Jemma Rose Brown, General Manager, The Signal Awards: Tell me about your journey into the podcast space. I’m curious if there was a particular moment that made you want to try your hand at creating audio fiction.

Brad Williams, Creator, Once Upon a Wasteland: Well, I was in this lab and I got bitten by a radioactive podcast… No but oddly enough it all started on Reddit. Back when I used to hang out on Reddit. The creator of MODUS Files put out a casting call and I had done voice work in the past and I thought, you know, this seems like it might be fun, I’ll throw an audition in and see what they say.

I got the role, and through the course of talking with the creator, he encouraged me to try my own audio drama and it got the wheels turning again. I sent out a casting call for voice actors and got two or three auditions. That was then. Now with the most recent casting call we sent out for season three we got, it might’ve been 125, 130 auditions for like four roles. So you can see the progression there.

Jemma: That’s one way to track success!

Brad:  I remember at the end of the first season I thought, “if I can get 10,000 downloads, I’ll commit to doing a second season.” And I thought, no way I’m going to hit that. And I blew it away. I don’t remember what the exact number was, but it was significantly more than that. I was like, well, I guess I’m locked in now.

And now we have over half a million downloads, which is pretty darn good for an independent audio fiction production, especially.

Once Upon a Wasteland featured on Fallout Games

Jemma: It’s incredible.  Could you provide a synopsis of Once Upon a Wasteland for the uninitiated?

Brad: Yeah, so Once Upon a Wasteland is a post apocalyptic science fiction romance that follows two characters, Elizabeth Kirby, who is a vault dweller, someone who lived in an underground vault when a nuclear war happened and a woman named Odessa Valdez, who is a member of the Brotherhood of Steel.

It builds on the Fallout video game franchise that also spawned a very popular and very good, I might add, television series on Amazon Prime last year.

But  I didn’t want to retell anything. I wanted to leverage the world and leverage the lore in a way that allowed me to tell interesting stories.  I like to tell stories about people, about their interactions and their relationships. Not just romantic relationships, but friendships and family relationships too. Ultimately it’s a show about characters and their dynamics.

Beth’s father is based in large part on my father and her relationship with him is very similar to my relationship with my father.  I drew on a lot of personal experiences while writing the series.

Jemma: I think our lives and our experiences are such rich creative fodder. I kind of see all art as in some way biographical.

Brad: Yeah, it is. I’ve never been in a relationship like Beth and Odessa’s, but the writing is coming from a place of my experience and the universalities of those kinds of relationships.

And I do seek outside opinions on certain things as well. For example, if there are things that I’m not sure how they will resonate within a particular community, I will seek out trusted voices within that community to check myself.

Jemma: Amen. Once Upon a Wasteland has won numerous Signal Awards including for Best Writing, Best Editing, as well as the Listener’s Choice Award. You’d shared with me that your Signal wins helped get the show on the radar of video game maker Bethesda games. How did that come about?

Brad: I had reached out to one of the community managers at Bethesda several times but there really didn’t seem to be any interest on their side in any kind of a partnership or promotion. But I wrote again to say, “hey, we just won a The Signal Award.” That really seemed to pique their interest, and that’s how things got started. The show was featured on the login screen for Fallout 76, so literally every person who logged onto the game got an ad for the show.

Since then we’ve had a really good relationship. They’ve looped me in on some stuff under embargo, stuff that they do much more regularly with streamers and YouTube video makers they’ve been including me in.

Brad's collection of Signal Awards' swag

Jemma: That’s awesome. Okay last question, you’re a member of The Signal Awards Judging Academy now, and I want to ask, you listen to a vast number of different shows, both in the audio fiction space and outside of it. When you’re listening to a show, what are you listening for? What does ‘good’ sound like?

Brad: So as a podcast listener  –I shouldn’t admit this– I listen mostly to discussion and entertainment podcasts. For a show like that, what I really like to listen for is rapport between the hosts. I like to hear people having fun. For audio fiction, I listen for immersion. If I can listen to a show and I can lose myself in it, then that’s a big thing for me. Also the way the dialogue is constructed. If I don’t notice the dialogue, then I think that it’s good. If I notice it, then something’s probably wrong.

Jemma Any final shout outs?

Brad: Once Upon a Wasteland is available on all popular and unpopular podcasting platforms.

Jemma: That’s the best way I’ve ever heard it phrased.

Brad:  You can email us at info@onceuponawasteland.com. We have a website of course, which is once upon a wasteland.com. We love getting feedback.

Jemma: Thank you so much Brad.

Once Upon a Wasteland Creator Brad Williams (L) and Production Partner Vitriol (R)