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This is Not a Wardrobe Door

by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

Zera packs lightly for her journey: rose-petal rope and dewdrop boots, a jacket spun from bee song and buttoned with industrial-strength cricket clicks. She secures her belt (spun from the cloud memories, of course) and picks up her satchel. It has food for her and oil for Misu.

Her best friend is missing and she must find out why.

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Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was THIS IS NOT A WARDROBE DOOR by MERC FENN WOLFMOOR, and if you enjoyed that then I’ve got great news for you, because they’ve been here six times in total; as well as this story, we’ve run Where Monsters Dance as episode 385; Or Be Forever Fallen as episode 451; What the Fires Burn as episode 481; Fathoms Deep and Fathoms Cold as episode 581; and my particular favourite, Iron Aria as episode 518.

Rachel K Jones Interview

 

Matt Dovey

…and now join me in welcoming back Podcastle’s rebound editor as she has asked to be known the last time this story ran. Hello, Rachel. 

 

Rachel K Jones

Hey, Matt. 

 

Matt Dovey

How you doing?

 

Rachel K Jones

I’m fantastic. How are you doing?

 

Matt Dovey

I’m not too bad, thank you. Very glad to hear it. First off, would you like to introduce yourself for those listeners who may not have been around for your editorial work back in the day?

 

Rachel K Jones

Yes. So I am Rachel Kay Jones, aka Podcastle’s rebound editor, which means that I was editor at podcastle…I believe it was 2016-2017 in that area.

 

Matt Dovey

It was 2015-2016 I think.

 

Rachel K Jones

Oh, see, I’ve already forgotten. And yeah, because my stint was very short. I kind of fell between too much longer tenures, so the joke there is that like you know I helped Podcastle Get over its long term editor so it was ready to love again. 

 

Matt Dovey

Yes. It was Dave and Anna that had done it before we knew them five years. And then after you was Jen who did like seven years or something. So…

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah

 

Matt Dovey

You were very much the – as you say the rebound in the middle. So why this story?

 

Rachel K Jones

Um, well first of all, I’m just a shameless Merc Fen Wolfmore fangirl, I love their work. Everything they do is just beautiful and compassionate, but also a lot of fun and adventurous. This story we picked me and Graham knew I was stepping down and I really wanted to do something full cast because that’s when you get to pull in all of your friends and just do a really cool production. And, it’s just one of the funnest things you get to do in your fiction. And so, I picked this story because it has lots of parts to read, and I thought it would make for a good full cast reading. And it’s also a story that has a lot of thematic elements that I really resonated with, especially in my having to leave Podcastle which I adore so much. Like I love that it’s a story that’s about like, how do you say goodbye, like you know, and what are goodbyes? Are goodbye supposed to be forever because like in the stereotypical portal fantasy like Narniaor something, there’s this idea of ageing out delicately had this wonderful adventure. You make all these friends. And then one day you say goodbye forever and you never speak again. 

 

Matt Dovey

Sorry you have menstruated so you are not allowed back here.

 

Rachel K Jones

Exactly. Yes. It’s very depressing and lots of great stuff out there about like how problematic that is. But I love how this is a story that’s kind of about like fighting for your friendships and fighting to keep every part of yourself and not just letting things go because you think we get them and like I love the idea especially that like this is a fantasy, a portal fantasy where the people inside the portal fantasy story have agency and they fight for their friends too. they actually get to..

 

Matt Dovey

It’s as much portal fantasy for them, I think as well as the visitor coming in are as much a delight to them as the whole world is to the visitors. 

 

Rachel K Jones

Exactly, exactly. It’s a beautiful story. 

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah. I mean, it’s just what two 3000 words tops? It’s short, but it packs a lot of punch in that time because it just, it hits on those familiar cultural nodes of the portal fantasy. And so it can kind of skip out on a lot of the word count and establishing – you know what emotional beats are being hit here already, because we’ve probably all read Narnia. You and I and our generation you know, we grew up on Narnia & CS Lewis so you know what they’re feeling.

