Growing up, I had a reputation in our house for having… let’s call it “trouble”… with the difference between fantasy and reality.
I don’t think I was ever more upset than when—in the summer of ’89—I flashed my Batman™ flashlight into the sky, and realized that the bat symbol would not illuminate the night sky.
Totally reputable scientists can tell me that time travel is impossible as many times as they like, but I’m never going to quite believe it, mainly because I don’t want to.
I had little aptitude for math or foreign languages, but I had enough of a working knowledge of warp drive that I could probably finagle an acceptance to Starfleet Academy.
In truth, I think I had an overdeveloped sense of fiction vs reality, and I mourned that immutable boundary*. I fully understood that I couldn’t vote Jed Bartlet for President, or join the Ghostbusters, but I never quite liked it.
When Michael Burris** talked about a radio show that was Sherlock Holmes meets Warehouse 13, it absolutely lit that same part of my imagination on fire. What if that border became mutable? What if—in a world where the difference between the fictional and the real meant little—we are subjected to a new slate of dangers? Who would protect us?
For the past year I’ve been working on that show, and while I’ve been alluding to it for months and am still working on the final touches, I'm excited to start sharing it with you now.
The Fourth Wall is a six-episode***, full-cast**** audio drama. The episodes will run each week starting in late September. The show will be available from the iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher podcast platforms. Subscribe now! The Fourth Wall isn’t going to stop at just the radio show, though. There’s going to be a “Pick-The-Plot*****” tie-in book, trading cards, and a line of sugary breakfast cereals******.
I’d go into it all more, but I want you to hear about The Fourth Wall directly from the people that live there. You can subscribe now and listen to the first season trailer on any of the above-listed platforms, but you can also hear it here:
While I might pitch the show as Men in Black meets The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen*******, the place is far more than that in my head. It’s a bit Babylon 5, and a little bit Deep Space Nine. At times, it can feel like Casablanca at the height of the war; at others it will be as madcap as Greendale Community College. Frankly, if it turns out The Fourth Wall is real, I want to go to there.
Give me a few more weeks, and I’ll show you around the place, too. In the meantime, I’ll be posting a lot about the show in the next few weeks. Artwork, bonus material, the recipe for that breakfast cereal. At The Fourth Wall, we’re just getting started.
*Although, I will admit when Chandler briefly moved to Tulsa in the ninth season of Friends, I had to work through some stuff.
**Without question, there would be no The Fourth Wall without him.
***Don’t worry; it won’t end there. I already have ideas for a second season and… ahem… a Christmas special.
****In fact, I had the privilege to work with seventeen separate voice artists over the course of the season, and I only had to play eight or nine roles.
*****Similar to, but legally distinct from Choose Your Own Adventure. Ahem.
******I’m only lying about one of those. Which one might surprise you.
*******The comic book, not the movie. We’re not animals here.