No Dragons Press

Episode 9: “Addie Visits the Lab”

Show Notes from Episode Nine

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode Nine: “Addie Visits the Lab.”

Hey guys, thanks for listening! This is ninth episode, and I’m still kind of struggling to get back on schedule after my microphone exploded last week, so I don’t have a whole lot for you today.

August is bonkers.

You know, it always seems like August particularly bonkers, and Emily and I both have just had a ton going on and it’s been difficult to stick to a schedule.

We’ve been pretty much sticking to weekly, but it’s hard when there’s just so much that goes into each episode and chapter and each piece of artwork. We’re doing our best to keep things consistent for you, and hopefully now that summer is winding down a little bit, we’ll find some more time each week to keep things on track.

No Dragons Press is also bonkers. Let’s jump in.

We have a whole bunch of really cool announcements coming up, but right now we’re at a really exciting point in the story, so I’m going to hold off on the updates and jump right back in.

Remember, last week Duc dropped a few teasers about what Tristan has been doing in his basement laboratory, and Addie of course isn’t going to be able to keep from jumping in headfirst.

So, I’ll have a little bit more to talk about next week, but for now let’s keep the story moving! I hope you enjoy chapter nine: Addie Visits the Lab.

Thanks for listening, you guys. Remember to subscribe to No Dragons Press on iTunes or wherever you’re listening, and be sure to check the show notes at nodragonspress.com/podcast for links to our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series. Take care, be kind, and I’ll see you next week!

No Dragons Press

Episode 8: “Addie Has a Visitor”

Show notes for NO DRAGONS PRESS Episode Eight

These are the show notes for Episode Eight: Addie Has a Visitor. (The story starts at 2:30, if you want to skip ahead.)

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re well!

Spontaneous combustion is real.

So! As you may have noticed, I had a little bit of a hiccup with podcast schedule due to some technical difficulties, namely that my mic decided to spontaneously combust.

You know, troubleshooting is a very frustrating time because you can reinstall programs, swap cables, all the technical stuff, but there’s always that little possibility that maybe it’s just user error, and maybe if you try just that one extra setting it’s going to magically work.

So anyway, after giving up on that, I finally took out my tool kit, a.k.a. wallet (which is totally a joke I just stoke from Mitch Hedberg), and got a new one, and here we are.

Weekly Illustrated Fiction: Still weekly, still illustrated

Thanks to Emily for her infinite patience, and you guys, the Weekly Illustrated Fiction has been plugging away on schedule, and I can’t even believe we somehow haven’t talked about the artwork for chapter 7, definitely go take a look.

It’s our first good look at Tristan, and it’s happening during such a Tristan moment. It’s maybe my favorite one yet and I’m just really excited to share it with you.

Addie: Finally actually about to make a decision?

Anyway, I’ll get right to the story. Remember, in the last chapter, Addie has just experienced the most terrifying moment of her life so far, and today she has some real decisions to make, at least until someone shows up to tell her the one thing that could possibly get her to change her mind.

Now, if it sounds like we’re heading towards something big, we totally are, there’s just a few more chapters until shit really get real and everything changes. In the meantime, make sure to send in your questions and comments, especially if you have any questions for my artist Emily. She’ll be on the show soon and I’ll be asking her a bunch of questions, so get yours in and I’ll be sure to ask her on the show!

Thanks, everyone!

Well that’s it for now. Remember you can listen to archived episodes, read the show notes, and find links to the Weekly Illustrated Fiction series at nodragonspress.com/podcast. Enjoy the show!

Hey everyone, thanks for listening! Feel free to reach out and say hi, and if you’ve been enjoying the story, let someone know about it! I really appreciate it. Thanks everyone.

No Dragons Press

Episode 7: “Addie Is Not a Superhero”

Hey, everyone! Thanks for stopping by!

These are the show notes for No Dragons Press, A HIGH FANTASY Serial Fiction Podcast, Episode 7: “Addie Is Not a Superhero.” (The chapter begins around 3:15, in case you want to skip ahead.)

Enjoy!

Welcome, new listeners!

Kind of exciting news: last night I submitted No Dragons Press to a few new podcast distributors, and it looks like I’ve got a few new listeners! If you’re a new listener, welcome! It’s great to have you here.

I’m really looking forward to the twists and turns coming up and I’m really excited to share them with you, both here on the podcast and on our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series. You can find links to both at nodragonspress.com.

