Hello! Does anybody listen to writing podcasts? Do you have a favourite? I’m always looking for new podcasts to listen to so please post them below!
I am completely biased. I listen to a bunch but I have a favourite and I want to share it with you.
The Bestseller Experiment: probably the nicest place on the internet.
I’ve made a little video about it.
I this episode of the Two Authors One Journal podcast (aka 2A1J) Rachel says something interesting about Charles Dickens’ secret other success, Andrew plays the harmonica (badly), and they discuss the benefits of writing with the music on.
We find out what music Stephen King and Douglas Adams listened to while they wrote and what me and Rachel are listening to while we write our novellas.
On the novella front, meet the protagonist of Call Me Oedipus (the working title for Andrew’s novella), and Rachel reveals the title for her Murder Mystery.
Listeners Questions has a new jingle! But it might change next week… It might change every week.
Find us on Twitter @2A1Jpod for updates, and be the first to hear about new episodes by heading over to 2A1J.wordpress.com and signing up as a member.
You can follow Rachel on Instagram and Twitter @RachyPetalFace
And Andrew can be stalked @AndyChapWriter on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
In episode two of the 2A1J Podcast Andy and Rachel are very sick. But they persevere against adversity to bring you another brilliant, thrilling, funny, and all-round okay podcast.
We talk about the progress of our novellas, we answer listener questions, talk about moths and Blackadder, and generally make each other laugh.
In Episode One of 2A1J Andrew has a rant about novellas and puts forward his case for why they are brilliant and should be read by all. Rachel and Andrew discuss what makes a novella a novella. They outline their plan for the podcast moving forwards and, at the end of the episode, reveal the ideas for the two novellas they will be writing over the next three months.
Find us on Twitter @2A1Jpod for updates, and be the first to hear about new episodes by heading over to 2A1J.wordpress.com and signing up as a member.
You can follow Rachel on Instagram and Twitter @RachyPetalFace
And Andrew can be stalked @AndyChapWriter on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Two Authors One Journal (2A1J) podcast is nearly here! Tune in on Twosday (haha) 25th June for episode 1.
Me and Rachel Howells have been recording the sounds of a typewriter and layering a guitar over it for our opening jingle and it sounds bloody brilliant.
On Twosday’s episode we’ll be talking about novellas and inviting you to write along with us as we start to come up with ideas for the two novellas we will be writing over the next 3 months.
Two authors, two novellas, three months to write them and three months to edit, create book covers, and build up to an Christmas release in paperback and Kindle.
We can’t wait to start writing our new novellas and bring you into our creative writing process.
Follow me to keep updated. If you want to be the first hear about new episodes you can send me a private message with your email address and we’ll be creating a mailing list where you’ll get a weekly message saying, “It’s here, check it out!”
You can follow Rachel on social media. She is @rachypetalface on Instagram and Twitter.
I am @AndyChapWriter on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
We’ll have a proper sign up page set up soon for the mailing list but for now you can message either of us on any of our social media accounts.
Me and Rachel have started a weekly podcast! 2A1J (Two Authors One Journal). In the prequel episode I interview Rachel Howells about her new book, Wode House. Listen right to the end to find out more about the future of the podcast.
Me and Rachel Howells woke up this morning, had a full English, and put on the Bestseller Podcast, as per. AND Rachel and her book were only bloody mentioned! Words like “bestselling” and “author” and “amazing” were thrown around.
Have a listen!
The book is available to buy via Amazon on Kindle and in paperback now! Go get it! What are you waiting for?
https://audioboom.com/posts/6705515-episode-2-coraline
The history of the stop motion animated film, Coraline, starts 20 years before the movie hit the cinemas. Way back in 1989 when Neil Gaiman was 29 and his first daughter was 4 years old. Her name was Holly. She would go off to kindergarten and come back to see her dad writing. Holly would climb up on her dad’s lap and dictate stories to him that Neil Gaiman would type out for her. They were all about young girls, like Holly, who would normally have witches pretending to be their mothers and the kids would have to escape from them.