 

Rachel K Jones

I gotta say too this is what Merc Fen Wolfmore is so so so great at too like, knowing the tropes that are in a story and using them in really powerful and subversive ways. I love to show a project that they are working on right now. They’ve gotten into writing visual novels. And right now, the reigning one on an app called storyloom which you can get for free. That’s all about what if the evil overlord who’s supposed to murder the chosen one or attempt to murder this baby that’s then gonna grow up and kill the evil overlord? What if that evil overlord decides instead to like, raise this child as like his own child. And so that’s the story it’s called Hero’s Choice and is incredible and I just want everyone to go love it as much as I do. So, if you need a little more of this wonderful compassionate, hilarious but also beautiful, smart storytelling, go check that one out it’s great

 

Matt Dovey

Merc is great. I just have gone through the list of the other stories that they’ve had this was, there was six stories that they’ve had on the podcast and all of them are brilliant. Just like you say, there’s such a good storyteller. We’ve taken that idea and presenting it again from new angle, but in a way that still feels perfect and like it, this is the original form of it. It’s just so perfectly satisfying. It’s Yes. Wonderful. So how did you get to be involved with Podcastle in the first place? Because I think you started off with Lasers didn’t you before you switched teams.

 

Rachel K Jones

I did so, I originally was escape pod Slusher. And I think at the time I worked for them, I was their….only Slusher or maybe the most active Slusher. And so, there was a span of a few years there were two where if you got an Escape Pod rejection it was probably from me unless you got past me. Um, yeah so my apologies. And I was also really involved at the time with a lot of things that escape artists I was involved with, like the first round of Artemis Rising, which was the celebration of women and non-binary people in fiction. And but the big thing is as a big giant podcastle fan girl and everyone knew it. I had listened to every podcastle episode, I was always commenting on the forum. And so, I even like written some podcastle fan fic, which we won’t talk about but that exists somewhere out there. And so basically, at the time 

 

Matt Dovey

Yep we have to talk about it

 

Rachel K Jones

* Laughs* Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, you know, you can Google it Matt,

 

Matt Dovey

Indeed I will.

 

Rachel K Jones

* Laughs*

 

Matt Dovey

Sorry!

 

Rachel K Jones

So, then I think that David and Anna thought that I was a pretty logical choice because I was someone who understood Podcastle’s vibe and it’s audience and really, really wanted to honour that legacy especially after such a long editorial stint so they thought I’d be a good steady hand at the wheel. Me and Graham Dunlop who was such a great co-editor! I love that man so much. So, he kind of was the Conan the Barbarian to my Pinkie Pie in terms of our vibes for the show. Yeah, so that was kind of how I got involved with PodCastle it’s great.

 

Matt Dovey

How do you think the working at PodCastle changed you? What surprised you about it that changed you going in?

 

Rachel K Jones

That’s such a great question. Yeah, I think it sounds a little cheesy to say that, you know, it’s all about the friends you made along the way. But like honest to God, its seriously the truth for me. So like, the friends I made while working at podcastle have become just absolutely lifelong friends. So like, me and Dave Thompson are really great friends now to this day. My entire critique group was homegrown from Escape Artists forums back in the day and we were all Escape Artists, fans and staffers and our critique group still runs. We’re no longer on the forums anymore, but like we still stay in touch, we send each other cards, we’ve been in each other’s living rooms. And there are people who just made a really big impact on my life and I can not imagine my life without them, or like, what my life would be like right now if those people weren’t in my life. 

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah

 

Rachel K Jones

For PodCastle in particular for editing, I will say that like what surprised me the most was getting an idea what the full job of the editor is, because like from the outside, it’s like oh thats the person who picks the stories and maybe they host sometimes, but like, inside the job, it’s very administrative. There’s just oceans of email all the time. You’re looking, always looking for new staffers too looking for new slush readers is a constant thing. Getting people trained, and answering questions from the audience, and planning ahead to new events. And Escape Artists you get to also coordinate with a pretty big team as you get to coordinate with all the other editors. But it’s just a much more complex job from the outside than it looks from the outside and there’s parts of the job that are completely invisible that are needed to make the show run smoothly.

