Cry Havoc: An interview with David K Barnes

Cry Havoc! Ask Questions Later is a new podcast available to listen to now, wherever you find podcasts. Our intrepid reporter, David K Barnes, spoke to creator, David K Barnes, to find out a bit more about the show and why you should listen to it. Hi David! What’s Cry Havoc! Ask Questions Later about? It’s an epic about power, politics, money, and murder – with lots of juicy drama and jokes! Yes, but what happens in it? Oh. Er. I’m waiting. What do you know about ancient Rome? Not much. That’s OK. I wrote the series to be totally accessible, so you don’t need to know anything going in. After all, we don’t all have an Ancient History degree do we? Ha ha! Was that a brag? Sorry. Christ almighty. But honestly, even if you’ve only dimly heard of Ancient Rome, you can jump into this series. And if you do know about Rome, there’s lots of geeky references and jokes you’ll enjoy too. So, Cry Havoc is set in the Roman Empire is it? Not quite. We’re at the end of the Roman Republic, when Rome was still run by a group of wealthy guys called the Senate. They were making decisions and taking votes. Sort of like a democracy, except the people in charge can totally ignore the poor. … I mean … gestures at the world I know, some things never change, sadly. But then along comes a statesman and military general called Julius Caesar- I’ve heard of him! He was basically already in charge, but he decided he wanted to rule forever. And some senators weren’t keen on that, so they killed him. But then…

Rusty Fears 6: Announcing the winners!

Rusty Fears 6 has been our biggest writing competition ever, with more than double our previous highest number of entries. Understandably, this has meant it’s also been one of our most hotly anticipated competition announcements. However, the writers who submitted entries did not make our judging panel’s lives easy, with an incredible standard across the board. Three shortlisting judges worked together to read all 700 stories across 6 categories. As the judges were doing their usual day-to-day jobs as well as the judging, they were given several weeks for this, to ensure they could give each story the time it deserves. Between them, they shortlisted about 10 stories for each of the categories. These were then passed to our lead judge, who after carefully reviewing the stories selected a winner and a runner-up for each category. This final shortlist was then looked over by Rusty Quill’s Head of Inclusion, Helen Gould, for a sensitivity check. Finally, we reached out to winners and runner ups to confirm their participation and understanding of the terms and rules of the competition. We had asked writers across the world to send in their best, new original short horror stories, inspired by one of the following 6 prompts: The judging panel this year consisted of: With assistance from Helen Gould. After much deliberation and discussion, the judges selected six talented winners. CONGRATULATIONS are in order for: These six stories will now undergo the Rusty Quill treatment, and will be professionally performed, produced, and released onto The Magnus Archives feed. We will announce the release date for these closer to the time. Once all six stories have been released, we’ll share a public poll for the…

The Magnus Archives Fanfiction Showcase

As a result of the incredible goals reached through the recent The Magnus Protocol Kickstarter, we reached the stretch goal of a live fanfiction showcase!  So, Rusty Quill are inviting fans to send in their own fanfiction based on The Magnus Archives, for creator of The Magnus Protocol Alexander J Newall and Jonathan Sims to read live on stream.   Please read the following carefully if you plan to submit your work for this livestream.  Terms and Conditions  FAQs 

The Magnus Protocol Announcement Codes and Ciphers

(AKA, the ARG “wash up”). Fans of Rusty Quill have always gone the extra mile when it comes to theorising, code-breaking and collaborating. So, when we were ready to start telling people our plans for The Magnus Protocol, a new audio drama podcast returning to the world of The Magnus Archives, we could have just… announced it. But that’s not very fun, and Rusty Quill is an entertainment production company. We decided to start with something subtle, to see how closely people were paying attention. In our regularly Monday newsletter to our Patreons, we included an alphanumeric code towards the end of the newsletter. It took a little while for people to notice (and then at first they thought it was a mistake). Then, as people started to recognise that, rather than a random string of numbers and letters it was in fact a code, the penny dropped that a game might be afoot. The first code was U3RhdGVtZW50IFJlbWFpbnMK . We’ve included the solution of this problem below; don’t look if you would like to try and solve it yourself. Alone, this code was quite exciting, but we also thought we’d share an eye emoji onto some of our social media pages. This got people talking, although those who weren’t Patreon subscribers weren’t quite sure what they were seeing yet. Two days, and a lot of Twitter notifications later, we thought we’d up the stakes a bit. Our Patreon subscribers had solved the Base64 code pretty quickly, so multiple folks at Rusty Quill put their head together and designed something a bit more complicated. We posted a new update onto Patreon with the subject line ‘Post title (required)’. The code…

Public response to an opinion piece

As a rule, Rusty Quill tries to avoid directly addressing unfounded social media accusations, preferring to provide formal updates like any other business. In this instance however, we are being forced to defend ourselves from what appears to be a case of carefully timed, deliberate defamation from people seeking to exploit recent hardships for our staff possibly to sabotage our fundraising and reputation. There are far too many false allegations within this blog to address them all at this time, so we will do our best and provide what information we can until we have finished consultation with our legal partners regarding this situation. Firstly, whilst it is true that there have been some redundancies this year at Rusty Quill, the company has no history of “financial failings” nor “worker exploitation” as is alluded to in the hearsay of this article. In fact, our most recent formal Employee Satisfaction Survey, which was conducted by an independent third party, found our scores to be “exceptional” and these were shared internally. Furthermore, we have already internally released a 2023 Operations Update which included factual information on related topics including recent redundancies and our plans for the future. This update is due for public release in the new year and multiple staff have already volunteered to provide testimonials in Rusty Quill’s defence. We were approached by Newt Schottelkotte to assist in “a comprehensive guide to fiction podcast networks” in November, and they did not disclaim their position as the Marketing Director of a competitor network called Fable and Folly. They later reached out to us asking if we cared to provide comment on “recent changes our network has gone through” for this article….

