Coming soon to the Re: Dracula Patreon feed, Tal Minear (Re: Dracula, Someone Dies in this Elevator, Sidequesting), Jamieson Ridenhour (Palimpsest, Re: Carmilla), and Wil Williams (VALENCE, The Deposition) announce LOVE, LAURA, a modern retelling of the lesbian vampire novella Carmilla.

Told in micro episodes (<10 minutes each), the story follows Laura (Tal Minear), a college Freshman stuck at home during COVID. It seems like she's going to be quarantined without any friends — until a distant relative Carmilla (Wil Williams) shows up needing a place to stay. They quickly become friends, and maybe something more, even though Laura is definitely straight. But what if Carmilla's strange nature isn't just hot and mysterious, but a sign of something ominous just below the surface?

LOVE, LAURA is inspired by the teen movies of the 90's and 2000's, from 10 Things I Hate About You to Ginger Snaps. It's a coming of age/coming of rage/coming of gay story for everyone who knows how Jennifer's Body really should have ended.

LOVE, LAURA will announce its start date soon — until then, we hope to keep you yearning.

Speaking of Reddit, Shreya Sharma of Tink Media recently published an article of the Podcast Marketing Magic newsletter titled “How to use Reddit for podcast marketing”—if you’re a creator looking to grow your show, this might resonate with you!

While reading this issue, you may have noticed the not-so-subtle references to HBO’s hit TV show Game of Thrones. For a show that had so many people across the globe in a chokehold during the 8 years of its release, it feels like it should be surprising that it pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth after its last episode… unless you watched the last few seasons, in which case you know exactly why we all stopped talking about it. (Spoiler alert: It sucked!)

The first prequel series House of the Dragon hasn’t been doing as well as its predecessor, but the new series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has rekindled my love for the world of Westeros, and I found myself craving the feelings I got back in the early days of Game of Thrones when I would tune in every Sunday night at 9 PM to see what crazy shit was about to befall my favorite blorbos.

Thus… a rewatch of Game of Thrones has begun in my house.

Now, I’ve seen every episode in the first few seasons several times at this point that I hardly need to watch to know what’s happening, which is what led me to don my good headphones, get the show going on my laptop, and multitask with some video games while I passively re-experienced the show. And after only a few episodes, I was starting to realize something about the sound design and audio quality that I hadn’t ever thought to pay attention to in the past since it had release before I was working in podcasting...

Damn, it was really good!

As Ned Stark walked through the gate into Kings Landing, after a long and tragic journey on the King’s Road, the ambient sounds changed slightly—not entirely, but just enough that I could tell without looking that their location had moved. Sounds of forests and dirt roads were exchanged for cobbled streets, with sea birds periodically flying overhead. Ned then joins the king’s council, consisting of 5 different men, and without looking it was clear who was speaking, where they were placed in the room, what was happening in the background, etc.

I feel like the audio for TV and film has become so deprioritized over the last few years in favor of “amazing” visuals (can you feel my eyes rolling?) that the producers forget that the sound is what really immerses viewers in the story. Obviously this is something we as audio fiction creators know all too well since we have only the audio to tell our story, but it feels like an aspect of podcasting that’s starting to be lost as the industry shifts focus towards video podcasting.

More and more creators are worrying about having a video component to their podcasts (to which I say: do you want to make a podcast or do you just want to be a YouTuber? it’s a thing already, you can just do that without calling it podcasts…), and I often hear about shows that are editing for the video first and sacrificing a tightly edited interview or chat show to be able to make the video look better. And I guess that’s fine if you want to do that, you do you, but just know that if the audio sucks, I’ll turn it off. But if the audio in your production can stand on its own, like a TV show from 15 years ago, it can be enjoyable no matter how I choose to consume it.

Unfortunately, we aren’t aware of any new shows that have released in the past month or so—for real, I asked everywhere!!!

Did you release a new show or season of your show so far in 2026? Did you LISTEN to a new release from 2026? LET US KNOW! We’ll give you and the show a shout out in our next issue!