Long ago, in the city of New Orleans, Fred Greenhalgh dreamed of having his own production company to produce his stories as well as those of offbeat and talented writers. He’d always thought of himself as a writer, and had a stack of short stories to support this assumption, but wanted something more than just the written page to work with. At the time, he imagined it was film, though he never really liked how expensive and time-consuming film was. It took a return to his home state of Maine, bereavement following a natural disaster, and a chance project with a friend to steer him to the art form that entrances him now: audio fiction.
Following the completion of Day of the Dead, Fred began adapting more of his stories for audio and learning as much as he could about the artistic and technical aspects of the craft. He submitted a grant for starter funding to the Libra Foundation Futures Fund, and while he didn’t get the cash, he did come up with a plan, which he set out to accomplish with a working budget of zilch.
In the months since then, FinalRune Productions has seen an active production schedule with new stories every 2-3 months. Fred’s auteur presence has diminished as he’s found talented and generous musicians, voice talent, and writers to contribute to the stories. Distribution has grown steadily, and while we’re still not turning a profit, we’ve gained a foothold and a lot of decent press.
Fred’s long-term vision with FinalRune is to develop a killer enough product that small to medium sized press companies will choose to have short story collections or short novels adapted into the audio form. Fred hopes to jumpstart this process by picking stories from his favorite magazines and approaching the publishers about adaptations, as well as producing longer-form serials. His first will be Amerigeddon, an absurd comedy about the devil and Jesus on a bungled apocalyptic road-trip of the United States, followed by The Cleansed, an epic post-apocalyptic story of three friends in search of a hero in a world more ambiguous than they imagine.