I have some exciting news, or at least it’s exciting news for me:

Now you can help me run the show (or at least myself)!

It definitely isn’t free to run a podcast, but this is a serial fiction podcast, which didn’t really feel to me like the right kind of thing to try to find a sponsor for, at least not right away. I’m already talking a bunch before I even start reading the chapter, and I didn’t want to put anything else between you and the story.

So, since Book One won’t be published for at least another six months, I started thinking about other fun ways I could help offset the cost of running a podcast in a way that didn’t seem disruptive to the show format or just creepy.

Buy me a beer!

I decided, instead of directly asking for help running the show, I would make it easy for listeners to buy me a beer. That indirectly helps, since I’m going to be buying it anyway, and it’s way more fun. Podcasts are such a uniquely personal way to connect with people individually, and something as classic as sending someone a drink really appeals to me on that personal level.

If you head to nodragonspress/beer, you should find a pretty easy-to-use button. Just let me know what kind of beer you’d like to send over and how you’d like to be thanked, and I’ll send out little thank-you gifts too as I start getting all the pieces together.

Edit: I’ve since moved to Patreon. If you’d like to support me, please head to patreon.com/nodragonspress, and thank you. (You can still buy me a beer.)

And you know, whether or not you choose to help out right now, thanks so much for listening, and keep telling your friends about the podcast and the weekly illustrated fiction series. That’s really the most important thing you can do to help right now, and I really appreciate it.

Story Updates

So, I promised things would really start picking up in the story, and they definitely have. If you remember last week, Addie was upstairs in Nate’s apartment, then she went down into the No Dragons Press offices to grab something—until she heard a noise and ran upstairs to see what was going on and got a face full of guns.

Today we pick up where we left off, and we not only learn how appropriate the chapter title is; we also learn just how much Addie doesn’t know about the people she’s closest to. She’s really starting to learn that everyone has secrets, especially the people we don’t necessarily expect secrets from.

Well, I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll shut up for now and jump right into the story. Thanks again for listening and following along, and I hope you enjoy chapter 7: “Addie is Not a Superhero.”

You guys are awesome.

Thanks so much, everyone, and thanks for listening! Remember, you can find the show notes for today’s episode at nodragonspress.com/podcast, as well as older episodes and a link to our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series. Have a great week, help spread the word if you can, and take care of yourselves! See you next time.

No Dragons Press

Episode 6: “Addie Hears Something Strange”

Show Notes

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode Six, where I read chapter 6, “Addie Hears Something Strange.” (If you want to skip the intro and go right to the chapter right around 3:05.)

Hey everyone, thanks so much for listening!

On Location in Myrick

So, this past weekend I actually went to visit the town Myrick is based on. A friend and I just kind of drove around town for a while, scouting out places where Addie might like to hang out and where her house might be and stalking the No Dragons Press offices (though unfortunately there was no Tristan sighting).

I did get a pretty cool shot of the street sign on the intersection of Madison and Twenty-Fourth, and you can even see a bit of the bluffs rising up behind it, although they just look like hills:

Then we wove around through the real bluffs, which are brilliantly green right now and really amazing. (I’ve added a few pictures to the show notes, so you can take a look at nodragonspress.com/podcast and check it out.)

The Bluffs: Addie’s Childhood Home

It made sense to me that Addie should have grown up in the bluffs, always with this view of looking down on the city below and seeing it as something separate. She’s got this view of the world where it’s like she wants to be a part of it but also prefers to stay separate—even when she’s just hanging out, she’s separate from other people, like even at a bar she’s either working or perpetually feeling like she’s just stuck her foot in her mouth. And she is definitely making plans to separate herself from Bradley.

She’s basically a weird girl who doesn’t really know what she wants, which is pretty typical, and I like that she has these special places she can visit whenever she wants to escape, up in these basically rocky, elevated green forests with sight lines of all the places she goes in real life.

Send Me Your Questions for Emily Ruf!

Coming up very soon here, I’m going to be bringing Emily Ruf on the show, the artist of the No Dragons Press series, so we can talk a little bit about how we got started on the project together and how she approaches coming up with a new piece of art every week.

If there’s anything you’d like me to ask her, definitely send me your question: you can reach me on Twitter at @nodragonspress, or check out nodragonspress.com for more contact info. thanks!

