Hello, friends!
If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, then you’ll know that Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight finished airing a couple weeks ago. That’s right, we made it all the way to the end! [party popper noise]
I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to (or reading) Roy Kaplan, (or if you haven’t yet, you will when time allows?) and that it’s been a satisfying journey for you.
So where do we go from here? Well, the good news is that if you enjoyed Roy Kaplan so much that you want a second season, that’s possible! But that’s going to be contingent on listener support, and I’ll talk about what you can do under the cut. Besides that, I’ll take a moment to reflect on these past few years taking Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight from start to finish.
So let’s get going.
Season 1 was great! What about season 2?
Okay. So first off, please don’t come up to me to say this. It’s a real downer to spend tons of time and effort on a project that’s released for free, only for people to immediately ask for more. (Unless you want to pay for all of season 1, in which case sure, let’s talk ;)) But this is probably the information that’s most relevant right now, so I want to put it at the top of this blog post.
So here’s the deal with Roy Kaplan. The story has room to grow–the full storyline of Roy Kaplan would take a total of four seasons (forty-eight episodes) and Out of Sight was written with these future seasons in mind. I’ve planned out most of the second season’s episode lineup already, and a couple of the scripts are written. It would be nice to be able to make more seasons of Roy Kaplan.
But. Making Out of Sight took three years. A lot of that was because of delays secondary to circumstances out of my (or my collaborators’) control. In the end, I didn’t end up just writing and acting in the show as was planned at the outset, but also having to run more casting calls and then edit the whole thing. That’s a lot of work–between May and November I spent hundreds of hours to get the entire season edited together as fast as possible so that I would finally be able to release it before the end of 2024 (to say nothing of the extra bump in work when I had to rerecord all my lines and then reedit those into the episodes).
Moving into the future, it’s likely that I’ll end up doing all production and editing myself again (and writing, but we can take that as a given) (and also maybe cover art, though maybe in the future someone else could handle that). I’m capable of doing those jobs but not doing all of them simultaneously, which means the process has to go writing -> casting -> editing -> casting -> editing -> etc. I think a reasonable ballpark for how long it would take for me to create another season (twelve episodes, 30-40 minutes each), assuming no extenuating circumstances, is about two years. And being focused on Roy Kaplan pretty much excludes me from working on any other major project at the same time (e.g., my novel).
I don’t mind doing work, and I don’t mind taking time. But if I’m going to devote that much time and effort (not to mention the funds) into continuing a project, I have to know that there’s an audience for it. I’m not going to spend two whole years of my life (or more) to play to an empty room–my time is not infinite, and I have other projects to work on. So if you want a second season, you have to prove to me that you exist and that you want it.
How can you do that?
The first one is by straight-up getting in touch and telling me what you thought of Roy Kaplan. You can reach out by email, on Tumblr, by commenting on the episodes on YouTube (I read these but don’t generally respond to them), or on Discord. I’m always happy to hear what people think of my work, and I’m especially happy to discuss my stories (if all those blog posts didn’t tip you off).
“Why do you need us to do that? Don’t you have analytics to tell you how many people are listening? Aren’t you making this for yourself? What if I’m shy?” Well, 1) If I just cared about numbers going up, I’d play RuneScape. I’m making and releasing a show so people will engage with the story contained therein, and seeing that maybe 50 or so people have listened to the show doesn’t actually tell me anything; 2) I get nothing from this show (in fact I have spent a significant amount of money on it) so getting feedback is the only return I get and if I’m not getting that then it’s hard to justify continuing; 3) I made Out of Sight for myself, and it’s successfully finished now, so it doesn’t really matter if it gets listens or not. But making it was really tiring and frustrating and I’ve gotten very little feedback on it over the last five months. Unlike a book I’ve written that I might want to reread, I don’t listen to podcasts, so if I’m going to do it again someone else needs to be there to appreciate the final product; and 4) it sucks that you’re shy but if you like the show and you don’t say anything then on my side that’s the same as you not existing.
The second way of proving you exist and want a second season is with financial support. As I’ve mentioned before, Out of Sight takes about 200-300 USD per episode, for a total of 3300 USD across the entire season. Almost all of this (over 90%) goes to paying voice talent and commissioning music. Because Out of Sight took so long and so much work to produce, I decided at the start of the season that I would only produce a second season if I could recoup costs from the first season. If you want to donate, you can subscribe to my Patreon or put in a tip on Pinecast. However, if you liked the season a lot and you want more content like behind-the-scenes insights, then there is another option: season end goodies! There are three:
- Full season HQ audio download – This is the full Out of Sight season in 320kbps (compared to 128kbps which is available through streaming), plus the trailer, plus the full resolution cover art and transcripts for all twelve episodes. This is primarily for convenience and to support production–you won’t get anything from this download which isn’t technically available for free, unless the bump in audio quality means that much to you, but I personally feel like you get diminishing returns above 128kbps anyways.