Rusty Fears 6: Remnants of Fear

As we look ahead to The Magnus Archives 2, we will be resurrecting The Magnus Archives podcast feed with bonus content, looks behind-the-scenes and other fun things! We are also preparing for our Kickstarter crowdfunding on 30th October over on our Twitch channel with fun, games, and special guests including Alexander J Newall and Jonathan Sims themselves. With all of that in mind, it’s time for one of our legendary horror writing competitions. Rusty Fears has been a staple here at Rusty Quill, and with The Magnus Archives 2 on the horizon, we want to once again showcase some of the best in new and undiscovered horror writing talent, this time with our best ever prize. As with all of our previous Rusty Fears competitions, six winners will be chosen to have their stories, read, produced and broadcast on The Magnus Archives feed. However, in our biggest ever competition, the winning stories will also appear on RQ Network shows, bringing your words to a huge audience. And that’s not all. From the six chosen winners, fans will choose their favourite writer, who will be given the opportunity to write a statement which will be included in the The Magnus Archives 2. This year, we would like to read your tales on one of the following themes: How you interpret these is up to you, but we’ll be on the lookout for original takes and/or exploration of tropes that might be less well-known in traditional Western media. Some important tips we’d also like to offer: For more information, please ensure you read the Terms and Conditions in full. If you have any further questions, please email mail@rustyquill.com. Fears 6: A Rusty…

Neon Inkwell: A new anthology podcast from Rusty Quill

Neon Inkwell, created by showrunner Elizabeth Moffatt and producer Lauren Grace Thompson, is a home for short-form audiodrama, introducing listeners to new and underrepresented creators (as well as a few familiar faces). Each self-contained series will be between three and eight and showcases writers from around the world. Executive Producers are Alexander J Newall and April Sumner. Whether it’s a post-apocalyptic space thriller or a quirky monster road trip, there will always be something new to discover, with show genres including mystery, horror and magical realism. Neon Inkwell is perfect for existing fans of Rusty Quill Original podcasts and RQ Network, as well as attracting new listeners. Below, we’ll share a sneak preview of the first four series featuring on the feed. Firstly, ‘Of That Colossal Wreck’, science fiction with a horror twist, by some familiar names for fans of The Magnus Archives: Sasha Sienna and Jonathan Sims. When five artificially grown people awaken on an abandoned space station long after the extinction of humanity, they must confront their purpose, their future and the carnivorous alien beings which have taken over the facility. ‘Broken Hearted Monsters’, created by Shane Ormond and Morgan Ormond, is a road trip like no other. When Dr. Frankenstein suddenly passes away, his creature must make the cross-country road trip for his funeral, accompanied by his ex-boyfriend, Dracula. ‘The Pit Below Paradise’, created by J. Evelyn Gaskell, is a coming-of-age story. In the months before his prophesied demise, a cult sacrifice accidentally builds a close relationship with a former gravedigger, with neither aware of the others’ strong ties to death. ‘Welcome to Foster’s’, created by Imogen Cassidy. In an alternate Sydney, Australia, a small-time private consulting…

RQ Network: Introducing wave 3

We’ve got more content to share with you and it is all available right now. We’re delighted to announce further expansion of RQ Network, with a number of fan favourites and exciting new shows joining the fold in our third Wave. Today we publicly welcome into the RQ Network The Hyacinth Disaster, Malevolent, Ostium, The Program, What Happened In Skinner, The Sleep/Wake Cycle, WOE.BEGONE AND Tin Can Audio Presents, a new feed featuring work from Tin Can Audio including The Dungeon Economic Model, Love & Wards, Middle:Below and The Tower. Previous waves have included iconic shows such as I Am In Eskew & The Silt Verses (Jon Ware & Muna Hussen), The Milkman of St. Gaffs (Chris McClure) The Town Whispers (Cole Weavers) and We’re Alive (Kc Wayland & Wayland Productions) in Wave 2. While while Wave featured Old Gods of Appalachia (DeepNerd Media), The Storage Papers (Grinner Media), Malevolent (Written/Directed by Lex Noteboom), Cryptids (Wild Obscura; written by Alexander V Thompson) and How it Ends (written/directed by Stephanie Resendes and Micah Rodriguez). Let’s meet the shows. The Hyacinth Disaster Written and Directed by David Carlson The Hyacinth Disaster is a sci-fi found footage disaster audio drama podcast. The year is 2151AD, a dozen super corporations compete beyond the reach of civilized law, battling for the incalculable resources. Beneath them these corporations contract mining crews struggle to prosper despite the best efforts of their employers. All of this sets the scene of what leads to The Hyacinth Disaster. The worst and most cataclysmic disaster of 2151 AD. In the future of the Hyacinth Disaster Mars and Jupiter have been colonised and between them lays 150 million resource-rich asteroids populate and…