An Innocent Sales Pitch... With Something Behind It

Most theater companies have a brochure. A few pictures, a description of the shows, a telephone number. You read it, consider booking some entertainment, and go about your day. It is a reassuring arrangement. The brochure generally makes no attempt to follow you into your dreams. Ours got a little out of hand.

It begins as a sales brochure. Its author wants your booking and your deposit. There is nothing particularly mysterious about that part; a touring theater company does have to keep the wheels turning! But as long as you keep listening, he keeps talking. And somewhere along the way, the sales pitch opens a door into something much larger. What exactly is Riddlesbrood? Where did Clyde come from? And what happens when the things people imagine begin to take an interest in the people doing the imagining? You may have come looking for entertainment. You may leave wondering whether entertainment has been looking for YOU. This is our novel: a fantastical telling of Riddlesbrood’s origins that follows a troupe of traveling performers into deeply unsettling territory. Ghosts and monsters inhabit its strange world, while the cosmic horror reaches toward something larger: forces whose intentions and dimensions are difficult to grasp. The mystery is part of the attraction. How much can you trust the person telling the story? How much do you really want explained? There is still Riddlesbrood humor along the way. Sometimes a laugh is welcome company when you are beginning to suspect that you are not alone.

One Last Show... and Something in the Audience

The story begins on New Year’s Eve, 1999, at an old dinner theater by the sea. A young comic actor is performing his final show. Driven out by the witch, he is facing an uncertain future, and the curtain is coming down on more than the evening’s entertainment. Then, in the middle of his performance, he notices something in the crowd. The audience’s faces drift into neat rows, like the bars of a gate. Behind them, something with violet eyes is watching. It breathes in every joke and breathes out every laugh. An actor watches an audience for signs that a joke has landed. A smile. A laugh. A little movement in the room. Imagine noticing that familiar exchange and suddenly realizing something else is participating. Something concealed behind the faces, watching the show for reasons of its own. Broke and alone, the actor retreats to his mother’s freezing attic, where the relics of his childhood fantasy games are still waiting. Then the dreams begin. These dreams have an order to them. A purpose. They seem almost written. Someone else appears to be arranging them, and sleep becomes an appointment he does not remember making. Each night, he wakes in Harken. An island adrift on a rust-colored sea that smells of turpentine. A sky that is also an ocean. A glowing mountain, beneath which people say something sleeps... reading. Masked hunters walk the shores, calling him by a name he has never heard.

They seem to have been expecting him.

That sense of being expected makes the island even more disturbing. A stranger can lose his way. But what if the place he has wandered into already knows his name? Meanwhile, the troupe he founds has troubles of its own. A coat rack steals costumes. A presence the actors call Clyde follows them. And then there are the squirrels.

Far too many squirrels.

We will leave you to discover how all of this fits together. The story’s uneasiness grows from those encounters, from the dreams, and from the suspicion that ordinary life and Harken are much closer than they should be. This Halloween, there may be worse things than a knock at the door. There may be something waiting for you to close your eyes. When Imagination Opens the Wrong Door. Underneath the peculiar characters and impossible scenery lies the rule that makes this story especially close to our theatrical hearts: what a crowd dreams can leak into the waking world. Fear erodes that world, and chaos waits just beyond its edge. Riddlesbrood, and every player in it, may be all that holds the tide back. Suddenly, the strange things around the troupe carry a more troubling possibility. If imagination can change the world, what might fear allow into it? And what waits outside a reality that people can no longer hold together? For a theater company, there is something familiar in the idea of shared imagination. Strangers arrive with different worries and different days behind them. Then a story begins. They watch together. They laugh together. For a little while, they share an imagined experience. As performers, we spend our lives helping that happen. We know the feeling when a room catches a joke, or when an audience becomes so involved that everyone seems to lean forward at once. That exchange is part of the pleasure of theater, and the novel gives it a much stranger significance.

In this world, keeping a show alive might also mean keeping something else at bay.

That is where the book’s theatrical spirit and its darker mystery meet. The performers are working with imagination itself, and the stakes extend far beyond an evening’s applause. It is an eerie thought to carry into October, when shadows already seem longer and the world outside the window feels a little less familiar. 