- Annotated Script Book – Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight – The Annotated Script Book and Commentaries is a 400+ page book, which contains (you guessed it!) all twelve episode scripts, reformatted for easy reading, especially on smaller screens. These scripts also have footnote annotations containing commentary from me about the writing and production. These annotations are same page (PDF version) or pop-up (EPUB version) for your reading convenience. Additionally, there are nine essays where I discuss the process of writing and creating Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight. This additional content adds up to over 40k of fully new material which is not published elsewhere.
- Art Bundle – Contains the art book, The Art of Roy Kaplan, a 62-page book with covers, sketches, and character art not released anywhere else, along with my commentary. This bundle also contains the full resolution art for all twelve episode covers, the season, and the two book covers. Additionally, there is a set of posters for printing with all twelve episode covers, in three form factors (18″x24″ vertical, 11″x17″ vertical, and 24″x18″ horizontal).
Also in the event that you want more than one of these items, there are bundles on itch.io which will allow you to buy them for a bit cheaper:
- Book Bundle – Art bundle + Script book (14 USD)
- Script Bundle – Script book + Season audio download (20 USD)
- Full Bundle – Art bundle + Script book + Season audio download (25 USD)
Since these are being sold on itch.io, you have the option of paying more than the list price if you would like to donate a little extra. Of course, any support is appreciated.
Also, both books have ISBNs attached:
- The Art of Roy Kaplan PDF (isbn:978-1-968286-00-2),
- Roy Kaplan: The Annotated Script Book and Commentaries PDF (isbn:978-1-968286-01-9), and
- Roy Kaplan: The Annotated Script Book and Commentaries EPUB (isbn:978-1-968286-02-6).
So it might(?) be possible to request your library to get an ebook copy of them. I’m not entirely sure how that works since the books aren’t available on any major retailers. If you do somehow manage to get your local library to get one of my books, you should let me know, because that would be really cool!
To close this section out, some points to be clear on: 1) everything noted above pays for season 1, not season 2. Buying these items does not guarantee that I’ll make season 2–please buy them because you appreciate Out of Sight and because you want the bonus materials, not because you want a guarantee of a second season, because I can’t give you that. 2) There will be no crowdfunding campaign for season 2. I don’t like crowdfunding because it’s not comfortable for me to accept money for a promise of a project that I might not be able to finish, and I don’t have any incentives to offer, and I don’t like using social media to promote my things. I will commit to working on season 2 if I recoup my 3300 USD costs from season 1, and I’ll pay season 2 out of pocket again (hopefully to recoup at season’s end). This way, you are paying for something you have already experienced and know you enjoy, instead of something in the future you might not like, or in the most extreme case, not even get.
Basically, it all boils down to: If you enjoyed Roy Kaplan and you want to see (or hear) more, please show your support! Whether you show your support by reaching out and telling me what you liked, or you donate because you enjoyed the season, or you purchase one of the season end goodies above, your support is very much appreciated!
Reflections on Out of Sight
Out of Sight is a project I originally started in 2019. A lot of things have happened between February 2019 and June of 2025, both globally and in my personal life. This was envisioned as a simple project–back in the start, it was just three scripts that I was hoping to do a recording for while in a Discord call with some friends that maybe we would pop on SoundCloud or something. Back then, I never would have imagined the scope that Out of Sight has in its current form–a fully produced seven-hour long season with professional voice talent.
I think that’s a big part of the whole thing–that I didn’t know this would be such a large project. None of us did. This was both Luna and my first foray into scripted fiction podcast (and in my case, my first audio project ever) and I had absolutely no sense of scale because I don’t listen to podcasts. My only point of reference was old time radio shows produced by Actual NBC, which brought in actual Hollywood actors to read the script together and was made by a full team with an actual budget. I didn’t know that a ‘typical’ fiction podcast was more along the lines of ‘a guy talks into a tape recorder for ten minutes’ instead of a full-cast radio play with full length (>25 minutes) episodes. Somehow, it didn’t really register until we got into the thick of it that trying to accomplish the same thing as Actual NBC with three people (and later, just me) and a shoestring budget was what the kids would call a little ambitious.
