The Month Ahead for April 2024

A regular accounting of The Three Fifty-seven published on the first Monday of each month.

This is The Month Ahead for April 2024

Hello, All,

February’s recording experiments yielded a simplified and reversed process for editing audio. It also produced cleaner audio.

However, rather than shortening editing times, the new approach has encouraged longer recordings. Rest assured this is still short form audio fiction. But, for a channel that started with average run times of less than four minutes, we are comfortably exceeding five and six minutes per episode. This could come in handy in future shows.

Another outcome of fine-tuning is that writing is a couple of weeks ahead of audio. Is there any impact? I don’t know. Perhaps not. One more note: the intended recordings of Shakespeare’s love sonnets did not happen. Put those into the future projects column.

However, episodes five through eight of SEVENTEEN were published in March. Taglined “He’s dying to forget. She lives to remember.” these were the conclusion of Severin Vincent Tennyson’s story which started in March of 2023. Nicknamed Tenny, he is a sixty-four-year-old, non-verbal, cane-using janitor at Gunderson High School in central New Jersey. Seeing now-Superintendent Millicent di Stefano for the first time since high school forty years ago triggered a flood of memories that threatened his life.

For April, The Three Fifty-seven is pleased to announce THE GHOSTLY GROOM. It is inspired by, and interpreted from, Washington Irving’s THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM published in 1819.

With the tagline “His altar was the grave.”, we show a healthy respect for the original text while gently updating it. The story’s lead, Lenore Katzenellen, is the 45-year-old founder and president of a financial analysis firm in Odenwald, New Jersey. She is engaged to Geoffrey Ochre who lives forty-five minutes upstate in Wurtzburg.

A bad automobile accident puts Geoffrey in a hospital where he announces he is dead. Lenore sets off the solve the mystery. But what truth does she find? THE GHOSTY GROOM’s five episodes will answer the question.

One more detail about April: Ingmar Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) continues to inspire. Fans of the movie will recall Max von Sydow playing a game of chess with Death (played by Bengt Ekerot).

Fast forward to 2024. Death is a subsidiary of The Four Horsemen, Incorporated collecting tortured and tormented souls. What would that story be and how would it unfold? In five minutes! As a comedy!

Until then, look for the first audio and written episode of THE GHOSTLY GROOM. We hope Mr. Irving approves. And, no matter what happens, please know The Three Fifty-seven remains committed to its core belief that “Stories are Everywhere”.

Sincerely,

William E. Spear, Jr.