Sorry I haven’t posted in so long! Ha ha just a little blog humor. It’s issue 1. I’ll introduce myself.
Who is Nick Douglas?
I’m a writer. I just spent a couple years writing for Lifehacker; before that I wrote for Gawker, freelanced for a few other sites, did social media marketing for some BBC America shows and, briefly, for Comedy Bang! Bang! but only the TV version. For three years I ran a comedy blog (now gone) and YouTube channel (still there), both called Slacktory.
I had fun making zero-budget funny videos, but I was getting frustrated with the limitations. My friend Tim Mucci and I thought up a great web series about a human living with a demon, but we got mad that we couldn’t afford to make a supernatural story look good. And then we realized: We could make it sound good, as an audio drama.
What’s audio drama?
Audio drama is a slightly insidery term for dramatized audio stories. Audio dramas can be radio shows, or podcasts, or albums. They can be improvised or scripted, serial or episodic or anthologized. There are audio sketch shows, miniseries, talk shows. They may or may not include shows made out of playing RPGs, and they may or may not include solo storytelling. I’ll write an issue about that.
What’s Roommate From Hell?
It’s my own audio drama, a supernatural sitcom I make with Tim Mucci, Serena Berman, Levi Sharpe, and a couple dozen other people. It’s about two young women, one of whom is an ancient demon, living in Brooklyn and having adventures with ghosts and gods and monsters. There’s a half-hour episode modeled after Groundhog Day, I think it’s our best one. It’s called Groundhog Cray.
RMFH is “a cartoon for your ears,” as Levi likes to say. Levi engineers, edits, designs, and mixes the show. And treating it like a cartoon clarifies many of our choices, at every stage: writing, acting, sound effects, marketing. I’ll write an issue about that.
What’s an audio drama I should try?
Well, mine. And then:
Midst: Like the comic book Saga with a little Broken Earth and mayyybe a little The Expanse?
Victoriocity: Like a steampunk Discworld novel, set in the Victorian city of Even Greater London.
Mission to Zyxx: Improvised sci-fi comedy that splits the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. Exquisitely edited to sound cinematic and to skip the boring parts.
Earth Break: Heartbreaking one-woman action-drama starring Jenny Slate, about being the last person on earth, and pregnant. (So, second-to-last person on earth.) Slate acts the fuck out of this role. If you like her at all, listen to this.
Do you have a favorite audio drama? Reply to this email and tell me!
xoxo,
Nick