Neil thought to himself, “This is so cool, she loves stories like this, I know; I’ll buy her some.” So Neil went to the bookshop to find really good scary books for four year olds. Alas, he failed. Such a book did not exist. So Neil Gaiman did what any good writer would do and wrote it himself.
10 years later the book was finished. It was never meant to take 10 years. Life got in the way. The book got abandoned. Holly got older. By now Holly was too old for the book but Neil’s second daughter, Maddie, was not. Neil decided he had to get the book done before she was too old. He finished it when Maddie was 6.
After the first draft of the book was complete Neil sent it to his film agent, John Leven, and said, “John, there are only two people who I would ever want touching this. One would be Tim Burton, and the other would be Henry Selick.”
Henry Selick had already directed Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas (in fact Tim Burton had little to do with the movie) and Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach.
Neil never heard back from Tim Burton but a week later Henry Selick called up Neil and said, “I’ve read Coraline, I want to make it a movie.”
That was in 2001. It took Selick 7 years to make his movie. The film was released on the 8th May 2009.
At the beginning of the film the two movers, unloading the lorry with all their belongings, were caricatures of Jerome and Joe Ranft. Jerome was a sculptor for Pixar and Joe was a story man. I’ll list some of credits in a minute but Joe sadly died at the age of 45 while directing Cars for Pixar. Ironically he died in a car accident. As homage to Raft, who Henry Selick called “the story giant of our generation”, the removals van had a logo on the side which read, “Raft Moving Inc.” Both caricatures of Joe and Jerome Raft were voiced by Jerome. A little add-on to this fact; the money used to pay the moving men had a picture of Henry Selick on it, instead of an American president. Selick worked with Joe on The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Monkeybone.
Just to give an idea of why Raft was so important here is a short filmography. (This part wasn’t in the podcast).
He was a story artist on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Beauty and the Beast; he did the story and provided several cartoon screams.
Aladdin (dad’s favourite animated film); story and more cartoon screams.
The Nightmare before Christmas; Storyboard Supervisor and the voice of Igor.
The Lion King; story.
Toy Story; story and voice of Lenny the Binoculars.
A Bug’s Life; story and voice of Hemlich.
Toy Story 2; story and voice of Wheezy.
Monsters Inc; voice of Pete “Claws” Ward.
Finding Nemo; voice of Jacques the Shrimp.
Cars; Co-Director and voice of Red and Peterbilt.
And many more things that would take too long to list.
The Cherry Blossom was made of popcorn.
The layout of the house, in the book at least, was based on Neil Gaiman’s actual home at the time.
The production made 500 dogs to populate the theatre in Spink and Forcible’s Other Flat.
5 miles of gold thread for a 5-inch wig. (Miss Forcible).
They used a record breaking 130 sets across 52 stages to record different scenes at the same time, over 183,000 square feet.
Wybie is not in the book. This means no nan, which means no doll.
It was the first animated film to use stereoscopic 3D. Which means that each frame of animation was photographed twice. Once for the left eye and once for the right.
Coraline is left handed.
Coraline is a spelling mistake. Neil accidentally spelled the name wrong but liked it so kept it that way.
And finally, in the scene where the other Father sings a song at the piano he is wearing Monkeybone slippers. Monkeybone is the film Henry Selick made after Coraline.
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https://audioboom.com/posts/6680862-episode-1-riverdale-and-archie-comics
Riverdale is a Netflix Original series based on the Archie Comics. The comics weren’t well known in England but were massive in America. It is as much of America’s cultural identity as The Beano is to England.
Archie Comics started nearly 80 years ago in 1939. It wasn’t always called Archie Comics. It started off as MLJ Magazines and mostly featured super hero characters. Archie’s first appearance wasn’t until 1941 in Pep Comics number 22.
The youth of America loved Archie and he soon started appearing alongside the super hero on the front page of the magazine. That super hero being The Shield. Interesting fact about The Shield quickly; The Shield is the reason Marvel’s Captain America has a round shield. When Captain America first appeared he had a triangular one but it was too similar to the shield used by MLJ’s The Shield so Marvel were forced to change Captain America’s shield to the now iconic circular shield. Did that make sense? I feel like I used to word “shield” too many times.
