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The Audiobook Club with John York
Eric Nolan AKA The Devil of Dublin | Actor, Voice Actor & Quinn Creator
01:35:04
Identity Reveal, Behind the Curtain and Becoming The Devil of Dublin
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Hello and welcome to the Audiobook Club. In this week's episode, we're so lucky to be joined by actor, voice actor and Quinn creator Eric Nolan, known to many as the Devil of Dublin. Eric, thank you so much for joining me on the show. How are you today?
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A
I'm very good. You know, I'm a little bit upset about your intro. You know, I've done much more things. I'm joking. No, I'm good, I'm good. It seems like I'm on some sort of press tour currently, so I can kind of forget that I have to say hello. You know, I forget that like we haven't been talking for a couple of minutes before this and I'm like, oh yeah, other people are now paying attention. But yeah, can I curse?
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B
You can do whatever you like. Absolutely.
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A
I mean, it's on video. I maybe shouldn't do that. That's definitely an audio name for Quinn, by the way. So, yeah, no, I'm good, I'm good. I have. It's the 15th of August currently, if anyone cares. And the audiobook that I worked on, the pre sale link is out now, but we'll plug that later on. So it's a little bit exciting to see when America wakes up, if anyone cares.
- [01:26]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm really interested in finding out, like, how. So you, you mentioned that you've been doing a little bit of a press tour, you've been appearing, you've got podcast appearances, interviews and all that sort of thing and where I believe I'm sort of slap bang in middle of this, this schedule. So, like, how are you with, with interviews generally? Is this, like, is this, are you finding your time being interviewed quite comfortable, enjoyable. Like, how has it been for you?
- [01:50]
A
I think it's the immediate imposter syndrome that happens every time someone wants to talk to me. Like, I've done podcasts in the past and like I did one, the Nerd Soup podcast, which, a funny little story about that. I'll explain. You can just jot notes because I'll end up like leading you somewhere completely fucking irrelevant and then I'll be like, I wish I mentioned that. So, so I did the Nerd Soup podcast, which is a podcast that I really followed about movies and tv. And eventually they interviewed me and I was like, why? But you know what I mean? Like in terms of me going, why? But obviously I have a nice CV for them and I was achievable as a guest, let's say. And then I did another podcast, Game of Thrones, one Kind of audio style. There was no video. It was literally just a phone call. But over time it kind of just disappears. If this was in person, if this was like a red carpet thing, or if this was like a Comic Con panel, or I imagine I will be at one of these audiobook events very soon, just in the way things are going in that side of the career that eventually someone will give a. And invite me to these places, you know, and be like, yo, that guy. Yeah, yeah, get him here. So I imagine that will be more difficult if I'm on like a panel or something like that. The most recent one that I did before this that I was like, oh. Is the one that I did with Bryn Weaver live on Instagram, because live, you know, obviously this current moment is live, but if I make a mistake or completely have no idea what to answer, you're not going to keep in the 20 minutes of silence of me going, you know, so that one was a little bit like, oh my God, have I done my homework enough? You know, anything, anything with Game of Thrones, as you know, when you met me, I think we spoke three words of normal conversation. And then I just did a Game of Thrones tour for you. Um, but yeah, it's cool. And obviously it's a self proclaimed press tour. I don't need to. I'm not booked on these podcasts because of the book that's coming out or whatever. It's more of a, hey, remember you wanted me to talk about something. I could do it this week, you know, I might as well get it done in a week kind of thing. So it's interesting that it's all kind of work. And for you and the other podcast I was on yesterday, you both chose today. Just randomly, you both chose a date and a time and it was the same date and the same time. And obviously due to hbo, I have to change everything, you know, so. So that's how we ended up here. And you are now not in the middle, you're at the end, but you might bring yours out first. So you could just, you could be like, I'm the first one he picked. Just, just cut, just cut to like three days later where you're like, finish the edit and you're like, w fresh off the plane, you know, you know these things. I think I have things to say. You know, it's, you know, whether it's audiobook or TV or film or Quinn, whatever you want to talk about, I can rattle on for, for this will be an eight hour episode of, of John's podcast, everyone, you know, exclusively behind a paywall.
- [05:13]
B
So, like, with the. So obviously been on screen for years, right? Working on the biggest shows around, being involved in some major core productions, you've also had a kind of separate career behind the microphone, right? On Quinn, audiobooks, all that sort of thing. I just kind of wondered, like, if. Do you. Do you sort of see those as separate ventures? Like you. So you have Eric Nolan, and then with Quinn, you have, like, the Devil of Dublin. Are those separate entities inside your head? And then now that you're doing, like. So, for instance, like this podcast and the other shows that you've been doing, which is sort of bringing the two together, like, kind of have you. Like. Like, how does that sort of. How does that sort of experience been of melding those two sides?
- [05:59]
A
I think it's more me melding them anyway. Like, we. You're a Quinn creator. I'm a Quinn creator. You're an audiobook narrator. I'm an audiobook narrator. We don't have to talk about Vikings or the Witcher or Game of Thrones or fucking Marvel or whatever. We don't have to. It's just the kind of thing of maybe there's people that are listening to this that just know me as the Devil of Dublin. And then they're like, oh, first of all, I didn't know he looked like that. You know, hopefully it's a positive. I didn't know he was on tv. I didn't know he's that narrator from that famous book. It's like, we can just sit here and talk about Quinn and I'll happily talk about that for two or three hours. It's kind of giving more in terms of doing these. It's like, well, now we have loads of things to talk to. We will or talk about. We won't have. There won't be a moment of radio silence, you know, dead air. There won't be dead air because you can quickly shift and go, tv. I mean, the audiobook narration and Quinn does go hand in hand. Because I've never done an audiobook that wasn't a romance novel, you know, so romance novel, Quinn. You're the main character in Quinn kind of thing. So. As in the listener, not me or you. So that kind of melds together in terms of then doing Quinn and audiobook. It's voice acting, which is acting. So I just finished a video game that's voice acting. And it was a game game. There was no. I didn't have to say cock or anything in this one. You know, so then it's acting. And then I step back and go on a TV show last week. There's no voiceover for that scene. For that day, I wasn't speaking. So then it's a completely different, you know, category of media or entertainment or whatever you want to call it. But it all. It fits under the umbrella of acting, I would think, whether it's physical acting, voice acting, so you can meld them together, or we can completely just speak about one subject. You know, it's really kind of. Your podcast is about audiobooks, so we could talk about audiobooks for an hour, and that would be the content for your market, for your audience. Because why are they talking about Game of Thrones? Do you know what I mean? Why is he talking about five gigs? Was he. Did he do the fucking audiobook for Vikings? No, he. You know, whatever. So, yeah, we, like. It's more kind of giving you the option to not just talk about the thing that you want to talk about. If you want, obviously, you're the. You're the man. You're the man who makes this work. You could cut this whole thing out, and no one will know the power you have.
- [08:48]
B
You know, I'm really interested. So the way that I like to look at or approach guests is really looking at, like, that everything is the full sphere, and then trying to find out a little bit more about that person behind either the microphone or screen, or in your case, both. You know, so, like, if we can. I like to start off the show by going right at the start, and it's. It can be a sort of frustrating question to. To. To answer, because obviously there's so many different paths that happen. Life doesn't really play out in, like, a straightforward narrative, but for the sake of this question, acting, performing, you know, turning into character. Where did that all start for you? Where did that start? As an interest, how did that form into. I'm gonna make this, like, my career. This is gonna be my income.
