Clockwork collections and colossal cities

Hi folks,

Wishing you the very best for the coming week from everyone at Rusty Towers!

Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone for your kind words of excitement about Neon Inkwell. If you missed our announcement on Thursday, we’re delighted to say that our upcoming anthology show featuring short series from creators around the world will be debuting on 24thNovember. The first series to be featured, Of That Colossal Wreck, is written by Sasha Sienna and Jonathan Sims. You can read our full announcement, including cast and crew, in our post from last Thursday.

Next up, we’re really pleased to be able to share with you a recent improvement to Patreon’s features. Patreon have recently introduced a new tab, Collections, that you should be able to see at the top of our creator homepage. Long-time users of our Patreon will know that because of when our Patreon was created, some of the early episodes of The Magnus Archives and Rusty Quill Gaming are out of order and hard to find. Collections has given us a way to display the full series, in listening order, in an easy-to-find way for our fans to enjoy. We’ve made collections of all main-story episodes of each of our shows, and will create more in the future. The episodes in the collections have been reorganised into the correct listening order, making it much easier for you to enjoy. This has been a requested feature for some time, and something that we have been trying to find solutions for a really long time. Fortunately, the introduction of this new patreon feature has allowed us to resolve this on 31st August. We are as excited about this feature as you are!

Next up, we’re really pleased to be able announce that today we are welcoming Clockwork Bird by Hanging Sloth Studios to the RQ Network. You’ll already be aware of Eira Major’s work from their other RQ Network shows, Not Quite Dead and Spirit Box Radio. Clockwork Bird, a sci-fi horror, was the first audiodrama they created and follows Shelly who is investigating the disappearance of Robin Jaeger, a man who is 70% synthetic. Eira was kind enough to speak to us about the show – you can also find out more about them in their previous interviews about Not Quite Dead and Spirit Box Radio.

Tell us who you are and a bit about the show!

I’m Eira Major, and I make audio dramas! You’ve probably already met me as my other shows, Not Quite Deadand Spirit Box Radio, are already part of RQ Network. I grew up in North Wales but now live in Manchester; it’s a great city but I miss hills and sheep, but if you told me that when I was a kid I’d say it wasn’t possible! Clockwork Bird was the first show I ever made. I started putting it together a couple of months into the COVID lockdowns in 2020. I had no experience and no idea what I was doing, and I was surprised at the number of people the show seemed to resonate with! It was extraordinary. Clockwork Bird actually started out as a novel. It was the first novel I ever finished writing, actually, which makes it appropriate for being the first audio drama I ever finished, too!

How is Clockwork Bird similar to your other shows?

Superficially, there’s not a lot in common between ANY of the shows I put together. Spirit Box Radio is a fake supernatural radio show whose host discovers he may be slightly more arcanely inclined than he first realised. Not Quite Dead is a show about vampires told as an audio diary made by a man who is being forced to decide whether he becomes a vampire or not. And Clockwork Bird is a found-footage sci-fi existential horror piece about a missing cyborg and an evil corporation. As my first audio drama, Clockwork Bird is certainly rougher around the edges than the others, too. But what they share is an interest in what it means to be human, especially when it comes to grief and death. Themes of loss and mourning crop up again and again across all three of my shows, and Clockwork Bird directly tackles those themes through discussions of death through the lens of medical malpractice, in a slightly-futuristic sci-fi setting.

Clockwork Bird finished airing in 2020. Do you have plans to expand the story or the world?

Yes, I do! Some time in 2024, I will be releasing a six-part re-visitation of the story called Icarus Rising. Icarus Rising is a sequel to the original show but it also explores some of the same concepts tackled in the original series in a new light. As mentioned before, Clockwork Bird began life as a novel, and there were lots of details I cut in the adaptation process. It’ll be exciting to revisit these concepts and these characters, especially now that I have three years of audio drama production under my belt.

Clockwork Bird is available to listen to wherever you find podcasts or on the Rusty Quill website. As always, if you enjoy the show please consider leaving a rating or a review as this is the best way to support a show.

Finally, on Cry Havoc this week, Charmian and Octavia go on a date exploring the city while Mark and Gaius do the exact opposite. On Friday, our Backstage episode explores sexuality in historical fiction.

Here is our full schedule for this week:

Tuesday 5th September

ROME 14 – Rome, Open City (Patreon) (4pm BST)

Thursday 7th September

ROME 14 – Rome, Open City (Public) (4pm BST)

Friday 8th September

KNIGHTS+ bonus – Backstage: Sexuality in Historical Fiction (Patreon) (4pm BST)

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team