Short Fuse Interactive Audio (SFI AUDIO, Inc.) is now available to record promotions, online trainings, outgoing phone messages and presentations for your company!

SFI Audio, Inc. has the talent and state-of-the-art technical tools to create highly effective recordings that inform, engage and inspire exactly the way you need them to. Award-winning voice professionals, fast turnaround times and competitive pricing!

Contact Kym at:  207-329-0000  or kdakin56@gmail.com

For sample demos click here and select demos 4 – 7 (blue bar, page right).

*Kym Dakin – Audie Award winner for Runaway by Alice Munro, BBC Audiobooks America, 2006

Recent Recordings

Audiobooks:

• Audio Bookshelf: Lives of the Pirates – Narrator (AudioFile Review below)
• BBC Audiobooks America: Stand-In Groom – Narrator
• Brilliance Audio: Still Life (abridged) – Narrator
• Brilliance Audio: Red Light (abridged and unabridged) – Director

LIVES OF THE PIRATES Swashbucklers, Scoundrels (Neighbors Beware!)
Kathleen Krull, Kathryn Hewitt, Read by Ray Childs, Kymberly Dakin • Unabridged • MAY 2010 Audio Bookshelf • Library Ed.

Krull continues her Lives Of series with the group kids love best: those dirty, dastardly, devilish pirates. Ray Childs takes all the male parts, and Kymberly Dakin handles a healthy contingent of female swashbucklers, including Madame Chung, Lady Mary Killigrew, and Grace O’Malley. There’s a tongue-in-cheek tone to each entry, although the book is rich in facts, details, and intriguing speculation, such as which famous male pirate might actually have been a woman.  The two narrators sail through the short biographies with grace and wit, letting listeners know that today’s pirates are ocean-going thugs—and that people felt the same way in days of yore.M.M.C. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, ME

Commercials:

• Home Smart:  Breakpoint Productions
• Dental Implants of Boston: Breakpoint Productions
• Waterwerks Communications (St. Johns, New Brunswick)
• Demi Cooper Advertising (Chicago, IL): Pulte Real Estate

Trainings and Promotions:

• CIEE International Student Exchange – Training program – Produced by Kelsey+Co.
• Maine Department of Health narration – Web training on ER procedures for Mental Health patients – produced by Margaret Kelsey of Kelsey+Co.  (See testimonial below)
• Caccoon Web browser narration
• Home Buyers Partnership (See testimonial below)

“Thanks so much for the voice work you did for our presentations. We were very impressed not only with the quality and sound, but also with the professionalism displayed at the studio. It was obvious from the start of our recording session that you had spent a lot of time preparing for the read, which kept our studio time to a minimum. We are grateful for the work you did for us and very pleased with the final product. When future needs arise we will definitely be giving you a call.”

Sincerely,
Randy Searls – President -HOME Buyers Partnership

“As a provider of e-learning solutions, when I needed to find audio talent to narrate a script for a project with the Department of Health and Human Services, one person came to mind: Kym Dakin! Having heard about her work and been exposed to how she conducts business through some of the workshops she provides, I knew she’d be the right person for the job. She provided exceptional service, ensuring that each unique audio track for every screen came across just right. The project took a great deal of focus and time; her commitment to quality came through every step of the way. One of my favorite parts of the project was ultimately syncing everything she’d narrated with the animations and text because her voice was so professional and a joy to listen to. Hands down, her contributions will make this project an engaging learning experience! I highly recommend her for any narration work!”

Margaret Kelsey – President,  Kelsey&Co.

