Yeah, yeah.  I know.  The “Giallo Hotel” podcast is really, really late.  Really, I know.  I’d give you a list of people to blame, but I’d hate to see all those people turning up dead.  Bear with me.  I’m working on it.

In the meantime, here is some sad news to wake up to.  I should know.  I did this morning.  Actress and model Maila Nurmi died in her sleep about five days ago.  We all know her as… Vampira!

Oh, c’mon.  Play this up, fer pete’s sake. 

Admit it.  She made this world a fraction more cool than it was without her, don’t you think?  She looked creepy and snarked about so-so monster movies long before it was fashionable. 

And Halloween would’ve been a little less sexy.  I’m sure lots of people thought to dress up like Morticia Addams before she did.  But Vampira made it the in-thing to do.

Well, that and she was one of the few highlights in Plan 9 From Outer Space.  She actually made that weird finger-wiggling bit pay off.  I mean, it’s not a selling point or anything, but….

I’ll close with a correction.  You won’t see this in the Wikipedia entry, but there is another musical tribute to Vampira worth noting, from singer-songwriter-and-really-cool-DJ Greg Kihn.  Go to his website and buy his “Horror Show” album.  Maybe I’m sentimental, tone-deaf, and in league with Jerry Falwell, but I swear the last track on “Horror Show” deserves to be a Halloween anthem.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  But if you ever visit the Giallo Hotel, don’t try the lasagna.

That’s right.  After a long frustrating delay, Ollin Productions is resuming the Afterhell podcast preview of Volume 3:  “Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel.”  A modern-day gangland war has become a zombie uprising, turning a mobster-run luxury resort into a slaughterhouse.  Previous episodes have opened the door first to bloodshed, then tragedy.  Now the stakes are higher than the body count.  In Part 7, Boss Giallo and his men learn that surviving hurts even more than dying.

We beg our listeners for their patience.  And we politely request the naysayers keep the groans down to a civil level.  There are only two episodes left.  We’re doing our best to deliver a high-quality, lower-class bloodletting finale for “Giallo Hotel.”  And when the podcast is done, the entire story will be released as Afterhell Volume 3.

Beyond that, we have plans for a new storyline made especially for our podcast.  And Afterhell Volume 4 is already in production.

“Afterhell” is just getting started.  It’s not for everyone.  It’s not polite.  And it’s not going away.

Tuck in while it’s still hot, kiddies.  Best wishes to everyone for the holiday season.

Newsflash!  Afterhell is making another appearance on “The Sonic Society” with Jack Ward and Shannon Hilchie tomorrow night (4pm PST, 7pm EST, 9pm AST).

Tonight is the world radio premiere of “Sleepless Days.”  But tomorrow night, “The Sonic Society” on CKDU 88.1 FM in Halifax will broadcast a slightly more worksafe version.  We had direct input in the edits, bleeps, and bloops, so we’re cool with it.  Dial it on your radio or stream it for some tongue-in-cheek dark humor.

Announcements!  Hurry up and gather around before I collapse.

First, we’re going to be on the airwaves again… we think.  You see, we would’ve mentioned this sooner, but we couldn’t get an official word from anybody.  We got a semi-official word, though!  And it goes like this:

KBOO 90.7 FM in Portland, Oregon is apparently scheduled to run an Afterhell episode.  On Monday October 22nd, at 11pm Pacific Time, KBOO will run a late-night radiodrama double feature:  Heather Breeden’s award-winning Gothic thriller Next Year’s Girl, courtesy of the Willamette Radio Workshop … and a radio (but still rude) edit of the Afterhell episode “Sleepless Days” by Jamie Lawson & Joe Medina.  Dial it in or stream it online! 

And if you’re in Portland, Oregon this Halloween, come see WRW’s annual live show at the McMenamin’s Kennedy School brewery.  WRW is going to rock Halloween 2007 with “The Monkey’s Paw” and “The Pit & the Pendulum” — straight from classic radio, performed before your very eyes, with sound effects and a full cast. 

A double whammy of classic chills ‘n’ thrills, people!  The Afterhell crew will be minding the swag table and watching the show along with you.  Admission is free.  Bring the kids and go trick-or-treating inside the Kennedy School where it’ll be dry and warm.  Then join us for some family-friendly terror.

We hope you’ll share Halloween with us, folks!  The company is great and the treats are better!

