DEEJ: Hey there, Patreoneers. It’s DJ here, your creator, showrunner, call it what you will, for Waiting For October and previously Moonbase Theta, Out. I’ve been starting to share a few responses from people to the little interview questions we sent around to the Waiting For October cast. We’ve only had a few responses yet, but I gave you some and I’ll have a few more from some of the actors to send after this. But I thought that I should at least go through them quickly myself as well and give you some of my responses and some of my background for it.
I am in a hotel room in a secret location, secret undisclosed location in Midwestern Pennsylvania, visiting my family for US holidays and stuff, and sort of trying to adjust. There are a lot of stuff that is weird down here right now, but anyway, I am down here from the Great North and I thought that I would take a few minutes in my hotel room and answer some questions, so I’ll try to do that. Please ignore my unusually labored breathing, the air quality is kind of off here and stuff, and I’m a little bit congested.
But yeah, let’s give this a shot. So the interview questions, I’m going to read the question. Some of them won’t apply quite as much to me as they do specifically to actors, but I’ll do my best. First question, what got you interested in Waiting For October and the world we’re creating?
Which I should definitely be able to answer that one. So when Moonbase was starting to come to a close, to the point where at least I was finished writing and I could start thinking about what might come next, I knew that I wanted to get into another audio fiction project. I knew I wanted to do something where I was a little bit more prepared for a longer-term story because with Moonbase, I’ve told the story a bunch of times that the first season was meant to be the entirety of the story at first, and then we expanded it and kept going because people got interested and it’s kind of hard to say no to that when people want to know more.
But with Waiting For October, I wanted to do something where I had planned a longer story, where I had planned the world and the things that I might want to do in it a little better. So I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about and the thing that I’ve been interested in the most probably my entire lifetime is not really the supernatural in general, although I’m kind of into that too. Like when I was a kid, I was all into like ghost stories and UFO encounters and things like that. But probably monsters more than anything.
I remember in the children’s library, where I grew up, I would grab every Bigfoot book, every Loch Ness Monster book, anything that they had about that sort of stuff and just devour it before anything else. I was big in too. We get into some of this in the zine that Sarah made for our crowdfunding backers as well, but things like In Search Of and X-Files, things like that, where they were getting into some of the cryptids and things like that as well. And just monsters in general were always sort of the something that I was really interested in. And so my mind came back to that and I was like, if this might be one of the biggest and I’m not trying to get morbid about this, but one of the biggest stories that I finish telling in my lifetime, then I want to really like dig down into something that I personally care about and personally I’m connected with.
So monsters were a big part of that. And I wanted to sort of explore … I guess every writer comes into this at some point as well, sort of explore some of the like intricacies of storytelling itself, why we do it, what it does for us, how it happens, what the importance is of stories as like people. And it seemed like I could sort of create a world where we could explore both of those things at once. And so I thought about the framework for the written worlds, the fictional worlds that we’re talking about, and then why monsters in particular might have one and what that world might be like.
I did a bunch of thinking, started coming up with characters and ideas and situations and started thinking about what the world itself might be like. And obviously, I can’t share too much about that because you’re going to hear it. But yeah, those were the things that got me into it that got me interested, that made me want to tell this particular story. And hopefully, it’ll be worth listening to the whole way through. I think that some of the initial reactions have been a little bit mixed just because we’re doing so much like sort of character stuff right now. And it’s just this sort of sweet like girlfriends and partners and love and getting used to each other world and everything. But we are going to get into some like deeper stuff as we go on. And we’re setting up a lot of stuff this season, again, because I’m trying to build for the long run, that will come in in bigger ways, further down the line.
So yeah, I have probably rambled way too much on that first question. Question two, who you’re playing? What’s your character like?
I am only in one episode this season as an actor. So there’s not too much, but I am playing the Endling, which is one of the writers of the world. And again, I don’t want to give away too much. But the idea kind of is that these worlds came out of the need that humans had to tell stories and that that need had to be transferred somewhere; like brought in from some other place. But that other place also needs someone to sort of like, create it and manage it and keep that world working to meet those urges. And so the Endling is one of the creatures who sort of fills that role. And he’s they, I don’t know why I say he’s, they are hidden away from the rest of the world. Pretty solitary, just working, writing the existence of October. And that is kind of an interesting character, because it’s hard to take someone who’s sort of got that metaphysical role and make them like personally interesting as well. And I’m really only in one scene this season with Karo. But hopefully we’ll get into them a little bit deeper later on too. Because I think it’s kind of interesting how that side of things must have come together too, and what it must be like to sit there and do that, have that responsibility all the time.
