Wormwood is truly a passion project and a labor of love, so I get just a bit extra-giddy when we get a really nice write-up somewhere. Recently, Floyd Salazar of FuriousFanboys.com, wrote up a great piece entitled “Top 5 Bits of SciFi Earcandy.” Wormwood was honored in one of these spots, and Salazar issued a quote that personally made my day:

“Wormwood is a professional grade production.  Accampo and Rogers head up an incredible writing staff, with varied backgrounds and talents, that come together to create a fantastic world and story.  The ensemble nature of the story allows the writers to explore their narrative from a multitude of angles.  Currently in it’s third and final season, each season of the show has a distinct feel – the creators are not afraid to take their creation in a new direction.  The cast is incredible – I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite – and all are given a chance to shine.”

This is truly what we hope for when we set out on a project like Wormwood. We realize it’s not for everyone. We make the show to satisfy our own cravings, our own need to tell a story the way we think it should be told, but it’s always incredibly gratifying to see it ‘click’ for someone else.

photo by jordanfischer via Flickr (Creative Commons).

This post was originally published on Murmur.com

Last week I talked about my road from creative writing to an audio drama podcast. A bit of a twisty road, but it’s an interesting one. Obviously, the common link is story. If you know me at all, you know I’m all about the story. If you don’t, please allow me to introduce myself…

My name is David. I’m a writer.

Now, that’s a bit of a bold statement that usually means one of two things: I make my living by writing or I’m one of those feel-good hippie types who says that he’s a writer because he writes, regardless of whether he’s published or not. The internet is full of the latter, and the label is sometimes looked upon with derision.

The truth is that I am both of these things. And I am neither. And I suggest to you that the definitions above are not an either/or proposition. In my case, one begets the other begets the one.

If you google me, you’ll see I have several writing credits on IMDb.com. But this doesn’t mean I made any money by writing. It just means my short films were deemed worthy of inclusion in a film festival. As part of the creative team behind an audio drama podcast, we’ve been nominated and won awards for writing on our series. However, I earn my salary with a business card that reads “Marketing Communications Manager.”

Doesn’t exactly summon up images of corncob pipes, ink-stained fingers, and click-clacking typewriters, now does it?

I do write, of course, and writing has been a part of every job I’ve had since college. In fact, being a “Writer” has gotten me nearly every job I’ve had.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I assumed that I would get a job as a bartender. I had tended bar in San Francisco while attending college, and it seemed the easiest, most marketable skill to bring to any town.

Unfortunately, upon my arrival in Hollywood that fateful July, I learned a tough (albeit slightly obvious) lesson. Everyone in Los Angeles is a struggling actor or writer or producer. And that means there are a LOT of bartenders.

However, I also had my degree in English and Creative Writing, so it seemed foolish not to at least try to get a job as a writer.

I sent a resume full of retail, barista, and bartender experience to an advertising agency, along with a short story I had written. The short story was published by the college literary journal. It was my first publication, and I even did a public reading to a room with, oh, a dozen people in it. A small accomplishment, but one of which I was proud.

Even moreso when the same short story landed me a job as a junior copywriter.

The woman who hired me was my age, newly minted in a management position with the task of hiring entry-level writers. My story had touched her. It had made my resume stand out from the pack. She loved it enough that the rest of the hiring process was pushed along quickly. She was very nice, though not a great manager. She was the first person I met who felt guilty about being a writer.

“Well, I like it, even though I’m not really helping anyone,” she would say. It felt as if she was minimizing her own role.

“But you write!” I wanted to say. “You get to call yourself a writer!” I felt too guilty to actually voice this view. What would happen if she had a comeback?

“Yeah, sure… while kids are starving on the streets.”

“But… words! You… make things up… with words!”

That job ended badly, and, in all honesty, it was a good thing. It was a special niche advertising firm that worked almost entirely in classified ads. I spent most of my days trying to think of clever ways to promote that a hospital was seeking registered nurses.

But I had made my living as a writer, hadn’t I?

And then that same short story got me a job at a production company. A sardonic brit was moved by my story, and brought me on board. Within six months I was scripting satirical commentary and straight news stories. I had a job title of “News Producer.” Later, as the production arm of the company split off, I became the “In-house Producer,” and I was able to write several scripts for different marketing/ad pieces, including an X-Files themed piece for a famous Hollywood lighting company.

After the dotcom bust laid waste to the production company, I struggled a bit. I took several small freelance writing gigs, but I wound up in a day job with an even worse title: “Product Manager.” I had traveled the opposite direction intended. However, even in this position, I made it known that I was a writer, and whenever something came up, I was ready to offer my services. I wrote marketing copy for newsletters and brochures. I wasn’t a good fit for the company, but at the same time, I was able to start my career making short films. And I was gaining those hard-earned writing credits on IMDb.com.