- [09:36]
A
There's income you guys are getting. It just. Just happened. It's not like I. I went to fucking acting school. I've never been to an acting class in my life. And probably it shows in certain things. I was just working in a supermarket, and I was doing music college. So, like, the sound engineering, I was like, oh, cool. That would be interesting. I think the goal was to, like, make music for movies, because I really like movies. So I was like, maybe that's the career that I wanted. So I got into this job, this sound engineering degree. I realized it Was recording artists for music for, like, albums. And then I kind of went, oh, I could record myself singing, but not to the level of I'm going to be Adele or I'm going to be my own, you know, bedroom producer, singer kind of thing. It's like, oh, I like to do this. If I'm not in the pub or at the movies or hanging out with my mates or traveling, I like to sit at home. That song's really good on the radio. I'm going to try and sing that, replicate it. Find a little instrumental. Now, I've been educated on how to set this microphone up and how through millions of mistakes, now I know how to do this. I know how to fix that. So when I was doing the music course, one of the guys in the class was like, hey, they're doing this show, Vikings, where I live. They're looking for people with long hair and beards. So I didn't, like, turn them down because I'd never been to an acting class. I was like, oh, I kind of would like to be interested in that stuff. I'd never watched the show. I'd never been in a TV show. I'd never been an extra before. Literally starting from scratch. And probably the same way you've done audiobook, but you've never done Quinn when you first started. And even now, to this day, I will look at someone's audio and go, what the fuck does B, D, C, F, G, L, M, N, O, P mean? What tag is that? I'm googling Urban dictionary. What kind of, you know, sex move that one is? Or, like, these things of. I'm. You're learning on the job. You're adding this thing, and that's what happens. Being an extra is, like, background blurry, you know, you won't be able to spot me until episode seven because I didn't know where the fucking camera was. I didn't know how TV worked. I didn't know that it takes 12 hours to do 13 seconds of actual content for your television show. Do you know what I mean? So it's like. Like this audio. We're going to talk for six hours. It'll be an hour's podcast. You know, you'll have to filter all the shite. So once I was there and I was still working in my shitty paid job, I realized, like, this is fun. This is also paid, paid. It's not. It's not. What's the word? It's not secure. It's not financially secure. I'm not, you know, setting up camp and that's it. I'm going to be a TV person because I'm at the background. I'm getting minimum wage, but I'm not getting shouted at by managers or customers. You know, whatever job that you're in, the level of stress on a film set for where you are is non existent. It's just so people. You'll see it. You know, there will be a whole generation of people who realize that they worked in the corporate world and they don't want to do it anymore and they'd rather get less money than be hounded by stress and just live on a film set. Pretend to be this character and just be that character and then go home and then the world destroys them and then they go back to film sets and they're a Viking or they're a wizard or whatever the fuck they are. So in that moment, I was like, oh, this is better than my old job. I mean, it's not good money compared to the. I'm working seven days a week. I do one day a week. And it's cool, it's long hours. It's four in the morning until seven o'clock at night. But when I come home, I go, oh, my God, this happened. And this happened instead of coming home from work, like, yeah, someone shouted at me because milk wasn't in the fridge. I used to work in a supermarket. So you can, you can supplement whatever job you have that someone shouts at you for a fucking stupid reason. Customer service should be like military requirement. Everyone should work in a supermarket or a hotel for two years so then everyone will be nicer to each other. So then doing Vikings, the guys that work there, they'd been in like, Braveheart, they'd been in like, Excalibur, they'd been in all of these TV shows. They're like, yeah, we do this for a living. We don't survive. It's a seasonal work, but we're doing Game of Thrones. Would you like to do it too? Yes, please. How do I do that? Help me, help me join you. So I signed up to that agency and obviously I look perfect for it. So then it was like, okay, well, you play a Viking with calf in season three of Vikings, now you're going to play a Wildling in Game of Thrones. And obviously I'm a massive fan of Game of Thrones. So as soon as I see, hey, are you free for these three days? I'm like, oh, my God, this is it. It's happening now. I'm getting more jobs. And this Supermarket work is slowly drifting away from me. Obviously they're pulling me back in because it's three days here and then it's nothing for six and a half months. So it's like. But after that, it was like, well, now I have to make a decision. Do I quit my shit job for this cool job? Do I completely remove financial security for the idea of. I'd much prefer to work here? And I did. I quit everything. And I wouldn't. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody because I. At this current moment of my life, I'm above the water. I'm still slightly drowning, like everybody is. But at the time I quit, I got offered three and a half weeks on. On Game of Thrones to do the hard Home, Season 5, Episode 8, I think the Attack of the White Walkers. And spoiler alert, if you've never seen Game of Thrones. And I wanted to do it, and I'd worked in this job for 10 years, and I was like, hey, I need October 12th to whatever. November 12th. No, you're not allowed to do it. You've been taking too much time off. Like, you. Yeah, but, but, but this is the last time, I promise. You know, this is. I just need these three weeks, and then I'll work for you guys for the rest of my life. You know, I'll hammer in the thing. So they said, no. And then I said, right, well, I quit. I quit. I quit financial security for a TV show. Which is insane. Which is nonsense. You know what I mean? And luckily, I didn't and don't have kids or responsibilities at the time. It's like, fuck it. Fuck you guys. I didn't say that. I'm a lovely boy. And they said, cool, you've been here 10 years. You need to work four weeks notice. So even if you do want to quit, you still can't do that thing that you want. So I didn't. I missed out on this episode. I do. I am in that episode at the very start. But the main battle sequence, I didn't get to play a major part in it because I had to go and work in my little supermarket and patch it and just be like that. Just be like the guy from. There's a niche reference. The guy from Superbad, when they go in to buy beer. And Is it Seth? Seth goes in to buy beer and the guy, he spills a lot of beer on the ground that smashes. And it looks up at the guy who works in the supermarket and he's like, fuck my life. Like, for the for those two weeks, I was like, fuck my life, you know? And then that was it. I did Game of Thrones and then I was completely unemployed with no money, like, zero. All the money disappeared. TV and film pays you after like two months. So it's not even instant gratification of great job here as a tenor. It's two months from now you'll have the money that you earn today, but you still have to pay for your accommodation, your transport and your food. That lower down on the level. So a stupid idea, but I think if I didn't do it, I'd still be working in that supermarket forever and ever and ever and ever. And I just be a manager and I wouldn't have long hair and a beard, you know what I mean? So taking that risk and losing everything was completely worth it. And probably people have done that and failed. But you only fail if you stop. Yeah, if you just keep going, then it's kind of. It's. It's good. So it all fell on me. And then once I did TV and film, once I'd done Game of Thrones, there was a thing of going, should I do acting? Should I do it? I'm like, oh, but what if they tell me I'm. Because I've done music college and me and my friend used to make music. And then I went to music college and I came back and I was like, nah, man, nah. A chord. You gotta go, duh, duh, duh. You can't go duh, duh, duh. And he's like, why not? I was like, oh, because that's just not how it works. And I became this locked in educated person while my friend's just making music for the vibe and the feel. I'm going, nah, man, you gotta have this, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And I'm like, what if that happens with acting? What if it happens that when I walk in the room and they go, whoa, what the fuck are you doing that with your face for? And I'll be like, oh, you mean. I didn't want to be called out for being shit. So I just completely avoided it. And then I did. A couple of Vikings obviously came back. Then I balanced between Vikings and Game of Thrones. So there was like the. The high point, as Tommy Tiernan says, that Irish people will have money. They're the good times. And then there's the bad times where you don't have money but you're saving for the good times. Do you know what I mean? You're up and you're down the whole way through. And then once Thrones had finished or once Vikings had got to a certain stage and Thrones had got to a certain stage, there was other opportunities. I did a docudrama where I actually had lines. And I did an audition, and I did an audition, and I got the job immediately. I was like, oh, maybe I'm not shit, you know, and maybe this is going to work if I just fake it. Like, Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad has never done any acting classes, but, you know, Jesse Pinkman, do you know what I mean? So it's like, if he can get away, this is me justifying it all, picking people out of nowhere, going like, well, if he can do it, I can do it, right? You know, I'll just. It's the famous extras thing with Ian McKellen where he's like, you know what I did? I just pretended I was Gandalf.
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B
You know, like, that's it.