 

Matt Dovey

Yes, we have a group chats on Twitter actually, it’s for our sins. I probably shouldn’t give the people on here an idea but it’s basically just a group chat of panic as…How we put it together every week l don’t know but it is a real team effort. It’s all about covering each other. Yeah, there’s so much like getting the narrators on that and they can’t do it and like this story scheduled for like two weeks out, it’s always close to the wire. You might be accepting stories a long time ahead, but they can contract out get the editing and copy editing done that the narrator lined up trying to get the right narrator

 

Rachel K Jones

Right

 

Matt Dovey

and it’s great for some that everybody always seems really seriously really getting it done when there’s so many spinning plates.

 

Rachel K Jones

It’s like we need someone who’s both speaks Welsh and Arabic and we need them within this window and it needs to be someone with a nice adult female voice they need to sound aged and you’re like how do you find that kind of person?

 

Matt Dovey

And yet somehow you do it!  Somebody knows someoneand they pass the word along and all of a sudden you’ve got an email in your inbox. And… Yeah. But it’s yeah, there’s a lot goes on behind the scenes and I think it’s like so you don’t realise it? You think they just do a bit of reading and go aaand that one, and that one. Nooo.

 

Rachel K Jones

And somehow all their little magic, you know, unicorns everyday make Podcastle sound wonderful.

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, I think Devin and Eric are effectively magical unicorns as far as my understanding of what they do in the order of editing goes

 

Rachel K Jones

It’s actually part of the process. It’s true, I’m not gonna knock the magical unicorns that are out there.

 

Matt Dovey

I mean I love all of the people I work with and like, I say it is really family like honestly, it’s really cheesy to say but even with I mean, Escape Artists as a whole has got to be at least 100 people now across the four shows and all the admin backend and everything and you’ve got original fiction managers, contract managers and accountants, and this huge like, admin back end to it all now to keep it running. But it still has that real family vibe like, you bump into someone else who’s Escape Artists at a Con and there’s that immediate connection isn’t there?

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah, because it’s all for the love, and it’s something we all do because we love the artform and because it’s totally worth it and we all do as like a lot of work and also yeah, it’s cool hearing from people out in the world. That was my favourite part about being editor was hearing the feedback the audience and you know hearing peoples connections to the stories or even like, you know, what audio fiction means in their life as you’re out there going about your day and like any number of things could be happening in their life and like having that break to be able to build this story for a little bit can be something really powerful

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, you bump into someone at a Con, and they’re like, they see you with the Podcastle sticker on and ask where did you get that? Well, I’ve got a bunch of them, I work there and they’re like oh my god can I have some? It’s not just those noodling about in front of our microphones and our screens. There’s actually people out there who listened to this that’s really weird and cool. It’s kind of easy to forget sometimes. It’s nice to meet people in the wild. We have a, there’s a discord now for people who support us on Patreon and talking to people there and everything. It’s just where people are giving you feedback about how much they enjoyed the story. It is really nice that, the effort we put in it, it does land and it does hit right is.. it’s very satisfying isn’t it?. On your own writing, there was a while there sort of six or eight years ago, where it seemed like you were everywhere. In short fiction, you were at Lightspeed you at Fireside you were everything, and then went a little quieter for you because I know you were trying to go through grad school at the time, and that was taking up a lot of the oxygen in the room. So I kind of question how do you balance your real life and writing and how do you keep your enthusiasm going for it, when there’s only the scraps of the day available to you?

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah, that’s, that’s like the perennial question for every author with a day job.

 

Matt Dovey

This is why I’m asking.  I wanna know tell me the answer!

 

Rachel K Jones

* Laugh * Yes, so like, I have gotten better about this over recent years, through a lot of trial and error because I will not lie I did have a couple of years there of like, total burnout where, you know, you look you stare at the screen and your brain is a total potato and the story just isn’t happening. And that’s pretty normal. So, like every author I’ve talked with, like has those phases where you kind of come and go. Then actually in some ways what really got me more into a groove was starting to work on longer stuff. So, working on like more novel length fiction, and the reason because of that. The reason for that is because in the world of longer fiction, they have all this magical tool called an outline. Where are you like, you plan your story in advance and you break it down the teeny tiny little pieces? And then it turns out, like, you can do a little teeny tiny piece of something in like half an hour here and there. And I’m being a little facetious you can hear and the reason is because that before that as a short story author during that period, where I was publishing, first big giant wave of short stories, I was what we call in the the biz  a pantser. So, authors identify themselves as plotters, people who like to plot their stuff in advance, or Pantsers people who write by the seat of their pants, and I was the latter for many, many years. I have to sit down and I had a big hour, a couple hours of time. Like I sit there and like, just sort of find my way through the story and make it up as it went along. But turns out that that requires a pretty big block of time to do upfront and like it’s a you know,

 

Matt Dovey

And a big block of emotional energy as well.

