It’s spooky season and you’re a Mass Movement fan. Chances are, you’re up for a new audio horror story in a podcast form. 

Chances are even higher you’re up for a new audio horror story in a podcast form written by two Big Finish creatives and stuffed to the gills with top acting talent and some new voices.

Welcome…to The Holmwood Foundation. 

What the living hell is The Holmwood Foundation? Apart from being a new audio story yadda yadda yadda…?

We caught up with its writers, Fio Trethewey and Georgia Cook, and asked them exactly that.

MM: What’s the hook that made you think “This is a story that’s got to be written, and we’ve got to write it?”

FT/GC: This is a found footage horror podcast, designed as a modern-day sequel to the Dracula novel. 

MM: Modern-day Dracula sequel? OK, interesting. How do you bring something new to the trope of the Count?

FT/GC: Our protagonists are haunted by Jonathan and Mina Harker, who can, at random, possess their bodies while they are being chased across the Yorkshire Moors, while carrying Dracula’s severed head. 

MM: OK, granted, that’s a whole new…angle.

FT/GC: It’s ultimately a story about identity, family loyalty and self-discovery, themes that are very dear to us as people in the queer community.

We really wanted to write a version of Dracula that was truer to the spirit of the original book. Too many adaptations centre Dracula himself as a love interest and “misunderstood” hero. We wanted to bring him back to his monstrous roots and make him a proper eldritch horror in our tale. Our protagonists are the Crew of Light from the original novel, exploring their love for one another, and how their story affected generations of people to the present day. 

MM: What makes The Holmwood Foundation unique in a genre saturated with vampires? We mean apart from the possessions, the Harkers, the head of Dracula and the Yorkshire Moors…obviously.

FT/GC: It’s horror, it’s found footage in a way we don’t often see in the genre, and it’s very, very Queer. 

MM: Ah! Fun. In fairness, those are all things that make most Mass Movement readers sit up and take notice. We can’t help but notice that the project is also quite the Big Finish alumnifest. You also did a handful of open casting calls for the project. How crucial were those casting calls for getting just the right voices?

FT/GC: It wasn’t at all planned as a Big Finish-fest. Our first point of call was Sean Carlsen, as we had both already worked with him on the Gallifrey series for Big Finish, and knew he would be perfect for the role of Jeremy – and luckily, he said yes!

MM: In fairness, there should probably be a Twitter hashtag – #EverybodyLovesSean.

FT/GC: We really wanted to find a trans woman to play our lead, Maddie, and as Rebecca Root had also worked for Big Finish before, we knew someone who said they could pass on a script for us. Little did we know that she would be interested in the project! They’re both such amazing actors, willing to accommodate the full strangeness of our plot, and we really hit the jackpot with both of them.

MM: We haven’t heard Holmwood yet, but in fairness, that does sound like a double rollover casting win.

FT/GC: As for the rest of the gang, wrangling people is always the hardest part of producing, but that was why it was easier with people that we knew, particularly for our first big project.

It also made sense to us to reach out to people who also love horror spaces. Sam Clemens, our director, has very recently made his first horror film, The Waterhouse, our sound designer Benji’s always expressed a love of things gothic horror, and our script editor Kat had written a Dracula play a few years back. Really, it made the most sense to ask these people to be on board!

As for our open casting calls – it was both a blessing and a curse! Casting is so hard, because you hate having to turn people down, but it’s absolutely amazing to be able to hear such a wealth of voices for the part, very often better than what you were picturing in your head. We had so many wonderful people apply, we wanted to cast everyone. Voice actors are the unsung heroes of the world. 

MM: All hail the voice actors! You’ve said the open castings were tough. What’s been the hardest bit of the process so far, and how have you/are you planning to overcome it?

FT/GC: Neither of us has never produced anything like this before. We both came at this as newbies to production, but with thankfully some great producers and writers in the independent podcast community who were able to give us advice and guidance. A massive thank you to David K Barnes, Robert Taylor, Tal Minear and Roland Moore for their help!

MM: You’ve collaborated on Big Finish box sets together before. Is Holmwood the first time you’ve collaborated on a single story?

FT/GC: We’re afraid we can’t answer this question or we’d have to kill you. (Sorry, hopefully you’ll hear more soon!) 

MM: Bwahahahahaha… potential, if entirely unconfirmed, exclusives. We love ’em!
What can people expect from Holmwood that, for instance, they won’t have heard before, even from the likes of Big Finish? 

Holmwood is designed to be found footage, which means it doesn’t sound like a traditional audio drama. There’s no diegetic music apart from our initial theme. Every scene exists only if there is a way for it to be recorded and played back, whether that’s a voice message, a radio report, or a news broadcast, which will already make it stand out. 

Most of the central scenes are being picked up by an analogue recorder, which is the central conceit of the narrative. Benji, our incredible sound designer, has had to find wonderfully creative ways to build parts of the story just through sound. 

MM: Ahh, the quiet genius of Benji Clifford. Splendid fellow…all of him.

FT/GC: Something that BF listeners might not also be used to is that we have content warnings at the beginning of our podcast, as is standard in the independent podcasting community. Transcripts will also be available for those whose English is not their first language, want to read along, or struggle with hearing. 

MM: Speaking as a half-deaf audiophile, that could well prove to be extraordinarily useful. So why this project? And why now?

FT/GC: Dracula is in vogue. 

MM: Blink. Blink, blink.

FT/GC: No, really. While we have been talking about this project in some capacity since 2020, there has been a substantial rise in Dracula content over recent years. Not only was Dracula 2020 released just four years ago by Moffat and Gatiss, but 2021 saw the start of Dracula Daily; essentially a newsletter released on each date detailed in the original novel, containing the correspondent segment or diary entry.

It was a wonderful bitesize way to introduce the novel to new readers, and means that every year since we have had the world’s biggest Dracula book club. This idea was then transformed into a wonderful audio series by Tal Minear, Ella Watts, Pacific Obidiah and Hannah Wright, which was released last year. 

There was also the release of The Last Voyage of the Demeter last year, as well as Robert Eggers’ foray into Nosferatu due out in January. 

With Dracula being in the public domain, this truly is the best time to be creative with the source material, and we hope to do something different, something creative and something very dear to our hearts, exploring both the horror and the LGBTQ+ narratives of the original novel. 

MM: So…What do you need to happen next? What’s your goal, how do people help you meet it, what’s the plan for getting Holmwood out there and into people’s lugholes?

FT/GC: Our Kickstarter launches today, along with our full 40 minute pilot! If people like what they hear, they can donate to receive the full 7-episode Season One later in 2025.

To get this made we need to reach our Kickstarter goal, which is £23,000. There are no other caveats to this. No ifs or buts. If we don’t reach the goal, we can’t afford to continue the project and pay the cast and crew. So we need to get it thrown at as many people as possible. 

We’re planning to do a listening party on the Thursday after release day, over on Twitch, and various Q&A sessions – and, if we can, find a way to watch and discuss Dracula content together over on Twitch too!

We plan to announce the full cast for Season One very soon (if we’re successful) and we might get some of our cast and crew to play games, do Q&As and join us in sharing their thoughts and feelings about the project. 

MM: Silently pencils in interview requests for leading cast and crew.

Horror fans, Dracula devotees, supporters of Queer storytelling and Queer storytellers, you know the things to do. Check out the fangtastic Episode 1 (We’re so, so sorry – it was practically mandatory), and then go support some superb creatives to get your lugholes round the full Season 1. Tony Fyler 

If you like what we do and want to help us keep the lights on and the podcasting mics warm, we’d appreciate it if you bought us a cup of coffee

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