And yeah, we were ambitious. Back in the early stages of all this, Luna and I had the idea that we’d like to have more than one season, and we’d use the first season to hopefully get established enough to make a crowdfunder for the second season and so on (we understood that it was not likely we would end up producing season 1 at a loss, which basically only impacted me and it was my vanity project anyways). I built the plot accordingly, so that we would have different arcs for each of four seasons total as well as an overarching story across the whole series. We had ideas of merchandise or other things that we could do to make up the funds so that future seasons would not be coming directly out of my pocket, and hope that the show would bring in perhaps not great popularity but at least some enthusiastic community members.
Obviously, a lot of this has fallen by the wayside since Luna dropped the project–I have no desire for things like merchandise or crowdfunders and I don’t have the time or energy to manage marketing or social media. The three future seasons of Roy Kaplan may yet exist, but the reaction to the show so far has mostly been silence, much less any popularity or sense that people are especially interested. That’s standard fare for an independent and original project regardless of quality (especially one with very little social media presence), but that doesn’t mean it’s not disheartening. I don’t know if the release would have been met with any better response had it been distributed through Luna’s studio (as we had planned at the start), but I don’t really expect it would have been that much better.
It’s been a lot of work from early 2022 until now. I’ve often cited a thousand hours of work as an estimate of how much time I’ve poured into this project, and I really don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Between writing, acting, editing, and producing, I very well may have spent over a thousand hours–all that, for a twelve-episode season that is just under seven hours.
It feels short. That’s an amount of audio that someone could listen to in a single day–twice, if they wanted to. Three years of work (certainly at least one full year of active work), blitzed through in a single evening. This isn’t unique to radio play, by any means–a novel probably has a similar time making to time consuming ratio, and things like film or animation would have much more. But it’s a lot of work, to the point I think it’s difficult for most people to even appreciate how much it is. I’m not saying this just to complain–it’s just true that making things is hard. After all, how many indie projects end up falling through? How many unfinished novels are sleeping on people’s hard drives? How many people have ideas they think will be the next big thing, if only someone could do the work–and never do the work?
I think it’s natural to want some kind of return for completing hard work. When you spend hundreds of hours on a story and you’re excited to share it, it’s not because you’re just happy to have finished the story–it’s because you want people to experience your story and enjoy it and think about it and critically, show you that they’ve done so. Sharing doesn’t work in only one direction, and it’s extremely exhausting to put something out there and get nothing back. Of course putting in work doesn’t entitle you to a response, and spending a lot of time on something doesn’t mean people will like it. But that doesn’t mean shouting into the void ever feels like a good time.
I don’t think there’s any issue with Out of Sight. I know it’s a good show. The writing is probably better than a vast majority of independent podcasts (by virtue of me having over a decade of writing experience) and the voice acting is probably better than a vast majority of independent podcasts also (by virtue of being paid talent). But it’s not a ‘sexy’ show. It has a constantly changing cast, so it’s difficult to get attached to any of the characters except Roy and Wes (and being a mystery series, the episodes aren’t even about them). It’s not overtly gay in any way that queer audio drama fans would go out of their way to search for. It’s clever but not especially snappy and doesn’t make for good soundbites. There’s no character art for people to get excited about. The main thing Out of Sight has is that it is a solid–very solid–and creative mystery of the week series. It has more than that, of course–intrigue about Roy’s past and his relationship with Wes, the impending threat of a mysterious rival psychic, a (hopefully interesting) post-apocalypse setting–but those aren’t marketing points. This just isn’t the kind of story that most people go crazy over. At the end of the day, it’s better to be lucky than good, and Out of Sight might be good but it’s not lucky.
That doesn’t matter so much. I didn’t really expect Roy Kaplan to become wildly popular. By its nature, the primary target audience is the intersection of people who really like 30s-50s hardboiled crime fiction, people who like urban fantasy, and people who listen to radio plays. That intersection is not so huge to begin with, and then you consider I have to actually find these people somehow even though I have no social media. Having a very small audience is pretty much expected. It’s not as if more listeners won’t appear over time, especially since the season is now finished and out there. I just hope that if people listen to the show and enjoy it, they’ll be a bit more vocal about it than they have been these past six months.