That job led me to the position I’m in now, which involves graphic design, writing, and various other creative tasks. The company I work for is a small one, but they value my creativity, and the job itself allows me to focus on these aspects of my personality in a variety of ways. I spend my days writing marketing copy  and my nights writing scripts and novels and short stories.

Do I make my living as a writer? I do, at least in part. But more importantly, I live my life as a writer, and living it this way has gotten me a number of different jobs. It’s informed my entire career. It takes a certain amount of bluster to say you’re a writer, and even more to back it up. But if you really live it — and this means constantly applying writing to all aspects of your life, whether it’s an advertising tagline or a feature film script or a column on a website  – it will get you where you need to be. There are all different kinds of people who call themselves writers. Yes, it’s a profession, but I see that as a limited definition. I won’t say it’s a calling. For me, it’s just a way to live.

When I was fifteen years old, I was awarded a black belt in the small Ashan-Tao martial arts system. It was a relatively young style, developed by a correctional officer at Folsom prison, and it was known as a system that promoted intense, full-contact sparring. For the most part, the black belts were hardened, athletic men in their late 20′s and above. It would have been a big deal when I, at 15, received my belt, but I wasn’t the youngest. A year before me a  friend who was my age had received his black belt — the youngest student to have received such an honor. As the time of my own test grew closer, we began to hear murmurings of whether or not 15 was too young to be granted the honor and the responsibility of the black belt. At a special meeting, my friend, the young black belt, shrugged off the criticism with the following response: “I earned it. You can take the belt away from me if you think I’m too young. But I am a black belt.”

Our teacher relayed this story to us with a proud smirk.

I received my black belt later that year. I earned it.

I haven’t made any money selling a screenplay. I haven’t earned royalties off the sales of a novel. Call it what you want… but me? I am a writer.

How about you?

My Life in Audio

This article was originally published on Murmur.com

In the summer of 1998, I moved to Los Angeles from the Northern California Bay Area. As a writer and recent college graduate, it would be a fair assumption that I moved to LA to pursue a Hollywood career. This would be inaccurate. In truth, I moved to Los Angeles because my girlfriend at the time was originally from the San Fernando Valley, and she wanted to be closer to her family again. I was a writer in need of an adventure. And, oh, I would write — but not screenplays. No, I was a fan of stories like Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust. I was a poet, dammit, not a crass commercial hack. Los Angeles would be the setting for my Great American Novel Which Observes LA from an Outsider’s Perspective. It was thus that I descended upon the city of angels with all the fervor of a budding anthropologist. The denizens of Hollywood would be my Gorillas in the Mist.

By 1999, after a failed attempt as a junior copywriter in a very specialized advertising firm, I found myself working a graveyard shift at a dotcom-era video production company, And — quite to my surprise (and probably only my surprise) — I found myself writing on-air scripts and spending my off-hours desperately trying to untangle the craft of the screenplay. By 2000, I had written my first feature-length script with my co-worker and newly acquired writing partner, Jeremy Rogers. I became enamored with form and with the concept of collaboration. Over the next few years, Jeremy and I would write three screenplays, some of which garnered a little attention here and there. Nothing to allow me to quit my day job… but, still.

In 2005, we were approached by an independent Canadian filmmaker who wanted to make a movie from our first screenplay. First he wanted to work with us to make a long trailer in order to acquire funding for the feature film. Jeremy and I took it upon ourselves to take it a step further. We boiled down our screenplay into a 25-page short film that could easily be filmed on a shoestring budget. We sent it to the filmmaker. He finally replied several weeks later, manically offering up a new spin on the script, which had been an urban ensemble drama about teenage runaways, that involved the entire piece being set in a near future where the kids would all inject neon-colored drugs. Correspondence trickled off after that.

A family friend of mine, actress Mary Alexandra Stiefvater, suggested that we simply film the script ourselves. It was so obvious.

How could we argue? She and her sister Kate joined us as producers, and we set about forming a production company and raising money to shoot our first film. We shot the film in 2005 over the course of a week, and if I had thought that the shift from short stories to screenplays produced a learning curve, it now seemed an infinitesimal shift in comparison to what we had to learn as first-time producers and directors. However, I like to think the final product was worthwhile. Bad Habits showed at a couple of festivals and won a couple of awards.

We’ve made two films since then. The next was an 8-minute short with two actors, filmed in one night. The third film was our most ambitious. We did not write the film, but we came aboard to direct. It was the executive producer’s story, and it was his budget. The making of the film was an interesting experience, but I felt as if I was getting too far away from the writing.

And here’s the thing — and if you’ve ever made a film, you already know this — the actual production of a film is really tedious. And if you’re an indie filmmaker, wearing the hat of both director and producer, it feels a bit like this: wait-stress-stress-wait-stress-wait-wait-stress-stress-stress.

