The leading character of the audio series The Diaries of Netovicius the Vampire was spawned by an offhand comment while creator Hugo Pierre Martin and his partner, Sonja Kelly, were walking around downtown Woonsocket a couple years back.
“My partner said she saw someone who looked like a vampire driving a lime green Cadillac,” the actor and voice-over artist related. That gave him the idea to set a vampire tale in RI.
And to give some backstory to Netovicius, Martin took a page from his own life: He and Kelly, a filmmaker, had moved to PVD in 2022 after leaving a “brutally expensive” Los Angeles. So, in the drama series, the vampire is priced out of his apartment on Beacon Hill in Boston, and moves to Woonsocket. An artist, he eventually takes up residence in the Hospital Trust building and deals with immortality; he’s a thousand years old, and is plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“I wrote and recorded that first episode in one take,” he recalled in an interview at PVD’s White Electric Coffee Co-Op, his favorite café. Martin added a soundtrack, and released it on YouTube. Bitten, so to speak, by the producer’s bug, he decided to keep at it, and put The Diaries on all podcast platforms, including Spotify.
Now, 2½ years later, The Diaries has 80 episodes, and their average length has increased to 15-20 minutes from 4-5 minutes in the early days. “Our longest one runs 45 minutes,” he added. Along
with music, the episodes have illustrations.
For instance, Esther Helas, who did the cover for Motif’s recent Food issue, drew a new character, voiced by Scottish actress Isla Campbell, for The Dreams In Which I’m Dying – Chapter 9. And actor Harry Aspinwall of PVD did the art for The Dreams In Which I’m Dying – Chapter 4, as well as the voice for one of the characters.
“I’m always looking for artist involvement,” Martin added. Netovicius sounds a lot like Peter Lorre; that’s because, as Martin put it, he was unconsciously inspired by Lorre, who played sinister or shady characters in film noir thrillers like The Maltese Falcon.
In addition to Netovicius, the VO actor does a half-dozen other characters in his series. “I can do a lot of different voices,” Martin said. “From low tones to high tones, and everything in between, as well
as accents.” He got his voice acting chops by doing a dozen characters in various video games over the years, including an agent in Valorant for the past four, and roles in Days Gone and Shin Megami Tensei.
Born in San Francisco, Martin went to the College of Marin just across the Golden Gate Bridge. “The theater school is a special place for me. Robin Williams went there,” he said. Martin graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts in Performance from San Francisco State University in 2010. He is a member of LitArtsRI, runs its audio makers group, and has conducted workshops.
When it comes to The Diaries, Martin does all of the writing, production, direction, editing, and marketing; the action takes place mostly in Woonsocket, PVD, and Boston. “We use a lot of real locations in the series, like the RISD Museum.”
Martin wrote plays while attending UNCSA, a drama conservatory. He honed his long-form improvisation at a few studios in LA. “It’s about telling a story,” he explained. “You have to have the ability to do monologues, and get across complex metaphors.”
A number of plot points in The Diaries were inspired by how Martin approached becoming an actor. “The characters live in me. I’ll walk around, and get an idea. When I’m writing the episodes, I always allow myself to be surprised by what’s happening.”
Martin’s interest in psychology and human development has added a couple of layers to Netovicius: The vampire came from a traumatic background in the first place, only to go through another trauma when bitten by a vampire and turning into one himself.
On top of that, immortality has its own traumas, too.
“Being immortal means losing all the ones they love,” Martin said. And a vampire like Netovicius has to deal with this loss every lifetime. Small wonder, then, that he’s manic-depressive.
Barnacle Harry, who was introduced in the second season, is an alcoholic. He’s invulnerable, which is a really good thing for his liver. Like the main character, Harry is a good fit for Martin’s whimsical world in which deep and dark secrets are explored by the traumatized.
At one point, Netovicius and Harry run up against the Red Umbrella Society, a vampire-killing cult chock full of sociopathic personalities who are filthy rich. They seek immortality, something the vampires have mixed feelings about, at best.
Despite his name, Netovicius is a sensitive character. “As an artist, he feels insecure about his talent even though he’s a thousand years old. He’s jealous of the Impressionists because they found their voice, and he hasn’t found his yet,” Martin explained.
In addition, his mania infuses magic into his art. The first time this happened to Netovicius was during the Middle Ages when he was living in a castle. He painted dragons which suddenly sprang to life and terrified everyone around.
“He has to watch himself, become more comfortable with his magical powers as an artist, and try to control them,” Martin said.
Still, Netovicius spends a lot of time running away from the traumas he’s suffered over the centuries. Inevitably, someone from his past shows up and makes him confront his disorder.
“Amid immortality as a mixed blessing, or as a mixed curse, the main story is all about recovery from trauma,” Martin concluded. •
The Diaries can be opened at the website netovampire.com