I'm an audiobook narrator, a fiction and academic author, and an applied linguist. Those aren't that far apart, actually. I've been writing classroom materials since I started out as an English as a Foreign Language teacher. I've always wanted to merge theory into practice and I have spent a good part of my professional life doing that. It's not so much whether materials "work" in class, but really "why do they work?" I suppose one of my greatest struggles in my later career in academic life is to keep motivated inside a large organization with a "flat" structure. In a structure such as this, no one "above" you is particularly beholden to you. At the same time, no one really knows what you are doing. This results in sometimes surprising depths of isolation. In this vacuum of leadership and personal responsibility, just one rogue colleague can do a lot of damage. One of the ways I deal with that is to do research, but more recently, audiobook narration and fiction writing. These are important outlets for me and I work with different ways of expressing meanings and shades of emotion using my voice. Writing fiction has made me a better narrator. And, being a narrator has made me a better fiction writer.