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A
You just pretend that you're them. So anything that you've heard me, you know, voice, act, or, you know, narrate, it's. It's me pretending I'm them. It's me winging it completely, you know, so it all kind of just spiraled and snowballed and the jobs piled up and I started to do kind of an acting thing, and I was like, oh, well, I can't do extra work and actor work. And then you realize that it's 1, 2, 3% of actors actually work constantly. You know what I mean? And let's say if you take if I didn't work for Quinn and you didn't work for Quinn, audiobooks can come to you. You can also go find them, but they're not happening every Friday. You know what I mean? So that kind of the same thing with acting was like, well, extra work is definitely happening three days, four days a week. So why don't I just do that? And if an acting gig comes up, I'll be like, no, I don't do extra work. No, I'm in this documentary thing. And, you know, of course I've spoken in TV and film before. Like, and legitimately to this point, 2023 was the first production that I actually spoke lines on television, even though I've been doing it 10 years. The finished lines that I've done, multiple things I've sang, I've spoken, I've done sex scenes, I' done all of these things, it then just doesn't make it to the final product. So then it doesn't count. Or does it Count, you know what I mean? And that is so funny to me that it's like people will call me an actor, and I will now, since doing a certain level of shows, I will say, I am an actor. I'll say more of a voice actor, because we are doing more voice acting work than I'm doing TV and film work. Do you know what I mean? So when someone says out of this, if I'm on the street and when I went to Morocco, they ask what you had the same thing, I guess, I assume when you landed in Marrakesh, they ask you what your job title is. And at the time, my partner was a digital marketer. And they're like, good. And I'm like, what do I say? Unemployed. They're not going to like that. Where's he getting the money to come? So I was like, actor. And he went, oh, do you know what I mean? He didn't ask me to listen to my fucking cv. He just went, oh, cool, this guy's gonna spend some money, because all the actors they know are fucking millionaires, you know? But it all kind of just snowballed into things. And the skills that I acquired through sound engineering, voice acting. Acting. Voice acting, romance, reading Quinn. So it's like there was never a. There's not a single person on that app that went, you know what I'm doing working for this app? Because first of all, didn't exist four years ago or whatever. So, you know, unless you're on Reddit, this is where people, I think, leave their. Their stories. Previously, I didn't think I'd be in this line of work, and I didn't think you. You didn't think you'd be in it either? I didn't think. I do audiobooks. And look at all the books behind you for the video version for the audio people. You'll have to find this video on Patreon. Look at all those books behind you. Yeah, look at all the books behind me. That's the amount of books I've read. So I'm not going for audiobook narrator.
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B
As a job to swing into audiobook narration. The Devil of Dublin. BB Easton, was that your first audiobook title?
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A
Yep. Got in, knocked it out of the park.
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B
How did that, like, first of all, was that like, your first experience with bb? Was that where that whole partnership began? And can you tell us a little bit, like, how that came about? And then obviously after that release, I mean, that's kind of. I mean, I think it's fair to say it's kind of life changing that project.
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A
Yeah, 100%. And also for the video version, I can't get the cap back on this water. So I've just been doing this for five minutes, you know, acx, I'm assuming as a voice over person. So I made an ACX because I saw an Instagram that was like, here's how to make a thousand dollars an hour. You know, I'm like, no way A side hustle me. You know, sake. None of them work. Everyone just, just, just to let you know. So. But click my Amazon affiliate link. No, I'm joking. So I had started an acx. I just wrote Irish voice actor. I had made samples. I think I read a poem. Very interestingly, I had read an Irish poem with a lot of Irishy lilty words. And then I put some rain sounds behind it. This is where this began, you know, forever haunted by rain sounds. And no one reached out to me. It just sat there dormant. But I didn't know how it worked. I didn't know that I can apply for jobs. I was clicking on male accent, Irish and seeing no jobs. I'm like, oh, okay. Because I don't want to rock it and start having to do a British accent or American accent because just like my acting, I'm winging it. If you want me to do a British accent, I can do a couple of the orcs from Lord of the Rings and that's it. Do you know what I mean? If you want me to do an American accent, I can do a pretty good American girl voice. Which, if anyone is listening to this and doesn't know that in Devil of Dublin, I play the male character and the female character in my POV chapters. So I'm doing an American female actor, American female accent the whole way through the book, which is, you know, hilarious. I got reached out on Instagram by Bibi, who I didn't know, and she said, hey, I'd love you to play my main character. He's Irish. Whatever. I saw your samples on acx. I think that's the conversation she'll remember, I imagine, hopefully. Would you be interested? I'm like, yeah, what do I have to do? Oh, I've applied to be audiobook narrator. What do they do again? They just read the words. Right? So. And probably I'll get a lot of shit from all of the community, but it's fine because it's very, very funny because, you know, I still deliver a really good product. So she reaches out, she gives me, and I don't know the timeline of This, I don't know what year it was, I don't know what day it was, but I know that she reaches out, she gives me the script and I, I think I did a sample just to show like, hey, this is the voice I'm going to do. Don't make me do like 51 chapters and then be like, oh, sorry, we wanted you to do this. Whatever. So I didn't know what to do. Panicked. Had a rode NT one the gray microphone. I had a dog shit laptop and I have FL Studio, which is Fruity Loops. For any producers out there. To me, I use that. You probably use Pro Tools. Any professional uses Pro Tools or Logic or Reason or audacity. I use FL Studio or Fruity Loops because when I was 12 and 13, I was using it to make shitty beats. You know, instead of studying for exams, I'm pressing this button and this synth sounds like Timberland. And I'm like, oh my God, that's the way I are about Timberland. You know, instead of doing that. So I know it better than I know anything. In music college I learned Pro Tools, but it's so official, it's so industry. Whereas Fruity Loops is silly and, you know, it does the same job. And I think Soulja Boy, the rapper was the first person to make a beat that sold a million records while using this software, which is like $70 and you get it for life. So. Which is pretty, pretty cool. So I had tried to work out where to record it and obviously you're panicking and you're going, what the fuck do I do? I don't have a vocal booth, I don't have a good microphone. I then booked off like a couple of weeks of time, not from a job, just from my unemployment at the time, to stay in my friend's house in Kildare, which is the kind of just outside Dublin. And she has a little cottage so there's no noise. So I find the spare room, I set up the laptop, I set up the microphone and I just start reading. I don't pre read the book. I don't prepare anything. I don't know anything about script prepping. I don't know anything about character listings. I start on chapter one and I just read and I read. I press record and I read the first line and I press stop and then I read again the first line again. Because I don't believe I acted it well enough. What if. What if she wants this version? What if he's more upset? What if he's this. I haven't Read what's happening in chapter 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. But I'm going in this moment, what's happening? Oh, he's. This is happening. This is the vibe. So I did like six or seven takes of each line of this whole audio book. There could be 15 directors cuts to these fucking things because I didn't know any better. And then I recorded each paragraph. Each page had its own project file. All these rookie idiot mistakes I was doing not knowing that, you know, most productions go in, you press record and you just fucking do the book. And then you just have one file, you know, I was doing Devil of Dublin, chapter one, page one. And that was my project file of finishing page one. I'm like, yeah, nailed it. And I've 15 different takes of that one fucking sentence. So I quickly learned that was terrible when it came to editing. And I had to then edit the whole thing myself. So it took like maybe 12 days of recording and another two and a half weeks of editing. And that wasn't 12 days of like, I'll get up at, you know, 10, have a coffee, eat some breakfast. It was like getting up at seven in the morning and reading till I couldn't read anymore, you know, because I was doing so much little stupid things that was catching me up, you know, whatever. So when I eventually sent the finished product, it was really good, you know, because I had given it my whole life in three weeks, four weeks. I had stressed that even if there is an editor in a production house that's going to look after it, I don't want them knowing that I made 14,000 mistakes before it got to the edit room. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pre edit my edits. Do you know what I mean? So it took a lot of time. I sent it to her and she loved it. And I was like, oh, okay, she loved it. That's all that matters. And then it came out and people were like, oh my God, who is this guy? Oh my God, his voice is so nice. Oh my God. This book is amazing. It's a very dark book. It's got horrible kind of, you know, things happening, but the main story is these two people are in love. You know what I mean? The world is a shit place, whether it's in an audiobook or the real world, you know, so this is dark romance. And at the time I didn't know what that was. And doing sex scenes for an audiobook, I was like, what the f. You know, I didn't know, you know? And like, as I said, have this joke, it still runs through everything. Do you know what? I. When I found out when this happened to the character, I was like, when. When I just read that line as it came in front of me, like, I didn't know that this was going to happen or this character was going to, you know, whatever. And it's always been like that. And it's still to this day, like that. And people will say, like, what are you doing? Why aren't you prepped? I'm like, well, I think if I can get in that moment immediately, that's the vibe I'm going with. So if I can jump on a Quinn script about a character who is this way inclined, instead of me preparing a voice two weeks before or whatever, I'm in there, I'm in the moment, I'm reading it, and then I'm. I don't know. I'd need to talk to someone about it. Emotionally, I can immediately get into it. And if I. Like, I'm not. Currently. I'm not emotional. I could sing a song, and I could put myself in the shoes of that singer in that moment, in that sadness, and I could cry. And it's the same way with doing audiobook narration at the end of Leather and Lark. I was crying in the recording booth while narrating. And the funny thing about audiobooks is I made a mistake. I read the words wrong. So that's not staying in the final piece. So that crying take doesn't exist. There's no emotion. I mean, obviously I was emotional for the finale, the crescendo of the book, but I didn't know what was happening in the book. I didn't read the ending. I just felt the ending in the moment. So it's. The same thing happened with Devil of Dublin is I became this person. I became the devil of Dublin. Which is so funny to say now because it seems since that moment, I became the devil of Dublin. And I became Beebe's vessel for the devil of Dublin for, you know, she can write all the words in the world. But no one wants to hear a female do a male character. No one wants to hear an American do an Irish person's voice. I mean, people obviously have it, but this, I think, why the book was so, oh, what's that? Who's this? Who's new? Whatever do you mean? Because I'd done nothing. I'd literally come from nowhere. And you can see it on Quinn as well. I came from nowhere. You know, from undesirable to undeniable. This is a thing Plays in my mind all the time. Is that with that book and the success of that book, then immediately production houses are going, hey, can you do my book? And I'm going, oh, my God, I had absolute hell. That was. There was a worst four weeks of my life. Why would I sign myself up to more hell?
