Olivia White Tag

If you haven’t heard about The Blackout going on at r/nosleep right now, then here’s a brief rundown. The sub has shut down until March 2nd. Why? Well in their own words:

The Writer’s Blackout is a movement designed to help authors receive fair compensation from YouTube narrators via direct mediation and/or advice from experienced writers. In addition, this movement strives to provide writers with personal advice on individual negotiations, working out fee options such as revenue percentages, view to dollar ratios or royalty rights. In short, we must stress that the core imperative of the movement is to strictly enforce that writers receive fair pay for their work.

- r/TheWritersBlackout

A lot of community members are involved, and the movement is run by autor TJ Lea and head r/nosleep mod Christine Druga. It’s about getting writers fair pay and treatment. And of course, this is something that we at The NoSleep Podcast hugely support and champion, and we fully back this movement. 

Part of my role on the show is to cultivate relationships with authors, give them advice, opportunities, help foster their careers beyond ‘appearing on the podcast’. I wish I had 100x more hours in my day to be able to do this as much as I’d like to, but alas. The point is, as a NoSleep Podcast employee who came in originally as a freelance author, I know what it’s like for horror authors in our community, and how often we’re made to feel like our content is worth nothing, despite it being the lifeblood of the horror narration and podcasting community. So I try and do what I can to help authors contribute to sustainable careers and personal brands. I’m sure I could do more, and this year I’ve reshuffled my responsibilities to be able to spend even more time on doing that. 

Anyway! I’ve been involved in The Blackout in a small way, working with TJ discussing and planning things, as well as occasionally being a media liaison for the movement. It’s been extremely heartwarming to see how well The NoSleep Podcast is regarded by the community; in fact our rates, processes etc have been used as some benchmarks in what the movement is asking for. I couldn’t be more proud to see the positive effect the podcast has contributed to the mobilizing of this movement. I’m still a relative newcomer to the NSP family, but I’m so incredibly proud of this brand that David’s built up from a tiny grassroots indie podcast into what it is now, and the authors who’ve grown and developed alongside us.

But enough of this preamble! Recently myself, TJ and Chrissi spoke to journalist Gita Jackson over at Vice about The Blackout, and you can read her excellent article here. Due to the nature of the article, the full interviews aren’t present, so with Gita’s permission, TJ and I are publishing our full interview answers here as a companion piece to the Vice article. Just in case anyone fancies reading them, y’know? I only answered three of the five questions as the other two didn’t apply to me. 

bannercopy Hi there, Olivia here. If you've been following the podcast, you'll know that in Episode 18 we released the first of a three-part whodunnit series, Curse of the Gilded Echo. If you haven't listened yet then stop reading immediately! Don't read this until you've heard it. Spoilers within. With that out the way; I managed to break into the Clearwater police station and acquire these notes from the desk of Detective Rob Chambers, the lead investigator in the Amber Rapids murders. I'm sharing them with you here in case they'll help you piece together the identity of the killer quicker than Chambers has managed! Tweet your theories using the hashtag #gildedecho and whoever guesses the killer will win a sense of pride and accomplishment.
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Hot potatoes, Sleepless! It's me again, Olivia. Boy, do I have some tales to tell you from Transylvania. I'm currently hiding out in a cave half-way up a mountain while strange creatures bay for mine and Danny's blood. It's all very exciting! But, I'm going to save that story for another blog post. Hopefully I'll survive to be able to tell you about it!

Moving on, by now you know who the mysterious guest host is. That's right, while David and co are on tour, the podcast is being hosted by Vlad the Impaler! Wait, I'm being informed by my legal team that it's actually notable voice actor Peter Lewis. Okay, that makes more sense. I did wonder how a centuries-dead tyrant was hosting the show. I guess a centuries-living tyrant is more logical.

Anyway, Peter's doing a grand old job, and I hope y'all are enjoying his wraparound scripts! We have a special surprise for you in episode 15 too, so be sure to tune in for that. Episode 14 is just about wrapped up and will be hitting you in your horror-spots this weekend as normal. But what of the others, you ask? What of the tireless tour team? Well read on, Sleepless, and I'll tell you all about it.

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Good afternoon Sleepless! Welcome back to the new, twice-weekly-scheduled 2018 return of the NoSleep Blogcast. Going forward, we’ll be publishing two blog entries per week, on Tuesdays and Fridays (circumstances allowing) so be sure to check back on those days for the hottest NoSleep Podcast content direct into your eyeballs.

