarus Remembered follows the story of Peter Mackenzie who, on a chilly March morning in 2012, wakes to the news his mother, Lydia, is dying. Peter has had no contact with Lydia since leaving his home town of Lazarus for the UK thirty years earlier. Over the next two days his life is thrown into chaos, catapulting him into the decision return to Australia. It’s Peter’s last chance to see his mother but means confronting the family and friends he abandoned as a teenager, and through dual timelines the events that forced his departure and the consequences of his decision to return are revealed, leading to a shocking climax
The audiobook was published in January 2021 and the reviews have been fantastic; even better than we dared hope for.
So how did we get there?
From the outset we wanted to ensure the songs move the story forward rather than simply complement the narrative. Lazarus Remembered is told mainly from Peter’s viewpoint. However songs provide a unique opportunity within the novel structure: an additional point of view. In one pivotal scene, Lydia lies unconscious on life support. Surrounded by her loved ones, I wanted to share her experience; fragments of memories stimulated by their voices. This is the concept behind Twilight, a hauntingly beautiful melody. It’s the only time where the listener enters Lydia’s head and not only does it provide another perspective but it strengthens a hugely emotional scene, allowing the listener a change of pace and time to reflect.
This leads into another opportunity we took with the musical score: to touch the emotions.
We can all recall pieces of music that are particularly moving and many art forms, especially film and TV, routinely use music to illustrate a mood or heighten emotional impact. Lazarus Remembered takes us on a powerful emotional journey, with moments of grief and despair, joy and optimism, hope and nostalgia. Chapter 2, for example, is set in the 1960s and to capture the mood we wrote, Come Dance With Me, an upbeat melody reminiscent of classic sixties pop tunes. As the secondary timeline moves through the seventies and eighties, the songs reflect the music of those decades, from grungy rock to techno beat, enhancing the sense of nostalgia that’s intrinsic to the story.
Along with the music we incorporated sound effects to strengthen the immersive experience. It took a lot of time to get the balance right. Listeners want to hear a compelling story not a series of sound effects so we used them sparingly but effectively to give a sense of place; glasses clinking in a bar or crickets chirping at sunset. The reviews have, without exception, remarked on how well this worked.
Many have also asked, ‘why aren’t more audiobooks produced with this level of care and attention?’ Great question!