- [35:07]
B
We see a lot of the listeners listening to this will have been made aware of you being made aware of the devil of Dublin through Quinn and finding you on that app. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came about? Like, how. And then also because it's very. It's very specific. It's very specific area of voice acting is what we produce on Quinn. And it's unlike even, like, graphic, graphically erotic audiobooks. It is a completely different world. It's so much more personal. It's so much more, you know, so, like, how did that come about? And then also, like, how did you. Did you take much convincing or were you just like, oh, yeah, I'll do that. I'm in that for the ride.
- [35:52]
A
So how it came about was I did audiobooks, romance novels. No one was bringing me in to do a drama novel. No one's. I'm not playing a voiceover cop. You know, I'm not doing whatever. For some reason, Irish accents happen to sound sexy. Who would have thought it? You know, a friend of mine tells me about these apps. Hey, there's apps that do little stories. She mentioned. I have, like, not on this phone, old phone, a screenshot of, like, names of apps that do this kind of stuff. Obviously, the main one, the first one that I reached out to was calm, because Cillian Murphy, Matthew McConaughey. I'm not saying I'm up there, but is there like a. Is there, like a lower level that I can jump in on? You know, I was like, cool. I'm gonna try and reach out to Kham and see if I can do voiceover work. Acting work is dried up lockdowns, all these kind of things. Maybe I'll try that. And then someone told me about Quinn. I think it's my friend Sam. I'm gonna shout out Sam every time I mention her. She played Viserion in Game of Thrones, so she is the voice of the dragon in Game of Thrones. She's also Ned Umber's scream when he gets stabbed and burst into flames. Super interesting. Met her for the first time. We've been Internet friends for years and years and years. Met her for the first time, like, last year, which is so funny. So she was like, hey, try Quinn. I'm like, okay, cool. What's that? And obviously, you click in. You click the Instagram and you click the thing. And I search on YouTube and I see it's such a weird thing to see, like, videos of, like, Tom York and Sarah and go, oh, that's cool. Oh, they're answering, like, little cute comment things. And then she's like, here's the. Here's the email. So I send an email as, you know, as the people who approach Quinn have gone through, instead of the other way around. Obviously, if you're, you know, a person in that world, you're going to be reached out to if people want to hear you. That's, you know, they're very good at bringing in new people that people want to. To hear, you know. So I reach out and I say, hi, I'm an actor and in Game of Thrones and I've done Vikings and I've done Devil of Dublin, which is like, you know, one things. I won sexiest male narrator on the planet for goodreads.com, which is so funny.
- [38:21]
B
Nice.
- [38:21]
A
Probably there was just like, yeah, I know. Probably got seven votes for the six people who were paying attention, you know, these kind of things. It's like. It's like me being the best tour guide in Ireland, who's over 6 foot 4 and has long hair and a beard. You know, it's like the market is. There's not many people. So I win that one, you know. So with that, I reach out and I say, hey, here's a sample of my voice. And they're like, yeah, cool. Do you want to do an audition? And I don't know if anybody knows, but there's an audition process to it because there has to be, you know, they're not just going to take you on your word. So Christmas time, a few days beforehand, I thought of the idea of why don't I release an advent calendar? But every day is a different phrase from famous audiobook romance novels. So for the people listening now, you're going to get free content, you know, straight up free content. Here you go. So I would be there, and I thought the idea would be day one, I'll just go on the microphone and go, good girl. And that's it. That's day one. And then day two would be, you look so beautiful, or whatever, whatever little things I could find. So I reach out to J. A host and I go, hey, is this a good idea? Would your listeners. Because I just finished her book. Would your listeners Like. Like that. I don't know how it would work. I don't know how it would exist, but I think it's cute. Maybe if I send you an email every day with this, 25 days, they get an updated newsletter with, here's a little, like an Advent calendar. A smutty advent calendar. Copyright fucking me. All right, if you see it anywhere else, tag me. All right? I invented it. So I reach out, and she didn't. I don't know what was happening. She probably just brushed past the email or whatever. And then I reached out to BB, and BB's like, that's a great idea. And she's like, cool. I can make a graphic and I can make a video, and I can make a reel. And immediately it was in motion. I was like, right, well, let's come up with the phrases. So I text my friend who's obsessed with romance novel, and I go, give me a list of all the stuff people love to hear. Quick. Right now, Quick. And then I go onto an Instagram that's based off of audio erotica kind of novels or whatever. Smoke novels, Genius. Like a divine intervention. There was like a, hey, hey, girls. What do you like to hear in an audiobook? And they just gave away all the answers. So I'm there, like, okay, they'd like to hear this one. This one. So now I have a hundred options. So I read them all. I give them the Bibi, and she's incredible. She makes a little Advent calendar, present box. A little bell rings, and the box opens, and it's me saying, complete filth. Tune in tomorrow for the next window. I filled her social media account with 25 windows of small. And then on the 25th day, it was like, thanks for taking part in the Advent calendar if you would like to hear the rest of it. Because I did, like, a hundred snippets. It is now for sale in BB's bio. So you get an audiobook that is like a hundred phrases in a row. And I didn't know this existed in Quinn. I didn't know Quinn. I knew Quinn existed. And I was in. I wouldn't say I was in talks with Quinn. It was. I had sent an email. They took months to reply. And then I was like, well, if they took months to reply, I can also take months to reply. You know, that kind of thing of like, this isn't an urgent thing. I was shooting a TV show. I was doing a movie. I was, you know, between countries. I was traveling, so it's not like it was urgent kind of an urgent matter, you know? And then I approached Quinn again to kind of like, reinforce, like, hey, I'm. I'm super interested in this. I also created this calendar. Would you guys like it? And obviously, me not even knowing what the app did, how it worked, not even paying $5 to check it out, I'm just like, this seems like a good idea. Those people liked it. Maybe you'll like it. And this is, like, now just looking at going, well, that was fucking stupid, you know? So the. The. The whole thing was. I made this thing. I'd said all these words, and then Quinn were like, yeah, you do an audition. So I was like, hey, B.B. you want to help me with this? Because I don't want to. I've done enough auditions that I didn't get. And when I hear audition, I hear effort, and I hear, do your best. Even if you're never going to get it, Even if they're looking for a completely different person and you get an opportunity to audition, you might do something in that audition that go, oh, we could just change this whole character's life. Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad was supposed to be in one or two scenes, but because he played it so kind of calm, they were like, oh, this guy's up to something. Like, the fans were like, oh, this guy's up to something. And they wrote him in as the big bad of the whole thing. And that's kind of where I'm like, well, I need help with this audition, because, yeah, of course I can. I've done romance audiobooks, and I've lived a life, let's just say that. So I have content in my brain, ready to go, ready to put into audio. But obviously, you know, the best way is to ask for help. You know, it's. The best way is to go, hey, what do you think of this? Oh, whatever. So we just completely 50, 50 collab the whole. Since day one, because she enjoyed doing it. Like she did the Devil himself, the audiobook. Or, sorry, the. The new book, the sequel, the Devil Open, takes 15 months to write that and to produce it, and it takes tens of thousands of dollars and takes. She does 47 jobs. And I'm sure there's aspiring authors or actual authors here listening, going, yeah, it is 47 jobs. I'm not just a writer. I'm everything. Like us. It's like anybody. You're not just a one thing anymore. You can't be. You won't survive. So we do it, and we make a little story, and I'm like, right well, we need to get across that. I'm Irish. So the listener is now coming to Ireland. It's the classic romance trope of protective man, of woman in a bad situation, damsel in distress. I wouldn't want to use that. But this kind of thing of overprotective man. The, the. That's the concept. It's 10 minutes. They say, give me a 20 minute audition. I give them 14 minutes and I'm worried. I'm going, oh, my