One Year of RetroZap

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We’re leveling up!

I can’t believe it’s been an entire year since I launched RetroZap. In so many ways, it has felt like a very fast 365 days, and in other ways, I feel like I’ve been doing this forever. In a very short time, RetroZap went from an obscure personal blog project into a full-fledged site with a full staff of writers, a slate of podcasts and video shows with tens of thousands of listeners and viewers and millions of readers. I still can’t believe that part–millions.

A year ago, life was a lot different for me. There had been a death in my immediate family that ripped a hole through us. In time, loss turned to grief, grief turned to emptiness, and emptiness was threatening to become abject despair. I knew it was time to start something new; I needed to focus on new creative projects, and I figured it was high time to start that blog project I had always talked about. I had a few false starts in the past; who can forget mister-blog.com (or more specifically, who can remember it?), but I had been learning a lot along thew ay about what it took to run a site on the back end; the fall of 2014 was the time in which I executed, and RetroZap was born.

In short time, I learned a lot of about site hosting, vector graphics, social media, and podcasting–all things I thought I knew about, but in truth had to unlearn what I had learned. It was interesting, exhausting, and exciting. I felt compelled to bring this to reality; the monster that was despair was at the door, and I had to keep it out by moving forward. I also caught up on all of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD season one in that time.

I told no one I was starting a site, save my wife and a very short list of friends. I wanted the results to speak for themselves. Having felt the burn from previous sites, I wanted to get this right. After weeks of planning, I finally had a living site. All that was left was to populate it with content.

At first, RetroZap was intended to be an outlet to take a look at pop culture through the lens of a Gen Xer; I’d revisit what I liked, comment on what was new, and write about interesting ideas. I would cover movies, television, comics, books, and gaming. Very quickly it became clear that while this mission remained, what I really wanted to talk about was Star Wars. And so what RetroZap became, and still remains today, is a mostly-Star-Wars-but-also-other-things-pop-culture site. More on this later.

I learned something else very quickly, I could write much more than I ever realized. Years and years of professional copywriting and training honed me to be able to publish upwards to 15,000 words a week if needed. It may sound weird, but I never realized I was capable of this, and put in perspective what I was capable of. I was finally able to write at the cadence I had always dreamed about; I was able to make projects happen I had always dreamed about. Turns out that all that ever held me back was a lack of confidence.

If you ever feel intimidated by a writing project, you should shove those feelings of intimidation right into the garbage and get writing. Be tough on yourself, revise your drafts, reread, but most importantly, get writing and don’t stop. I’m hardly the first person to offer this advice, but I can’t stress it enough.

Anyway, things started to move quickly. I had concurrently started writing for The Star Wars Report, who I have to blame for getting me started on my all-consuming addiction to podcasting. In November, I appeared on their show and instantly turned from podcast listener into podcaster, and haven’t looked back. All my tech and audio passions from years of playing music flooded back, and in a few short months I had amassed a full studio worth of equipment. Thank you, Amazon, for all the returns. Thank you, Sweetwater for the amazing customer service. About that time, I recorded with Scott Ryfun for his new show My Star Wars Story, and it was nothing short of a transformative, emotional experience. I was energized to make another project a reality as well.

My close friend Chris Salton and I had been talking for years about doing a show where we would talk about Star Wars the way we were talking about it anyway in our regular outings at the local pub. We hadn’t decided on a medium for a long time; Chris wanted to do a YouTube show and also discuss his collection too, I wanted to do a podcast. In the end, it turned out we did both; Chris started the Collectors Hutt in November 2014 and we also started test shows of Brews and Blasters. We had content, we had shows, we were having a ton of fun. Things were off and rolling. I had expected obscurity to last for along time, with a steady, slow incline that would take years. I forgot that the Internet doesn’t always work that way.

The new year rolled in with the death star blowing up at midnight, a lot of Chinese food from Fantasy Island, and plenty of ideas rolling around in my head that had built up over many years. One of them was an interpretation of the end of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, and it took off like wildfire. Everything changed. Friends were reading RetroZap and didn’t know it was my site because I didn’t even bother to include a byline. Pro tip: always include a byline to your articles. My heroes were reading my writing, and I was talking to people in the Star Wars community I had deep respect and admiration for. But, what was the next move? Expansion, of course.

It became clear that I just couldn’t keep up with covering a steady stream of content across a number of TV series, comics, books, and movies alone while also producing two podcasts (oh yeah, I started a second show, too, this one about Game of Thrones) whilst trying to write compelling editorials. This is my hobby; it’s what I do after my full-time job. RetroZap needed to scale up, so I put out the call for writers. I was lucky enough to meet the best team out there.

THANK YOU

Bill Gardner, Chris Salton, Courtney Martin, Dennis KeIthly, Mike MacDonald, Mike Audette, Mike Conte, Bill Drewnowski, Joe Ryan, and Kevin Rampelberg

I also learned that there are a disproportionate amount of Mikes in Star Wars fandom. This team is absolutely amazing, and produce some of the most insightful and rewarding content I have ever seen. I’m proud and lucky to be their editor.

As 2015 marched on, I had expected to return to obscurity, but that never happened. RetroZap is viewed worldwide on a daily basis, and we connect with listeners and readers every day. Our network of shows thrives and multiplies (We are happy to bring to The Trade Federation–the first show ever dedicated to the popular Star Wars Card Trader), and there are plans for more. Oh yes, so many more plans.

RetroZap is not slowing down, not for a longshot. There are so many ideas I still want to bring to reality, and many more areas of pop culture we need to cover (gaming, anyone?), and where once I feared I would run out of content, it seems nowadays that if granted 1,000 years, I still wouldn’t have enough time to publish it all. THere are a lot of ideas and a lot of plans already in the works, and we look forward to bringing you unique content with a distinctive perspective and personality.

And of course there will be more editorials. I have been working on a dozen ideas for a while now that will soon see the publication. Sneak preview: Could Darth Vader use Force Lightning? I say yes. How about one more: Luke, I am your son.

I am so thankful to have this site and to have the friends, acquaintances, and contacts it has brought. In a lot of ways, I feel like it saved me. I have purpose creatively like I’ve never known, and it drives me to wake up early and fall asleep late every night at my laptop in dedication to this site. But more importantly, I can’t thank you enough for reading. If this is your first time here or your fourteen-thousandth, you have my respect and gratitude. This site is dedicated entirely to you, the readers and listeners. I want you to enjoy this site, have a good time, and come back often. I want RetroZap to be a place among pop culture, narrative art, genre enthusiasts, geekdom, fandom, whatever you call it–I want it to be a place where you’re comfortable and can have fun. I want you to participate by leaving us feedback through email and social media. I want you to feel like you’ve found a home base here, because looking back, that’s what I think I was really building for myself, and if I can share that with you, than I’ve accomplished more than I ever thought one little site on the Internet ever could.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.
Onward to Year Two!