Halloa, back at the homestead.  We didn’t keep up a day-to-day journal of the World Horror Convention, I’ll grant you that.  But we managed to go there and back again while staying in one piece, getting neither sunburned nor stoned on absinthe.  Lemme give you a thumbnail sketch.

Day Three:  Friday.  The first full day of the convention.  Our base camp in the dealer’s room was all ready, so all we had to do was uncover our tables and…sit, mostly.  I’d gotten a dealer’s membership instead of a full one.  For all intents and purposes, I had clearance to be in the dealer’s room only.  Ironically I shouldn’t have been allowed into my own panel.  We got lots of confused glances from passersby who scanned our wares.  We explained the disks were all audiodramas.  The glances went from disoriented to downright suspicion.

Yes, suspicion.  A furrowed brow and an apprehensive glare worthy of a spaghetti western hero.  Perhaps it was socio-political tension, a residue of fear that we worked for the NSA.  Maybe a prior case of mistaken identity was taking place.  Oh frack, I thought to myself, who do I look like now, the leader of the freakin’ Symbionese Liberation Army…?

Whew, it turned out that it was nothing of the kind.  The prefix “audio-” had conventioneers positively befuddled.  (If you meet one of these people, tell them to click that link.  Also, be a dear:  Smack ’em on the head on the behalf of every single frustrated English teacher throughout the land.)  Jamie hit on the idea of telling everyone we were selling radio theater.  Worked like a charm.  When told that, they instantly got excited.  Then they moved on to the next table.

Writer Lawrence Santoro came in for the first of many visits to our table.  We’d met him the night before, but he was exhausted.  Friday morning was our first chance to go into detail about our show, WRW, and Transdimensional Media.  That marked the first of many encounters with writers, editors, agents, and even customers that weekend.  A few might even be in town for the UFO Festival this Saturday.  Shiny.

No, wait, now this–this–was really shiny.  We’d tried to make contact with any number of other people, including family, while we were in the Bay Area.  Just when we thought it was just us against the world, we met up with Peter Fagan for the first time in six years.  Years ago we’d worked on a painful amateur film project.  Somehow we’re still friends anyway.

Day Four:  Saturday.  That morning we heard incoherent grunts and murmurs from our fellow dealers.  They hadn’t been bitten by zombies, thank God.  Rather, it was a little hair of the dog.  We were among the few completely sober people in the whole con.  I resisted the urge to wave pictures of ships at sea in front of the afflicted.  ‘Tweren’t the only urge I had to sit on either.  We were sitting across from dealers in goth corsets.  Fortunately our sales were picking up quickly enough to distract me.  By the end of the day, we’d sold all our copies of WRW’s “Frankenstein.” 

We’d also met up with writer Simon Wood for the first time that weekend.  Very charming fellow.  Very clean.   It was a relief to see him, I admit.  At least I’d managed to meet my fellow panelist.

Panel…oh, ta ma duh, the damn panel.  That was the following day.

Day Five:  Sunday.  Closing day.  Lastday, Capricorn 25.  “The Sounds of Horror” panel.  We’d asked the convention staff whether they were going to do a panel on radio horror.  They said “Great idea!” and nothing else for several months.  Suddenly I’m told that I’m going to be the moderator for the panel.   I hadn’t done any public speaking in a hundred years.  And I had to moderate the panel, the first time I’d ever done it.  I’d read up on the job of moderating con panels.   I wanted to put my notes on index cards, but couldn’t find any.  I wrote them out in a spiral notebook, writing question after question, comments as well as comedic gags. 

All the advice I’d found turned out to be flat-out wrong.  Like a fool, I believed everything I’d read.  The articles said to avoid jokes.  Avoid jokes?  Until then, I’d always heard it was best to open with a joke.  Draw as little attention to yourself as possible?  Well, that kinda flew in the face of our reasons for being there, to promote “Afterhell.”  Wait…no audience participation till the end?  No shameless plugs?  Don’t introduce your panelists?  Introduce them while…plugging their work?!  How does that work? 

It didn’t, of course.  Utter BS, the lot of it. 

The dealer’s room closed early that day.  Everyone wanted to go home, including us.  And it was just as well.  I got tired of ignoring attractive goth chicks trying on corsets in front of me for four days straight.  Packing all our wares as fast as possible, Jamie and I ran late for the panel.  We ran in, period — with everything we had, looking like the well-equipped refugees we really were.  We set our panelists’ table while con-goers trickled in.  I welcomed them and apologized because Jamie and I being so out of breath.  They looked confused.  Again with the deer-in-the headlights look.  Mentally I tossed out half my plans and broke all the rules I shouldn’t have learned.  I introduced the panel, then explained briefly about “Afterhell.”  People in the audience started sitting up, now curious.  I told one joke, prepared to watch it crash and burn.  lt broke the ice faster than you can say “CFC’s” and took a little tension out of the room.  The second one, totally improvised to cover up noise from the next room over, made everyone loosen up even more. 

