This is it, people! The battle at the gates of heaven is about to begin!
The final episode of The Dante Experience, the award-winning series produced by Mind’s Ear Audio Productions is up for your listening pleasure. You can listen to the episode here:
If you are interested in owning your own copy of this creation of Hell, please visit amazon.com (here) or contact Mind’s Ear Audio Productions via their Web site (here). Next week, I begin to share the scripts to the second part of The Dante 3– Time Out Of Mind.
Today brings us the penultimate episode of The Dante Experience! What a long, crazy ride through Hell it has been.
Today, I am also proud to share an interview with Dana Dyer Pierson, executive producer and sound designer for The Dante Experience! So to begin you can listen to episode 9 here:
Share and enjoy!
Dana Dyer Pierson
Dana Dyer Pierson, along with her husband Joel Pierson, created the award-winning Mind’s Ear Audio Productions. They created such nationally honored productions as French Quarter,Children’s Zoo and The Dante Experience. Besides producing Dante, Dana also created the sound design; a series that included everything from a musical number in Hell, to a boxing match, to a TV talk show! Every time I listen to the series I am just floored by her work on the series.
What inspired you to work in radio?
I chalk it all up to lazy babysitting, honestly. When I was little and my older brothers tired of me, they would plop me into a wingchair, put some headphones on my tiny head, and drop the needle on one of their sound effects records. I was entranced by these random noises—and would unconsciously start creating stories to make sense of them. Thus, by accident, a sound designer and playwright was born. (more…)
Where were you the first time you went to Hell? Well, if you have been listening to The Dante Experience chances are on a computer. Ha!
It’s Friday and time for episode 7 of The Dante Experience, the radio comedy series. You can hear today’s episode here:
You can catch up on previous episodes (and read more excerpts around the making of the series by the author, me) via the Dante 3 page on this blog. If you would like to purchase a copy you can do so via amazon.com (here), or by contacting the producers at Minds’ Ear Audio Productions (here).
Exposure
Hearing your work come to life, for a writer in radio is a multilayered event. It is happy, but emotionally overwhelming; it is disappointing and surprising; it is a relief and a frustration; and there is a sense of peace. A great sense of peace because a chapter in your life is done. No matter what, that chapter is done. To be honest, it’s probably the same feeling I am sure most writers feel around movie, TV, and theater (Completing a novel is very different for me); and you relive in your mind all of the work you went through to get to that point. (more…)
Here is the link to Episode 4 of The Dante Experience.
The three previous episodes, of course, can be found via the links on the The Dante 3 page above.
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Writing The Dante Experience
It was 1997 and I was in the MA program in English Literature at Michigan State University. My dream, at the time, was to become a professor in literature, getting my MA and then moving on to my Ph.D. Really, I wanted to teach back at my alma mater, Aquinas College (a dream I would succeed at for one semester a decade later), and I saw this as the straightest path to that goal.
Honestly, while I would be spending my days reading the work of other authors and writing reports, the creative side of my brain was starving…. So that brings us up to winter break and I am still living in my dormitory. I had a job working at a bank during the day and I really couldn’t leave Lansing. Which means I was living in something equivalent to a haunted house. I would walk down the hallways of the dorm and hear strange noises in the distance, not sure if it was another soul (living or not), or something more dire. (more…)
I’ve decided to move forward with sharing the rest of The Dante Experience, on a week-by-week basis. There is also a page now above (The Dante 3) that links to the episodes that have already been shared so you can catch up on Episode 1.
Episode 2 is called “Our Time in Limbo” and can be heard here:
-Radio and Me-
There are two moments I remember clearly that started me down the path of wanting to write comedy for radio. The first was when I was in fourth grade. I was in the car with my dad going to visit my grandparents and I first heard The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (more…)
January was the first month where I focused more aggressively on my blog. Well, today marks a milestone for me. I have had 500 unique views on the site for just this month!
To celebrate this first step, I wanted to share with you something special… The first episode from the radio series I wrote, The Dante Experience.
Here is the link where you can listen.
The series was first produced by Mind’s Ear Audio Productions back in 2001 and it is kind of a trip for me relistening to it. Yes, a few references are a little dated (I reference Sharon Stone, for example), but a lot of it holds up very well. (more…)
They say that being a parent is all about making sacrifices. I had already understood that but I never thought it was something concrete, I thought it would mean I was like The Giving Tree, but in spirit … But because my son is four, and he is the right age for it, I’m about to make another sacrifice, one to hang on the wall of parenthood next to my broken DVD of the first The Pirates of the Caribbean and the torn cover of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles.
I am going to take him to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace on Imax, 3D in February.
Godfather 3 is far too over quoted by people, but seriously, I was out! Lucas and his mad skills at getting to my checkbook has pulled me back in.
Now I grew up with Star Wars (the first movie came out when I was three which was the perfect age for warping my little mind), but after all of his changes to the original trilogy he had lost me. I was free! I didn’t buy the last set of DVDs, I didn’t buy the Blu-Rays. Oh, I held them in the store, but more to study the ugly cover art on the front (and really it is bad). (more…)
This is it, people! The battle at the gates of heaven is about to begin!
The Stories of Scott D. Southard 