Welcome back to Pro-deux-er(s) of the Months! We’re highlighting the creators of Windfall and Forgive Me!: siblings Bob and Adam Raymonda. Windfall is the story of Cas and Kendall, two low-level criminal enforcers navigating life on the surface of a giant city. Forgive Me! is a comedy about the sometimes funny, sometimes awkward, and often confusing adventures of Father Ben and his rather unusual congregation. Both shows exist under the family business: Rogue Dialogue productions (it is advised that you read all of the answers below as if they’re both speaking in unison. It’s not far off from reality).
When did you join Fable and Folly?
Bob: We officially became a part of the network in September 2021 but started conversations with Sean about 6 months before that. He gave us some extremely helpful growth marketing sessions that helped us substantially grow the audience of both of our shows, especially for Forgive Me! which was really struggling to get out there after the end of our first season.
What part of making your show gets you the most excited?
My answer to this question depends entirely upon what part of the process we are in production. One of my favorite things in the world is breaking the story of a season, just chatting with Jack, or Jess, or Christie about what our shows could look like in the future. That vast expanse of possibility of what an episode could look like stretches out before us before there’s even a blank page to stare at. It’s just so exciting to get to talk through what could happen before we even have to figure out how we get from point A to point B. But then later on, still, finalizing new cast members and having their audio trickle in. Assembling takes to have the episodes take shape, even in their barest form. And then reviewing each finished product before it goes live.
Of course, there is a lot of crap to wade through during a production that tarnishes that shine a little bit. Transcribing, writing show notes, making videos for social media, the tedious/less artful stuff… But overall, I am just so in awe of all of the parts involved in working in such a lush, collaborative medium among some of my favorite artists I’ve ever met. I genuinely feel lucky to get to do what we do.
What is your favorite thing about audio fiction as a medium?
Our ability as creators to tell both expansive and intimate stories in equal measure, alongside each other, sometimes in the same show (and, in fact, the same episode!). While we’re always struggling against our indie budget constraints, I’ve witnessed shows take giant swings to redefine what the medium as a whole can look like. Whether that’s a full-cast musical (ala 36 Questions & The Bright Sessions), an interdimensional pirate ship partially crewed by a sentient teddy bear (Archive 81), a bone-chilling pilot episode surrounding a suicide vest (Boom: an Audio Drama), or getting to make a Law & Order spoof in the most recent season of Forgive Me!, we utilize our lack of visuals in order to make the wildest stories for our audiences imaginable. For every Limetown, Welcome to Night Vale, and The Magnus Archives clone that pops up, there are twenty more shows that challenge what it means to make audio fiction.
What’s a big, pipe-dream goal you have for your show?
I’ve always dreamed of seeing the world of Windfall in another medium. I’m not kidding myself that we’d ever get the massive budget we’d need to tell this kind of story on television, but writing either a novel or comic book set in the same world of our Queen’s floating castle in the sky would be a dream come true. As for Forgive Me!? I keep making cracks on Twitter on making a crossover with every podcast out there, and while I know at my core that’s an impossibility, my goal is to produce as many as possible before our show officially ends. Not just because I think they’re fun pieces of bonus content, but because we never would have been able to grow to the heights we were able to without our The Amelia Project crossover, and I would really like to pay that kind of attention we received from releasing it forward to other shows and creators that I love.
What do you hope listeners take away from your show?
While both Windfall and Forgive Me! exist in wildly different worlds, I think much of our messaging remains the same: that, no matter how messed up life can be, there is hope to be gained from the found families and communities that we’re a part of. It may feel impossible to change the biggest, most disheartening, and scariest parts of society at large, but doing good things for one another on a macro level can ripple out beyond that. And being there for, loving, and trying our level best to understand the people around us, is often the best thing we can do to make a better future.
In your opinion, what’s the most important part of a good in-universe ad?
I’ve always found it most important to find characters that the products in question make sense for. In our case, that’s often Father Ben or Father Klem, but leaning into a personal bent and using their character quirks to make it feel relevant to the wider show we’re making, while also using our own standard sense of humor, makes it feel seamless alongside the rest of our production as a whole.
