“You only have your fist, your wits, and your pager to help you”
– New Arcadia: Stage One
You have heard of him. Eric Jason Martin has narrated and directed over 300 audiobooks including Heads Will Roll starring Kate McKinnon. Now he will bring his narrating power along with a star-studded cast, with the debut of his original pop culture, arcade-inspired work.
In New Arcadia: Stage One, it is the year of 2023 and everyone is homebound with a virus (sounds awfully familiar…). Just as we have all down, the has been forced to self-quarantine and the escape from bored is through the virtual realms. We meet our middle-aged hero, John Chambers, who travels back to 199x as a fighter in the virtual beat ’em up world of New Arcadia. Expect tons of pop cultural references from the games and movies of the eighties, nineties. In this world, he teams up with other players to stop the deadly Drug X from taking over the city and to save the world.
The audiobook cast features a handful of nerd-tastic members:
- John DiMaggio (Futurama)
- Matthew Mercer (Critical Role)
- Sam Riegel (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
- Dave Fennoy (The Walking Dead)
- Erika Ishii (Cyberpunk 2077)
Interview has been transcribed below:
Toni Adams: This is Toni with Squeedar, producing this for the wonderful Fangirl Nation and I have Eric Jason Martin. And I gotta say with the two seconds that I’ve been speaking with you, you’re voice is awesome. Even from hearing from the audiobook, just from right now, it’s like, yeah, this man has done a lot of audiobook narration. Amazing! Over 200 works! I cannot believe that!
Eric Jason Martin: Yeah, coming up on 300 now. Thank you…it seems like I found the right gig to be in. But thank you, Toni, I’m thrilled to be here, thanks for having me here.
TA: Do you think anything special to take care of your voice, I am so curious?
EJM: Oh totally, yeah. I mean, not a ton but a lot. Take care of myself. Make sure to eat right. I do a warm up every day. You know, it takes a few minutes. Can’t start cold or else you sounding like aaaaasp starting out the day! You don’t want that!
TA: So no heavy metal singing at the night or whatnot?
EJM: I had to cut that down and that was hard…but it was a good trade off
TA: Oh my goodness. Where do I even begin with this audiobook?! This is actually my first introduction to you. I do confess I did see ads for “Heads Will Roll” [Audible original starring Kate McKinnon and Emily Lynne] now and then so when I saw your connection to that, now I really have to look into this. I was curious and I’m an honest sucker anything retro, 80’s kinda look. It must be a 90’s kid kinda thing? What do you think? We all seem to be obsessed with this 80’s aesthetic..
EJM: Oh absolutely, yeah. That was the culture, what was around us. It was cool! It was cool at the time, you know, a lot- some of it- does not hold up….some of it does!
TA: That’s so funny that you mention of it not holding up. I’ve actually been on a recent binge of revisiting some old works. I mean, they’re horrible but I still love them…Super Mario Brothers…Double Dragon… totally love them, they’re awful, but I love them.
So, could you give a briefing of what this New Arcadia Stage One is all about?
EJM: I’ve narrated many audio books and I’ve put together. Produced and or direct many multi-cast audiobooks. I wanted to write one.
New Arcadia Stage One is my debut novel but I approached it as a multi-cast audiobook. Which made it easier to deal with, since it was daunting to write a book. I know how to do audiobooks, let me bring together some great people and having them in my mind will help me tell the story.
I love the, and I work a lot, in what they call game-lit or RPG-lit. The the idea of Ready, Player One really pioneered this in a lot of ways. Dive into a virtual world that feels real, a lot of them are done in a world of high fantasy way, which I enjoy. But nobody has done one that really takes you back to the arcades. I grew up with a lot of arcade stuff in the eighties and nineties, specifically throw in some quarters in the what they call the “beat ’em genre,” so that was an influence.
It’s not just the fighting, it’s the city. The idea of being a in a city and being able to explore in an eighties/nineties world and you only have your fist, your wits, and your pager to help you.
