MyHuge Epic Fantasy Trilogy Writing Project is my main writing project and will be my first thing to submit to an agent to try and get published. If all goes according to plan, it will be a trilogy of traditionally-published, fast-paced comedic adventures, set in its own epic fantasy setting. As of now, I have written multiple drafts of the Book 1, one draft of book 2, and one draft of book 3. I am currently in the plotting and worldbuilding phase of all three books, (currently in the plot of Book 3), after which I will go back and re-write the first book anew. Some of the activities I do when writing are: plotting, creating maps and environments, fleshing out characters and places, writing samples of prose of scenes I see in my head, developing constructed langua4ges, designing architecture, developing backstory, and so on. While this project has taken me years to “finish”, I have been working on it slowly and steadily in all that time.
Brief Summary
A young burrito chef’s life changes when a signal from outside of town sounds, signaling the return of an evil threat. Whisked away on a grand adventure by a quasi-powerful, silly wizard, she encounters foes, friends, and new fantastic places, and learns much about herself and the world.
Waldkrach (German for “Forest Crash” or “Forest Commotion”) is my second and current folk metal music project. It was established in haste in September 2023, when I was about to release a professionally-produced EP of folk metal music,. This would turn out to the Waldkrach EP, released on September 12, 2023.
Beginnings
I had released two albums with my folk metal project, Linnalapsi (2010’s Laulu linnalapsien and 2012’s Menneisyyden Laulut). I intended to continue a quick and steady pace with Linnalapsi releases, but the compositions got more complex, and this time around, everything would be professionally produced. By the time the songs were done, a lot of time had passed, and, in a conversation with bestie and frequent collaborator Ralph Blanchard, we realized that the new crop of songs had very little similarity to the older Linnalapsi songs. It was decided that I should release the new songs under a new name. Since I had one day to deliver all band information to the mixer for the metadata, I tried many combinations of German words, and decided on Waldkrach, the first syllable meaning forest, and the second meaning “noise,” “rumpus”, “crash”, and so on.
Furture
Waldkrach
External Links:
Waldkrach at Bandcamp Waldkrach at
A full album of Waldkrach songs is now in the works, with an unknown future release date.
Cover of Musen, with a old picture of William Daniels on the front cover. William Daniels played Mr. Feeny in the show Boy Meets World. The first song of the album is about Mr. Feeny.
Musen is the second album from my industrial metal music project Fadenfreude. My credits on the album include all composition work, all guitar-playing, lyrics-writing, vocals, keyboards, and mixing. The entirety of the album was composited and created in my room of my apartment. Additional credits on the album belong to long-time collaborator Ralph Blanchard, who provided backing vocals on all tracks (except track 4) and (also long-time collaborator) James Meder, who mastered the album.
Musen was released online via Bandcamp in February 10, 2015.
Cover of Waldkrach EP Released: September 12, 2023 Length: 18:42
Waldkrach EP is the first release from my Waldkrach folk metal music project. The EP features five songs, composed and produced by me. I also served as the lyricist for the four tracks that feature vocals. Unlike my previous folk metal albums with Linnalapsi, I actually hired out musicians to record each part individually through Fiverr. Frequent collaborator Ralph Blanchard was featured on backing vocals for tracks 1-4. Album was mixed and mastered by James Meder at Pique Studios.
Waldkrach EP was released online on September 12, 2023 on Bandcamp [1], Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms.
I’ve gone and co-made another short film under the Cat cat Productions name. And you can see it now! The film is embedded below. Be sure to check it out and let me know what you think. Leave a comment on either this site or on YouTube!
Summary: Four different students spend Prom Saturday retaking their SATs, unaware they will mix with each others’ lives as much as their spices.
More:
Since this is also a blog post (and I don’t want to just embed the film and call it day), I’ll share some tidbits about the making of the movie. Just like the past eight Cat cat Productions movies, Ralph Blanchard and I have shared writing, producing, directing, and editing duties. We’ve also acted in every single movie (this time I play a take on Pretty in Pink‘s evil Steff).
I share many credits on the film, but I thought go into more depth about two of them that are most interesting!
Titles
Usually on our Cat cat projects, if one of us really, really wants something for the film, it is their responsibility to bring it to life. For whatever reason, I was just compelled to get the titles in this film to match those of The Breakfast Club exactly, and mostly in their subtle jiggling. Titles are known for staying on the screen and not moving at all, but for whatever reason, the title cards of older films seemed to jitter and shake ever so slightly. (This might have to do with projectors not lining up every single frame of the title perfectly . . . or something. Just a guess! I should look into this!) This jiggling happens with the beginning titles of The Breakfast Club, and I wanted to nail this look 100%. To go about this, I imported footage of The Breakfast Club’s titles, then used a computer program to record the “jiggle-ness” of the letters exactly. The amount they moved, how long they were in each position, etc. Using the same program, I applied the exact same jigglynes to my own text. And this is why, in The Brat Snack, the opening titles jiggle slightly (don’t let anyone say we didn’t pay attention to detail!). Hopefully this gives the film a subtle 80s-like quality. Even if people don’t notice outright, their brains might!
Lyrics by…
As we all know, I’ve been making music for quite a while. But like 97% metal music. Sadly, The Brat Snack would call for no “heavy metal vomit party” type music. So I’d have a real challenge ahead of me. Typically, I find myself terrible at doing a “topline”, which is a fancy industry word for the vocal melody. I can do the background music just fine, just can’t pair melodies with it. Metal requires only grunts and, well… more grunts, so for The Brat Snack, I’d be traversing out of my comfort zone (y’know, like, the kids in The Breakfast Club.)
Three songs would need lyrics for the film. The first song was a spoof on “Don’t You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds, so that was more or less easy. Just kind of do the same melody as the real song and change up the words. For “I Need My Bangers” and “My Sausage Making King”, I would have to do my own original vocal melody. In order to do this, I played the backing tracks over and over, and had my guitar there with me, just plucking away, noodling melodies. When something sounded interesting, I would follow that thread, and hammer something out until it sounded great. Once I had the vocal melody, and I knew how many syllables I had to work with, I wrote the lyrics. I think I did an all right job! Of course, the singers really brought the songs to life and were amazing.
But really, with these silly sausage songs under my belt, maybe I have what it takes to topline some more songs (I do have a few non-metal songs laying around in draft form…hmmm)! Now that The Brat Snack is over, I have some time to work on other things. Let the mulling begin.
Casey Poma 