 

Rachel K Jones

Yes, exactly. We need to kind of like really be in the groove and like get into that deep focus work and like, and it’s not easy to like recreate that without having enough time to get there and pick your favourite coffee shop and having the right level of caffeine and like all the magical conditions that make that worthwhile or make that possible. So, like in the world of novels, though. It’s super, super normal, and probably the default to work from outlines instead. Lots of people pants novels also, but like it’s just good reasons not to do that if you don’t want to create yourself a lot of work on the back end. So, I’ve got into outlining and I started outlining my short stories. And it turns out that when you do that you can break up the task of writing into two different phases. So there’s kind of like the business that you’re like No, the administrators short story, we’re going to sit there and make yourself a to do list. And then like later on, you get to be the little worker monkey where you just take the next item on the to do list. Okay, now, I’ve got to describe the crazy futuristic car rally that’s full of the dino-bots that are now going to go smash each other and destroy each other in epic ways. And like you can just take that down to one task and do that one at a time as you’re putting together the story. 

 

The other tool that has been really great for me is actually the Notes app on my phone. And this is something I think is probably not like reinventing the wheel or anything but like I found that like, throughout my workday that a lot of times, you know, like I have the kind of day job where I don’t have a lot of downtime like I’m constantly I’m like, constantly doing things, but sometimes I’ll have a little thoughts like you’ll have walking around taking a little quick five minute break as you’re prepping for the next thing and like, suddenly an idea or an image pops into your brain for a story 

 

Matt Dovey

It’s always the most inconvenient moments isn’t it? 

 

Rachel K Jones

Yes!

 

Matt Dovey

Like when you are driving and can’t do anything about it.

 

Rachel K Jones

Exactly! The shower thoughts, that kind of thing. Exactly. So like, what I’ve done now in recent years is now I’ve got like, little organised folders on my notes app where like I have like projects I’m working on. And if I have a thought the day about a project I’m working on especially something that I can go into the outline and I just throw it in there and like you know, and then about set time during the week where I sit down and like look at Notes app and pull out and organise all that and like you know, set up my to do list later that week. So that means when I sit down and I have 30 minutes here and there like you know, three minutes before at work or a little bit of time after work before I make dinner, that kind of stuff. I can really dig in and make some meaningful progress.

 

Matt Dovey

You’ve got grist for the mill and you don’t have to come up with something there and then because you’ve already come up with things, now you just need to implement it.

 

Rachel K Jones

Yes Yeah, you don’t have the blank screen like and like, I think that maybe working on longer work has given me more of a sense of trust in myself that you know, even if progress looks slow that it adds up piece by piece and that you know any meaningful little tiny chomp I can take on the project is going to add up in the long run and like… Oh another cool thing I found out too, is that I used to believe that like, my emotional state while writing would be reflective of the product I put out so like you know, if I’m writing when I’m super burnout and in a bad mood that the audience would be able to tell. And I found out it’s actually not true because by the time you go through the revision process, and polish things up, you know, I kind of no longer identify which parts of the story like I wasn’t really sure. 

 

Matt Dovey

Especially if your plotting now instead of pantsing, 

 

Rachel K Jones

Exactly

 

Matt Dovey

If you are pantsing it’s probably obvious still.

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah, you get a little more than that spike where you can tell if you’re really in it, or when are pantsing and you always have to kind of be in it. Like anyway, so, so it’s been sort of nice to just let go of this idea that like there’s any kind of magic. My skill is going to be there and accessible to me regardless of whether or not I’m feeling it. And the nice thing is, you know, are maybe the downside is also maybe like weaknesses are always going to be present, regardless of whether or not I’m feeling it. So you know, it just kind of all averages out, you know?