It’s an exciting, if bittersweet, time at the NSP HQ right now. Our intrepid tourers; David C, David A, Erika, Nichole, Jessica and Brandon are packing up their things, ready to leave us. The first tour date is on February 20th at the Aladdin Theater in Portland, so they gotta get ready, get their practising on, rehearse the scripts, and fine tune their scariest voices to give you NO SLEEP. So we’ll be bidding them farewell on this weekend’s show.

But who’s hosting in David’s stead, you ask? Well. I can’t divulge that yet, but let’s just say it’s someone who’s sure to give you many a sleepless night. I’m personally very excited to begin working with this person to produce a handful of home shows you’re never gonna forget. It’s up to us to keep things running smoothly while David and co are on tour, and aside from the occasional fire, flood and kaiju attack, I reckon we’re gonna do okay! My trusty butler Theobold has my back too, so I can’t see anything going wrong.

Greetings, Sleepless. Olivia here, back from the dead like a zombie with unfinished business.

As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago the NoSleep Podcast team performed a fantastic sold-out show in Toronto! I couldn't attend because I was off taking part in dark and sinister rituals for unspeakable reasons, but we sent along our intrepid reporter, aka Community Manager Krista Neubert. During her time with the cast and crew, she wrote this blog to give us an insight into the horrific goings on behind the scenes of our beloved podcast! And she took photos. Lots of photos. Photos I captioned which I'm sharing with you now in case a mysterious agency tries to erase me from existence. It happens more often than you'd think.

So without further ado, here we are with the first of Krista's guest blogs, which I have puntastically titled... Community Mismanagement.

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Greetings and salivations, Sleepless. It is I, Olivia White, host of The NoSleep Podcast, back with another dose of terrifying, nail-biting horror.  On this week's episode we have six skin-crawling tales about bigamist Bigfoots, twerking Thunderbirds, cuckolded Chupacabras and meme-loving Mongolian Death Worms. In our first tale, entitled What I Saw On Top Of My Mom's Wardrobe Will Haunt Me To This Day, author Chainsaw Dave takes us on a journey of...

Wait, sorry, no, my bad. That story got rejected. I'm being told it was only 300 words long, 248 of which were just the word 'really', and the ending twist was that the story was just a dream.

Now, you may be wondering two things here, Sleepless. One, 'why is Olivia pretending to be David?'. Well, the answer to that is simple. I'm getting practise in before I have him 'disappeared' and stage my coup to take over the show as host. The second thing you may be asking is 'how does The NoSleep Podcast select such quality stories, instead of the kind of rubbish outlined above?'. The answer to that is more complex, but in short: Gabrielle Loux.

For those who don't know, Gabrielle is The NoSleep Podcast's extremely talented story editor who, along with some story curator I've never heard of, works tirelessly to select the best of the best of horror fiction to be produced on the show. Gabrielle is one of our less public-facing team members, but she has one of the most important jobs on the show, and so what better to give you an insight into her fantastic work than... A NOSLEEP BLOGCAST INTERVIEW?

So read on, kiddies, as transcribed from an exclusive found footage recording, we have a glimpse into the mind of... GABRIELLE LOUX, STORY EDITOR EXTRAORDINAIRE.

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Greetings, Sleepless.

We’re five days into October now. Already across the community I’m seeing a vast amount of Halloween preparations. Movies are being selected, costumes are being designed, virgins are being sacrificed to dark ancient gods, candy is being bought. It chills my already frozen heart to see so many of you getting into the spirit of dread and panic.

Over at The NoSleep Podcast HQ, they’re obviously preparing for the live Halloween show, and the special Halloween episodes, but more immediately they’re gearing up for the release of Episode 22 this coming Saturday/Sunday. I broke into David’s office in the dead of night to see if I could steal some exclusive, never-before-seen information about the upcoming episode.

I managed to discover the following: It has some stories in it. They are horror stories. They are performed by some narrators.

Nobody tell David I’ve leaked this information. I’ve heard the punishment for giving away NoSleep Podcast secrets is severe. But then, he’d have to identify and catch me first.

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Hello, sleepless ones, and happy October.

That’s right, the month of Halloween is upon us, and that can only mean one thing. Horror! So, business as usual at The NoSleep Podcast HQ then… or is it? Answer: No, no it isn’t.

Firstly, you may notice that you’re reading this message on the NoSleep Podcast blog. Y’know, that blog which hasn’t been updated since Season 5, when David made a post detailing the fact he was taking a week off. It’s the only post on the blog until now in fact, and yes, that does mean David’s never taken a week off since then. He hasn’t even taken an hour off since then in fact. He’s a shambling, hollowed-out husk of a man, working his fingers (literally) to the bone to bring you the premium in horror content.

So, yes, exciting news, the blog’s going to be getting some use again, and what better time to kick that off than in the run-up to Halloween.