Episode 27: OSSE, Halloween In July by Kevin Anderson
Alex and his wife Sara have moved away from New York and are spending their first night in their new home. A warm July night. But then, why are there children trick-or-treating at their front door. They are children, right?
Rish and Big talk about writing stories that sound an awful lot like other stories. Also, they mention something called the Broken Mirror Event.
Special thanks to Josh Roseman, Christine Maia-Fleres, Amory Lowe, and Liz Mierzejewski for lending their voices to this show, and to Gino Moretto for today’s episode art.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/dunesteef/Dunesteef_27_Halloween_In_July_by_Kevin_Anderson.mp3%20Right click to download the episode HERE.
Related Links:
Kevin Anderson’s Site
Pumpkinseeds on the Drabblecast
Gino’s Art Site
The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine 
March 28, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Here’s the thing… When I was reading for the story I made a concerted effort to only read the parts that I was responsible for. This made the listening rather entertaining, since I really didn’t know the whole story. Nice and creepy. WTG, Kevin.
But geeze, Rish – tell me the next time I record something that sounds like I’m recording inside a giant metal hatch buried under the ground on a mysterious island. I’d have recorded it again.
March 28, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Oh, that was great! Big’s kids make terrific little ghouls, and their singing was well-layered into the story. I remember Pumpkin Seeds, too. It was a creepily stand-out. Kevin, I hope you submit more work!
Just a note on the chatter: I doubt anything of Neil Gaiman’s will be forgotten in 10 years, but The Graveyard Book won the Newbery, so it is especially likely to live forever. It’s a charming piece of work, and you can hear Neil read it himself from audible.com. *ding*
March 28, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Thanks, Abbie. I realise I referred to it as “The Cemetery Book” or something at one point in the podcast, but we were so behind on this one, there was no point in recording it again.
And yeah, I feel bad about some of the sound quality, and I take most of the responsibility for that. Someday, we’ll figure out a way to get perfect sound levels for everything, but alas, that day is not yet here.
March 28, 2009 at 4:37 pm
I think your mixing is quite good. One question: are you letting your voice actors send you MP3s? Are you double-compressing stuff? Double compression just never sounds as good.
One thing you might find useful is the Levelator (maybe you’re already using it). It’s a free audio optimizer that a lot of the authors on Podiobooks.com use. It’s for voice only (you run it on the loss-less voice file before you mix in music). But your stuff doesn’t really suffer from uneven volume. It’s more that the ambient noise and sound quality from various microphones is different. I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with that. Background music can help cover it up, but short of dragging people to one location to record, I don’t know how to fix it.
March 30, 2009 at 5:29 am
I was totally saying Clockstoppers as you guys were talking about it. I particularly enjoyed the New Found Glory song on the soundtrack.
Abbie: when I sent the files to Bigg & Rish, I sent 320k mp3s which is the highest quality my software can output. I figure the best thing an amateur voice actor like me can do is provide the best quality source files I can and whatever the editors do, they do.
March 30, 2009 at 6:39 am
Josh – I’m sure you did a great job! I’m also pretty sure that your software would output wav’s or aiff’s, which are loss-less file formats. However, there are problems inherent in sending those big files back and forth, and Bigg and Rish probably just don’t think it’s worth it. The extra compression doesn’t seem to get in the way of most of us enjoying the story. I was just trying to…you know, be helpful (and was, perhaps, the opposite). Anyway, carry on!
March 30, 2009 at 7:33 am
I could send WAVs. I just didn’t want to send such ginormous files, and nothing was ever specified. *shrug* FWIW I didn’t really notice that much compression. I tend not to use it at all — as a former radio guy, I prefer to ride the levels as I record, rather than have to compress later.
March 30, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Great show. I really liked Pumpkinseeds, but I thought this story was much better. Nice job on the production and reading, too. I’ve found that any show that uses multiple readers for a story is going to have noticible differences in sound between the different readers. It still isn’t much of an issue, since I think using different voices really improves the presentation, and the Dunesteef has had really good production since (nearly) the very beginning. In fact, it’s one of the things I really like about The ‘steef. I won’t keep listening to a podcast with low production values.
Anyway, the Broken Mirror even sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll keep my pencil sharp.
April 5, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I can send any future readings (if I may be so bold) in any format you’ld like. I felt bad for my sound quality. I have to get my staff to produce better work, da*n them!
June 9, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I enjoyed it throughly. I
September 24, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I always enjoy Kevin Anderson stories. I run into them in a lot of markets and his stories are consistently good. This one is no exception. I liked it. Now I want to go back and listen to the Drabblecast story and see what’s up with this new sherriff. Good job Kevin.