How We Ended Up Starting A Podcast

Beware- this is a long one!

I still remember the first time I heard of Red Queen. My best friend Courtney, in May of 2020, sent it to me to after she had heard it described as Hunger Games meets XMen with Game of Thrones mixed in, but YA. Intriguing right? I thought so too. I picked up the first book with an Audible credit and my journey began. I devoured the first book. It was amazing. The characters seemed so real, I could picture them in my head so easily.  I felt kind of bad for not really liking the main character, Mare Barrow, but ever since I read The Girl on the Train, I realized that I can not like the main character and still care about what happens to them in the story and finish the book. It almost makes the story seem more real, since there are people in my life that I don’t really like but have to spend time around but I do so might as well make the best of it. Mare’s story, and my ability to relate to her since I was a 17 year old girl once too, is too good to give up on when the reading gets tough.

About a year later, after my daughter wrapped up her 7th grade year, my daughter was looking for books to read for the summer. I suggested Red Queen. I had really liked it and thought my daughter would enjoy the world the Victoria Aveyard creates. There is very little romance in this book and I knew she would appreciate that. We went to the library and checked it out. She was ecstatic. She devoured it and the other 3 books in the series. She got audiobook versions of the books and listened while reading along. As a bookworm mom, it made my heart happy to see her get immersed in books like that. I devour any and all Stephen King I can get my hands on because of the worlds he creates for his readers to live in within his pages. The Red Queen world felt much like that. When it’s over, you don’t know what to do with yourself.

As Mia was finishing up the series, she got her dad reading them. He had bought her all 4 books in hardback so we didn’t have to wait for the library to have them. As Greg was reading, we would have discussions about it and Mia and I would have to bite our tongues as Greg talked about characters he liked, plot lines he didn’t like, etc. We were so excited for him to experience the twists and turns of the rest of the series like we had. I hadn’t read the first one in a while so I listened again to refresh myself for the convos. We had a blast.

Somewhere around mid November 2021, Mia came up with the idea to start a podcast where we recorded our conversations about the chapters and did an indepth dive into the book. As a podcast-aholic, I was totally in. It has always been a secret dream of mine to have a podcast so this was a great opportunity to spend more time with my daughter and also get to see what running a podcast is like. Of course, I didn’t know the first thing about launching a podcast and was about to get crash course in all things podcasting.

The first thing you need to do is obviously plan and record your content. Mia came up with a timeline and we recorded the first episode on my Samsung tablet. It felt so amateur and matter of fact and we were all so nervous but we got through it. I did some editing and handed it over to Mia who would do the post production. She had used a program called WeVideo in school and was anxious to use it again to put our episodes together. We recorded the second episode shortly after the first and planned to release the first 2 together when we finally did launch.

Somewhere along the way, late November probably, Greg and I decided to get Mia some professional level recording equipment for Christmas as well as building a website for the show for her birthday and launch the podcast right around her birthday, which is New Year’s Eve. This is where I became really excited. Researching something is so much fun for me and now I was going to get to research how to start a podcast and what equipment we needed. I quickly realized that this wouldn’t be like my normal research projects. Since I don’t know thing one about audio engineering, recording, or RSS feeds, I had A LOT to learn. A few friends helped me figure out what I needed and we bought all of our equipment. We couldn’t wait for Christmas so Mia could open it and we could feel like real podcasters!

On Christmas, she opened her equipment and was so excited to start recording. I had tried to figure out how to operate the sound board before she opened it so I would have a headstart but without having it in front of me to see all the knobs and inputs, etc there wasn’t much I could learn from just reading the manual. So the learning curve once we got everything out and started setting up was immense. We found out quickly that we didn’t get an audio cable to attach the sound board to the headphone amplifier and also that the amplifier to XLR cables and our headphones had 3.5mm. Off to Guitar Center we headed and got everything we needed. That’s when it got really difficult. It took us (me) several hours to figure out to how to get the sound board get all the information into my computer. (I had forgotten to download the drivers for the board. Oops.) We got everything set up, finally, and got busy testing it. We recorded what we call our “hidden casting episode” to test out the equipment.

A few days after Christmas, it was time to get ready to launch and give it all to Mia for her birthday. I had found a helpful article on starting a podcast that helped me find a hosting platform and walk me through actually launching. I got the first 2 episodes up on the hosting platform but quickly realized that to get any decent features. Our episodes would only be up for 90 days before being archived and we could only upload a certain amount of minutes to the platform before we had to upgrade to a paid plan for hosting. As I was working on the website, I realized that I could build the hosting into the website and have it create an RSS feed that I could register with major directories without any additional cost above what I was already paying for the website. It took a few hours to get it transferred and the feed registered with all of the popular directories but I did it! Our first 2 episodes officially launched on 12/28/2021.

We had already recorded 4 episodes before we got the new equipment so unfortunately we have 4 episodes that don’t sound fantastic but by episode 5, we had found our groove. The jokes started flying a little more freely and our conversation got more lively. Episode 6 turned out even better. And more importantly, we were having fun. We decided new episodes would drop on Sundays and now we have a routine set up and this podcast has officially become a part of our life. We are so proud of it! We hope you will enjoy it, and your journey of reading along with us if you are. Thank you for listening and please tell a friend about the show. Word of mouth is the most precious and important marketing we can get!

-Beth 1/11/21

Why The Red Queen Series?

I specifically remember the first time I heard about the Red Queen book series. My best friend Courtney is always solid on recommendations and she sent me the description of the book. “Its’ very Game of Thrones esque.” and "X-Men meets Hunger Games”. That was May of 2020. I got the audiobook on Audible and the rest is history, or so they say. But that’s not the whole story.

I’ve read a lot of YA books. There’s something comforting to me about YA. Whether it’s character recognition (I was once a spitfire 17 year old with big dreams and a strong head) or how the worlds always seem to be just like our own but with enough of a twist that it stays in the fantasy realm, I just love them. No series since the Hunger Games has hit me the way Red Queen did though. What is it that makes Red Queen so memorable?

Red Queen ticks all the YA boxes: strong female lead, post apocalyptic America, evil monarch/ dictator in power, etc. It’s everything we know and love in a modern YA series. But something sets this one apart from the others. Victoria Aveyard’s writing sets this series apart from all others not written by Suzanne Collins. Her use of foreshadowing and descriptive language is remarkable without being cliche or heavy handed. None of us have ever been in a situation even close to what Mare goes through but the writing is so clear and concise that we are all instantly in her world. Mare walks us through her universe step by step in such a real, raw way that we feel we are right there beside her.

There’s so much more about this series to discuss and enjoy! So head to your favorite book store, grab a copy, and read along with us. New episodes dropping every Sunday!