By Leslie Lindsay

You guys! May has been a huge month for me. I am so grateful, honored, and humbled to have had the opportunity to record the audio version of Speaking of Apraxia: A Parents’ Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech.

A Timeline of SPEAKING OF APRAXIA:

• When my first-born wasn’t speaking like other children her age, I worried. When her pediatrician said, “I think she might need an assessment from a speech-language pathologist (SLP), I gulped. Really?! Not my kid.
• Just shy of her third birthday, she was diagnosed with moderate-severe Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS).
• What is CAS?
• Quick definition: a neurologically-based motor speech disorder in which kids know what they want to say, but have have difficulty organizing the movements needed for speech. It is not something kids outgrow, but requires frequent, intense speech language therapy, often for many years.
• I wanted a book. Few were available, with the exception of some graduate-level textbooks, a chapter here and there, a mention in parenting or child development book. I wanted a book for families navigating this elusive and complex disorder.
• What I did: I wrote the book. It wasn’t easy. It took years of research, a ton of reading, writing, networking, rejections…more.
• The original book was released in 2012 by Woodbine House, a premier special needs publisher.

• Fast-forward many years. My editor at Woodbine reached out and suggested it was time for a 2nd edition. We wanted to update websites, quotes, resources, follow-up on some of the children mentioned in the first edition. We wanted more apps and technology, suggestions for things you can do at home, pandemic-related stuff. We did that. It, too, was a ton of work.
• The second edition of SPEAKING OF APRAXIA (December 2020) was met with a huge amount of excitement and interest and was a #1 Amazon bestseller in its category.

• And THEN….Penguin Random House said they wanted to turn it into an AUDIOBOOK!! I was flabbergasted. I didn’t even know this was in the works! Well, I did…but then heard NOTHING for months. I figured it was a NO-GO. But it was a PLEASANT and DELIGHFUL surprise.

• What’s more, Penguin Random House suggested we record in May, which is Better Speech & Hearing Month/Apraxia Awareness Month and Mother’s Day and I thought, what BETTER time to do this! It seemed the planets were aligning.

• It took 5+ days (and probably a total of 30 hours) of recording. I worked at a recording studio in downtown Chicago and was consistently impressed with the sheer teamwork and all of the hands involved in the production, from the office manager to the studio owner, sound engineer, director (via Zoom in Brooklyn), the producer (in California), and the editor. It takes a village!

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• I had to pop back into the recording studio one last time to record what the industry calls “pick-ups.” That is, if there was a little bit of sound that was picked up (a growling stomach, cord movement, a sigh, swallow, throat-clearing). Sometimes I said something similar to what was printed, but not quite. “Interpret’ versus ‘interrupt,’ for example, or I said someone’s last name incorrectly. The editor listened to ALL 1133 minutes of recording, followed along with printed text, and then pointed out where I veered ‘off-script;’ we fixed it.

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• SPEAKING OF APRAXIA: A Parents’ Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech will be available in audio from Penguin Random House July 6th. You can pre-order now. It includes a downloadable appendix will all kinds of great resources.

Learn More:

• Speaking of Apraxia webpage
• Like and Follow the Speaking of Apraxia Facebook Page
• Join me in Instagram
• Find me on Twitter
• Discover all Woodbine House has to offer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Leslie Lindsay is the creator and host of the award-winning author interview series,“Always with a Book.” Since 2013, Leslie, named “one of the most influential book reviewers” by Jane Friedman, ranks in the top 1% of all GoodReads reviewers and has conducted over 700 warm, inquisitive conversations with authors as wide-ranging as Robert Kolker and Shari Lapena to Helen Phillips and Mary Beth Keane, making her website a go-to for book lovers world-wide. Her writing & photography have appeared in various print journals and online. She is the award-winning author of SPEAKING OF APRAXIA: A Parents’ Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech, soon to become an audiobook from Penguin Random House. A former psychiatric R.N. at the Mayo Clinic, Leslie’s memoir, MODEL HOME: Motherhood, Madness, & Memory, is currently on submission with Catalyst Literary Management. Leslie resides in the Chicago area with her family.

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