Works of Horror/SciFi/Fantasy fiction produced as mini radio drama--a testament to the old pulp cover magazines of days-gone-by.

I graduated from Bennington College here in Vermonti n 2013, where I mainly studied drama and literature. I've always had an interest in horror and the macabre, starting from when I was a boy and my grandmother would lend me VHS copies of bloody stories from her own horror collection. Our listeners are people who like to be scared, sometimes grossed-out, and who also enjoy a fuller audio production with more sound design than your typical "reading creepypasta" program.
 

I started Pulp! as a creative outlet during a time where I was away from friends and spent a lot of time alone. The program seemed to be the perfect thing for scratching both the itch to write, but also the itch to act.

In the beginning it was just me, audacity, and the microphone that came with my ancient all-in-one PC. I think the quality does reflect that a bit in the earlier episodes, but boy was it ever fun.

I started in late 2017 with the goal to try to rope my friends into helping me with this strange little project. I wanted to showcase their talents and passions as much as my own, and I got extremely fortunate when I convinced my friend Zachary Husband to co-produce the show and write a lot of the content. In the beginning it was just me, but it sped up the production aspect once two pens were moving. The first episode came together fairly quickly, and I realized after the first episode I was going to have to make changes to the format. I wanted to focus on original work, so I stopped reading from Kafka's "Metamorphosis" after episode two.
 

It hasn't been easy to find the time this past year, what with the pandemic and all--words that truly belong in my podcast, I daresay. There was a time two years ago where episodes would come out every two weeks, and I was hustling to put them together. It was very rewarding. Once COVID-19 lockdowns began I was unemployed and home all day. We switched to doing a "Curbside" Pulp! series of shorter one-off stories. We ended that about a year ago, but here today we've just started Season 2 and have more content in the works.
Funding is another tough part. It is a labor of love, and I've paid a lot of the costs myself. A year and a half ago I started a podcast LLC, Riverpower Podcast Mill, in Vermont, and me and some friends and podcasting peers have joined up and pooled our resources a bit to keep the lights on.
 

We have absolutely zero paid sponsors, which as it stands now is not such a bad thing. It gives us the opportunity to insert these strange and surreal "fake ads" in our program that many of our listeners enjoy.

Maybe if we make it to 1000 downloads per episode we could consider taking on sponsors, but if we do I'd like to create the ads personally in order to not break up the atmosphere of the program.

The biggest benefit has been friendship. I couldn't do this podcast without the help from my very talented friends.
 

I use a program called Mixcraft 8 as my DAW, but there is a fair amount of Audacity thrown in. It simply has the best Noise Reduction in the business!

The process begins by writing the content. Usually we'll do two stories and a fake advertisement, plus vamping from the narrator in between. Once the script is finished, I'll reach out to friends to get a sense of who is interested in lending their voice to the show. No one is a professional voice actor, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Once recorded, I'll spend a long time editing the seperate stories together, finding Public Domain music and effects, before finally adding them all together for the final compression, EQing, and mastering. Admittedly, this is not my strong suit, but I think it sounds just fine.

Often times I'll get on Zoom with the voice actors and give them direction as they record their lines. I try to keep recording short and sweet as to not take up too much if their time. The direction process also lets me find a better understanding of what things should sound like.
 

Sonetimes I take out ads on Facebook, but mostly things have been word of mouth. Each new guest on the show undoubtedly tells their friends and families about the weird show they were just on, and if I can get even one constant listener from that organic outreach, that's enough for me.
 

Save early, and save often.

Keep in mind that you are doing this for fun. Even if your goal is to make some scratch at this, it is a long journey to get to that point and you are bound to go farther if you actually enjoy the process rather than searching for results.

Shoutout to Yeti Microphones. Affordable, versatile, pretty good!
 

Check out our program, Pulp! from Beyond the Veil, wherever you find podcasts or at our website: www.pulpfrombeyond.com
Thanks for reading!