TA: I love that line when I saw that. Oh, pagers…I remember those…can you talk to us more about this world of 199x?
EJM: There is a lot to unpack. I’ll start by saying that with Ernest Cline in Ready, Player One, I read that when it first came out, I was transported by that. I thought it was incredible and amazing. I love the concept and that it inspired, truly, this whole genre. I’m happy to take some inspiration from it.
I think what we do is every different…not terrifically different but it’s different enough that if you like this story (Ready, Player One), then you will like this one (New Arcadia, Stage One). It is unique in it’s own way.
Going back to 199x, that was just an incredible time to be alive. In specific to this game world, what I wanted to do was to create a space. I was thinking of the mechanics of having a virtual world where people would come together in this urban city space where there’s fighting. And of course, Cobra Kai has gotten people back on board on that in a big way. I’ve seen it and I love it!
I would say, once things shut down last year, and everyone pretty much staying at home, if we’re doing it right, then we start to think about the ways that we can come together. So a major impetus for writing this book was to try and figure out what to do when we can’t come together in person. And just expanding out and how we can come together as community.
TA: I’m assuming you had some done virtual reality?
EJM: I had! I had to buy a headset and do some research. It was a grueling process but I played some games and had a good time.
TA: What was your first virtual reality game?
EJM: Beatsaber was the one. That’s the one where you hit the beat and slash at some music, some blocks. Fascinated by it and the videos. Or that you are suddenly at the top of Notre Dame Cathedral. I love that!
Being cooped up as I am, any chance to get away, even if it is virtual, it’s most welcome.
TA: Do you ever wonder about what happens after exploring a virtual world and then coming back to reality and dealing with that steep disappointment of dealing with actual reality?
EJM: I kind of allude to that in the book. It is a bit of a hangover, a disorientation, to being so focused on one thing. You’re kind of using limited senses. So to put all of your focus on maintaining this space can wear out your mind. It’s kind of like being on Zoom calls all day. It’s wearing. It’s thrilling that we get to connect but it takes a toll.
TA: I love that you mentioned the hangover because that’s how we are introduced to the main character, John. Really happy to see that we are starting off with a forty year old hero, instead of in Ready, Player One the hero was a teenager. I think I can relate to John, I fee like a lot of people can relate to John. Was he based off of anybody? Or an amalgam of all the people you know?
EJM: I honestly wrote him in terms that I know I am going to be playing him in the audiobook. So, let’s make it as easy as possible! It’s not me, but certainly he behaves in certain ways that are consistent with the way I react. So I do put a lot of my personality into that character and into the performance of it.
I’ve also been told that there are a lot of kids are playing retro games and loving it. So a lot of them have discovered this book and they’re understanding what it was like back then.
TA: I am a huge World of Warcraft player. So the “World of Moby” cracked me up so hard. I don’t know if this is going to spoil anything but was it a foreshadowing or was it like “ha ha ha, this is what I think of Warcraft”?
EJM: Well, I like World of Warcraft very much –
TA: Oh good!
EJM: – I was scared of it for a long time, since I knew that it could take over my whole life if I let it. So I have a bit of a fear there.
In specifically to “World of Moby,” I specifically wanted to take something out of the public domain. You will see there are reasons that’s the case. They also call this in video games, what they call what happens at the beginning of the book, as “abilitease.” Meaning where you get a sense of the character at his full power, he’s grinding away and he’s almost at his goal. To get him there and to do all these cool stuff and then he comes back to square one. When the, not spoiling anything here, the free trial ends. And he’s got to figure out whart to do with the rest of his life.
TA: If you could, would you create a mock up of “World of Moby”?
EJM: Yeah! If I cold get pull together a dev team, I’m pretty sure we can capture a slice of the market. There would be a bunch of satisfied players. I think it would be a fun experience. I think the world would be well served with “World of Moby” served out into the world.
TA: You did mention your love of arcades but are there any other games that we can expect in New Arcadia: Stage One?