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, I sort of realised in the last year or two you know writing is… you think you just sit down at the keyboard but it takes so much energy because it’s that constant decision fatigue. It’s just decisions all the way down. 

 

Rachel K Jones

Yes. Yes Yes Yes.

 

Matt Dovey

It’s deciding what’s this character is going to do next. How is that person going to respond to what they’ve just said in the dialogue? What’s the right word I’m looking for in the sentence? Where should this comma best go to represent the flow… it’s just decisions all the way!

 

Rachel K Jones

And what’s their name? What’s their name Matt?  I have to come up with another name. It’s terrible.

 

Matt Dovey

It does. You know If you’ve not got the emotional energy left at the end of the day, it is impossible: it is blood from a stone which is so original. But you know I’m a writer now I’m good at coming up with original thoughts. It’s also half past nine at night  for me so you know my emotional energy is at a low. It’s hard to, if you’re waiting for writing time to coincide with energy time, it just doesn’t happen does it? You’ve got to take it wherever it comes.

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah, And like the upsides of being a writer the day job is I will say that I do get a lot of inspiration from my day job and the writing kind of gets cross pollinated with interesting people and like, stuff that comes up and like, even the things that annoy you at work can make for good stories and like a lot of that eventually does come out my writing so versus maybe being alone all day in my office and staring at the wall waiting for inspiration to come

 

Matt Dovey

I think, weirdly I think the place you see that is with bands and songwriting because bands first albums are always really interesting with lots of good thoughts about like life and this idea of like being poor and scrappy, and by like album four it’s like, like, yeah, it’s really tough being on tour in America. God. And that’s everybody’s fourth album and like, yeah, you’ve stopped living a normal life now haven’t you? There’s no inspiration left from that.

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah,

 

Matt Dovey

Um, you said, talking about writing longer. Up till now. I think the longest thing you’ve had published is a novella, isn’t it? Every River Runs to Salt

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah!

 

Matt Dovey

Which was with Fireside, which I did enjoy very much. It was very, it was very Gaimanesque but in a southern American in the South of American USA, kind of way rather than Gaiman’s obviously, very British sensibility. Other than longer things coming in or?

 

Rachel K Jones

Yes. Yeah you bet!

 

Matt Dovey

Any you can talk about?

 

Rachel K Jones

Okay. Yeah. Lots of stuff. So I I’m still writing a lot of short fiction, and I’m writing a lot of longer stuff. So like, the funny thing about like, getting into longer fiction is that some of the skills from short stories do transfer. And a lot of it, you’re kind of learning from the ground up and the big thing is that novels require a lot more structure than a short story does. Short Stories can be kind of boneless and flop around and still be kind of fun. 

 

Matt Dovey

* Giggles *

 

Rachel K Jones

You know, like, you know, microcellular features, like novels have to have bones and have to have structure, to hold them up and make the pacing work correctly. So, over the last six years, I wrote a few bad novels. I wrote a mediocre novel and then I kinda wrote a pretty good novel? and then I wrote a really good novel. And right now, Yeah, I mean, I say that, but maybe it sucks, like, so like, yeah, so I’m just now wrapping up a draft of a YA novel that It’s a YA fantasy that set in magic school and it’s sort of my take on like, you know, maybe we all we all have things that annoy us about famous franchises. One of them is Harry Potter for me. And one particular aspect of Harry Potter that really annoys me is that like, because at my day job I at work at school, like I feel like that as a magic school novel if I’m frustrated by the fact that it doesn’t deal with disability very well. That you’ve got these kids wandering around, they have they have a like a memory problem or like, you know, like, Neville Longbottom like clearly he has memory problems as a trauma and like, I’m like, why are you and they just sort of say, oh, yeah, go deal with that. And like, none of the teachers actually like, you know, teach or like, you know, help children in a magic school setting overcome disabilities early into magic, 

 

Matt Dovey

There was very little pastroal care in Hogwarts

 

Rachel K Jones

There’s not! and so it was like, what if like, so what if we had a school that like, took disability seriously and took magical disability seriously, so what would it look like if you had to build as it impacted your access to magic? 