God. Oh, they're not going to, they're going to like, yo, where's my six minutes? You know, So I do it and two or three days later it's like, this is amazing. We'd love to have you on blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I was going to do the rest of history, but there's, there's months and months of deliberating what happens next. Because I knew I would get the job. I knew I would be taken on not only because of the content, but I just knew and I just know that this is never going to stop. Kind of the effort that we have together, like myself and bb, we are going straight to the top, both, you know, matching yachts. It's not about money, it's about the creativity and the fun of having someone to riff off of as well is really, really good. But then it comes to the stage of, well, what do I do? What's my name? What's my profile picture? Do I go public immediately? And Quinn had given me, hey, use your name. Here's a range of pictures of you that we found on the Internet. This one is really good. And I'm going, that is a really good photo. Yeah, I look alright in that one. You know this, it's a weird thing to be like, what if people hate my face? And that was none of the reason of me being private. It was other things that were happening in the real world that kind of helped, kind of kept me away from being public. I always knew I would be public, but there was like a few months of me going, just in case, I'm going to be private. And I think someone will have to confirm with me. I think I'm the first ever creator to go from private to public. I think I'm not even fully public yet, so I might start a wave of people going, hey, he was private, now he's public, so it'll be interesting to see. So it just kind of happened and then BB stuck around and I was like, hey, because I. I'll come up with an idea. And then I'll have to put erotica into it. No, you know what I mean? Like, it's when I first started on Quinn and kind of nobody knows because I'm not allowed to talk about it. I was filming a movie, 15 hour days. I'm starting at 3 in the morning. I'm finishing at 6pm, 6pm to 7 to 8pm I'm recording Quinn Audios because the ball has begun rolling from January 19th to August 16th. The ball has never stopped rolling. And I'm not asked. We're not contractively obliged to release every Thursday, Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it doesn't matter. You do the amount of content you want to, you put in the amount of effort you want to. But the ball started and I was like, it's like how I kind of reduced my alcohol intake. I realized that I'd gotten 500 days without drinking and I went, oh, I might as well do another year or something like that. It wasn't like it had come to a problem. Now I need to stop the problem. It has come to, oh, I just noticed this. Let's run with it. So I was shooting a movie. I was in different countries. I was packing no clothes and a microphone because I wanted to keep the Quinn thing going, you know what I mean? Which is super interesting that I would pay my friend. So I was in shooting a movie, I paid my friend to leave the house because I needed time to record Quinn in his house. And we're good friends, but we're not that good friends that he needs to hear these noises and these words, you know? So, yeah, with that, obviously I'm incredibly lucky to have Bibi because while I'm filming a movie, sending her messages of what about this? And she's sending me what about this? The process is being done in the background that when I finish work and I'm covered in dirt and blood and I'm fighting dragons, whatever the fuck I'm doing, I come and I jump in and I go, cool, this is the story, this is the script. I really do have three and a half hours before I have to go to bed. Record it right now and tomorrow I will edit it, you know, and you can't bring your laptop on set. I mean, these kind of things, there's. There's no point. So I'm guerilla recording Quinn, you know, like, I'm doing all of these things just for me, just because I don't want. I see, hey, this is good. Oh, people like that. Maybe I'll do another one. Let's do something completely different. Than that. So having that kind of sound board, is that what you call it? Sounding board? To riff off of it means that I wasn't worried. And probably there's other creators that are like, oh, the process of writing is really difficult for certain things. Or you've got writer's block. And of course she'll have it and I'll have it, but together we can work it out. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And even at the stage, probably two or three months in the bird, the smut bird inside of me can fly the coop now. I know successfully, she knows, and I know that I could easily go away and do my own thing, but I don't want to do my own thing. I want to work with her. I want to create stuff. I want her to see the genius that's creating this stuff, and I want to see her create something so cool. And I go, that's. No one's ever thought of that. And I have like three or four scripts already drafted. I just haven't recorded them that have never been done on Quinn. And I said it last night, and I'll say it here again. I'm the first person to kill someone in an audio erotica. You know what I mean? So it's like, I find it so interesting. And it's not that I just blatantly killed Mercy because I had the power to, it's because it had a reason. Now he's dead. He ends up in hell. I'm also in hell. Let's see what happens next. So this door is not closed. It's now opened three other windows to do whatever. So having Bibi there from the very start has been amazing, you know, and it's.
- [51:56]
B
How much time are you? Like, on just a general weekly basis, how much time do. Do you dedicate to exploring ideas, exploring avenues? Because the. The colossal size, just the entity of what you're creating on a weekly basis, to me, it has to be like, do you ever stop thinking about the next drop? Is there ever like a time where you're not thinking about it?
- [52:24]
A
No. That's the sickness, isn't it? Really emotional for some reason, like being called out like, yo, bro, take a break. No, I'll never stop immediately. I'll think of an idea. And I. I do hope everything goes well for everyone, that in two years time, I know that, let's say an honorful Nadio. These guys have been there. Zach have been there three years. I've been there seven months tomorrow or five days from now, in seven months, what has happened is amazing, but I want to do another seven months, so everything that I'm piecing together will connect in seven months. So if we haven't worked together yet, it's because it's not time. Do you know what I mean? It's. I'm constantly thinking about it because I've gone all in. This is. I have to. Do you know what I mean? And the more I reveal, let's say, whether it's the process or my identity or my face, a statement of how serious I am about this work. So, like, in terms of being private, I don't know why I'm about to cry. It's so funny because you heard the word break and I was like, what's that, papa? What's a holiday? The reason I was private at the start was I was working on a kids film. I was working on a kid's TV show. I don't know how this will work if someone finds out and wants to take me down. Look at any murder of famous people. And I'm not saying I'm famous, but just look at. Tupac was killed by a guy in his inner circle. You know, all of these people were killed by friends of theirs or people in the same industry as them. If I'm on a film set and there's a job going for me and there's also a job going for you, and you have a way of stopping me from having that opportunity, you're going to do it. You're going to have no remorse. It's the fucking. That's showbiz, baby. If I can take you down before you can take me down, the opportunity is there for you. No one's going to remember me if you get the job. Do you know what I mean? If you have to step on my head to jump up, whatever, and if that's. He does audio erotica and they go, cool. Or they go. It's the. That I was worried about and knowing now. And as the thread unwinds, as I'm on a film set and a friend of mine was like, oh, hey, how's the stuff with Quinn going? It's not a, hey, shut the fuck up. It's a. Oh, it's going amazing. Hey, what. What's that? Oh, it's this. Oh, I didn't know that existed. Yeah, it does exist. And if you're interested, there's a whole range of boys and girls for you. You know what I mean? So the. The thing of that is, like, I've gone all in. I haven't fully Done it. I've never posted, apart from trying to lift weights like a idiot. A full. Hi, I'm Eric. I'm the devil of Dublin. Because like anything, it's. It's a weekly thing. People might pop into Quinn for a month, and in that month I may have revealed my identity through an audio and they might have not listened to it that week, so they don't know who I am. And it's funny to still have comments going, whoever this guy is, amazing. And I realized that just because I'm there every week doesn't mean they're there every week. And obviously there is, you know, subscribers that will pop up every time in the comment section or whatever. And they're there for the long run. They're paying the year subscription or whatever, but there's other people just floating in, seeing it in Instagram. What's