INTERVIEW: Mac Rogers is ready to ‘Steal the Stars’ with new podcast drama

Two employees of a private military contractor have a secret to tell. They spend their on-the-job time not simply protecting people and property from security breaches. They actually spend their time guarding a crashed UFO that could have tremendous implications on a global scale.

When the two employees, Dakota Prentiss and Matt Salem, fall in love and decide to hightail it away from the private military contractor, they realize they need some startup loot. Hmmmm. Why not sell the alien body in the crashed UFO?

This science-fiction storyline is the premise of the new podcast drama Steal the Stars, a joint effort involving Gideon Media, Tor Books and Tor Labs. The 14-part series is the brainchild of Mac Rogers, a scribe known for The Message and Lifeafter, two podcast dramas that have been downloaded more than 6 million times.

“I’ve been looking for an opportunity to produce some audio drama along with my colleagues,” Rogers said in a recent phone interview. “I’d been a writer for hire on a couple of podcast drama miniseries over the last couple of years, and I wanted to produce one of my own. And longtime co-producer of mine, Sean Williams, and I, we formed a company, Gideon Media, with an eye toward wanting to produce some audio drama under our own shingle.”

Williams, Rogers and their colleagues have been producing science-fiction theater under the banner of Gideon Productions, so it seemed like a logical extension to take their craft to the podcast world. Plus, their work on the stage eventually drew the notice of Tor Books, the celebrated publisher of science-fiction novels and short fiction.

“When Tor decided that they wanted to get into the podcast audio drama business, they reached out to us because my colleague, Sean, has a long background in studio producing,” Rogers said. “I just recently had the success writing for audio drama with The Message and Lifeafter for Panoply and GE, so they knew that I had a big love for science fiction. They knew I had some recent success in writing audio drama, and so they asked for a bunch of ideas. We sent over several pitches.”

One of the pitches was Steal the Stars, a story that Rogers has been thinking about for some time. The “hook” of the story, as Rogers put it, is this simple idea of two people falling in love and deciding to steal the extraterrestrial body at the secret military base. It’s an out-there concept, but one that fits nicely into the science-fiction realm.

“It’s a hook I’ve loved for a number of years, with the idea of a heist that involves stealing the body of an extraterrestrial,” he said. “I included that in the pitches. That was the one they were excited about. They asked us if we were open to a co-production possibility. We worked out the details of that and got underway. It’s been a real whirlwind process that basically started just this past March.”

Before recording the series, Rogers went through several drafts of the story. He received feedback from his co-producers and Tor staff members. Once the recording began, Rogers would sit nearby and listen through headphones. Inevitably there were times when he needed to do rewrites and refashion some of the details.

“Every once in a while, we’d find a plot hole that needed fixing,” he said. “I’m used to the theater process where we discover the plot holes or other problems with the script during the rehearsal process and just make changes, and the actors learn the changes. In this case, with audio, if you don’t spot the plot holes or script problems during the initial recording, you have to try to bring folks back for a follow-up recording, and we’ve done a bit of that this time.”

Tor Labs is Tor’s new experiment with publishing under new models, Rogers said, and this podcast is one of their first projects. Initially, Tor was looking for a 16-part story, but Rogers was a bit unnerved by that length.

“I had just come off writing a 10-part story, Lifeafter, for Panoply and GE, and I knew what a fearsome process outlining a 10-part story is,” he said. “I was really unnerved at the idea of plotting a 16-part story, so I brought up that I was concerned about it. And they said, well, sit down with the outline, and see what it naturally comes out to. So I sat down and started working with it, trying to make sure that each episode moved you to a new place in the story. … When an audience member listens to it, I want them to feel like the story has definitely moved forward. You’ve learned some new stuff about the characters. The plot has moved on to a new beat. There’s a new level of peril or suspense to the story, but at the same time, you don’t want to move through the story too fast where you haven’t left yourself enough stuff to do later on.”

After breaking down the podcast in those initial stages, Rogers realized he had enough content for 14 parts, not his original idea of 10 and not quite Tor’s original idea of 16. They compromised and moved forward.

“I knew I needed to get it through the idea of the main character falling in love with this guy, deciding that she wants to run away from the contractual restrictions that she’s under, and trying to figure out a plan, trying an earlier version of the plan that doesn’t work that well, and then deciding she’s just got to go big or go home with the full-on stealing of the alien body,” he said. “Then I needed a couple episodes for her to move all the pieces into place, to set up not just the theft itself, but the perfect getaway afterward, which is always a big part of every heist. I discovered that I actually needed whole episodes for her to set up certain things, and then starting around part 10, the heist moves into position. And those last four parts are all kind of breakneck suspense and action. It just came out very naturally to the 14-part length when all was said and done.”

Now it’s up to podcast listeners to take this well-planned journey themselves.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Steal the Stars, a co-production of Tor Books, Tor Labs and Gideon Media, features a script by Mac Rogers and is now available on major podcast distributors, including iTunes, Stitcher and GooglePlay through the Macmillian Podcast Network. Click here for more information.