This year’s been a bit of a weird one, hasn’t it? I feel like I’ve been incredibly productive and nowhere near productive enough, which will hopefully even out to make an averagely productive time as far as my writing goes. Here’s a brief update on some of my projects.

Mistbirch Mythos

My prose output this year has mostly been in relation to a series of cosy eldritch murder mysteries. It’s set in a small village filled with lovely people and weird horrors. I drafted Mistbirch Mythos last year and have been proofreading it, reading it out to my writing group and then making changes since.

At the time of writing, I’ve got 24 scenes left to edit out of 43. My aim is to get this completely done by the end of the year, then I can send copies out to readers. If I can edit one a day then I should be able to get this done, or even better, editing more than one a day means I’m finished earlier and can focus on the next big thing.

Lightning. Again.

My KDP exclusivity for Lightning’s first novella went away this year and I decided it was a good idea to pull it.

Lightning’s a series of novellas covering families of superpowered aliens living on Earth and the hijinks that ensue. It’s my baby, but it also needs work. I have the season written and I love a lot of it, but it needs some heavy changes as it was written and then benched a few years ago. The world has changed a lot since then. I’ll get into more of that next year, though as 2021 will be my Year of Lightning, prose-wise.

I’ve tweaked Episode One and have a nice new cover as I wasn’t really feeling the last one. When Episode Two is ready, I’ll launch Episode One on Amazon, Itch and several other platforms.

This year I’ve seen a couple of friends have issues with their writing. One of them has been polishing the same thing over and over again, which I recognise I can fall into the habit of, especially with Lightning. The other, WH Arthur, has actually been releasing a ton of indie RPGs on Itch and even has a Kickstarter for one of them. I’m going to use him as a good inspiration to get Lightning Season One out of the door. Done. So next year I want to see if I can blitz through rewrites, edits and get at least a few episodes out of the door.

Explosion High!

Artist Hunt 2020 has been a major factor this year. Matt Hardy of Mad Robot Comics fame saw my seven or so pitches and asked me to focus on two. I’ve done that and then spent most of the year fretting about trying to find artists. I’ve not had to do that since secondary school and the comic company my friends and I tried to create. This meant a lot of staring at different sites looking for artists who might work, overthinking things and then calling up Matt to help get me back on track with the mission.

One of the projects, Amnesiac City, is still an ongoing issue and I’m still looking for a suitable horror/mystery artist. I got to issue three of scripts and I’m paused until I find an artist.

The other project is Explosion High! and that’s gone amazingly quickly. For the project which didn’t have a script at the start of the year, it suddenly shot ahead. It was the first thing I wrote in the ‘rona times, in a kind of manic burst.

Since then I managed to get not one but several artists who will be joining me on this adventure. I’ll say more over the coming months, and showing off some fabulous art from the Explosion High crew.