I asked Patrons of the Kakos Industries Patreon (KakosIndustries.com/Pareon) to ask me anything. Also, please consider pledging if you are able to.

Hello, Kakos Industries shareholders. It’s Conrad again. This is not a cover story. It’s an AMA. I asked Patreon Patrons to Ask Me Anything, and we’re about to do that. Why did I do this? Because it’s an excuse to mention the Patreon. Head to KakosIndustries.com/Patreon to contribute to this project and I will be forever thankful. I know that money is tight for everyone right now, but it really helps me out a great deal and makes this project possible. The monthly total has fallen a bit recently. I have not been pushing things because I know that the pandemic was hard on everyone, but I am asking again. Please let me know what you want from me. It is because of all of you that I do this thing. I am at your disposal.

Question 1: Where do you see Kakos and future projects taking you, do you feel burned out on Kakos? Or have you rediscovered your passion for it?

I thought a lot about how I wanted to answer this question and I think that I keep getting caught up on my thoughts about Audio Drama and the media industry at large, but I get further caught up on not really feeling like I’m fully qualified to comment on those things. You can let me know if you really want to hear those thoughts. 

I’ll try to keep my answers short.

I want to start by saying that I am incredibly lucky and thankful to have you listening to this thing that I do, or watching it on Youtube now that I’ve started doing video. Not everyone who comes up with a funny idea for a story ends up with an audience for that story and I am extremely fortunate for that. 

I was curious, so I looked into it, and as of right now, Kakos Industries is about three days long. 72 hours. That’s longer than Gilligan’s Island by about 24 hours. I don’t have an exact word count for Kakos Industries but it’s probably in the 600,000 words range. That’s almost three times the length of Moby Dick. That’s longer than the complete works of HP Lovecraft. Obviously these things can’t be directly compared, but I thought it was interesting all the same.

I think sometimes about the length of Kakos, and how it’s been going for almost a decade and I wonder all kinds of things about it. How long should it be? How long should it run for?  But I think the truth of the matter is that there are no rules for a story like this. It is a new media product that exists because of the Internet. There isn’t much in its category to compare it to, either. It can go for as long as I want it to, and it can go for as long as all of you are willing to tolerate my foolishness. So the reality is that I don’t know where it’s going to take me.

It is far more difficult to get an audience doing audio drama stuff now than it was in 2014 when I started. It is likely to remain difficult, though I do know some incredibly smart people who are working on ways to change that. I’ll name drop one. Evo Terra’s TheEnd.FYI is a great list of completed audio drama podcasts. The irony is that he can never feature Kakos Industries because it is ongoing. It’s really really hard to get your audience to check out your second or third projects in this medium with the same excitement that they have for your first project. For that reason it is very difficult for me to invest a lot of myself in new audio drama projects. I think going forward, at least for the time being, my focus will have to be on Kakos Industries and writing for other formats, though I do have one more audio drama project I’m working on that’s going to be pretty rad I think. 

As for burnout, dog, I’ve been burnt out since I was like four. I am trying to take better care of myself, though. The support of Patreon Patrons such as yourself makes that a lot easier. 

Question 2: Who is your favorite character in Kakos Industries? And a non Kakos question if I am allowed two: Favorite song?

Superlatives are always difficult, but I’m a big fan of anything Anwar Newton does. You also have to love Soundman and Violet.

As for favorite song, that’s a really difficult one. I’m going to go with The End of the Tour by They Might Be Giants. That can’t possibly be correct, but I said it. 

Question 3: How has the character of Crorin Death III grown with you over time?

Well, the convenient thing about making a character exactly your age who starts doing a new thing and is a little bit awkward at it to start with is that the character evolves exactly as it should. I know that I’ve gotten a lot more confident in my portrayal of the character alongside Corin’s growing confidence in his role as CEO and probably at about the same pace. It took me some time to find the character, but I really enjoy playing him now.

Question 4: How big is it?

It is so unimaginably large. You cannot fathom the sheer gravity of IT. IT is everywhere always and in everything. You cannot escape it. It is so heavy that it weighs down everything. It slows everything down. Even the knowledge of it takes a toll on you for the rest of your life.

I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

Question 5: How many yous do you think you would need to get all the things you want to get done done.

This is a trick question because if there are more mes, then they will also have ideas and hopes and dreams and this number will spiral out of control exponentially. Assuming that all of the additional mes are strictly yoked to my will, then maybe four? Until I get greedy. I would probably run out of ideas around 10-15 subjugated Conrads. 

Okay, and those are all of the questions I received. I’m definitely not against doing this again soon, so please let me know if you have any more questions. Let me know on Patreon if you want me to feel really special.

Until next time, thank you for listening. If you feel so inclined and you are able to do so, I would really appreciate you going to KakosIndustries.com/Patreon and pledging a bit to help me keep this thing going.