ICYMI: The Beneath the Rain Shadow podcast

This post is for new followers to this blog, in the event you are unaware that I’m one half of a co-hosted podcast on a Pacific Northwest horror writers’ show, Beneath the Rain Shadow. My partner is the horror writer and podcaster Clay Vermulm.

A brief history of BTRS: We launched it with an intro in very early 2024, then had 12 episodes (once monthly) throughout the year, ending with a final “postmortem” to review this first season.

Each episode is guided by writing prompts assigned by one or the other of us (we take turns). These prompts are always in three categories:

1. A Pacific Northwest location (we focused on Washington by default, but that doesn’t mean we won’t venture beyond the Evergreen State in future seasons)
2. A horror trope
3. A Pacific Northwest “quirk” (some bit of cultural identity that resonates in this “neck of the woods”)

(See table at bottom for a full breakdown of prompts and episodes)

Whoever receives the prompt spends the next few weeks writing a story to meet the needs of the prompts. Then, we meet at the next episode to do a live recap of the experience of writing to those prompts (what worked, things that tripped us up, rabbit holes). Afterward, in the same episode, whoever didn’t write that month offers a live critique of the story itself (sometimes a bit of a deep dive!).

The goals for this podcast are several, but I think we hit our targets. We aimed to:

• feature the wonderfully atmospheric and gothic landscape that is the Pacific Northwest. Ours is a vibe like no other.
• challenge each other to write new stories that mine horror themes in a way to show the breadth of the genre.
• reveal to curious readers and writers what it looks like to have one’s work critiqued by another writer, to show how the story generation and drafting process works.
• collect these stories into a book to share with the world.

We are currently working on the final revisions for these stories, to be unified by the title Rain Shadows, and the book comes out this summer.

Readers and listeners should find the exercise interesting if they’ve followed along because some of these stories have taken big turns and twists, losing some deadwood while gaining some new tendrils.

There is a feeling of connected vision and a sense of distinct but complementary voices that weaves through these stories (both mine and Clay’s) that I’m truly thrilled by.

So if you haven’t listened yet, you might want to go over to the BTRS home at Clay’s Substack and pick up where we started and ended.

Trust me, you won’t spoil any future reading of Rain Shadows by doing so; in fact, by listening to these early efforts, you might find the final collection even more fascinating!

Season 2 begins in 2026 and we may have some format changes, so stay tuned!

Use scrollbar at bottom to read horizontally