An Author’s Search for Voice

By Nancy Cole Silverman

I recently attended a writers’ conference where a number of authors were huddled together discussing another author’s voice on the page. It made me think back on my career in broadcasting and the importance of voice and the story behind it. 

I spent nearly twenty-five years in broadcast news, most of it at news and talk radio stations, and I consider myself fortunate to have seen a lot of change. My first assignment was as an intern in a television newsroom while I was still in college at the local station in Phoenix, Arizona. My assignment was as a fact checker. It was not an on-air position but a behind-the-scenes, get-the-coffee, girl-Friday type of job. I pulled copy from the wire service, called the local police precinct for the blotter reports, and did rewrites for the news anchor. 

I was in the newsroom in September of 1972 when the story broke about the Munich Olympic Terrorist attack. The station where I worked didn’t have any female reporters on the air back then. Not for serious news anyway. We had a weather girl and a female co-host on the morning show. Most of what they did the news department considered to be fluff. Serious news was for men. The way it was explained to me was that the public could take bad news. But it was best delivered by a male voice. A strong, soothing male voice. A female voice was considered to be too high-pitched and scratchy. Nobody would believe hard news coming from a woman. 

Four years later, Barbara Walters, who had co-anchored NBC’s Today Show, broke that mold when she joined Harry Reasoner as co-host on the ABC Nightly News. Barbara was the first female co-anchor of a network news program. It would be another thirty years before Katie Couric would become the first solo female news anchor. But, hey, who’s counting?

My point is that women had to work hard behind the scenes to get noticed and even harder to be believed, particularly in a newsroom. I won’t get into the roadblocks women faced or how often I had to push a reporter’s roving hand from my shoulder while I sat in a darkened edit bay, syncing an audio track to film, or the unwarranted looks I’d catch when I would come out from the edit bay with some smug looking reporter behind me. In those days, there was no affirmative action or human resource department to sort things out. Women weren’t wanted in the newsroom. It was still an old boys club. In fact, one news director went so far as to call the university and complain that women in the newsroom were a distraction. That they were flirting with the field reporters and needed to go husband hunting elsewhere.  

I’m happy to say most of those days are behind us, but it took time before a woman was taken seriously in the newsroom. 

But even as women began to climb the corporate ladder and started to appear more regularly on the air, things in the boardroom remained much as they had been. Any woman who has ever sat around a conference table knows the power of a male voice. Female voices, even when presenting the same idea as their male counterparts, are often dismissed.  

I’m not complaining. I had a great career, worked with some incredibly talented and gracious men in the business, and retired as one of two female general managers of a sports talk radio station in the world’s second-largest radio market. It was a great ride. 

If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that women and men look at the world differently. For example. Valentine’s Day. As a woman, Valentine’s Day meant flowers and candy. It wasn’t until I was running a sports talk radio station in L.A. with a lineup of loud-mouthed sports jocks who believed Valentine’s Day was a national conspiracy designed to separate them from their hard-earned cash and make them feel guilty that I began to see just how differently men and women can view the world.  

I realize this is an issue that could be debated forever. And believe me, the jocks I had on the air milked it for all it was worth. We had male callers sharing how they had told their girlfriends they weren’t falling for any Valentine’s crap – they would have used another more descriptive four-letter word, but it wasn’t allowed on terrestrial radio—and female callers screaming at our jocks for ruining their life! One had even broken her engagement.

Live and learn, right?  

However, at this point in my life, and as an author, I’m not as interested in the differences between men and women and how we look at the world as I am in using those differences to create flawed but likable characters whose voices on the page my readers can’t get out their head.  

In my newest series, Kat Lawson has fallen on hard times. She’s been fired from her job as an investigative reporter for the Phoenix Gazette due to an inappropriate workplace relationship. She now finds herself working for a small travel publication as a writer and undercover operative for the FBI. As an operative, she’s not an agent, just a glorified messenger. Someone no one would suspect. A position with minimal risk and lots of travel perks. What could possibly go wrong?

—

Nancy Cole Silverman enjoyed a long and very successful career in radio before turning to print journalism and later, to fiction.

As a graduate of Arizona State University with a degree in Mass Communications, Nancy was one of the first female on-air television reporters in her hometown of Phoenix. After moving to Los Angeles in the late 1970’s she turned to the business side of broadcasting, becoming one of the top advertising sales executives in the market. After stints at KNX, KFWB, KABC and KXTA radio, she was appointed General Manager at KMPC, making her one of only two female managers in America’s second-largest radio market.

But in her heart of hearts, Nancy thought first of herself as a writer. In 2001 she left the radio business to found and edit The Equestrian News, a monthly publication for equine enthusiasts. “That’s when I really began to write,” said Silverman, “toggling between writing articles for the News and fiction I’d been thinking about for years.”

Today, Nancy is a full-time author. She writes both the Carol Childs and Misty Dawn Mysteries (Henery Press), numerous short stories, and is currently at work on a piece of historical fiction.

MURDER ON THE MED

A travel feature turns into a deadly investigation for Kat Lawson when she discovers a missing passenger, presumed overboard, may have been used as a mule to smuggle ancient artifacts aboard Athena, a luxury cruise ship designed for retired seniors at sea.

Kat Lawson has got a plumb assignment, or so she thinks. Travel International has rewarded her with a vacation cruise along the Amalfi Coast to report on a new floating senior retirement center. After working undercover as a travel reporter for the FBI and barely escaping her last assignment with her life, Kat’s job is to relax, take notes, shoot pictures, and report back on an extravagant cruise from Naples to Positano. What could go wrong?

But once aboard, Kat quickly learns it’s not all smooth sailing. Kat finds a handbag for Dede Drummerhausen, the woman who owns the suite where Kat is staying, and hidden inside is a gold coin. Rumor abound. Passengers and some of their possessions have gone missing. The residents are restless, and some on board are suspicious of a travel reporter who might uncover their secret mission. When Athena’s captain discovers Kat snooping below deck, she soon realizes, like the antiquities hidden onboard, that she’s been kidnapped and that her job and her life are in danger.

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