I usually illustrate it with the following example: our last film called for a scene in which a 1920′s era detective chases a suspicious woman down a hallway. This “chase” lasts approximately three seconds on screen. It took three hours to light the set and probably another two to shoot the takes required.

While all of this was happening, all I could do was sit. And wait. And stress.

And listen to my iPod Nano.

And listen I did. At the time, I was just discovering podcasts prior to the filming of our third film. One of the first podcasts I began to listen to regularly was this site’s sister show, the iFanboy podcast.

And somewhere along the way, an idea began to form.

It takes so long to light a set. And we can only tell certain stories because we’re so restricted by budget.

What if we just got rid of the picture?

I was listening to downloadable shows that were produced on a weekly basis. From home computers. Why not use it to craft a story? What could I do then?

That was when things started to click for me. I recalled how I had listened to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion on the radio with my parents. I recalled listening to a mesmerizing storyteller named Joe Frank who would irregularly appear on the radio on late nights driving home from my job as a bartender in San Francisco. I remember pulling up and blasting MP3′s of old serialized radio programs as I made my way through the exhausting graveyard shifts at the production company.

So what if we told a story in audio?

New ideas began to form, swirl, and link together: Podcasts. MP3 players. Everyone’s always listening. They’re plugged in. They could listen to stories while driving. While at the gym. While on the subway.

I’m not sure if I emailed or called first, but I know I hit Jeremy with a barrage of ideas: “what if… okay, okay… what if he’s a detective…an occult detective, yeah… and he’s got this mysterious hand… and…and… he comes to a small town. But everyone there is hiding secrets! Yeah! Like the boxer who is on the lam after getting mixed up with the mob!”

You see, my entire life was informed by longform serialized storytelling. However, the budget restrictions and time constraints of the independent, no-budget, short film meant that we had to think carefully — we were forced to fit stories to the restrictions tiny budgets and reasonable, available settings.

And now the gloves were off.

When I was a senior in high school, I fell in love with David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks. From about the ages of 13-18, I became a regular viewer of Days of Our Lives — after spending a week with my friend Matt Ault, who watched “Days” each day after school with his mom. I had grown up in the ’70s and ’80s, reading the long, interwoven plot threads of Chris Claremont’s run on Marvel Comics’ The Uncanny X-men. In fact,the first set of books I really remember reading as a child was The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I had lived my whole life to make this series.

I had been waiting for this, searching for an outlet into which I could throw all the crazy things that informed my childhood and adolescence. However, until now, I had always worn shackles. Literature, in my mind, required merit and gravity. Films required time and money. But here in the realm of audio, I could collaborate with a whole team of writers. I could work directly with actors at the height of their craft, without having to worry about make-up and lighting. And best of all, I could imagine long stories spanning both space and time. I could give my characters time to live and breathe. I could build mysteries within mysteries.

As I write this, we have just launched Season 3.2 of my audio drama, Wormwood: A Serialized Mystery. This installment, entitled “Wormwood Portraits,” offers a series of character-based vignettes that serve as a sort of mosaic upon which we are moving forward our main plot — not unlike the structure of shows like TV’s Lost.

I love that I can say that. Here I am with my audio show. We’ve told a grand mystery over three seasons, and we’re still finding crazy new stories (vikings!) to tell within that framework.

Admittedly, the move to audio has been strange. There is a growing niche of people who listen to audiobooks. And people love genre TV shows more than ever. But by being an “audio serial,” I sometimes think we get lumped into people’s memories of sensational 1940′s radio serials, like old episodes of The Adventure of Superman. And while we like these things, I think our show attempts something a bit more modern in sensibility. It is, as I said above, a TV series… without the picture. If you could listen to Lost while running on a treadmill, wouldn’t you like that? If you could sit in traffic and listen to an entire season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, conjuring all the imagery in your mind while giggling to the witty banter… wouldn’t that be a cool way to fight the boredom?

That was our goal. And in a true indie spirit, we’ve tackled the dramatic serial podcast with the same D-I-Y attitude we’ve had with each of our creative projects. When we jumped into film, we surrounded ourselves with talented technical people, and then we trusted them to get us the best visual based on our direction. With Wormwood, we taught ourselves as much as we could about the technical aspects of our chosen medium. And like everything else we’ve done, there’s been a learning curve. I’ve learned a lot about audio production in the past few years, or, well, I’ve learned enough to realize how much I don’t know. But we still fumble along. I’d like to think after three seasons, we’re halfway decent, but I can no longer judge. Maybe we’re just too stubborn to quit. But I can say this: we’re having a great deal of fun. I got to write the series I’ve been aching to write for years. I get to work with some really talented actors and writers. And we get to put something out that anyone anywhere in the world can find and download.

And that’s pretty damn cool.