Hey, folks, gather ’round!  Updates for everyone.

The podcast, featuring “Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel,” has been delayed again.  Yeah, sorry.  Lots going on, it turns out.  We’ll announce more of them as the details firm up.

That’s the thing about pushing the holiday season out earlier and earlier every year.  Have you noticed that?  Not just with Christmas, but everything.  I don’t know about you, but all the Halloween stuff hit the store shelves around here the first week of September.  And since that’s our busy season (three guesses why — and Hispanic Heritage Month doesn’t count), that means more work for us.

Also, tomorrow we’ll be recording a new Afterhell episode.  And it’s a controversial one.  No, really.  The first draft of this episode alone set off a heated debate before we started work on Volume 1.  Watch, no one’ll so much as blink for this one.

Oh, one last thing.  Back to “Giallo Hotel.”  (Hm, nice name for a sequel.  I don’t think anyone survives it, though.  Wait, I’d better check.  Never mind.)  Anyway… when we first announced the Giallo podcast, we said it was going to be a ten-part serial.

Not anymore.  Now it’s nine parts.

That’s another reason for delays.  We’ve been retooling plot structure and dialogue, tightening things up as we go.  And when I say “we,” I mean me.  And that’s another reason for the delays….

Sorry to make everyone wait.  Hold on a bit longer. 

The end is nine nigh.

Enough of the ketchup puns.  We’re going to war.

It turns out that what happened to me earlier wasn’t a fluke.  We’re seeing alerts from the folks at Horror World and the esteemed Shocklines.  A certain social networking website is mailbombing a significant chunk of the online horror community.

Ticking off horror fans with net access.  Does that sound like a smart move to you?

Here’s a chance to tell these crypto-spammers what you think of them.  Be polite but direct.  Let’s give ’em Afterhell.

mark@idatecorp.com
glen@idatecorp.com
audreyr@idatecorp.com
paul@idatecorp.com
justin@idatecorp.com

Normally we upload new podcast episodes in time for the start of every week, usually uploading over the weekend.  Circumstances have forced us to break from that pattern — more on that in a later posting.

With luck, Giallo Part 5 will be out by Friday, September 7th.  Please be patient whilst we mete out unholy retribution.

A quick message to all and sundry.  It’s an apology…with a little grumbling thrown in.

Everyone I know — and several people I don’t — just got an automated invite to Quechup, a social networking website.  This happened without my knowledge or consent.  I’m very sorry.

Long story short:  I found a Quechup invite this morning in my e-mail.  It was marked as coming from an acquaintance I rather liked, so I figured I’d join.  When I registered on the website (wonky as it was), it offered to scan my address book and find this person for me.  Like a doofus, I thought, “Gosh, how convenient,” and clicked ok. 

The fineprint didn’t load onto the page until much later.  Nice trick.

I can grumble till the sun explodes, but I’m still the one who clicked on it.

Feel free to disregard the Quechup invite.  No hard feelings from me… unless your name is Quechup.

Don’t get me wrong.  For all I know, it could be a great website.  It doesn’t load completely 90 percent of the time, its privacy policy and its webcode are two completely different things, and it acts like a damn computer virus.  But hey, it could be a great website.

And yet I’m not linking to it.  Maybe when I calm down….

After a summer break, new episodes of “Afterhell: Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel” are now being posted to the Afterhell podcast feed. If you haven’t subscribed yet, this is a great time to get in on a story of mobsters and zombies in a casino that’s going straight to the Afterhell.

You can go to our iTunes page or grab the RSS feed from the Afterhell audio page.

If you are already subscribed to the podcast, well, you already know we’re posting new episodes — and we want to thank you so much for your support.

First off, we wanted to give our podcast listeners a heads up that Part 4 of “Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel” may be delayed for a few days — but only a very few, at worst.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share this picture:

Those of you who play “The Sims 2” probably recognize this as a screenshot from the game. It’s a picture of one of my Sims who is a vampire, and she is indeed wearing an Afterhell t-shirt! It is similar to the real Afterhell shirts designed by and available for sale in our CafePress store.

It’s my first effort at making some custom content for the game, so it’s not perfect … but if any of you are Sims2 players and would like the Afterhell shirt for your Sims, send me a message and I’ll send you the files. There’s a men’s version as well as ladies’.