Were podcasts always this complicated?

Yes, the podcast journey is beginning. I wish it was as simple as leaving the shire, but I’m no Frodo, and my story is not the ring.

Let’s briefly go over some history. I’ve been writing for more than a decade, and not unlike Shakespeare, I’ve produced a lot of content. Some better than others. Late in 2018 I found podcasts. I was relatively late to the party, but I knew what they were. What I didn’t know was how frickin’ good they are. I found myself a nice wee niche (supernatural and horror fiction) and made camp, racing through as many different ones as I could. My first step was Limetown, which if you haven’t listened I can’t recommend enough.

I began to think. I have loads of fiction content sitting in the cloud stagnating. Why can’t I do a podcast myself? Two of the most interesting podcasts I listened to were Alice isn’t Dead, and The Magnus Archives, both of which are (usually) single person narrators. This, of course, may be wishful thinking, but I love trying new things (not food, though) and building skills (and possibly a thicker skin).

I also decided to document my journey. I’ve never done any kind of audio editing in my life, or really know that much in depth detail about the podcasting world but I have been running another blog for 4 years, so at least here I’m in my comfort zone.

Now, the story. What, out of all the crap I’ve ever typed out, made the cut to launch this podcast? If you’ve read above you can probably guess. Many, many years ago I was really into ghost stories and my kindle was full of the genre. Obviously this obsession bled into my own writing, as things often do. I have many supernatural stories in the cloud, but for some reason this one seemed easier to transfer to audio.

After hobbling through the terrible writing of my younger self I decided it was worth a go, there were just a few problems. I disliked the main character’s name. It was pretentious, and from an era when naming your character unusual names was “cool”, or at least I thought it was.

Simultaneously with the scripts and characters I also had to figure out all of the technical bits behind podcasts, like audio editing, microphones, pop filters, shock absorbers, audio hosting, and this website. Even though I’ve been running another blog for years that’s on Blogger, so this is my first foray into WordPress (for the record, I actually prefer it).

And the good news is that I’ve tracked everything on this blog. If you want to hear my inner thoughts, my opinions, and the how not to be an idiot when making a podcast guide, then you’ve come to the right place.