By the time our discussion had run out of steam, it was ten to the hour and I told everyone that’s all we had, thanks for coming. 
The response was a quick, surprisingly energetic round of applause.  Courtesy or not, we took it as a weary victory and headed north for home.

The only consolation I had…well, the beauty of it was that I had several.  Good sales, good contacts, good response.  People’s eyes widened with interest, nodding with approval, whenever they heard our sound clips.  And those CD’s were moving.

And now we don’t have to.  Later.  Got cat barf to clean up.

Well, here we are in San Francisco on the second day of our trip.  We would’ve posted something sooner, but we’d gotten only two hours of sleep.  Getting ready for the trip down south got kinda sorta rilly-rilly hectic. 

Day one:  We stopped across the bay, in Alameda.  Y’know, where they keep the nu-clee-arr wessels.  Thanks to the folks at the Willamette Radio Workshop, we were blessed by the hospitality of former Portlanders Bob and Laura Lundy-Paine for our first night.  There was lasagna and kittens and everything.

Day two:    After a quick stop at my favorite Mexican restaurant in the whole fricking world — it’s mine, you understand?! mine, mine, mine, go, go, go! — we hit the Golden Gateway Holiday Inn, the site for this year’s World Horror Convention.  It doesn’t start till Friday, but today was time to sign in, set up our tables in the dealer’s room, and say a few hellos. 

The real horror (hence the mention of Bowie and Bing) began once we had to pay for our parking space.  It wasn’t a parking fee.  It was a ransom.  And they didn’t even accept plastic.  We had to go back into the hotel just to use the ATM.  At least highwaymen didn’t make you load their guns before they robbed you….

Fortunately we’ve already gotten some interest from would-be customers.  And the con hasn’t even started yet.

Just a few quick updates:  We have a Volume 2 promo now available on the Listen page of our website.  If you want a taste of the whole disk and the “Sleepless Days” podcast wasn’t enough, fire up the RSS feed on your podcasting software or try the direct download. 

Hopefully that’ll tide everyone over for a little while.  We wanted to do a fully fledged podcast in April, but the first few weeks of May are going to be really busy.  From May 11th to the 14th, Jamie and I will be at this year’s World Horror Convention in San Francisco.  We’ll have a table in the dealer’s room where we will have for sale copies of both Afterhell CD’s as well as some tasty wares from our friends, the Willamette Radio Workshop and Transdimensional Media, the purveyors of the sci-fi noir classic “Dry Smoke and Whispers.”

I’ve been pegged to host an audio horror panel which will include Jamie, author Simon Wood, and the good wishes of writer-producer Lawrence Santoro.  Larry was slated for the panel, but the poor guy has to book it to SFO early if he’s ever to fly back home.  Something about a sinking ship.  Anyway….

Also we’re going to be at the UFO Festival on May 20th at the McMenamin’s Hotel Oregon, helping out while the intrepid folks from WRW will perform live the Mercury Theater adaptation of…

Was it “The Time Machine?”  No, that’s not it.  “The Invisible Man?”  Or maybe “The First Men in the Moon?”  Nah, that’s not right.  It was something by H.G. Wells, I know that.  Or was it Orson Welles?  I always get them mixed up.  Uh, maybe I can get back to you on that….

Thanks to our good friends at CD Baby, “Afterhell: Volume 2” is now available for sale! Click on the album cover or the “buy the CD” below to get to our CDBaby.com page:

OLLIN PRODUCTIONS: Afterhell — Volume 2 Horror/dark fantasy audiodrama, this time with an edge of black comedy.

We will be updating the rest of the Afterhell website soon, with new information about the Volume 2 cast, a promo audio clip, and links to some of our creative partners.

We’d also like to thank all of you who have taken the time to check out the CDBaby page for “Dark Descent.” Over the last few months, visitors to that page have risen to an average of 2 per day. Maybe not much in the world of webdom, but it makes us happy! We’d love to see the numbers for “Volume 2” go even higher, though…. 🙂

Finally, those of you who have purchased or are about to purchase either “Dark Descent” or “Volume 2,” we would love to have a review from you! You can send it to us, or post it on our CDBaby or Amazon pages. Do be honest — if there’s stuff you weren’t entirely happy with, we don’t mind if say so — but keep it polite.

As always, thank you so much for your support.

