On My Anne Shirley Series
With the public release of the final chapter of Anne of the Island this week, my years-long Anne Shirley project comes to a close.
If you’ve followed me online at all sometime in the past few years, you’ve undoubtedly seen me post about my Anne Shirley audio series - an enhanced reading of the first three Lucy Maud Montgomery books featuring a full cast, sound effects, and music. This past week, I publicly released the final chapter in the third book, Anne of the Island, which is also my final book in the series, so I thought I’d look back at how the project came to be and why it’s meant so much to me.
I did not grow up with Anne of Green Gables. It wasn’t something I was exposed to as a child, and I have no explanation for that. To this day I still have not seen the beloved Megan Follows adaptation. My first experience with Anne was when I was cast in a stage musical adaptation of the book in 2011.
I read the book upon getting cast, and like so many others, I fell in love with Anne’s pure and optimistic outlook on life, and her “scope for imagination” was something I deeply resonated with, having grown up an only child of divorced parents. I was just as enchanted by her as many others have been before me. I think I went on to read the second book in the series, Anne of Avonlea, even though the musical only covered the events of the first book. I grew very fond of Anne, and I wanted to see how her story progressed. At the time I never could have imagined how deeply intimate with it I would become years later!
I supported myself as an actor by having a Patreon for many years - something I started in 2013 after the success of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Through my Patreon I would provide perks to supporters - early access to YouTube videos, group hangouts with me, personalized hellos, you name it. In a particularly low and frustrating time in my career, when auditions were scarce and jobs fewer, I felt stuck in terms of what I had to offer my patrons. Many artists who have Patreons are musicians, or podcasters, or visual artists - their art inherently provides something tangible that they can share with their patrons. Doing “acting” for people feels much more nebulous, especially when one does not write one’s own material, and writing fiction is not a skill I was blessed with in this life. I felt frustrated both that I didn’t know what to offer my patrons and also that the industry itself wasn’t fulfilling me. And one day, I had a small but simple realization - I could read a book.
Not just read a book, of course, that’s what audiobooks are for, and that’s not really acting. But books exist already! They are written! And if they are in the public domain, they’re free for the taking for aspiring creatives like myself. I could have different people voice different characters, I thought, and bring in other members of my talented community (I had, at this point, done many play and script readings with many other friends for my Patreon, so involving others felt natural, and fun!). I could add music and sound effects - make it feel like a real, live listening experience. That seemed like a fun idea.
I allowed my patrons to vote at the time on what book they’d be interested in for such a project, and I can’t thank them enough for choosing Anne of Green Gables. It turned out to be the perfect book for such an endeavor in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. The narrator was a young female, and since the books take place in Canada, I didn’t have to put on any accent. The world is full of vibrant characters but only a few main players, and usually there are not more than three people talking to each other at once, which makes it easier to listen to. And it was a story I was pretty familiar with. Now, three books in (something I never planned to do at the outset!), I’m so grateful that that was the book I chose. And the more I created my version of it, the closer I felt to Anne and her story.
Next came the casting. I knew I’d be casting from my pool of creative cohorts, so age appropriate casting was not really my plan - I was reading the role of an 11 year old, for starters. The first person to cast beyond myself as Anne would of course be Marilla, Anne’s stern and reluctant adoptive caretaker, and my friend Whitney Avalon, who has so much gravitas as a performer, was my obvious first choice. For Matthew, Marilla’s softspoken brother who is so charmed by Anne, Dylan Saunders immediately came to mind. I filled out the main cast with Jamie Lyn Beatty as the town busybody Mrs. Rachel Lynde and Sarah Grace Hart as Diana Barry, Anne’s bosom friend, and of course, my own romantic partner as Anne’s nemesis-turned-soulmate, Gilbert Blythe. Additionally, many other friends leant me their voices for other characters, big and small, over the years.
Originally these friends would come over to my apartment and sit in front of my Yeti Snowball mic in my dining room and we would read through scenes together. Thankfully, as time went on, my process and my equipment improved. Some people would record from home and send me their lines, and as the pandemic hit in 2020, recording from home became the preferred way of doing it - I unknowingly had set up a pandemic-proof project! I’d sit in front of my computer and put it all together, pulling songs and sound effects from Epidemic Sound and churning out chapter after chapter for my patrons. And the more intimate I became with Anne’s story, the more I loved it and felt deeply connected to it.
Eventually, I finished the first book. I allowed my patrons to vote again, and they chose the second book of the series, Anne of Avonlea, as the book they wanted me to embark on next. And by the time I finished that book, I knew I had to do the third, Anne of the Island. I didn’t read Island until I did this project, so discovering this third chapter of Anne’s story in this way was so special to me. And by the end of that book - which you can now enjoy online in its entirety for free - Anne and Gilbert’s story had come to a satisfying, heartwarming place. It felt like the perfect end to my project.
I don’t remember when exactly I decided that these chapters should be enjoyed by more than just my Patreon patrons, but for the past few years I have been putting them online as free podcasts. This little project grew bigger than I ever could have imagined, and I am so grateful that so many people have found so much enjoyment in my tellings of them. I certainly wish in some ways that I could go back and re-do the first book - the quality is not up to my current standards, but hey, I was learning! But listeners are very forgiving, and now they’ve been listened to over 3 million times, which is pretty wild.
Revisiting these books in this way has had a profound effect on me. I found myself deeply relating to all of Anne’s various glories and struggles, and laughing and crying with her as she grows and learns and finds her place in the world. I never could have imagined that Anne Shirley would become such a big part of my life when I was first cast in that musical back in 2011, but I’m so glad she has.
There it is! The first three books in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne Shirley series, all out for you to enjoy for free, wherever you listen to podcasts. I actually finished making Anne of the Island in 2021, which means I’ve had some time away from this project, and now…I’m ready to embark on something new. I don’t have a lot of details yet, but if you’d like to join me on another classic novel audio adventure, you can do so on Patreon.
Until next time, readers, go out and enjoy this dear old world. ❤️
If you’re interested in creating your own audio series and would like to know more about my process, sign up for office hours on my website.