that? Oh, that's cool. They're not going back through 31 audios of 8 and a half hours of content to find the reason why I ripped Mercy in half. They're going, oh, that's a nice story. Oh, an American. Oh, a British guy. You know what I mean? They're. Yeah, they're at the buffet. They're not going to just sit there and just eat the, you know, chicken. They're going to try everything if they've paid for it, you know. Oh, I've never, I've never eaten that dessert before. Imma go try it. It's not for me. You know what I mean? So it never stops. Because if I stop, then, well, I don't know what happens when I stop. You know, the expression, how can I miss you if you don't go away? Also lives inside my brain. But I'm going to do a full year. I can't do 52 audios because I didn't start the very start of the year. But I'll do every Single Friday for 2024, and that will become cool. Maybe what happens in 2025 will be different. Maybe I'll become completely obsessed, but not. I gotta. I gotta keep the streak going like fucking Gollum. I'll just be, you know, pulling my own hair out for stress. But I have, I have my own ideas. I have my own life and Bibi has her own ideas. And together we come up with our own ideas we didn't know we had 10 minutes ago. I have a really, really beautiful story that I want to conceptualize into Quinn, like to the point where someone could make this a movie. And I'm going to make it a One part epic, and it will be super cute and super sad, but super amazing. And obviously to me or to anyone listening now, they could use Quinn for just helping them fall asleep, or they could use it for comforting them through a bad time, or they can use it to Good Time Fridays. Let's burn the batteries out of these fucking things. Multiple reasons. And that's why I think the creative part of my production, our production, me and BB Is that it is. I said it last night. I've now stopped calling them audios, and I'm calling them episodes because it's a TV series, it's an audio. But when I do Freaky Friday, which is the one that came out last Friday, the collaboration with Zach, that's episode one. Is there an episode two? Is there a season finale? The Devil's Pact. This is. This is my Avengers Infinity War Saga. I have 18 parts in my head. I have the start, and I have the end and the in between. It doesn't have to exist. There could be a point where you reach out to me and go, hey, I would love to play whatever. A historical figure, someone in space, you know, these kind of things. So then it gives me an opportunity. And obviously, the creativity of Quinn is really, really good for every creator. I know that you did one about baseball. Yeah, I don't know anything about baseball, but I'm sure you knew stuff about baseball, but you also had to learn about baseball because your audience is probably baseball heavy in their life. So they're going, what's he calling it that for the fucking idiot? It's not called that. It's called this. You know, So I. I might not know these tropes and these kinks, but this Devil's Packed series lets me just explore that section. So I did a collab with Ryan where it was medieval stuff, and it gave me an opportunity to not just pretend to do an English accent, but to give a different English creator a platform for new listeners to be like, oh, that's cool, because he fits the vibe more than I fit the vibe. Do you know what I mean? If I do an audio on the Titanic, I'm on the bottom floor. You're on the top floor. All right, so my audio is different to your audio, Billy Zane, you know, I'm drowning. You're getting off with the women and children. You know you have enough money to get out of there, right, Just from your accent alone. So it's such an interesting thing because then it gives way to a creative through narrative, a through line. It doesn't have to connect. South park for the first 15 seasons never connected. And after season 16 or 17, all the episodes flow into each other. So now when you remember this character, he's back. And it's the same way that if I create an audio in the packed series, don't think that's the last time that you will see of them. Don't think that's the last time that they won't return that. So with that kind of. Do I think about Quinn constantly? Of course I do. Because it's such a good outlet for creativity and it's actually helped me unlock parts of other sides of me that aren't involved in Quinn. More of ideas, more of stupid shit I can do when I'm not recording. That also helps with creativity. And there's a couple of things that I will do in the next few weeks that have never been done. And once I open that world up, it will be done. And I believe other creators will be like, fuck, why didn't I think of that? And it won't be, what is it? And the best artists copy or something. There's a quote about copying and sealing. You know, this kind of. Yeah, yeah. So we don't. We can. We can fact check the quote in the video series. It'll come up now in the corner. Good artists copy, Great artists steal or something like that. I could have an idea that this Friday I'm going to release X. But something could happen in real life that's much funnier. Get on that quick. Now let's craft something as fast as possible. So there's been audios that I've done two and a half weeks in advance and there's been audios. I think my deadline, I think I messaged you is Thursday at 8pm GMT. I've recorded an audio, produced the whole thing, and you will never know which one it is. With about 45 minutes to spare, I woke up in the morning, went to the gym and recorded something. And you will have thought, well, it's probably that one. It's not that one. It's not the one you're thinking of. It's like, how did he do all that work in four hours? Like, well, because I. The pressure was there, you know, pressure makes diamonds. And so I think about, why don't I just release 10 stories and then that's me with 10 weeks off. And that would be the dream. Imagine having 10 weeks off, but it hasn't happened yet. I haven't thought about, like during shooting a film recording Leather and Lark, I had to get ahead of myself doing the devil himself. I had to get ahead of myself. But I was still doing Quinn on a constant weekly basis. I was still maybe a few days ahead of myself. And then doing a full 51 chapter audiobook and then getting back into Quinn and editing and coming up with stupid things to mess with people on Instagram for. You know what I mean? So like inviting, just completely paying for you to come to Northern Ireland to see me for a joke, you know, is the. Is the narrative that I will spin on. Even though you came at your own.
- [64:57]
B
Accord, I can send you the invoice if you'd like.
- [64:59]
A
Yeah. Fucking 9.99, I hope. I have a question for you, by the way. See bottom left on your screen there's a purple book. Purple book. The other that's pink. Get that purple. What's the book beside that?
- [65:21]
B
Hang on, which one is it?
- [65:23]
A
This one? Trying to point. No, no, no, keep going, keep going. The purple one. And what's the book to the left of that? Yeah, that one. What's that?
- [65:31]
B
Yeah, that's Miriam Margulies.
- [65:34]
A
And then above that, what's that one? So straight above the blue one to the other, same color coded one beside the pink one on the left, what's that one?
- [65:45]
B
That is on the mic by Nick Reg.
- [65:51]
A
Okay. Because I was like, they look like Leather and Lark.
- [65:56]
B
I do have the audiobook for Leather and Lark.
- [65:59]
A
Oh yeah, thanks, man.
- [66:01]
B
Yeah, thanks.
- [66:02]
A
I mean, I don't get paid anymore, but. But thanks. So, yeah, no, I never stopped thinking about it because why, I mean, if I worked, I worked there full time and our audience is mainly based in North America and I try to go to bed at 9:00pm, so technically I'm, I'm not interacting with our core audience when they're most active because we're sleeping. Do you know what I mean? I haven't got to that mental stage of going, well, I better just swap my whole sleep pattern and just, you know. Where's Eric? Oh, he's on America time now. Why? He lives in Northern Ireland, like. Yep, not so much. He takes this seriously. But no, I won't stop. I won't ever stop producing audios every Friday. And if I don't, if I don't have an audio on a Friday, there will be a reason. It might be a cool reason. It might be. Hey. Unfortunately, I'm after picking up a massive acting gig and I have to move to Romania for three weeks. I'm sure everyone will understand, but I'm. I'm trying to keep if this app is, you know, mainly many things, if I and you, or whoever it wants to be, can be there on Friday and be reliable, whether it's just for entertainment, then I want to do that. It's the least that I can do for the community supporting me or you. So why wouldn't I. Why wouldn't I not sleep and work hard? Because that Friday, tomorrow, whoever it is who's possibly having a hard day, can get completely shipped to a different world for 30 minutes and then 30 minutes with you, that's an hour out of their shit day. They've only 13 more to go before it's bedtime. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So why wouldn't. I wouldn't take time off because it might be. It might be the Friday that they need us, that we don't appear. So that's kind of the idea behind it.