Our Troupe Steps Up to the Microphone

Turning the novel into an audiobook was a big company undertaking. This was a project that brought many of your favorite Riddlesbrood actors into the recording studio, contributing their voices to the story of the very troupe they help bring to life onstage. Clyde P. Riddlesbrood narrates the adventure, while our participating performers help populate its unusual world. For longtime audience members, there is an extra pleasure in listening for a familiar voice. Hearing someone you recognize within this eerie story brings a little of our live theater company into the shadows with you! Our recording contributors included Kevin Ebner, Barry Berglund, Dean “Woody” Duncan, Karla Shantz, Kate Brubaker, Jeff Cleve, Eileen Morrison, Chris Nagle, Shannon D’Arcy, Jerry Long, and Conor Bell, alongside Clyde. We are grateful to every one of them. A project like this depends on people making the time, showing up, and contributing something of themselves. There is something particularly fitting about that. A novel about Riddlesbrood’s origins now carries the voices of the people who are part of Riddlesbrood. The company’s imagined story and its actual company effort meet at the microphone. We usually bring the show to your venue. This time, our voices can accompany you into Harken. Whether everyone should be going there is, of course, another matter. Years in the Making, One Session at a Time. Our recording calendar reaches back to July 2023, with sessions and follow-up work continuing into February 2026. That is more than two and a half years of returning to the project, working through its chapters, bringing in performers, and getting the remaining pieces recorded. There were individual recording appointments, sessions with several actors, and visits devoted to the next chapter or the remaining material. A troupe has performances to do and schedules to coordinate. A studio has its own calendar. Getting everyone to the right place at the right time becomes a production in itself. One of our September 2025 calendar entries was optimistically labeled “final!!!!!” Five exclamation points. A confident declaration. An administrative masterpiece. Anyone who has ever completed a creative project will understand. “Finished” sometimes means that you are about to discover one more thing that needs finishing. We kept returning until the work that remained could be done, and now those many separate appointments have led to something you can actually sit down and enjoy.

A Big Thank-You to Gradwell House and Eric McNelis

The recording sessions took place at Gradwell House Recording Studio in Haddon Heights, New Jersey. We want to give them an enthusiastic thank-you for being such a great company to work with throughout this undertaking. We also owe a special thank-you to Eric McNelis, our editor, who was terrific. His work helped turn the recorded material into the finished audiobook, and his contribution deserves recognition alongside the voices you hear. The voices receive much of the attention, naturally. But the work on the other side of the microphone is essential to bringing those performances to listeners. This audiobook also includes lots of professionally produced sound effects, giving its eerie story an additional layer of atmosphere. Audio is a fitting way to encounter a tale so concerned with unseen presences and uncertain realities. You hear the words, and your imagination supplies the pictures. With Clyde leading you deeper into the mystery, there is plenty for that imagination to work on.

Your Halloween Listening Is Waiting... If You Dare!

You can now listen to The Greatest Brochure in the World as a 19-chapter YouTube playlist, completely free. The full audiobook runs approximately 12 hours, making it a substantial adventure to explore throughout the Halloween season. Start with the first chapter and follow the story at your own pace. Let it accompany your autumn travels, your pumpkin preparations, or an evening when the wind is moving through the trees and you feel like hearing something strange. Headphones are welcome. Prior knowledge of Riddlesbrood is unnecessary. You may prefer to leave a light on. If you enjoy it, share the link with a friend who likes ghost stories, monsters, cosmic horror, dark fantasy, or the Riddlesbrood troupe. Leave a comment, let us know whose voices you recognized, and tell us what you thought of the adventure! To everyone who contributed, and to everyone who has supported our shows over the years: thank you. We are excited to share this new way of entering the world of Riddlesbrood, and delighted to invite you into its mysteries this October.

Click here to begin our FREE audiobook, The Greatest Brochure in the World!

The author still wants your booking and your deposit, of course. But first... listen closely. Something with violet eyes may be listening, too. The show has already begun.