EJM: There’s pinball. I’m a big pinball player-
TA: I suck at pinball.
EJM: – oh I was terrible at it for the longest time. And then I realized that it was like any other thing, just keep practicing, eventually you’ll get better! So that was a big realization for me.
Truly, there are nods to a lot of other types. There are old school games but it’s a mix too. The world of New Arcadia has a lot of nineties trope but you quickly understand that it’s a persistent world and you have to figure out how to survive and live and basically make a living out of it. So there’s leveling, and other sorts of things that modern games have. There are also sly nods to cultural things from the nineties, different types of games from the arcade that I enjoy.
TA: Did the story get written down during lockdown or did the lockdown help boost up an old idea?
EJM: I was actually going to go away last March to start writing it. And then I got sick, some mystery viral illness that lasted for weeks and made me feel terrible. I tested negative for everything and have no idea what it was. Although I do have my suspicions. Then after that, it was over the summer that I started writing this. During that time, I couldn’t do much but I was thinking what if we use this [the lockdown] as the beginning for where the story could go. What the world is like, why someone would be interested in going into something a thing like New Arcadia.
Once I started writing, because I was working on a different version of a beat’em up world, we were developing a project a couple of years ago, so a lot of the ground rules for how you have this virtual world, we already worked out. So by the time it came down to Summer for me to sit and write, it came very quickly. We had a lot of baseline to work from.
I think I wrote it in the course of four months. Then the audio portion, my first email to finishing this up, was three months. It was an accelerated progress.
TA: Three months?! You’re a pro! That’s some amazing organization. Just to take two people to do anything is… [sighs]. This was an eighteen member cast? How many people are in this cast?
EJM: Nineteen, including me.
TA: Nineteen!
EJM: Two incredible musicians writing an original soundtrack. And our production crew as well.
TA: Is that the same soundtrack that I hear on Spotify(link: https://li.sten.to/NewArcadiaOST) ?
EJM: Yeah! Casey Trela has released the original soundtrack and then Lloyd Cole, who is one of my favorite musical artist. I knew him from the eighties, nineties and he continues to do work today. So he wrote this incredible theme song that we use in the trailers.
TA: Since this was produced during the wonderful lockdown that we are all familiar with, how did you maintain motivation just to keep working on it? When a lot of people are suffering from lack of creativity just from dealing with everything.
EJM: It’s a great question. It was hard at first. I was under the weather but I didn’t feel like doing anything for months. Except sitting there. Slowly, I was able to get back to work and start narrating again. Once I was getting my strengths back, I started thinking, what was I doing before this? And, really, most days, I was sitting in a little booth in my home, talking to myself in a microphone. How is the lockdown that much different from my normal day to day?! So I was basically able to pretty easily adapt to the structure in the current world that we live in. Because I was already a pioneer! Just sitting alone in a little box…
TA: Of course, it’s no easy feat to write your own work. The amount of everything that goes into it. Going from directing and producing other works, and now working on yours, were there any unexpected hurdles or surprises that you found?
EJM: There wasn’t, thank goodness. Because I had worked out so much of it. The real surprise was just the pride that I had. I had spent so much time with actors, just directing them with other peoples words, and now these were my words. And it was great! It was such a thrill to hear people speak these things and bring their talents to this work. Honestly, that was the biggest surprise. It was such a thrill…and they made it better!
The other thrilling part about it, normally for audiobooks, you gotta read the script as written. It’s a big no-no to change anything. In this case, I was the author, so…
TA: That’s a great segway into my question, was there a line or anything that the actors made that was way better than imagined?
EJM: Yes, there were several occasions. Probably my favorite, because I haven’t laughed this hard since we’ve all been in lockdown. I was tears down my face, and it was Dana Snyder, whom you may know as Master Shake on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Disney, and a bunch of great stuff. Basically, if he’s in character and he starts talking, I’m dying from laughing. I just love it.
