Dungeon Crawler Carl narrator Jeff Hays is so good fans think he’s multiple people
Clare MulroyMatt Dinniman sometimes hears a peculiar question about the audiobooks of his series, "Dungeon Crawler Carl": Why didn’t he credit the female narrator?
It's an easy answer: There isn’t a female narrator. But you could be convinced otherwise, hearing the uppity British quips of Princess Donut. She and nearly all the characters in Dinniman's eight Carl novels are voiced by Jeff Hays, whose skill has helped catapult the near-perfect-Audible-rated series to the forefront of the LitRPG (literary role-playing game) subgenre.
Audio greatly overindexes in this subgenre, Audible previously told USA TODAY. The Carl series specifically has clocked over 140 million listening hours on the app. The audiobook is a selling point for many readers because of the range of distinct voices Hays creates for the eclectic cast of characters.
Watching Hays perform his characters live is a masterclass in audio storytelling. To a panel of eager BookCon attendees in April, Hays read from the newest book and flipped flawlessly from voice to voice. That’s why USA TODAY is crowning him this year’s voice of the summer, the audiobook narrator sure to be in everyone’s headphones this year.
“I never, ever predicted this level of success," Hays says. "This is an absurd scale that I still have trouble wrapping my mind around. I want audiobooks that I produce to be greater than the sum of its parts. And I think we definitely did that with "Dungeon Crawler Carl. "I feel such a kinship to the way Matt's imagination works and I feel like I'm right there with him with every decision he's making and able to respond in the way that he's imagining in his head.”
The voice behind 'Dungeon Crawler Carl'
Dinniman and Hays met at an audiobook award ceremony in Kansas City and became friends long before Dinniman started writing the Carl series, the author told USA TODAY at BookCon.
“He was also a gamer his whole life, so he understands the book really well," Dinniman says. "He is just a super talented voice actor. He’s also a professional musician and I think that helps a lot with audiobook narration because they understand the cadence. And, you know, he's crazy. So it fits well.”
Though Hays was in a few high school plays, he’d call his formal acting training “severely lacking.” But a love of reading and producing led him to audiobook narration, eventually creating his company, Soundbooth Theater, where he leads full-cast, immersive audiobooks.
Hays loves classics. When he reads, he wants something heavy in “word craft” and “how to express them in the most evocative ways … that really touch your soul.” But when it comes to audiobooks, he wants pulpy, high-octane adventures.
“LitRPG has been a great genre for exercising my versatility and developing my instrument to take on more and more unique, diverse characters,” Hays says.
So when Carl landed on his doorstep, Hays already had an entire resume full of similarly “depraved and messed up” books, full of very colorful characters” (a compliment, he clarifies). He felt more than up for the task.
How Jeff Hays created iconic 'Dungeon Crawler Carl' characters
With over 200 characters in the series, how does Hays create such an immersive, memorable world for "Dungeon Crawler Carl"? He says it’s all about reading between the lines and ad-libbing, but not how you’d expect.
“Timing and tone and that stuff, it’s not explicitly there on the page. It requires that I am fully immersed in the scene myself. It requires that I feel like I'm there with the actors and I can say, ‘Hold up, let's retake that,’” Hays says. “When I say ad lib, I'm not saying I'm changing the words. What I'm saying is I am improvising how the character would deliver the line in the moment that sparks that laughter in someone.”
He says “actors,” but what he really means is the cast of voices he’s created for iconic characters like Carl, Princess Donut and System AI. He sees himself as a director and a casting director, keeping a rotating “troupe” of actors based on his visualization of the characters.
He starts with an actor whom he admires and thinks would do a good job if given that role. It’s not an impression, it’s “channeling” that style of performance, he says. As he gets more familiar with the voice, he’s able to quickly reference that “actor.” Carl started as a riff on actor Patrick Warburton. But the character – and the voice – has evolved over so many books.
“He's got such a special place now in my heart and in my career, and what he represents is so big in the grand scheme of my performance that that's a voice that's going to get retired once "Dungeon Crawler Carl" is finished,” Hays tells USA TODAY. “That’s a narration voice I will never use again because I don't want other things so strongly associated with something that's so ubiquitous as "Dungeon Crawler Carl" anymore. It would be just a betrayal of the character.”
An evolving audiobook narrator business
Audiobook narrators are no longer the anonymous voices behind your favorite book. Many of them are becoming celebrities and public figures in their own right. At BookCon this year, one of the hottest tickets was a seat in the Audible-sponsored panel featuring Hays and Dinniman. On one Reddit post with 141 upvotes, one Audible user laments that Hays “might have ruined audiobooks for me. … NOTHING is quite as good.”
“Jeff Hays is the first actor that actually forced me to learn who they are because they are so damn good,” another reads.
“That was my goal from the beginning,” Hays says. “I wanted people searching my name on Audible. I wanted to impress upon people, this is a style of storytelling that if you search my name, you're going to get.”
He also wants to “earn his royalties,” he says. Unlike most narrators, Hays and his Soundbooth Theater operate on a royalty-only basis. Most traditional audiobook narrators get paid per finished hour of recording and don’t receive royalties after the book comes out.
With Soundbooth Theater, Hays is piloting a new method of narration, where a voice actor also operates as director and producer. He’s passionate about “audio drama,” which involves a full cast, sound effects and a bigger production team. He wants to represent an audiobook as a businessman, not just a voice.
“If we don’t take advantage of that, if we don’t own our medium, then what’s going to happen is the people in suits are going to make the decisions and audiobooks will never rise above a certain level of entertainment,” Hays says. “Audiobooks are competing against all other medias. We have to remember that. Why would people listen to this audiobook when they could watch Netflix?”
Hays' production adds a theatrical element to the traditional audiobook. Last year, when he recorded the crime novel “The Bones at Point No Point” by D.D. Black, he went out to the small town from the book to record ambient sound.
They're also rolling out “Immersion Tunnel” versions of "Dungeon Crawler Carl" with added audio elements in episodic format. For the repeat readers who keep "Dungeon Crawler Carl" on best-seller lists and Hays' career on the upswing, he wants to gift them a new, special experience.
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter, or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].