We don’t usually post about any women other than the ones that we spotlight, but make an exception every once and again. Now seems like a very good time to do that.
After we had posted our Lady Jane Grey episode we were on track to bring you the final episode of Season Three. It’s a doozie, epically complicated with a lot of players covering a very long span of time. It’s a topic you asked for, we researched and were ready to record it.
But we had also promised that we wouldn’t take a break between Season Three and Season Four- and we needed to firm up our schedule for Season Four.
So we decided to meet and do just that: select a list of ten women and get a collection of options for you to vote for in the Guaranteed Content Poll. The plan was to meet one Friday, then record three days later on a Monday. Because of where we live, our day jobs and our preference to record in the same room- we usually only have one day a week where our schedules can work together. Taking that Monday was a choice we made to put everything else aside, and get this podcast recorded.
We had this foolproof, sure-fire plan...
On that Friday, the plan was working. We firmed up the upcoming season, had a lovely- and very rare- lunch together. We had a few minutes before we had to head home to pick up our kids, so we went to locate a nearby Geocache. Because we could. And it was fun. And we don’t ever have time to do goofy stuff like that together.
Then on the way home one of us came down with a pretty nasty stomach virus that wiped out the whole next week for recording.
The following week a Day Job emergency did the same.
Day job commitments, kid health issues, and our schedules kept stealing our recording days. Finally, several weeks after our Friday meeting, we sat down and recorded what will be a two-part podcast.
Our microphone was getting lonely
You may not realize what we do after we have recorded an episode. Beckett gets to editing. She takes out the parts where a truck may have driven past the House of Wood, or one of us got up to get a fresh cup of coffee, or got off on a tangent (what? It’s a conversation-sometimes that happens). Basically she takes out anything that has no relevance to the topic at hand. She adds and selects the music, and gets our very smooth voiced History Dude to record something for the middle. This takes quite a few days- and an occasional night- worth of any free time she has.
While she is doing that, Susan writes the shownotes. This doesn’t take as long as Beckett’s editing, but we have a pretty sizable portion of our audience that don’t listen to the podcast, but use the shownotes to tell them the story of the women that we spotlight. (Waves to those people) And we have to make sure that all of our recommended reading and links to places we talk about are here for you to click.
At this point we started to wonder if our episode was cursed. Things continued to happen- a death in the family that required out of town travel, a technical issue that had us contemplating re-recording… one thing after another. In the span of time that we kept crashing into obstacles, we typically could have two full episodes out. It was very frustrating.
In the middle of all of that, we were informed that YOU had nominated us for a Podcast Award! Thank you so much for that! But we hesitated to link you to the voting, before we could get the next episode up to you. It felt wrong to us.
So we were silent.
And you noticed! You sent us notes asking if we were ok and when you could expect the next podcast episode… it was really nice and made us reevaluate our communication plans.
Today, we share the tale. Quite frankly we are nervous to tell you when the next episodes will be posted. It’s a two-parter that a curse really does tie into quite well. We HOPE to have that up by the end of this week.
Hope.
Cross everything.
Send good vibes, and energy and prayers and whatever you have to offer. Because after we post those, we need to record the beginning of Season Four…and we both are really excited to do that.
Do we have your vote?
If you don’t hate us for keeping you in the dark, here is a link to The Podcast Awards. We are nominated in the Education category and you can vote once a day until November 15th.
And because it’s fun, here is a link to learn more about geocashing.
Thank you for your patience and understanding!
Beckett and Susan
