As Halloween and the election season come to a close, a strange fusion has taken place, setting the stage for international controversy.

Simon Pegg, one of the brains behind the brilliant movie Shaun of the Dead, has thrown his hat into the metaphysical ring of zombie politics.

Simon Pegg:  “Zombies Don’t Run!”

On Afterhell Volume 3, we kind of cheated.  In “Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel,” zombies move at the speed of plot.

So what does everybody think?  Should zombies be fast or slow?

It’s official!  “Afterhell Volume 3: Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel” has been released and is available for purchase now.  We will update the purchase page soon, but in the meantime you can order your very own copy through CD Baby.  Click here to go there now!

If you are in the Portland, Oregon area, you can come to the Willamette Radio Workshop’s production of “From the Case Files of Doctor Moreau” (the show’s free and promises to be a lot of fun!) Halloween night and buy a copy directly from us.

This is the same story you may have heard on the Afterhell podcast.  But with this disc, you get all the gruesome goodness in full stereo and CD-quality sound.  Plus the hair-raising artwork of Alida Saxon!  (Note to collectors: there are two different versions of the inside-the-box info card!)

It has been a long wait, definitely longer than we would have liked.  But we hope the results are worth it.

Hey everyone, here’s a quick peek at some of the art for the upcoming release of “Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel” on disk. With some great direction from Joe and Jamie, I think we’ve taken the presentation for this volume to a new level for Afterhell. Just click on the image to view the larger file.

Everything’s at the printer now, so expect to be able to purchase this in time for Halloween!

Nominations are opening shortly for the 2008 People’s Choice Podcast Awards, presented by the fine folks at Podcast Connect, home to Geek News Central. If you’ve been enjoying our show, please take a few minutes and nominate “Afterhell” by clicking on the Podcast Awards banner at the left, or by visiting the PodCastAwards website.

Go give ‘em (After)hell! Thanks for the support!

This is a heads-up to let everyone know that “Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel” will soon be removed from the Afterhell podcast feed.  If you wanted to check out our tale of gangsters, zombies, and other strangeness at the dawn of the Afterhell, but hadn’t had a chance, go grab any and all of the nine installments now!

The good news is that “Afterhell Volume 3: Bloodbath at the Giallo Hotel” will soon be released on CD!  This is the same award-winning story as on the podcast feed, but with a full stereo mix and without the podcast bumpers.  There will also be at least one bonus track!

Keep watching the skies this space for further news on Volume 3 … and Volume 4, in work now!

Yup, this is the good news we were alluding to the other day.  We’d said it be a few weeks, but how’s this for service?

Afterhell Volume 3 has received an honorable mention from the 2008 Mark Time & Ogle Awards.

We submitted Volume 3 for the judges’ perusal, absolutely certain they were going reject us out of hand.  Gory, graphic violence.  Rude language.  No kitsch or camp, definitely not safe for the whole family.  Just modern-day nightmare fuel.  Wow, it shows you how much we know!

Now you know the reason for the delay.  We had to figure out where to fit the Ogle award info on the CD artwork.  Simple as that.

We’re planning a release date in August, if not sooner.  It depends on how busy things look this summer, what with WRW’s Writers-on-the-Air Workshop ‘n’ all.

So yeah.  Our first award.  Only the beginning.

Anyone who recognizes the movie tagline we’re riffing on… wins a tetrodoxotrin Chiclet.

Yup, we’re still around and sporting a new look online. The Afterhell website has gotten a fiery new makeover and a new blog. More than that, Ollin Productions has a website of its own where you’ll find a shingle for all of our projects. Our thanks to Ali for doing all the design and coding in record time!

Unlike the revamped website, updates have been slow in coming. We’ve been overwhelmed, plain and simple — everybody’s day jobs, family emergencies, tons of sound work and writing to do — not enough time to do it all.

Fortunately, causes for delay aren’t all bad. Watch this spiffy new space for good news in a few weeks.

Thanks for sticking with us! We’ll get back to freaking you all out good ‘n’ proper shortly.

Hey, please excuse the construction for the next couple days as I customize this wordpress theme and just generally spruce up the whole site. So if you find anything broken or missing, rest assured it is temporary!

I’ll keep this short and simple. 

Months ago, a message board was set up for our friends at the Sonic Society.  But don’t look for us there.  Ollin Productions no longer maintains a presence there.

Jack Ward and Shannon Hilche, the co-chairs and delightful lead voices of “The Sonic Society,” were offered the use of a message board space.  It’s called Audio Drama Talk.  They wanted it to be the watering hole for audiodramatists, where people could share their knowledge and experience.

However, you can’t share much in the way of knowledge unless there’s a mutual sense of professionalism.  You can be as friendly, complimentary, and informal as you like.  But you need an effective work environment — a mature atmosphere — where ability and merit are welcome, not simply a token word of approval.  There must be room for disagreement and reasonable discussion, not conformity.  And you can tell that’s not happening when you get certain signs.  A grown woman (Jamie) is addressed like an irrational child.   Points raised are sidestepped, so people can discuss more popular views.  Someone appeals to community instead of merit, basically truth by majority.

Or when somebody says to you, “Did a director pee in your coffee this week or something?”

At that point, Jamie had had enough.  We asked Jack to delete our accounts.  So before anyone starts a rumor or smiles to themselves, Jack and Shannon can tell you:  We weren’t thrown out.  We walked.  Better things to do.  Death in the family, it turned out.  But that’s another story.

Also for the record:  We at Ollin Productions are proud members of “The Sonic Society.”  Jack and Shannon are good people, and we’ll stand by them any day of the week, even if it is a long walk from here to Nova Scotia.

Because it is.  A long walk, I mean.

How does affect “Afterhell,” you might ask?  If you want our take on something, go to the source.  Always the best place.

Taken from one of our personal blog entries:

LJ Uber-drama
I’m sure everyone else has heard about this by now. Certainly lots of blog postings out there. Some of them are even useful.

I’m not going to get into all the back-and-forth, the horribly translated Russian interviews with the Powers That Be, the yay’s or nays (deliberate word choice) regarding the big boycott on Good Friday, or any of that. My understanding of the whole thing boils down to a few simple things:

1. LJ intends to close up the no-cost, ad-free Basic Account level.
2. They didn’t intend to let anyone know about it.
3. They were also caught censoring user interests, rendering them invisible on key listings.
4. They have now fostered a hostile relationship with their customers — and their content — for several months.
5. There’s no sign that it’s going to stop.

On the first point… sad, I guess. But it happens. It’s a business. They have to make money, yadda yadda. That’s a fair complaint. If they had just said so, and not resorted to item number two, people would grump, but eventually deal. Look at DeadJournal. I bitched, but I moved on. And they’re still around.

But it’s the last three items that give me and Jamie pause. And how many times has LJ gone to war with its customers over content — two times? three? — in the current management’s first 100 days at the helm?

Content issues are a big deal for us. It’s not just a hobby for us. This is our business. We have to make money too. We do an audiodrama show that’s clearly, loudly, proudly not for everybody. How long will it be before LJ has a problem with us?

We’re really busy now. We don’t need this kind of grief now. I’m working on several scripts, some of the Willamette Radio Workshop, some for Afterhell. I’m mixing a new episode fast as I can, when I’m not writing, collapsing from fatigue, fielding family emergencies, or trying to medicate cats. Deadlines are looming close behind.

So we’re left with two choices. Pray that LiveJournal never comes after us. Or take Afterhell off of LiveJournal ourselves.

We’re preparing to move the Afterhell blog.

I’ll be cross-posting this elsewhere.