- [68:28]
B
Has, have you found any or have you noticed any changes that Quinn has brought about either your person, yourself? Like, I was talking to Tom about this, and it was actually something that he brought up with. It was like how recording these audios on a weekly basis, thinking about them as frequently and consistently as. As you do has. What impact has that had on your person? Do you find that you have changed in any way? Because we were talking about it on the previous episode and I think it's like that little part of your brain. So as. As a lot of us are quite told, told quite often in terms of our emotions, that we just got to shut up and carry on doing stuff. You know, you're in pain or you're in. You want to talk about something. Well, we don't quite have time right now because shit needs to get done. Right. So we. I don't know about yourself, but, like, I'm. I'm trying to go. I don't care if I don't want to go to the gym, I have to get there. Right. My emotions are irrelevant at this point. But then when I'm writing for Quinn, I open that up because that's the part of my brain, like, how do I really feel about this? Do I find this particular thing erotic or arousing in a certain way? I really had to ask myself all of these questions, and I've noticed that that's changed my relationship with myself. So I wondered if there was anything that springs to mind for yourself.
- [69:52]
A
I've become a total asshole. No, I've been so. Quote me on that. Put it on a shirt. I think I've become a better business person. First and foremost. It's when I do a TV show. So I shot a massive scene which you kind of know what it is. But I'm a secret boy and I'll only break an NDA for the boys in secret when I know it's not recording. And in 2025, you will all see that scene. There is no instant payoff of whether people liked it or not. So when Bibi writes the devil Himself, the sequel to the Devil of Dublin, she started in January. It took her 15 months. I recorded and I brought in Irish actors. We produced it all in Ireland and then produced the whole. The rest of it. The production side, like editing stuff in New York. The thing traveled the fucking world. And today the pre sale is out. And that will be the first instance of do people care? You know, so this kind of not instant gratification from working with like working on Quinn stuff, it's like, oh, people do like it because they're listening to it. Oh, I should keep doing this. So that level of me has become like, not. How do I monetize this? Because I'm assuming the last. The thing I just spoke about for 40 minutes and nearly cried about is the main reason that now has taken over from, from the production side of things and the story and the. And the why. The why has changed, you know, and many creators. And it wasn't easy to say yes. Yes. You ever been so broke that you can't afford food? This kind of stuff? Of course I'm going to say yes. Do you know what I mean? So there's a level of accepting it in that way, no, thank you. I'm fine making peanut butter sandwiches and having eight hours sleep for dinner, you know, so emotionally I think I've always been a mess, you know, sexually, it's definitely opened my eyes to things. Things I didn't know about, things I'd only heard of. Creativity. Creativity. Can't even say it. I read books for a living. Everyone can't even say creatively. Little changes have been. Have been made, I think in terms of. I'm not afraid to say that I really love listening to pop music and sad music and everything resonates with me that way. And you know, it's not that I'm currently heartbroken or sad, but I can instantly put myself in that moment. So if I'm doing an audiobook and the moment is sad, I can just get there. I don't have to. I'm not closing away my emotions because I'm not. I wasn't ever kind of raised in that environment to be like, nah, you don't cry. And you mean it's. It's that thing of like, I never had to hold it back. So I don't think I've ever locked any of it away, you know. So when I do Quinn stuff, there's obviously like a whole. And it's a very funny thing because if you just listen to my Queen audios, you'll perceive a completely different man than what I am. And obviously we are more than just these voices. And each creator has a life outside of this world. And I would attune it to the wrestling business of the most successful wrestlers are their own personalities turned up to 11. So when they turn it back down to 8 and 7, they're not playing a different character. So there is points of me that exist in these audios, I just never access them. Do you know what I mean? And I'm sure there's sexual tropes and kinks that in my life I've brushed through. There's been instances where stuff has been involved or I don't want to give away any real personal life things, but there's been times I've been in a room with more than one person. So it's like it's this kind of thing. I'm not accessing that moment. If I do an audio like that, I'm. I'm accessing the audio itself, you know. So there's something in this Friday 16th August's audio that is. I know of it, I know it exists and it's played for comedy in this audio. Whether I do that in my real life or whether I do it in an actual Quinn audio is really up to the future. Do you know what I mean? And this is something that was asked of me yesterday and it's weird now. Well, not weird because obviously it's nice to talk to a different creator. And I have a question for you. You see the success of your work and you see the success of listeners who are confidently writing you a comment that says, this works for me. And then you have 50 other instances going, this also works for me. This is my jam. I'll take 14 of them. Whatever sort of comments, maybe it's personal. So we can cut this bit out. Do you make more noise in your real life? Now?
- [75:51]
B
I may bleep the answer because my dad listens to this. Yes.
- [75:59]
A
So that's interesting. And I'm not going to ask the reaction to it because it's really not my business. Thank you for your answer. You'll. You Know, if he doesn't want to share it, it won't be here. If he does want to share it, what's your dad's name? But do you think that's the market pushing that narrative on you? Do you think you opened your mouth, let's say more or less, out of success, as in, like, well, if everyone likes it, then I should do it. Do you know what I mean? And I'm sure there's your partner and would be like, no, I don't like that. That thing, that trope, that tag, get that away from me. But if 40,000 people are telling you everyone's into that, you're going, should I just, you know, so then it's. It's a weird. It's a weird thing that we're making audios for our audience, but they're now evolving us as monkeys. And I've found that as well. And I'm not going to answer it, you fool. No, I'm joking. I've thought about these words and these pet names and all of these expressions, and it's a weird thing to go, because if I go to my partner. If you go to. If you go to your partner after this and go, you know, hey, baby girl, Daddy's just finished the podcast. She's gonna hit you a box. Or she might be like, you know, maybe. So there's only one way to find out, you know, Big Daddy Podcast, you know, but it's. It's that thing of kind of are you doing it out of. That's what everyone else does instead of taking it as a case by case basis of. Well, I'm sure before Quinn existed, you had a successful relationship with your partner, hopefully, I'm hoping. And if. If you hadn't. And Quinn has saved it. Amazing. Congratulations. You know, Big Daddy, this is going to be a thing now. They're just going to start calling you Big Daddy. We're going to sell Big Daddy Merch. Yeah, I'm sure you will. So it's just an interesting thing to me. You and I are completely new to this world. There's other creators that were doing Spice before they arrived on Quinn. There's other people who were doing much spicier dark romance audiobooks before they joined Quinn. And I guess there's much more sexually open creators. They may not have experienced this stuff, but they know of it because of their. Much more open to it. And I'll speak about one thing, is that everyone's like, yo, do a Priest audio because of Fleabag, because he played hot Priest Irish Guy, priest. Excellent story. Sexy stuff. Amazing story arc. Hey, Irishman, do a priest audio. Me, the Catholic Church. It's not sexy, you know, so it's that thing of I should do one for the audience, but for me, this isn't my thing, you know, because it's not sexy. From my experience, you know, it's not. It's never been. I'm sure that TV show is very good and the man who plays that priest is very, very good, but it wasn't ever a thing that I thought. It's like, oh, that's not. That's not hot, is it? Obviously, when you explain the context of that television show and his tropes or his personality, then, yeah, of course that character is hot. But just be a priest. I'm like, you mean be celibate? My audio is just me, 40 minutes. So it's a really interesting thing about kind of answering to the audience's wants and needs, you know, and trying to take that into your real life. And obviously, I don't know where you're going to cut and not cut this part of the conversation, but whether you make more noise or not, is that you deciding on a basis of everyone else thinks it's cool, I'll do it too, or is it like, let me. Let me workshop some of these things. And that's all good, you know, because I'm really.
- [80:49]
B
I'm really worried that. Because I. My initial reaction is to say it's confidence. And it's just my confidence in that area has grown a little bit because a few, you know, people on a weekly basis say, oh, this is good and you're good at this. And I think, oh, maybe, maybe this was something I was sitting on in real life, like, for quite a while. But I think more. More embarrassingly, I think maybe the truth is that I'm looking for ideas and looking for, like, creative inspiration. I've never. I haven't got to the point where I'm making notes yet, but that may be around the corner.
- [81:29]
A
Yeah. And like, kind of, you know, Ricky Gervais did the office because he worked in an office. He did extras because he was an extra. He knew what he did in his life. And same. I don't know about you, but for me, I haven't got to the stage where I'm scraping my own memories into audio, you know, and if I was, I would make it go a little bit better or worse than it, you know. You know, not everything's fantasy. And like, even with that kind of stuff of. I think the Opportunity that we have is to give someone a fantasy without the admin. You know, there's. There's, like when someone says, oh, I'm gonna kill you because they spilled water all over you by accident, you're not really going to kill them. The admin of actually murdering someone would, you know, you know, has consequences. And the same way I think, you know, I have been told and been referred to as the infidelity king. So if you want to be as infidelitous as you possibly want, log on to Quinn, find my profile, and you just cheat away. And then, and then you just take the headphones off to live your normal life without having, you know, burn our phones, you know, secret apps, you know, this kind of thing. Just log in there, be who you want to be for that 40 minutes, and then go spend time with your partner. Or.