 

Matt Dovey

Rather than just making them the janitor? 

 

Rachel K Jones

Exactly, yeah. Or even like in that in the Harry Potter universe, the very worst thing to be would be a muggle, which is a person with no magic at all. It’s like the… you know, it’s the most severe disability. 

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, it’s an insult sneered down, like the worst is Squib where you should have magic and you don’t

 

Rachel K Jones

Exactly A squib! Like, and no one does anything for him. I’m like, wait a minute. There’s lots of things he could probably do. You know, like, like since they were professional education or what have you. Did you have like, a familiar that like maybe goes and helps you like go to the animal ..I am losing my words today, like kind of like a seeing eye dog or something or you know, an animal to help you access things or you can have, you can use items like maybe you have items to help you access magic. Or maybe you have a person designated there to perform the magic for you, but you’re the one who dictates what’s being done. So, there’s things that you could do, even if you’re a completely non-magical like within your physical body, that something gets access to that school. and so that’s kind of my novel deals with a whole bunch of that I won’t spoil it too much because it kind of, it’s not the Harry Potter universe, and it goes in some very different directions. But that’s sort of the heart of the story where it’s all about access and ability in the setting of a Magic School. So super excited about that. If you are a fan of my short stories, I have good news for you just have sold my 10th short story so far this year. 

 

Matt Dovey

Bloody Hell it’s only May!

 

Rachel K Jones

I know! We’ll have more reprints which means that they’ve been published before but a lot of them are originals. 

 

Matt Dovey

Ooh!

 

Rachel K Jones

So, if that’s like your jam I’ve got a few I don’t know what all the release dates will be yet but I know that I’ve got one a portal fantasy coming out at Nightmare magazine. So it’d be a very dark portal fantasy story. I’ve got another short story science fiction story coming out Lightspeed. If you want to stay around Escape Artists, Escape Pod is going to be reprinting one of my stories called The Greatest One-star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant which is 

 

Matt Dovey

My Favourite!

 

Rachel K Jones

Yes, Matt. Matt was instrumental and critiquing this one back when it was a wee little baby. Not only I think one day old when I’d written the story.

 

Matt Dovey

How you can write so quickly, it staggers me. This is how I know you are a better writer than me because what you did in 24 hours was so much better than anyone could ever have dreamt of

 

Rachel K Jones

We need to get some context everybody here. So, me and Matt met in person for the first time at this writing workshop years ago where there was a challenge where you had to be given 24 hours to produce a short story from idea to finished draft. And it was wild and like, I ended up writing about cannibal cyborg food trucks and

 

Matt Dovey

As you do

 

Rachel K Jones

Like you do! and it was described as sick and twisted and made some people physically ill. So, if you really… 

 

Matt Dovey

And it’s brilliant!

 

Rachel K Jones

I thought it was hilarious I cackled the entire time I was writing that story Matt was there as literally cackling 

 

Matt Dovey

Yes

 

Rachel K Jones

So like, if you want that go to Escape Pod, I think it might be coming out later this month. I’m recording right now in May. So it may already be out by now actually 

 

Matt Dovey

yes, because this episode won’t actually go out until the start of July so time is. 

 

Rachel K Jones

Maybe you’ve already heard it then. 

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah

 

Rachel K Jones

So you’ll know what I’m talking about! Yeah, so there you go. There’s some other stuff too. Yeah. If you follow my blog, which is Rachel K Jones.com. Then you can get announcements as things come out. Or you know, follow me over on Twitter or Mastodon @ Rachel K Jones.

 

Matt Dovey

And maybe you should send some in to us because it’s been a while so it’s I’ve just had a look… 633 was the last time you had a story here with The Night Bazaar for Women Becoming Reptiles

 

Rachel K Jones

Whaaat?  It’s been way too long. 

 

Matt Dovey

Because Makeisha in Time was number two and our 10th anniversary best of list as voted for by listeners. 

 

Rachel K Jones

What?

 

Matt Dovey

So you know, clearly your stories are popular here. You should send us some more so we can have them again.