My goal, when Luna and I started this project, was to finish. I wanted to get all ten (later twelve) scripts written, get them produced, and be able to listen to them and have them be a product that I could say was good without having to add any disclaimers. It wasn’t just for sunk cost reasons–though 3300 USD is not a trivial amount–but because I thought it would be a good thing for Luna’s studio to have in their lineup, and because I wanted an original project of mine to go all the way to the finish line. Of course, things did not go so smoothly. Real life circumstances interfered, and a project which was originally slated to release in August of 2022 got pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. Luna dropped from production entirely, and our editor also disappeared, and it became clear that the only way I would be able to finish was if I picked up the remaining roles and took care of everything myself. So I did. And even if the work was more than I thought it would be, and even if I had to redo my editing two or three times, and even if it was often frustrating or tedious, I think I did as well as anyone could have done under the circumstances. Done is better than perfect, and Out of Sight, despite all of the mess that’s occurred, is done.
It’s not a great feeling, to finish a project like this on your own when you started out with a team. Not just because it’s a lot of work, and not just because so much of it was new for me. One of the big things was not having anyone to test listen to all of the episodes as I edited them and give in-depth feedback for each one, especially because, as previously noted, I have no background in audio editing and don’t listen to podcasts at all. There’s also definitely a sense of unfairness when you go into this kind of project with the expectation of just taking care of a few very specific parts (writing and acting and funding) but then the people who were supposed to take care of everything else dropped out, leaving me to pick up all the rest of the work. It’s not really fair to say it’s their fault this happened–life does happen, priorities are a thing, and making projects like this is way more time and effort than you can ever realize if you haven’t done it before. Sometimes ambition really does get you. But this is (and always was) a project solely funded by me, and I’d be lying if I said I was happy to pick up all the editing and production that I was never supposed to do, on a project that I’ve agreed to work on at a significant personal loss.
Maybe you’ll find my thoughts about all this a bit of a downer, but if I’m not going to be honest on my own blog, then what’s the point? The truth is, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the production of Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight and it wasn’t all a good experience, and the payoff thus far has not especially convinced me that it was worth it. I won’t say that I regret making Out of Sight. The time has passed but the work remains, and when all is said and done, I accomplished my goal. I have a finished original work and I’ve put my best effort into it and I’ve made it the best I could. Maybe one day, when I look back on this project, I won’t feel so annoyed about the process and I’ll just be able to appreciate the work done.
It’s not like it was all bad. I’ve met a lot of different people over the course of working on Roy Kaplan, and I’ve learned a lot of skills. Learning is never wasted. I went into this project with the intention of making short detective stories, and I accomplished that. I edited together episodes competently and people enjoy them. I’ve put together a project of this scope and took it to the finish line. Those are all achievements I can be proud of. And of course, I enjoy Roy Kaplan and its story and characters a lot. I’m glad to share Roy and Wes and everyone else with others.
It would be nice to make the second season, Greetings from the Other Side, but I can’t do it under the same circumstances as Out of Sight. I knew that Out of Sight might not get a continuation, which is why it stands solidly on its own (minus the sequel hook), and if Out of Sight is all that Roy Kaplan ever is, then I don’t think I would be upset. Which is good, because as it stands, the chances of reaching a point where Greetings from the Other Side can be produced look slim. For Roy Kaplan to continue, something has to change drastically (see: the entire first section of this blog post).
Regardless, the season is over now. No more posts, no more recording, no more editing. It (and all its supplementary material) is finished and out there and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Whatever happens with Roy Kaplan at this point is out of my hands, and I will go on to work on new things as I always have.
So what happens now?
Well. I’ve been focused on Roy Kaplan pretty much nonstop between May last year and now, along with pretty significant personal life changes, which means I haven’t had the time to work on other things I really need to work on. So: I’ll probably be pivoting to work on those (after taking a bit of a break. That script book has been kicking my ass for the past three weeks). Maybe this time, I’ll actually finish my novel? I really only need one more big push to get through to the end, and then edits…
If season 2 for Roy Kaplan doesn’t go through, probably my next audio project would be an audiobook (maybe full cast?) for The Crow’s Last Call which does, of course, require that I finish writing it first. I’m expecting the finished word count to clock in around the 90k-100k mark, so The Crow’s Last Call audiobook would be a fair bit longer than Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight, which is only 70k.
I still need to write a blog post about my game jam game this year, especially because I have a decent amount of animations to show off from that, so maybe that’ll get done in the next couple weeks.
In the meantime, summer is here and I want to spend it doing some fun things. Now that I’m not being held hostage by Roy Kaplan, I can go out and do those things :)