Well, that’s it from me! Remember, you can always find archived episodes, show notes, and links to the Weekly Illustrated Fiction series at nodragonspress.com/podcast. And if you know of anyone who might be interested in the show, be sure to let them know where they can find it.

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy No Dragons Press, a High Fantasy Adventure: Book One, Chapter 6: “Addie Hears Something Strange.”

Thanks for listening, you guys. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you’re listening, be sure to check out nodragonspress.com/podcast to learn more about our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series, and tune in next week for another episode of No Dragons Press: A High Fantasy Podcast. Have fun, be good, and I’ll see you next week!

No Dragons Press

Episode 5: “Addie Makes a Choice”

Show Notes for Episode 5

Hey, everyone! Welcome to the show.

So, a lot of scary things going on this week, again—a lot of uncertainty, a lot of people trying to tell you we’re broken and we can’t be fixed. Let’s just keep moving forward, and keep respecting each other as individuals. Everyone has their own story, and it might not be the one you expect, so let’s keep an open mind about each other and be kind to the people you encounter, OK?

High Fantasy = HIGH + FANTASY

So, I know we’ve spent a lot of the story just hanging around the No Dragons Press building in the tiny Midwestern town of Myrick. And the “high” aspect is pretty clear by now, but since you may be wondering, I thought I’d take a few minutes today to talk about where this alleged “fantasy” part kicks in.

Hopefully you have a pretty clear sense by now that something is about to happen, something that involves Tristan’s secret door to the basement.

Now, this isn’t a total spoiler, but in case you’re starting to get a little antsy for the shape of this thing, keep in mind that one of the most critical characteristics of the traditional “high fantasy” genre is that the story takes place in a world that isn’t our own. And while it’s gonna be a few more weeks before shit really hits the fan, you’re definitely going to start seeing some of those pieces coming together really soon, so that’ll be really exciting.

In the meantime, today’s chapter skips forward a few weeks, and it starts off a little more reflectively than some of the others. You can think of this as kind of the calm before the storm, when Addie still thinks she has a little bit of control over her life. She doesn’t, of course, but she thinks she does.

No, really, I know what I’m doing…

So, I was talking with some friends the other day about Lost and the Battlestar Galactica reboot—you know, other shows like that where you either suspect or know that the writers really didn’t know if they’d be canceled and they may or may not have had an actual plan for how the thing might end if it had the chance to.

That’s not what’s happening with No Dragons Press. I’m actually completely finished with book one, which is what you’re listening to now, and I’ve got books 2 through 5 outlined, and each book is novel-length. So don’t worry, you’re in good hands, I will not leave you with a ton of open questions and just suddenly slap an ending on it and call it a day, promise.

Have I mentioned I love fantastic leggings?

So, I have to mention this because I’m still absolutely tickled by Emily’s surprise for me this week. If you follow me on Instagram at @nodragonspress, you already know that I have a bit of a love affair with fantastic leggings. Most weeks, my artist Emily and I meet up and discuss the chapter, see what about it really calls to her as something she wants to depict—and she usually suggests something I’m not expecting and it completely blows me away, like the map of the galaxy in last week’s chapter.

This week, I don’t even remember what we decided on initially, but I got a message from Emily saying that she hopes I don’t mind but she took the artwork in a slightly different direction than planned this week, and would I mind if we made a bit of a switch. Immediately followed by another text saying: I’m going for it.

The result is of course amazing, and, as usual, way cooler than what I had imagined—and to top off the surprise, she put Addie in a pair of my own favorite leggings. It was so much fun to see this happen, and it’s a great reminder for me to just listen to the creative process as it’s happening, and if something feels like it isn’t working and some other option seems way more interesting, it probably is.

Check it out here:

Well, I think that’s it from me—I hope you enjoy chapter five! If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you, just head to nodragonspress.com for contact info, or you can follow me on Twitter or Instagram at @nodragonspress.

And hey: if you like what you hear, tell a friend! Because I had to rate this podcast “explicit” due to the the F-bombs and the marijuana thing, I don’t have the biggest outreach right now, so your word of mouth is definitely appreciated, and it is definitely the most powerful way for me to reach more listeners.

Thank you so much for your help, and thanks so much for listening, and I hope you enjoy Chapter Five: Addie Makes a Choice.

Thanks for listening, you guys. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you’re listening, be sure to check out nodragonspress.com/podcast to learn more about our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series, and tune in next week for another episode of No Dragons Press: A High Fantasy Podcast. Have fun, be good, and I’ll see you next week!