 

Rachel K Jones

I know. Yeah, that’s I would absolutely love that. Yeah, I would love to be on Podcastle again,

 

Matt Dovey

We would love to have you back. I think I did try and look and see if this was actually the last time your voice had been on here after because the last time this story ran as you said was your goodbye episode. Yeah, the drama of that goodbye was completely undone by the very next episode being narrated by you anyway, so your voice was immediately back on the next week!

 

Rachel K Jones

* Laughs *

 

Matt Dovey

But you did then you popped back recently for us actually to celebrate the Gorgons Glass

 

Rachel K Jones

Yes! such a great story.

 

Matt Dovey

Last year, May 24, so about 12 months ago from when we’re recording this so yes, that was very clever story. But other than that, yeah, it’s been a long time since we’ve had you about on Podcastle. It’s been lovely having you here and it’d be lovely to have your stories here as well. Which is not to say that I’m saying goodbye now I just

 

Rachel K Jones

Of course. We need to talk about Nicholas Cage still

 

Matt Dovey

That is the very next question, there you go! Because I couldn’t possibly interview you without asking about Nicolas Cage so… He has been fantastically prolific these last few years even by his standards. So, what is it about him that you love so much? And go on, what’s your favourite of his recent films? There’s a lot to choose from

 

Rachel K Jones

So like, Yeah, we’re in the middle of a beautiful Nicolas Cage renaissance and if you’re a Nicolas Cage fan you’ll know why this makes my heart happy. I think it’s kind of hard to describe why like Nicolas Cage. There was this one summer years and years and years ago where back when the US stores used to be a thing. Me and my husband were like, we went to like the like the old video store and like we were like, Let’s like rent a bunch of movies that star different actors and star the same actor on them. And so we had like a Nicolas Cage week and we enjoyed that experience so much that we, the next week became Nicolas Cage week and the week after that. And before we know it, we’ve spent an entire month watching Nicolas Cage movies, and we called it Nicolas Cage match 

 

Matt Dovey

* Laughs *

 

Rachel K Jones

And by the end of it so the weirdest thing about doing this is that the first time you watch a movie that doesn’t have Nicolas Cage in it, you start waiting to see him and he never shows up. And it’s the weirdest experience to be like when’s Nicholas Cage gonna show up in this movie, and so like, it sort of became a thing. So we started watching Nicolas Cage movies every year, so every year we’d have one month we only watched Nicolas Cage movies and like the man has a lot of movies, so you can do that and not have to repeat very many or never repeat any of them and the thing about Nicolas Cage is that like he’s the kind of creative that I want to be. So, like he’s a man who takes a lot of different roles. Some of them aren’t terrible. Some of them are great. And he whatever role he is and he you can tell that he genuinely enjoys his job like he enjoys the creative work of acting, he enjoys what he’s bringing to a roll delivery and like he knows that sometimes like his delivery is hilarious and I think he thought he was like about himself that he sort of unique and one of a kind. And like even like to his like, his like terrible straight to VHS… like you know, wouldn’t be special at Walmart like those sorts of movies like even then, like you watch his movies and like he’s the one who’s having the most fun in any movie he is in. And like, that’s sort of what I want to be as a creative, it’s like you can’t always control how successful your stuff is and like what gets awards or it gets any attention but you can enjoy the process of making 

 

Matt Dovey

You cannot deny that that the man always throws himself into the roll and into the production and gives his everything no matter how low budget is. I mean, you have been watched Willy’s Wonderland about a year and a half ago. Does he even say half a dozen words in that movie? I saw an interview. I know he models it and being like the man in black and he is having so much 

 

Rachel K Jones

He is!

 

Matt Dovey

You hire Nicolas Cage for a film and he barely says anything and yet still by far the best thing in it. Phenomenal. Phenomenal.

 

Rachel K Jones

So like yeah, best movie of the last five years. His best serious movie was probably Pig, which is about like the film industry in Portland, Oregon. His best funny movie was probably The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

 

Matt Dovey

Oh I love that.

 

Rachel K Jones

It’s sort of a parity done with a lot of love towards Nicolas Cage fans like me. And I also I have a Podcastle themed Nicolas Cage anecdote I’d like to share too. If we have time. 

