It’s fitting, I think, that the idea for this podcast came to me in the car, while Anthony Blake (who is at work on a Frankenstein project of his own) and I were driving to North Carolina from Fayetteville, Arkansas. This was one of many lengthy car trips we’d taken over the course of this past year, and to kill time we’d been working our way through a number of audiobooks and podcasts. We’d recently finished an episode of the second season of Sarah Koenig’s Serial, and were in high agreement that Koenig excels in presenting compelling, well-researched journalism that thoughtfully considers all aspects of a particular story. It’s no surprise then, that the podcast form crept its way into our subsequent discussion of Frankenstein, and the ways in which we might recast Shelley’s original tale in a more modern light. If Serialand Frankenstein were both independently able to keep our interest piqued over the course of an eighteen hour drive, we reasoned, who knew how compelling they might be when combined--or rather, stitched together--into something new? In that moment, It’s Alive: The Podcastwas born. The more I considered the idea, the more sense it made. Taking the basic premise of Serial—the concept of a single story, told over the course of several episodes—and merging it with the core narrative of Shelley’s Frankenstein turned out to be a match made in artistic heaven, by which I mean that it was immediately easy for me to see how the two sources could combine in complementary ways. Before I got the chance to sit down to write a script, the story I wanted to tell began rapidly forming in my mind, and I soon found myself coming up with ideas faster than I could type them. For instance, I knew instantly that I wanted to set It’s Alive in Baltimore, not only as a reference to Koenig’s first season of Serial but also because Baltimore makes sense as a backdrop for the story I wanted to tell: one in which a young doctor attending one of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools reanimates an exotic dancer he falls in love with as a means of reconciling his loneliness with his own ambition. A third reason I chose to set the story in Baltimore is that it’s a city I know well—I lived there for three years while attending college, and a year afterwards while commuting to my first job. Having lived in the place I was writing about made it easier to create characters and settings which I felt were true to life. As I began to map out my story as a whole, I also found that I enjoyed the way the podcast form enabled me to revive the episodic nature of Shelley’s story. The original Frankenstein is, of course, written in chapters, and this element is often lost when the text is adapted for film, or for stand-alone television episodes. It was both a joy and a challenge to bring back the segmented nature of Shelley’s story, and I found that having to do so forced me to push myself as a writer to consider where the most intriguing pieces ofIt’s Alive stopped and started; I decided to wait till the beginning of episode three, for instance, to reveal that the creature is a woman, and it’s not until the final episode that listeners get to hear her voice. To keep the suspense high from one episode to the next, I also decided to tell the story in real time, as these events were unfolding. This allowed me to include news updates in each episode, which create a sense of suspense that I believe will keep listeners invested in the story as it progresses. In addition to drawing inspiration from Serial and Shelley’s Frankenstein, I incorporated numerous adaptations of Frankenstein into It’s Alive, particularly when developing characters. I relied heavily upon the version of Victor Frankenstein presented in Showtime’s Penny Dreadful as a model for my own Victor, as I, too, wanted a creator who reanimates a woman with a somewhat salacious reputation (in my case, she’s an exotic dancer, in the case of Penny Dreadful, she’s a prostitute) as a way of giving himself a companion. I was also captivated by the way the web series Frankenstein, M.D.implicates its viewers—in showing viewers the science behind the creature’s creation, as well as the danger inherent in him, Frankenstein, M.D., invites them to take action to stop what’s happening, and makes them feel culpable for the havoc the creature wreaks when they don’t. I wanted to implicate my listeners in a similar way, and I now feel I’ve done so by having the host of It’s Alive rely, at times, on tips from listeners to move her story forward. What’s more, It’s Alive purports to be created as a response to the public interest in the discovery of the creature in Leakin Park, and presumably moves forward as a result of the public’s continued fascination with the story. While writing, I also found myself responding to Frankenstein adaptations in a more indirect way, namely by reviving material that I wanted to see more of in the Frankenstein canon. For instance, there’s often an emphasis on returning to the past in Frankenstein adaptations, and in creating my own story, I was more interested in the modern repercussions of the fact of the creature’s existence. In particular, I was curious how contemporary western society as a whole would handle a creature of the type Victor Frankenstein creates. Over the course of It’s Alive, I tried to use interviews as a way to answer this question, and to bring in new opinions on questions of human rights, culpability, and justice as they arise in the story. One of my favorite aspects of Frankenstein’s history is that it is a project born of collaboration, when Mary Shelley and her friends challenged one another to write the scariest story they could conceive of. One of the most enjoyable aspects for me of creating It’s Alive was the ability to continue this collaborative tradition by working with my friend, local filmmaker and musician John Erwin, to transform the script I wrote into a podcast. In addition to helping me record and edit each episode of It’s Alive, John kindly agreed to be the voice of two of my story’s key characters, Ace and Agatha. Though it’s always nerve-wracking for me to release control of the vision I have for a project (or rather, to let my artistic monsters loose in the world, and allow them to be vulnerable to outside influence), I found it fantastic to have John’s input on the final product as we edited the recordings. I very much appreciated his thoughts on stylistic decisions (what type of tone we were looking to create with the music, for instance), as well as character development. The way he chose to render Agatha Dane’s voice is my favorite aspect of this podcast so far—if you listen to the third episode, you’ll hear Agatha as a scrappy grand dame who is far more interesting (and far more hilarious) than the person I’d envisioned on the page. Were I to continue to work on this podcast (as I hope to), I’d like to integrate more interviews into each episode, and to create more opportunities for collaboration with the people producing the podcast and playing each of the characters. I want to close by mentioning one other reason why I particularly liked working with the podcast form, which is, in short, that podcasts are having a major moment right now. The incredible popularity of Serialalone attests to this fact, as does the wide listenership of many other contemporary podcasts (This American Life, Fresh Air, etc.). This popularity was helpful in a myriad of ways; to begin, it has resulted in a number of scholarly articles on podcasts, which I was able to draw upon while writing. What’s more, the present popularity of podcasts gives me hope that there is an audience of people outside of Frankenstein academia who would be interested in It’s Alive, and who would potentially pay to fund it. Unfortunately, the popularity of the podcast form is a double-edged sword. Competition in the podcast world is fierce, as the market is now saturated with compelling and supremely well-edited programs that expose us to new stories, thoughts, and voices on a weekly—even daily—basis if we’d like. Nonetheless, I’m hoping that the novelty of my project will set it apart, and will help enable me to raise the funds (perhaps through a crowdfunding campaign) needed to develop It’s Alive into a more fully realized creation. It’s been a joy bringing the project to life so far, and I hope to continue to do so. Happy listening!