Last year I triumphantly shouted to anyone who would listen about how I would be publishing the first ‘season’ of my Lightning novellas in 2015, starting in April 2015 so that the final part would be launched in time with Christmas 2015. One episode a month with a gap at the midpoint to fit a bit of a cliffhanger and give me some catch-up time. I guessed I would need the delays between ‘episodes’ to edit the stories, but I didn’t realise it would all take so long and that my lack of knowledge in the field was quite as much as it is.

The season is written, that’s a start. I have a little of the supplementary material also written, but not much yet. That’s far shorter than the season itself though, so it should be easy enough to get done. So here’s what’s left to do.

I’m going through the episodes myself first, just to make sure they make basic human sense, then throwing them at four readers so they can rip them apart like the jackals they are. The big hope is that they won’t find anything shockingly wrong, story-breaking or horrendous. I plan everything to a crazy level, so it shouldn’t ever hit that point. Still, one of my readers found a continuity issue which had remained untouched in a couple of drafts. Hence the need for readers. Episode One is with the readers, I’ve gone through Episode Two but have yet to send it off. Episodes Three through Eight will be handled in order as I keep going through my tasks.

The readers throw back my work with notes, hopefully praise, probably thousands of things I’ve done wrong. I have Episode One back from one reader so far. Each one can be dealt with later than the last, luckily.

Then there’s the scary other things. The bonus content, the covers, the webcomics (I’ve given up on the idea of a video project, but a couple of short-form webcomics would be pretty cool). Then a Lightning website to act as a central hub for everything in the series, linking to wherever I’m selling the ebooks from. Gods, there’s marketing to work out… so much.

I’m undaunted, I still plan on releasing Lightning Episode One, “Crash Day,” in 2015. That’s the main goal, but April’s probably too near even to get the story edited, find a cover artist and get the first couple of short stories finished at the same time.

The current plans for launch dates have the season finale, “A Very Lightning Christmas,” end up launched in December 2016 so it still fits with Christmas. Episodes will release every two months either starting from October (using the gap month content as a bonus month full of fiction) or August (using the gap month content inserted in the release schedule).

Everything else is yet to plan.

There’s the other work I do as well; my comic reviews on the Google Plus comic book community, my video game reviews on D+Pad Magazine and soon my work for Who Dares Rolls, a tabletop website. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to start up Explosion High! properly, too.

Here’s to a busy 2015 and hopefully getting published!