 

Matt Dovey

Five minutes, sorry, 

 

Rachel K Jones

This is perfect. So I’ll keep it short and sweet. So because this is… an untold story that involves a lot of podcastles editors. So, way back when me and Graham Dunlop had first taken over Podcastle, Graham who lives in Australia happened to be in the United States and he had the opportunity to come visit me in Georgia where I lived at the time out in the middle of nowhere. And so that was super cool that my new friend from Australia was in my living room. And he his last stop on this trip was going to take him to Los Angeles where Dave Thompson lives. The, one of the previous editors of podcastle. And so we came up this came up with a plan to prank Dave Thompson by printing out something about 1000 Tiny Nicolas Cage faces they’re about the size of my pinky like little teeny tiny faces, and I gave him a giant sack of them to take with him and Graeme’s instructions were to like take the role of like, you know, clear tape and then wait until Dave Thompson was out of the house and then put Nicolas Cage in as many places as he possibly could. So, I want you to know that this went over beautifully. There was some day when Graham was visiting Dave’s house when everyone was, went for a walk or something or they’re napping and Graham went to town. There was Nicolas Cage faces on things in the fridge. They were in the bottom of every coffee mug and the cabinet. He opened up random books in the bookshelf and like stuffed Nicolas Cage faces into the pages. He went to every family photo in the house and put a Nicolas Cage over each face on each of the Thompson family members faces. So, your adorable baby photos or wedding photos or anything but now starting to Nicholas Cage’s and like you know, 

 

Matt Dovey

He is very prolific, why not? 

 

Rachel K Jones

They were He’s everywhere. So, they’re They’re everywhere. They’re everywhere. They’re everywhere and it was so bad. There are so many Nicolas Cage is in this house that to. This. day. This is probably like you know, eight years later. Sometimes I’ll get a text from Dave Thompson that like somebody found another Nicolas Cage face. You know they’ll pull a book off the shelf, opened it in one fell out on the floor. So there you go. So that’s the time that three podcastle editors. Inspired for.

 

Matt Dovey

He’s in our very DNA, it turns out, 

 

Rachel K Jones

There you go you never knew

 

Matt Dovey

Fantastic. That’s right. In the couple of minutes remaining to us, then what works would you recommend people read if they’re interested in your stuff? And where can people find out more about you? Well, I think you’ve said that anyway. But yeah, it’s always good to repeat.

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah, can check out my stuff at Podcastle If you haven’t before, it’s got some of my absolute favourites together. The Night Bizaar for Women becoming reptiles is a fan favourite. There’s a story on the drabblecast called the Innsmouth of the South, which is a Lovecraftian humour piece which I think a lot of people really love. And yeah, check out the Cannibal Cyborg Food Truck story coming out from Escape Pod: The Greatest One-star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant. If you want even more of my stuff then on my website, which is https://www.rachaelkjones.com And I’ve got my complete bibliography and also some excerpts of fan favourites. And yes, you can follow me on Twitter @ Rachel K Jones, although you know, and now in the age of Elon Musk, like

 

Matt Dovey

I mean we are recording this six weeks before and Twitter might not exist by this point?

 

Rachel K Jones

Yeah, but if not, yeah, find me on Mastodon at Rachel K Jones at wandering dot shop and you can always find wherever I am nowadays and social media on my website so that we assuming no more billionaires buy out any more social media sites,

 

Matt Dovey

We shall see eh?

 

Rachel K Jones

Mmm Hm. 

 

Matt Dovey

It turns out that trusting the essential social infrastructure of our age to the whims of billionaires has maybe got some downsides but Rachel, it has been an absolute delight to have you back on Podcastle it’s been too long since your voice has been here, notwithstanding that one story you narrated. It’s been marvellous. I’m glad to see you’re doing well. Thank you very much for being part of our 15th birthday celebrations. 15 bloody years!

 

Rachel K Jones

Woo! Happy Birthday Podcastle!

 

Matt Dovey

I’ve been here for half the time now and it feels bizarre to me! I’m the new kid what’s going on? What do you mean I’m the longest standing? Nonsense!. Anyways, Zoom is about to kick us off. So again, thank you and good night.

 

Rachel K Jones

You’re awesome. Thank you. Thank you.