- [83:01]
B
It seems like the infidelity king. Seems like a good Tinder bio for yourself or maybe, you know, Yeah, I.
- [83:09]
A
Mean, that would be a good Tinder bio. My partner would be like, cool. So you're just, you know, living your life work now. Yeah.
- [83:17]
B
So as we come towards the end of the show, I do have a question that has been DMed in, if that's okay from I Rule the Earth. I've never had a message while recording.
- [83:31]
A
It's 2pm GMT on the 15th of August. Whoever sent that DM, thank you. I appreciate you. You're amazing. Everyone else listening to this who didn't send John a DM, it's over. We're not on this.
- [83:45]
B
DMs going to. Most DMs go into the request. So I don't see. I don't see. Okay, so, yes, so I've received a question from I Rule the Earth and it is goes as follows. I'm curious to know how Eric feels about playing the Persona of the Devil of Dublin. Does he find it similar to his other acting roles, especially since it's a collaboration with BB Easton? Or does it feel like he's tapping into a completely different side of himself?
- [84:12]
A
Good question. That's the best question we've had all podcasts. No, I'm just. Out of all the DMs, that's the only one. No. And this is going to be set in humor. Luckily, no one in Dublin has become a serial killer. No one in Dublin has done horrible things enough to get the papers to call them the Devil of Dublin. Because then I'm screwed. Do you know what I mean? Because then it's not just an audiobook narrator name or whatever. It's like that murderer guy, that drug dealer who shot up. You know what I will say is there's. There's me. There's actual Eric isn't even the one that's on this call. You know what I mean? You're getting. You're getting normal Eric turned up to 11 in the audio. There is the characters that I played, they don't have names. I thought about naming the Vibe. If it's this Vibe, he's this guy. If he's this Vibe, he's this guy. Irish names are overused everywhere. If I see another person called Killian, I'm going to, you know, you'll be reached out. I'll be reached out to in the next week. Hey, I'm doing this audiobook. It's an Irish story. You'll play Killian. Think of what. There's loads of names. There's real Eric who will, when I press leave on this thing, will go and live his life, obsessed by Quinn, forever crushed until he passes away. I've even thought about making an audio if I die.
- [86:02]
B
Amazing.
- [86:03]
A
Yeah, yeah. I'll be like Tony Stark leaving the fucking, you know, spoiler alert. And then I'll come back as Dr. Doom. So. So there's the Eric that exists. There's the Eric that's on this call now who pretends he's confidently having conversations with strangers, knowing that thousands of people will listen to it. There is characters that I play inside this Quinn world. There is the Devil of Dublin vibe of this dark romance. Overprotective, which is a character. It's Kellen Donovan from. From Devil of Dublin. These traits pass on to characters inside my Quinn audio, St. Patrick's Day. My audio is based off of Devil of Dublin. He plays Kellen Donovan in a roleplay situation with the listener. It's not specifically said who he is or what book it is, but if you've read the book, you know, that's what I'm doing. So then there's the devil, which is a side of me that I can say whatever I want. Do you know what I mean? Because he's the devil. He can be rude, he can be snarky. He can talk about real. It's like Deadpool. He can break the fourth wall. He can call all the listeners out for being annoying or not being, you know, this, whatever. He can do that. Then there's Eric that now exists in the audio. There's the Eric that exists in the devil himself. My audio reveal. And there's another Eric that's appeared now where it's like he's a character. It's all my voice. It's my thing. But I've cloned myself or split myself into seven different versions that I know which one shows up to work for that specific script and what vibe I need to give off. And in the Devil himself, when all of the, you know, you took part in it. Thank you very much. When all the sound effects go away and everything disappears and the lights switch off and it's just me and the microphone, that's me you can't see. I'm holding my finger. Sorry, I forgot about. I've just been voiced for so long and I'll say that's the closest you'll get to physically me, Eric. And I wouldn't say that everything is a character because as I told you, as I'm bleeding emotion into these characters, it has to come from somewhere. I didn't just wake up as this good of a emotional voice actor. So I am the Devil of Dublin, but I'm also many different things as well, you know, all under the Eric Nolan umbrella. And it's raining in Ireland, so I have many umbrellas. But yeah, yeah, I get that. I hope that answers your question.
- [89:26]
B
I think it was a fantastic answer.
- [89:28]
A
Nice.
- [89:28]
B
I think it was a fantastic question, a fantastic answer. Have you anything in the schedule upcoming that you're excited about that we can share with you with that excitement?
- [89:41]
A
Yes. We'll start at the most stuff, the most impactful, the Devil himself. And let me just explain to you how I know that everything's going to work out in the end. B.B. easton wrote the Devil himself 15 months ago. There is a line in that audio before I'd ever read the book about the Devil snapping his fingers and me being in hell. And in my series, the Devil's Pact, without conferring with BB at all, I literally go without knowing what a single word she's ever written on that book. We together, like twin brain, had already put this concept to life without even talking. So this book is very special to me. It wouldn't exist without me. Devil of Dublin was a success. It deserves a sequel. It never was going to be a sequel, but now it is a sequel. The presale is out right now, right this second, whether it's the 15th, 16th, 17th, whatever. The full release date is the 29th of August. Go and buy it. Just the audiobook. No, I'm saying the physical copy will have super cute photographs. It'll also have little interesting things. There's obviously the ebook. There's the audiobook. I am on the audiobook, if you care. It's also going to be the original cast returning, saying that. So funny. Eric Nolan and Elizabeth Klett, who are the voice actors of Devil of Dublin. And now there's additional cast of Odette O'Byrne, who is an actress, a friend of mine from Vikings, and Lawrence Killen, who is a Northern Irish actor who I work on two projects with, we can't speak about. So he's a lovely voice and he came in to do some. Some character work for me and obviously written by B.B. easton. So, yeah, that's. That's the biggest thing that I have going. If you follow me on Quinn, if you listen to my stories, watch me slightly have a breakdown earlier. There's audios coming every Friday for the foreseeable future. I'm in movies that I can't say. I'm in a TV show that only you know. So I can't plug them unless you want to get a lawyer and we all get sued. But yeah, the devil himself, that's the thing. So I'm assuming it'll be linked somewhere. I won't shut the hell up about it. And I'm going to promote the fuck out of it. And also in terms of that, I do want to give away certain things. So possibly you get Devil of Dublin and the devil himself together with an additional chapter that will be instead of from the female perspective, is now from the male perspective. So, for example, if there's a scene and it's a sex scene and it's stolen from the. The POV of the girl, it's now going to be done from my point of view as an additional content. Perfect. Thank you. I have one more thing to say. Yeah. And it's about my identity reveal. And you can leave this in as a bonus chapter to the point before I revealed my identity and that a lot of people had found out and realized that I was Eric Nolan, I was ready to hire my friend to play me like the way presidents would have body doubles. And I was putting in motion a thing where I accidentally turned my camera around, but it's my friend. And then he turns it off. And then I would leak information as a joke that I, the Devil of Dublin, reached out to Eric Nolan and said, we fit a similar vibe, a similar voice style. Would you like to play the part of the Devil of Dublin so no one will ever know who I am? There was a point where I was gonna go so, so far away just for a joke. That is the ending of this conversation. Just know how far I will go just to mess with you all. Including you. Yes. You listening right now in your car? You. You think I'm saying one thing. The more you pay attention, the less you see. Okay, that's a wrap.
- [94:41]
B
And that just about does it for this episode of the Audiobook Club. All of Eric's socials and links can be found in the show notes, of course, as well as more information on Amplify Audiobooks, who very kindly sponsor podcast. Eric, it's been such a pleasure getting to chat with you on the show. Thank you so much for spending the time and. Yeah, thank you so much.
- [95:00]
A
It's not a problem. I look forward to the video version coming soon.