Question three, how has the process been for you working with the other actors, rehearsing and recording? We tried really hard this time around, and I know that Tina and Robin talked about this some in their response too, but we tried really hard this time around to set up, to record simultaneously as much as possible for October.
It was really too hard to do for Moonbase. Well, first of all, we didn’t try at first, because the first two seasons were pretty much all monologue. And so there’s no real need to try to get actors together to record live for monologues. I just gave them the scripts, let them go, and then gave them notes if anything came back and I needed a different take or whatever. But there’s definitely a better chemistry and a better magic in being able to record simultaneously. Moonbase just got too big for that too fast, and scheduling was impossible. We worked really hard to make scheduling work for this so that we could record as much together as we could. There were still people who couldn’t quite make it, but particularly for the leads, Karo and Yvonne, Tina and Robin, I wanted them together as much as possible because this whole season is really sort of establishing the emotional relationship of their characters and the arc that it goes through.
So just having those two together was always amazing. And it was just a wonderful process and so much of the time I just sort of like sit there and just get lost and listening to them. But everybody, I think, just sort of got more out of the process, being able to be in the room, and more people who got to meet, like a lot of the actors in Moonbase never actually had a chance to introduce themselves to each other, even if they were playing characters that were close. And so it’s nice to have that happen too and have a little more chance to chat and everything. So I like what we’ve established with this process. I hope that we can keep doing it that way.
And some of that I specifically wrote to make that easier as well, like I wrote October trying to keep the cast sizes smaller for each episode and the scenes a little bit more intimately focused. So we’ll see if I can manage to keep doing that throughout. Question four, if you knew our previous show Moonbase Theta, Out, what do you think is different here?
So that was – one of the answers to that question actually is the recording process. Looking at it more sort of philosophically, I don’t think we’re starting out with as big a single message as Moonbase. Moonbase pretty quickly from the very beginning was about sort of finding ways to push back against corporate greed and corporate power structures and to find a way to foster revolution and to work together as different groups with different revolutionary needs. And that was really important.
October, I have like some ideas. I mean obviously we’re talking about monsters and othering as part of the world and the very reason the world exists. And there are some other things tied into that that we talk about a little bit even this first season. But I don’t have a single message that I’m building towards in quite the same way yet. I have some thoughts about where things are going to go down the road.
But I really wanted to focus on creating – and part of it too is because Moonbase was like our world just a little bit further in the future. Being a completely different world, I wanted to focus a lot more and on giving people a chance to get used to the world and the characters and the way things work here. And just sort of settle into that before we tried to like focus on telling bigger stories. So I think that’s one thing I think that Moonbase at least starting out had some more sharper edges, some more darker spots than what we’re exploring into the first season of October. Not that we won’t get there and not that there isn’t a lot of emotional content. Trust me there’s going to be feelings jail moments for everybody before we hit the end of season one.
But I don’t think it has quite the same darkness that Moonbase had at the front of the beginning because of course they were trapped in a pretty untenable situation. So excuse me, those might be the big things. I think that I already mentioned how I like tried to build the episodes a little different and how we’ve been recording a little different. Technically we’re doing things a little bit different too. In Moonbase I directed the episodes and then everything else, all the sound stuff was done by Cass, Cass did the dialogue editing and did the sound design and everything. In this one I’m doing the dialogue editing myself.
I – first of all because I really love doing it. I used to edit the first two seasons of Moonbase and I just really love setting things up just the right way. I feel like it’s sort of an extension of the writing and the directing to be able to do that part of it because you know exactly what you wanted to hear. You know if a pause is too long, you know if something didn’t come out quite the way that was intended and you can tweak things. Not that actors don’t bring in their own unique amazing things and we found a lot of that stuff in recording which is another fun part, jumping back to what the live recording process is about.
