Life & Work with J Rodney Turner

Today we’d like to introduce you to J Rodney Turner.

Hi Rodney, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
It really all starts in the early 60s when Hurricane Cleo blew through South Florida. My dad worked for Southern Bell and he was responsible for keeping the phone lines operational (used for communication purposes between land-based facilities and aircraft) during inclement weather events. He asked me if I wanted to go with him to the Center in Miami. Getting to ride in the Company truck was cool and dad never asked me to go to work with him. I jumped at the chance. Entering the facility and seeing these men around large round glass-top tables (I would learn later were considered flat-top radar displays) was amazing to a very young boy.

Fast forward to becoming an air traffic controller in the Navy after high school, and subsequently being hired by the Federal Aviation Administration in mid-1986 I would learn a craft that would serve me well for a combined thirty-one years.

It was during this time as a controller that I would hear peers and pilots speak to me about the sound of my voice. Having been a singer in church choir all my life and having had the change of my voice around 13 years old, I was told by grownups it was unique but the thought never crossed my mind that one could really make a living with his or her voice.

Fast forward again to the FAA and the law that requires active air traffic controllers to retire no later than the last day of the month within which they turn age 56. For me, that was Halloween, 2013.

My wife and I had a daughter later in life than most might deem “normal” so I knew that while I was likely the oldest dad in school, and I would be confused often as her grandpa, we needed to be prepared for our future and hers.

In 2006, prior to retirement, I began to research and look for opportunities to obtain work with my voice. In 2008 I attended the Nashville Campus of the Connecticut School of Broadcasting. in the years between graduation and retirement I worked part-time trying to find work……and nothing seemed to create roots or build a foundation for a solid and successful second career.

Until a local coach recommended audiobooks. Again, I began doing my research and looking for coaches and social media pages that would assist me in my venture. Success was obtained subsequent to a class called the “ACX Masterclass” taught by one of my coaches, David H Lawrence XVII — a successful narrator, on-screen actor, podcaster, and coach — among many other things.

As my portfolio expanded and I reached out to new coaches I learned of the Audiobook Publishers Association and their annual conference APAC. Here I met more coaches, narrators, and most importantly audiobook publishers. These are the people with the ability to hire me to record their titles.

I now have around 210 titles to my credit and I love storytelling. My voice, and my natural southern accent, as I’ve discovered, are best suited to westerns and historical fiction in stories set in the pre and post-civil war south and west. Titles full of great stories, lived by great characters who don’t know they’re just characters in an audiobook. My most popular genres are, mystery/crime/thrillers, westerns, and a sub-genre, named by one of my favorite authors, Ronald Kelly, Southern Fried Horror.

I have enjoyed all of my stories and I hope to continue telling them as long as I’m able to sit in the booth and do so.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Life is always full of ups and downs. I’ve lived through the same things almost all of us will, or have lived through, eventually — death, birth, divorce, marriage. My faith and my family keep me well grounded.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a narrator of audiobooks in the western, horror, and mystery/thriller genres.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jrodneyturner.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/jrodneyturner
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jrodneyturner
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/home