It wasn’t long before Archie’s popularity so overshadowed the hero that he was given the full front page and the company changed its name to Archie Comics.
In 2015 Archie Comics re-launched Archie for today’s generation. It was so successful they had to do a second print of the comics to keep up with demand.
The modern incarnation of Archie Comics has moved away slightly from the safe family friendly tone of its past. Including a Zombie comic called Afterlife with Archie and the very bloody Archie vs Predator crossover.
In 2017 Netflix released a TV adaptation of Archie called Riverdale. Riverdale being the name of the town where Archie lives.
So, Jughead has a famous hat. He wears it for most of the TV show, apart from when he’s in bed. Or naked. In the show it’s a woollen beanie that’s been cut up around the edges to look like a crown. Originally it was not a beanie. Or it was. Something got lost in translation along the way. It’s actually a fedora. Also known as a Whoopee Cap when worn the way Jughead wears it. Back in the 1920s it was common in America for all men to wear hats. Teenagers, and other people who think they are cool and unique, would turn the fedoras inside out and cut the brim into a jagged edge. They would then personalise them with badges and pints and whatnot. They called it the beanie. The trend to do this got forgotten to history but Jughead kept his on.
Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars were shot on the same set.
When we were watching Riverdale yesterday Kassidy noticed the school, Riverdale High, looked a lot like Rosewood High from Pretty Little Liars. She Googled it. Turns out I’m right. The shots from above the town are identical in both shows. Even the school looks like it was shot from the same angle.
A fact about the show creator, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Roberto is the Chief Creative Officer at Archie Comics and he’s the guy who adapted Archie for television. So, long before Roberto worked for Archie comics, back in 2003, he wrote a play called Archie’s Weird Fantasy, in which Archie comes out as gay. Archie Comics found about the play and issued a Cease and Desist order threating litigation. Meaning they would sue them if they went ahead with the show. The show did happen a few days later but under the name Weird Comic Book Fantasy with the characters’ names changed.
In 2012 Roberto Aguire-Sacasa went to a book signing for Archie Meets KISS where he met the current owner of Archie Comics, John Goldwater, and pitched the idea of an Archie/Glee crossover. Goldwater loved the idea and made it happen. By 2014 Roberto was Chief Creative Officer or Archie Comics having also pitched the Afterlife with Archie zombie comic.
The actor who plays Archie, K J Apa (his full name is Keneti James Fitzgerald Apa but he’s known as K J Apa), is from New Zealand and is half Samoan. His dad is a Matai (chief) of his village in Samoa. KJ has part of a sleeve tattoo to commemorate his father and his heritage and would like to get his whole body tattooed in Polynesian and Samoan designs.
Finally. Do you remember Sabrina the Teenage witch? Did you know that she is also an Archie Comics character?
She’s getting her very own spin-off show called The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
And she’s from Greendale which is a fictional town somewhere near to Riverdale.
Please subscribe to the podcast and share amongst your friends. (iTunes reviews also help!)
Follow us on Twitter – https://twitter.com/KassidysNerdBox
Kassidy’s Nerd Box is a 10 minute weekly podcast in which we delve into Kassidy’s nerd box and see what TV show, film, comic, game, or random thing from history is currently obsessing her.
Kassidy gives a brief history of the episode’s subject. We share some interesting facts about it, and then end the podcast with a curious and random science fact (and maybe the odd Shakespearian insult thrown in for good measure).
Kassidy is a 12 year old geek with a passion for nerding out on all things. I am Andy, her dad, and this is our podcast.
What is in Kassidy’s Nerd Box this week?
https://audioboom.com/posts/6680862-episode-1-riverdale-and-archie-comics
This week Kassidy delves into her nerd box to talk about the history of Riverdale and Archie Comics and shares some interesting facts about the show.
Subscribe to the podcast via Audioboom at – https://audioboom.com/channels/4947025
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Andrew Chapman / Author and Screenwriter 