One of America's most familiar voices talks about his latest novel, Third & Heaven.

By Christopher Cappiello

He's been in your living room. He's been in your car. He might have even made it into your bedroom. Ben Patrick Johnson is one of the elite voiceover artists in America, with his lyrical and commanding baritone selling many of the top films in the country, and several of your favorite television shows. What you'd never know from listening to him promote everything from C.S.I. New York to The Merchant of Venice is that Johnson is also a prolific writer, with his second novel, Third & Heaven, just released this month by Alyson.

"I started out in radio," he explains, a surprising revelation considering the super-fit writer with the piercing eyes is the complete opposite of the phrase, "a face made for radio." As he sinks his athletic frame into the L-shaped sofa in his living room in the hills above the Sunset Strip, he describes his journey from radio to a short-lived experience on television's Extra, to a career in voiceovers. "Doing television and working at Extra was a departure for me. After my one year of hell at Extra [where his on-camera work waned once it was disclosed that he was gay], I didn't go back to radio because at that point I had managed to make enough contacts. One thing that I did that was very smart -- although I did it by accident, it's just my nature -- but I became very friendly with a lot of the producers at Extra. In television everyone is always job-hopping. There's a lot of cross-pollination, so from day one when I left Extra, there was plenty of voiceover work to be had."

Since then the Minnesota native with the deep voice has worked steadily, even building his own recording studio in his basement so he can do all his work from home. When asked if he has a favorite movie trailer, he considers the question for a moment before answering, "I think I'm happiest with the work I've done for Miramax. There are a lot of films that they've put out that I've worked on that I'm proud to be associated with." More than being proud of certain work, he sometimes questions the projects that are promoted with his voice. "There was one particular film that I worked on," he shares, carefully omitting the movie's title. "It was an urban comedy and I went to see it with a friend of mine who thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. And I thought, 'This is such hateful stuff. This is exploiting the worst of human nature.' It's like bad reality TV and I'm making my living laughing it up and trying to get people to go and see this dreck."

Throughout this multimedia journey, Johnson has always been writing. It was his yearlong drama at Extra that inspired his first published novel, In and Out in Hollywood, in which his protagonist, Freddy, was a gay television entertainment reporter and a thinly veiled version of the author. "My first published book is actually my fourth or fifth novel. The rest of them are all just sitting on the hard drive of my computer or at various stages of being readied," he explains.

Third & Heaven also features Freddy, but this time Johnson introduces readers to Freddy's circle of friends, specifically his three best friends who gather each Saturday morning for brunch at a West Hollywood eatery called Nobles on Third Street. His close friend Claire is a divorced osteopath and mother of a grown daughter. The scars on her face from a prom night car accident are symbolic of a scarred self-image that allows her to get too involved too quickly with all the wrong men. When asked if one would meet the "real" Claire after hanging out with Johnson for a while, the author replies with a laugh, "You sure would! The only character that is somewhat a composite is Ritchie. But you probably already know him," he laughs, referring to Freddy's friend who is a personal trainer struggling with a forever-stalled acting career and trying to reconcile his sexuality with his strict Italian Catholic family in Chicago. The fourth spoke in the Third & Heaven wheel is Joshua, a publicist for faded stars who seems a step above Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose in terms of his clients' talent.

Johnson's novel follows the four friends' travails, in work and love, over the course of a year. The writer's breezy style makes for easy reading, and the characters are familiar to anyone who has spent time in West Hollywood. As far as Nobles, the diner where the gang meets, Johnson reveals, "It was very loosely based on the restaurant Who's on Third. But it's really any hangout. It's as much based on the frozen yogurt place, now closed, on Santa Monica Boulevard, or Urth Café."

Over the course of the book's swift moving chapters, each character finds love, loses love, and learns something in the process. The most powerful thread in the story is Freddy's obsession and brief -- but white-hot -- affair with Justin Salvatore, a young Broadway star he first sees on the Internet. Eventually Freddy discovers that Justin's bizarre behavior is caused by a crystal meth addiction that the beautiful young singer cannot shake. This story line jumps off the pages with a vividness and tension that stands out from the rest of the book, and its tragic trajectory is the novel's most compelling arc.

It's no surprise that the Justin/Freddy affair is based on a real relationship of Johnson's. "The character of Justin was based on Jason Raize, who was a brilliant Broadway star who I fell crazily in love with," he quietly reveals. "The time that we were together, it really wasn't that long, but it was so intense. He really wouldn't leave the house, and I worked at home at the time, so we saw each other 24 hours a day. I just watched this human being unravel and it was one of the more difficult experiences I've been through." In the book, Freddy ultimately sends Justin packing, recognizing that he cannot take responsibility for another adult's life. Johnson explains, "It was incredibly hard to take this person who is allegedly grown up, but who has degenerated into an 8-year-old, and just shove him out. 'There's the world. Goodbye.' I felt like a bad parent." The author's naked honesty in spinning those experiences into Freddy's story is one of the most satisfying elements of Third & Heaven.

So how does one of Hollywood's busiest voiceover artists find time to write novels? "It's a difficult shift," Johnson explains. "I have a friend who's a musician and he'll have a creative day, and then he'll have a business day. I don't have that luxury. I can't say (in a grand tone), 'Today I am a writer. Do not talk to me about anything but my book.'" With his recording studio in his home, it's hard to find that quiet time and space to spin out a novel. "I have a 5,000-square-foot house and I end up doing a lot of my writing at Starbucks," he says, with a hearty laugh.

The episodic structure of Third & Heaven begs the question of when we'll see Freddy and his crew on camera. The book's unfolding of events in the lives of this group of WeHo friends feels like it could easily be the first season of a television drama. When asked if he imagined his characters on the screen as he conceived the novel, Johnson flatly states, "In a word, no. I'm a very visual person in terms of when I'm writing. I see a scene. It's almost as if I'm watching a movie and I'm just a stenographer taking notes on this film I'm seeing. But as far as my intention when I'm writing," he concludes with heartfelt sincerity, "I'm really just trying to nail the characters."