You can do a lot more ad libs and a lot more inventive stuff that way. But I feel like directing, like anyway, the dialogue editing is part of writing and directing for me and so I was glad to have be able to do that again this time and have time to do that this time. Because part of the reason Cass took it over was I just couldn’t handle it with everything else. And then I give stuff to Caroline Mincks is our sound designer and they have just been doing a fantastic job and working with them has been great too and a little bit different from working with Cass too because I think Cass and I had worked together so much before that I sort of just gave stuff to him and sat back more and didn’t get as hands-on and as involved in the process, which was fine. But I’m having fun working closely with Caro. They are really amazing and do like amazing work on their own shows and have just done so much fun and inventive and creative stuff on this one as well already.
And I’m babbling again so I’m gonna try to jump on to the next one. Would you live in our monster world? What monster would you want to be? Yes, I would definitely live in our monster world. I would probably jump there in a minute if I got the chance and you would probably never see me again.
What monster would I want to be? That is hard because there are so many and I’m so invested in all of them right now. But I don’t want to give away too much because there are characters that I don’t even want to talk about yet. But by the time that you hear this, I don’t know. I think I would want to be just sort of a little oddball character. We call them the Moonkin, which Moonkin are sort of the odd little one-off monsters that don’t really have a tribe or a bunch like a pack or a bunch of others like them. And they’re all sort of like individually different like Cass McPhee’s character. And this show, the Hodag is one of those. And I think I would kind of want to be one of those just sort of a little like odd one-off character who sort of lives their own solitary or individual, not necessarily solitary, but individual existence and has all sorts of weird back history and possibly weird powers that you don’t know about yet. Be a little mysterious, I think.
Is there another fictional world you’d want to visit? Well, all of them probably. I don’t know. Well, I won’t say all of them. I don’t know if I would want to visit like dangerous like action-adventure type worlds because I don’t think I would do very well there. I’m not sure I would want to visit a horror world, which we’ve already made a joke about on the show as well, that if there’s a monster world, maybe there’s a horror world somewhere and I don’t think I’d want to be there. But I think most fictional worlds I’d want to at least visit and experience them. And I like to think that we’re going to eventually get to a few of the others in our story just to see what they’re like. I definitely would want to see the fantasy world. I’m interested in like the romance world, how an entire, because we mentioned that as well, that an entire world that was sort of set up on romance fiction would work because I think that would be kind of interesting to think about like how the whole world would work, like sort of focused on that.
But just all sorts of things. So yeah, I would definitely visit another fictional world. And if we’re talking about specific like story based fictional worlds, then Discworld, I’d love to go to, honestly, Narnia, I think you know from Moonbase how obsessed I was with Narnia. And so that would be fun. I don’t know, lots and lots pretty much anywhere that has been established in something that’s important to me, that I’d be happy to dip my toes into.
Do you have a favorite cryptid? I don’t know. I used to be big into Bigfoot. I wrote a huge research project in university on Bigfoot research and did a lot of reading on it and a lot of publications and everything just digging deep into it. And so that still sort of echoes around my head and was probably one of the reasons that some of the stuff in this show happened. And I’ve always been big into werewolves, even though I don’t think werewolves kind of fall under cryptid as much as monster in general. Depending on the era you’re living in because there was a time when people thought werewolves were real. But yeah, so those are probably top of the list.
What other shows slash creative projects are you involved with? And where can we find you? I think you already know this about me. I’m not involved in any other shows or creative projects at the moment, other than the fact that I’ve been writing these Moonbase short stories all year for Patreon. You guys know that. And Cass is about to start recording narrative versions of those for the feed for next year.
But I’m only involved in that project as a writer. Cass is producing and directing himself and doing all of the editing and processing and everything on that by himself. So I’m barely involved in that after this, after the year ends, and I finish writing the stories.
And technically we still have MonkeyTales. I don’t know if MonkeyTales will ever come back to life or not. Depends on, there’s still one script that was never produced that was written by one of our actors from moonbase, H.E., and hopefully their script will eventually get produced. But it’s not much else going on right now. This is more than enough.
I pretty much spend my entire life either in day job stuff, a little tiny bit of real life, and then a lot of time on Waiting For October. So I think that’s about it. And I think that’s about it for this response. Feel free to poke me, poke us on the Discord and ask further questions about any of this. Ask for deeper information. I know I kind of glossed over some things because I didn’t want to give you spoilers, and there are some aspects of production we’ll probably dive deeper in to other times. But yeah, I hope that that gave you a little more information on how the show came about. Thank you. I am going to put myself together and go and probably do family things, and I will talk to you all later.