He wound up improvising a fast food order as the character of a punk. If you can think of Star Trek IV – I realize it’s a deep cut- Star Trek IV, the voyage home, they’re in San Francisco and they’re on a bus and there’s this spiky-haired punk rocker with a boom box and flipping you off. So imagine Dana playing a character like that, ordering food, from a sniveling kid behind the counter at that burger joint…
TA: The image alone! Oh…is there a blooper reel??
EJM: We don’t have a blooper reel but we do have enough for some good outtakes, for sure…
TA: There are a lot of references already from the first two chapters. I get so excited since I recognize a lot of these references, so I’m probably showing my age there too.
When you were writing the story, did you already have these references to write or did the references come along as you writing the story?
EJM: That’s a great question. There were some that I wanted to hit. Some references that I knew that I had to, like I can’t get out of this without mentioning, you know, this pop culture thing that was near and dear to my childhood. A lot of them came from the story of the situation, it was kind of an organic thing.
The character was somebody that responded through pop culture in many ways so, depending on what he was going through, he had an analog and whatever was on HBO a million times at three in the afternoon in 199x. He could refer to that.
TA: I love the idea that you would have to invest in pop culture to survive in all of these virtual worlds. I love that the idea justifies the time I spend watching and reading all this stuff.
Are there any pop culture references provided, without spoiling, that you wanted to put it in because you wanted the youth to always remember this? No one should ever forget this?
EJM: Yeah, there is one that I won’t spoil. There is a certain song from the 1990’s that everybody, not everybody, most people mishear and have a very different conception of what they’re chanting. And so, our version, leans into misunderstanding and we create something that will instantly transport you back into the world that you think you remember.
TA: Have you ever revisited your older narrations?
EJM: Oh sure, I have. I’ll go back time to time. I listen now and I’m glad I learned a lot but even from the beginning, there were a few things that hit and did right and I feel like I knew what I was doing. Nowadays, I’m very happy with the way I sound and the way I perform. Although, who knows, five years from now, I may look back on this and think I’m so much better now. And that’s the great thing about storytelling, your skills as a storyteller will continue to evolve but that core, that thing that is unique to you, will always hopefully come through if you do it right.
TA: Storytelling is an art in itself. Did you have any inspiration for your skills?
EJM: There are certain things, like books, that I really wanted to narrate that got me into it. To actually be able to do that over time like I narrated the first Kurt Vonnegut story. It was a lost Kurt Vonnegut story, his first new work in twenty years. And I got to narrate that, that was a thrill because I love Kurt Vonnegut.
David Foster Wallace is another one of my favorites and I got to narrate one his pieces. Just his love of language. So those things that I read for inspiration, often I find myself performing them so that’s part of the thrill to this work. You know, you get to talk books.
TA: What are your current reads or listens?
EJM: I’m listening to a podcast called Dead Eyes which is a guy who got fired from a Tom Hanks movie twenty years ago, as Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”-
TA: Oh no! I thought it was a crime podcast!
EJM:– no! He treats it like a true crime podcast! He really gets into dissecting. It’s just funny and fascinating and has really sweet, poignant things to say about show business and just all of us. It’s such a great show.
TA: I would be devastated if someone said I had “dead eyes”!
EJM: If Tom Hanks told you that, America’s sweetheart, it would be crushing!
TA: Last question, from the world of New Arcadia, what would be some words you would leave for readers/listeners curious about your book?
EJM: I would say, if you grew up in the 1990s, and even if you didn’t, you’re gonna want to know what happens here, because you’re gonna want to remember, and experience it. You’re going to want to go back to that shining city on the hill.
**********************************
New Arcadia: Stage One is available now on Amazon and Audible. It has debuted #2 in the Humorous Science Fiction category on Amazon’s Bestseller list, #1 on the Hot New Releases, and in the Top 250 for all audiobooks on Audible.
For more info, check out Eric Jason Martin’s website: https://www.ericjasonmartin.com/