Sorry I disappeared for a few days.  I was going to post something by popular demand.  A command performance, as it were.  But I just plain crashed on Sunday.  One part illness, several parts fatigue.  I slept through half the day!  (If not for DST, I might’ve slept for only a third.  Bah dum-bump.)  Jamie figured I crashed because I finally could.

Why is that, you ask?  Volume 2 is complete.  Mixed, mastered, burned, pressed, and packaged.  Distribution is in work.  The folks at the Mark Time awards have already gotten their batch.  A whisper in a gently shadowed corner told us the artwork has already blown them away.    And we’ve just sent copies out to CD Baby.  We’ll see what everybody else says.

Finally.  Whew.  We’ve been banging on this thing for nearly two years despite toil and trouble.  No cauldrons bubble, though.  I kicked those over and told them to keep the racket down.

A quick heads-up to one and all…we’re using a different CD case for this release.  Instead of the standard CD jewel box, we’ve opted instead for a Super Jewel Box CD case courtesy of the folks at Jewelboxing.  We’ll break the horrific news to them shortly.  But anyway, each case has a latch that holds it shut.  Press it in and the latch opens.  It’s a little confusing at first.  I’m still getting used to it and it was my idea to try it out!  On the bright side, these cases are pleasing to the eye and well built.  It’s sturdy enough to survive more than a few car trips.  If you use a baseball bat on it, you’re on your own.

We’re also giving copies to cast and crew whenever we can.  For most, if not all, this is their first opportunity to see the artwork and hear the final mixes of each story.    We’ve already gotten a few responses, which have so far boiled down to “Wow!” or “How do you open this, again?”

On Saturday, Sam Mowry and Cindy McGean treated us to a really nice wine bar (that I won’t tell you much about because I want to keep it a secret as long as possible) to celebrate.  We all took turns locking and unlocking the case as well as fondling the cover insert. 

On Monday, Jamie and I went to Grendel’s Coffeehouse in downtown Portland for one of David Loftus‘ readings that month.  It also gave us a good excuse opportunity to show off the new Volume 2 CD and some promo cards for it.  David has been waiting patiently for this disk ever since he first came in for “Sleepless Days,” so it was a real pleasure to give him the finished product.  I got an unexpected charge when a few people started asking for promo cards.  If I’d known, I wouldn’t have used all 50 cards as coasters for my cup of chai.  But seriously, folks….

And of course Tuesday saw the first half of our debut on “The Sonic Society.”  A trickle of compliments and sales has started up. 

I’m hoping for a deluge.  But that comes later.

The day has opened with some sad news.  Dan Curtis, creator of the much-loved Gothic daytime soap “Dark Shadows,” died yesterday morning.  Four months ago he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, which has apparently…finally…taken its toll.

Jamie and I have been DS fans from way back.  Vague impressions of Collinwood and its cursed inhabitants are among my earliest memories.  Whenever the show comes up in conversation, there is always one person who fondly remembers running home from school to catch the show at 3:30pm (back in the dinosaur days when there were no home VCR’s or TiVo’s).  Anyone who watches the show, whether they were fans or harsh critics, eventually developed an attachment to Barnabas, Maggie, Willie, Angelique or Quentin.  It wasn’t hard.  For all its technical weaknesses and dialogue that was so wooden you could’ve staked vampires with it, “Dark Shadows” had heart.  Everyone on the show was having fun.  And you could tell.

It’s important to point all this out for a simple reason. Dan Curtis will be remembered for “Dark Shadows.”  His accomplishments in Hollywood are significant and numerous.  He’s everything from TV sports to the “Winds of War” mini-series, and won accolades for all of his work.  But he’ll be remembered for this corny Gothic soap opera.

You know what?  I don’t think he’d have wanted it any other way.  Recently we saw a recent interview with him.  The slightest mention of the show made him explode with enthusiasm.  Recalling his frustration with budget issues and crumbling sets and live Chromakey only made him smile from ear to ear.  It was a difficult production, but after three decades, he still loved it.  And he wanted to do it again.  Once, twice, three times…it was never enough.

And once has never been enough for us either.  Many horror fans, writers, artists…well, everybody has been inspired by “Dark Shadows.”  We Afterhell folks are no different.

Hence the personal sense of irony for us:  Tonight, Afterhell Volume 2 will be ready for disk production.  On Thursday we’ll submit our copies for the Ogle Award.  And on Friday, we’ll need more Dark Shadows DVDs.  We’d go shopping for some tonight, but we’re gonna feel wiped out by the time we leave the studio. 

Wiped out and satisfied.  And already anticipating the next production.  Just like Dan Curtis.

Um, about that big circle I told you to make on your calendar…did you do it in pencil?

The Afterhell segments on The Sonic Society radio show have been bumped out a week. We’ll be appearing on April 4th and 11th.  They probably needed more time to edit out the long silences that punctuate my occasional lapses into unconsciousness.