Contact Kym at:  207-329-0000  or kdakin56@gmail.com

Sample Reviews for Kym Dakin’s Audio work:

SEEKING PEACE : Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World by Mary Pipher

Published 2008 by Brilliance Audio

From the first sentences it’s clear this is a narration by a consummate pro. Kymberly Dakin’s vocal quality seems formal at first, but it’s utterly calm and so connected to this writing that listeners almost immediately forget anyone else is reading and hear only the essence of Mary Pipher and her story. Pipher is a mature storyteller whose responses to her uneven family experiences and self-critical ways come across as uplifting rather than melodramatic or self-pitying. She unfolds her lifelong efforts to slow down and be kinder to herself with the secure tone of someone who knows the redemptive power of self-acceptance, family, and community. The production’s warm sound and nurturing lessons offer an endless supply of inspiration and comfort. T.W. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2009]

Set adrift after accepting a buy-out from a sneaker company, former corporate executive Noreen flounders as she decides what to do next. Discovering that walking has less to do with vanity than it does with sanity, she joins neighbors Tess and Rosie in walking 10,000 steps a day around their small beach community. Almost imperceptibly changing her conversational timbre, Kymberly Dakin distinguishes each vastly different woman—and dramatizes the eventual discovery of all three that they are on the same path to middle age. Especially charming are Dakin’s portrayals of Noreen’s naïve but lovingly concerned mother, who is adjusting to her own new circumstances, and Tess’s petulant teenage daughter. Step by step, the members of the trio talk their way into self-acceptance and develop the courage to walk into the future. E.V.B. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

KNITTING MEMORIES: Reflections on the Knitter’s Life Lela Nargi [Ed.] (Excerpt)

Some are deeply moving, others just plain fun, some educational, one or two perfect for putting me to sleep. I do have to comment on the reader, Kymberly Dakin. I am probably more critical of readers than what they are reading. Ms. Dakin is an exceptional reader. Her tone and voice takes on the personality of the written words (the writer?) so well that I looked forward to hearing the next essay not just for the words, but for the way they are delivered. Sometimes smooth and eloquent, sometimes spunky and fun, sometimes even almost obnoxiously self-aggrandizing, her voice reflects the gist of each essay perfectly.

RUNAWAY : Stories by Alice Munro

The subtle and exquisitely polished stories of Alice Munro are among the literary marvels of our time, and Kymberly Dakin conveys effectively the peculiar blend of Canadian “haut provincialism” that provides the tone, context, and so much of the humor of Munro’s finest stories. Each of these eight stories features a runaway of some kind; dramatic events are most often filtered through the consciousness and recollection of the female protagonist. Dakin, who also narrated Munro’s last story collection, HATESHIP, FRIENDSHIP, COURTSHIP, LOVESHIP, MARRIAGE, works successfully in a narrow band of vocals and tones, grasping that these are stories of voice and of distance, in which motive and outcome often remain mysterious, and in which evenness of delivery is part of the drama of the telling. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 05]

GRAND AVENUE by Joy Fielding

Kymberly Dakin does a fine job of unobtrusively narrating the 23-year history of four young mothers who become friends when living on Grand Avenue in a Cincinnati suburb. She lets the story of each of the women take center stage. Chris, an abused wife; Vicki, a successful lawyer; Barbara, a former beauty queen; and Susan, a student, all have daughters the same age. Starting out as a soap opera-ish women’s novel as the four experience abuse, betrayal, and success, the story picks up speed when one is murdered and another defends the prime suspect. D.T.H. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 03]

HATESHIP, FRIENDSHIP, COURTSHIP, LOVESHIP, MARRIAGE by Alice Munro

Alice Munro is a wickedly acute observer of human behavior, and she pretty much owns the short story form. In the first of these, in which two adolescent girls play a cruel epistolary trick on Johanna, a spinster housekeeper, it is almost unbearable to look so steadily at their unkindness, knowing that it comes from a probably universal terror that the “promise” of being young and pretty and juicy is in fact no promise at all, that loneliness and dead ends can happen to anybody. Not to Johanna in this case, though; this story is a brilliant and satisfying play on the law of unintended consequences. The rest of the collection, Munro’s ninth, is equally strong and surprising. Kymberly Dakin brings a delicate wisdom to the readings, just what the text deserves and requires, which is the highest possible praise. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 02]