After Dark

Hi folks,

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

This week we are very excited to be welcoming a new show to the RQ Network. Not Quite Dead is a horror romance audio drama from Hanging Sloth Studios (who you may recognise from their work on another RQ Network show, Spirit Box Radio). Not Quite Dead explores themes of identity, sexuality and death and follows Alfie, a nurse whose life becomes entangled with a vampire underworld. Whilst working overtime on an A&E nightshift, Alfie comes across multiple patients with vicious, violent wounds. Alfie almost becomes another victim of the walking, rotting dead things which have been attacking his patients, but is saved by Casper – a vampire. Now Casper has saved Alfie’s life, they’ve become inescapably bound together – whether they like it or not.

Creator, Eira Major, was kind enough to answer some questions about Not Quite Dead.

Tell us who you are and a bit about Not Quite Dead?

I’m Eira Major, and I make audio dramas! As a life-long storyteller and long-time fan of podcasts and audio drama, it’s a great privilege to be making shows and becoming a part of RQ Network. You probably remember me from Spirit Box Radio, which joined RQ Network in May, but today I’m here to talk about Not Quite Dead, a show about vampires. This show came about through something I call my creative exhaust pipe; I like to have a couple of long-term projects running at once, at least one which is intended for public eyes, and another which is just for me, as an exhaust pipe for extra ideas which don’t fit with my main project. I started writing about a senior nurse who is witness to some brutal attacks and falls in love with the vampire who is investigating them as a way to siphon off some of the darker, gorier and spicier ideas I had whilst working on Spirit Box Radio. Over time, I realised that I wasn’t just something I was sticking together for the hell of it; I was spending hours working on lore and timelines and really fell in love with Alfie, the nurse, and Casper, his vampire. That’s how the visceral, blood-soaked story of Not Quite Dead came about.

What got you into podcasting?

I started making audio dramas in COVID lockdowns in 2020, coming off the back of several years of trying to make it in the world of traditional publishing. I was drawn to audio drama because of the potential for freedom and boldness which is limited in more traditional creative tracks. It would take me years to be able to tell the sort of stories I most love to write in TV or film, so I set about making Clockwork Bird, which started airing in June 2020. By the end of that year I was also producing Spirit Box Radio, the first project I’d put together exclusively for audio. The concept of Not Quite Dead was born in 2021, but wouldn’t start publicly releasing until Halloween 2022. I hadn’t planned on releasing it the way I did, which was very out of the blue without much prior promotion. Despite that, people tuned in and started to care about Alfie and Casper, and now here we are!

What are you most proud about Not Quite Dead?

One of the main motivators for writing this show was that when you encounter vampires in modern media, they’re usually interacting with a human, and I never really vibed with the way those humans responded to finding out vampires exist. I love vampires! I think they’re cool and I would absolutely kiss one if they wanted me to, but I would still be absolutely terrified to find out they were real. In the show, I’m most proud of the balance I’ve struck between the allure of Casper and vampires in general against the inherent horror of creatures that require human blood to live. The vampires in Not Quite Dead can range from almost-human-seeming, like Casper, right up to rotting, feral creatures who care only about the drive to the slaughter. It’s really fun to move between scenes of tenderness and care where Alfie and Casper navigate the difficulties of being a prey/predator couple, and scenes of brutal violence which underscore the very real risk Alfie is in whenever he’s in Casper’s presence. It’s quite difficult to manage those tonal shifts, but I’m really proud of how they work in the show and I think the horror and the romance reflect and amplify each other in the end!

You can listen to Not Quite Dead wherever you find podcasts, or on the Rusty Quill website. As always, if you enjoy the show, please consider rating it on your podcast app or leaving a review. As we mentioned in last week’s newsletter, creator Eira Major is also about to launch a crowdfunding campaign for their newest show, The Twelvelms Conspiracy. You can find out more about this new show, and register interest in the campaign before it launches fully later this month on the Twelvelms IndieGoGo page.

In this week’s episode of Cry Havoc! Ask Questions Later, Gaius and Mark are on the hunt for a solution to their money worries, exploring Rome’s dark underworld in search of a mysterious cult. Meanwhile, Octavia and Charmian go out for post rehearsal drinks together, but an interruption from Fulvia, the wife of Mark Antony, might disrupt their plans.

On the same theme, this week’s backstage episode is all about Roman religions and cults. Joining host Lowri this week once again is creator David K Barnes and one of our incredible writing team, and director of Trice Forgotten, Rafaella Marcus. As well as chatting about how religion worked in Ancient Rome, they also chat about Raf’s experience in writing rooms and some behind the scenes information on how these episodes were written.

Here is our full schedule for this week:

Tuesday 4th July

ROME 7 – Rome After Dark (Patreon) (4pm BST)

Thursday 6th July

ROME 7 – Rome After Dark (Public) (4pm BST)

Friday 7th July

KNIGHTS bonus – Backstage: Roman Cults and Religions (Patreon) (4pm BST)

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team