Also, there is a Frapper map courtesy of the Audio Addicts, friends, fans, and allies of the Sonic Society.  Jamie has put in one of those little pin thingies on the map.  So has Sam Mowry of the Willamette Radio Workshop.  You’ll even find a cute picture of Jamie.  (I have dibs on her, by the way.)

I’m still debating whether to join the Frapper map myself.  I’m inherently paranoid about anybody knowing where I am at any given time, for one thing.  I have been known to sandblast tables in restaurants to obliterate any traces of myself whenever we go out for dinner.  I have to leave really big tips after that, but anyway….

On top of that, recently a complete stranger has told me that I look like Saddam Hussein.  Oh yeah, that really builds up my enthusiasm for public appearances.  Gimme a paper cut and pour some Southern Comfort on it while you’re at it.

Oh yeah.  Volume 2 is going to disk production next week.  Did I mention that?

Three audio formats — WAV,  MP3, and CD-Audio — represent the current standard in sound these days.  Just about everyone is familiar with them by now, thanks to CD burners and portable MP3 players.  The MP3 file format has been a real boon for voice work too.  Nowadays a voice actor can do most of his/her work at home, compress the results to MP3, and e-mail the file wherever it has to go. 

There are negatives to MP3 format, of course.  It’s a lossy format, which means you lose information.  To make a sound file smaller, it leaves stuff out.  It’s like filling up a suitcase.  You can’t take everything with you, so you take the stuff you know you’re gonna need and leave the rest behind.  If you want the audio format equivalent of a Space Bag, you have to try something else. 

MP3 is also a proprietary format.  Technically it belongs to somebody else.  Some cyberspace cowboys don’t like that.  They want information to be free (or at least hassle-free), accessible to everyone.  That desire set off the open source movement.

Okay, so why am I bringing all this up?  Well, other than the way working in audiodrama makes all this stuff disturbingly important, I stumbled on something that might be handy to folks who want to use their MP3 players without getting pushed around by the Man.  It’s called Rockbox.   However it’s a geeky, hacker-ish alternative.  I haven’t tried it either, so I can’t vouch for it. 

I’d love to hear from anyone who tries it out.  Post a comment on this posting or e-mail.  Rockbox looks like an interesting experiment and I’d like to follow its progress.

Here’s a quick peek at what Volume 2 is going to look like. We’ve been working on this the last few weeks, back and forth. Friday the 10th saw us with the print-ready files packed up and ready to go. We had way too much fun playing with the design on this one. And what a lot of information to pack in! We’re going more colourful with this volume, but kept the white, red and black look similar to “Dark Descent” for the CD face.

We’ll be updating the website shortly with other promotional material for vol 2, so keep your eyes open for that.

Okay, bad pun.  But if you killed me, you wouldn’t get any updates, now would you?

As Volume 2 gets closer to completion, so does our deadline. 

Deadline — what deadline? 

I’d set a private deadline for myself some time ago, then slowly divulged it here and there to see if it was a realistic one.  Among my sordid and sundry reputations (as a Quiet Loner, short fuse in residence, token hyper-nerd, or even blood-sucking freak of nature, to name but a few), I had often been accused of harboring unrealistic goals.  I pick my battles.  Sometimes I feint.

Going back on point:  My private street date has become a hard and fast deadline.  The deadline for Volume 2 is March 31.  

There’s a simple reason for that.  The American Society For Science Fiction Audio in Minnesota holds the Mark Time Awards every year.  Every year they give Mark Time Awards to the SF audio of their choice and Ogle Awards for fantasy/horror audio.  We’re gunning for the Ogle.

Of course, a sincere “wow!” would do.  But Afterhell Volume 2 is worthy of the Gold Ogle.

If not Volume 2, then Volume 3.  If not Volume 3, then Volume 4.  If not Volume 4, I’ll blast open their vault with a Death Star superlaser and take what’s mine.

So for their sakes, wish us luck.

Also, put a big fat circle around March 28th and April 4th on your calendars.  We’re about to hit Canada’s airwaves.  The Sonic Society, a radio showcase of modern audiodrama syndicated across Canada, has invited us to join their exalted ranks.

Our friends at WRW suggested that we send them a copy of “Dark Descent,” so we did.  Apparently it sent the Sonic Society folks into a tailspin!  They rearranged their production schedule to squeeze us in.  Host Jack Ward even called us up to interview with me and Jamie.  Fifty-fifty, whether our cats will also appear on the show.

If you miss those airdates, no problem.  Podcasts will be available.  The Sonic Society — tune it in or download the MP3’s.  You can hear us babble and grope for answers to Jack’s questions!

Now then, caffeine…