There’s a lot going on in the world at the moment with lockdowns and such, so I’m at the point where I’m trying to push forwards.

I’m still working full time, which is good. My workplace is pretty much prepared for us to work from home indefinitely which is proving distracting at times, especially with paying too much attention to catastrophising about the world. I’ve found that my anxieties about getting old and still not having published much at all is taking back over, so maybe that’s a sign that this is becoming normal for me now.

I’ve got a few irons in the fire and I need to focus on getting them done. So I thought I’d process this all out loud (kind of) and publicly here. This was I’m not only showing you what I’m doing, I’m making myself publicly accountable as doing this, and possibly giving folks some ideas.

First of all, I have a lot of projects, so I’ve started a Trello, and I’m trying to keep things cut down a bit and point me in the right direction.

I have some work I still wants to do for Who Dares Rolls, some of which I need to find my notes for, some I’m fine putting off for a bit as I know I’ve got a bunch of things in the pipeline there already and can prioritise other things. Mistbirch Mythos’ proofread has a deadline of November as that’s when NaNoWriMo starts and is as good of a deadline for a novel proofread as anything.

Emma and I bought a day calendar to hang up in the kitchen and put stickers on when we did writing-based things. It stopped pretty abruptly at the start of all this, so I want to try and get that going again. Basically anything at all writing-based counts, whether it’s searching for artists, editing or making words. I found that in previous years I’ve had issues recording progress with editing as it rarely adds many words and sometimes removes them, which looks odd on a word count spreadsheet like the one I keep. I’ve also modified that to accept a general ‘I’ve done editing’ note on the far end as something to keep my combo of days when I’ve written going.

Lightning

Ah, the big project. I’ve noticed that the rolling Amazon KDP license ends on the 26^th, so I’ve decided to untick that option and look into using places like Itch.io to host the first novella as well. I’ve been apprehensive about promoting it for a couple of reasons. The cover’s not great. I love Nathan Paoletta, the logo he made and the support he gave. He went along the design specs I asked for and was cheap, too. Still, I’d rather go a different way so I’ve made new covers for all eight novellas. I’ve been concerned about the cold open of it and that I literally used ‘not like other girls’ as a phrase there. It turns out on rereading it that I didn’t, but I still had some changes to make to fit the later novellas. I’m giving it a very quick skim before compiling the version with the new cover. I’ll see where else it could be hosted, as well. I figure the more coverage the better. I’m also still dabbling with the idea of a comic version, but that’s not my main priority.

Speaking of KDP expiring, the Cuckoo anthology is also expiring in June, so if I can sort out Lightning Episode One then I’ll do the same with this.

Amnesiac City

At the moment I’ve been having some help from Matt Hardy at Mad Robot in my artist hunt for this. I’ve got the first three issues scripted and some sample scripts to send out to folks. It’s still something I’m not incredibly confident with, but with some help I’m getting there. I’ve put off starting scripting issue four yet, but I’ll get there.

Explosion High!

I’ve broke the back of this, as I revisited my old version which was a bit too 2000’s era webcomics. It started as a webcomic, so that made sense, I guess. Now I’ve got a lot more energy into it, a larger plot going on, but in the background of individual issues with a couple of fun stories within them. I made a bunch of extras when scripting the first story of the first issue and now I love almost all of them which might be bad, given how joyously deadly the school is. I’ve been adding to the Explosion High! revamped series bible today, along with making the light pass on Lightning. You can see the shocking lack of productivity and my writing day combo meter here:

The number next to the date is how much I’ve written this year so far. The ‘1’s are when I’ve added to the word count or edited something. Again, I’ll be trying to make that combo meter go up more in the future.

I’ll hopefully be posting more here about the upcoming changes to Lightning Episode One, or any comic news, or indeed chattering about games.