The Sonic Society

From the shadows of the jungle comes a mystery older than civilization itself! Temple of Vampires is a cooperative recreation of the classic adventure from Carlton E. Morse’s legendary radio series I Love a Mystery, newly produced for the Mutual Audio Network by Sonic Cinema Productions and The Amigos Collective. In this thrilling opening double-feature, Jack, Doc, and Reggie travel deep into South America in search of a mysterious stone temple rumored to hold an ancient terror—one whispered about in fearful tones by the locals: vampires. As danger closes in from the jungle and the secrets of the temple begin to emerge, our heroes must decide whether the legend is merely superstition… or something far more deadly.
The production stars Jeff Billard as Jack, Lothar Tuppan as Reggie, Jack Ward as Doc, and Angela Young as Sunny, with John Bell, Jan Didur, and introducing Austin Mosher as Hermie. David Ault is your Announcer, with Sharon Bee on the organ. Post-production by Michael Messner, with script updates and direction by Jack J. Ward.

Audio Auteur, writer, producer, actor. Lothar Tuppan is a founder of Mutual and Screaming Eye Press as well as The Ninth Tower Productions force! He makes his way into an interview with Canvas Rebel!

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lothar Tuppan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lothar below.

Lothar, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?

While I am a part of a number of artistic communities, one of the unique aspects of the audio drama community is that we are all mostly DIY and there is very little division between audience and creators. We all listen to audio drama and most listeners (especially around 2008-2015) also quickly found themselves taking a stab at acting, writing, mixing/producing or all of the above.

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As such, I had many opportunities given to me that I don’t think would have been granted in other creative industries. One producer gave me my first break as a voice actor. Another gave me beginning training on how to mix audio. Another gave me more advanced mentorship and a platform for my stories.

The community has grown far beyond the fairly “small pond” that it was back then and the “we all help each other” ethos isn’t quite as prevalent as it once was, but it is still a very supportive community.

I feel very blessed and fortunate to have fallen in love with the art form when I did.

Lothar, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Screaming Eye Press was started at the beginning of the pandemic in February of 2020. I had worked with author and audio drama producer Mark Slade on a number of audio dramas. I had acted in some episodes of his “Blood Noir” anthology of supernatural crime stories and he and I co-created the “Daniel Dread” series. We also worked together on the “Twisted Pulp Radio Hour” show that aired on terrestrial radio. He and Chauncey Haworth wanted to create a print magazine version of the show and our little magazine “Twisted Pulp Magazine” (which is now up to issue 45) gave birth to Screaming Eye Press.

Chauncey is our publisher and does the layout of our books and magazines, Mark is our creative director and “talent acquisition” (the guy knows sooo many different authors—established, fairly big names as well as newer, aspiring authors), and I do the bulk of the editorial jobs. We all contribute stories and material to our offerings as well.

We have also worked with BearManor Media to produce two collections of interviews with comics creators.

For our readers, we provide a type of “pulp” story that isn’t as prevalent today. We are as inspired by the old MAD Magazine, Crazy, and National Lampoon as we are Weird Tales, The Twilight Zone Magazine, or any other old “pulp” magazine. Music, especially old rock ‘n’ roll, punk, and other more off the wall types are present either as inspiration or music reviews.

What we provide for our authors is a light editorial hand and a platform for them to tell their stories the way they want them to be told.

Something that we’ve discovered over the last few years is that there is a lot of overlap between the readers who want to be authors and the authors who really love reading other authors. This reminds me so much of that early audio drama community I mentioned that we have plans to address art and craft in ways that, hopefully, will be different from the myriad “how to” videos and books out there. We’ll be reaching out to a lot of our authors to discuss their process, give advice, and also provide a venue for new writers to explore their artistic abilities.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Short answer: I’m 57 and, despite setbacks, ubiquitous day-jobs, disillusionments, etc. I’m still as passionate about my art as I always was. This translates into when, during lean times, we all have to work full-time jobs, we still kept the Press afloat. We didn’t need to pay our mortgages or rents with what the Press brought in and this allowed us to keep it going because it is something we love. If we had to work on our stuff after putting in a full-day’s work somewhere else then, how cool was that? To have something you love doing so much that it reinvigorated you after a day’s worth of drudgery instead of draining you more.

We know that Screaming Eye Press will never make us rich and that auxiliary revenue streams will always be something we have to have at the ready. But we’re doing what we love. We’ve gotten the chance to work with, interview, and become friends with some of the authors that we idolized when we were younger.

We went from the idea of publishing a retro-style print magazine that might only last a handful of issues to one that has 45 published print and electronic issues since that first issue in 2020, multiple print and ebook collections of interviews with creators, eleven print and ebook anthologies of short stories, multiple series of non-fiction essays, and a growing body of online content. All because we just kept doing what we love and what we are passionate about.

I think what makes it “easy” is that, ultimately, this is something we would do no matter what. The fact that there are others that join us in it makes it just that much cooler.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I mentioned briefly about how Mark, Chauncey, and I came together but something I’d like to share is that, sometimes, when people are guided and driven by complimentary (albeit sometimes seemingly different) goals, ethos, and ideals, something truly special happens.

I’ve been blessed in both my literary and audio worlds to find partners that are more than just business partners I can rely on and trust. I’ve also found dear friends who are almost as close as blood family.

I know this isn’t something that is necessarily common in the business world. I think the fact that my worlds are all in the creative and largely DIY worlds aids in the ways that can manifest. But when one can work with someone that they genuinely like to be around. When the work turns into play because these are people you truly enjoy working with, well, it’s truly priceless.

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