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"Together?" "Together."

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Night Shift Podcast: A 2025 Big Update

Phew, deep breath.

Here goes.

The Night Shift Podcast is coming back!

(@ me, that wasn't so hard, was it?)

It's July 2025 as I'm writing this, and on behalf of the whole Night Shift team, I'm really happy to say the show is on its way back to you.

Writing this post has me super anxious because it's been so long since the second season was promised, but things are moving again at last.

To answer some questions we've had a few times:

No, we didn't blast through the crowdfund money on other things. That was for this show and will always be for this show.

Yes, there likely will be new parts to cast soon, but we'll post about them when it's time.

I still can't give you a release date yet, as production takes time, and whilst I was all but unemployed during S1, I ended up with a pretty intense and high level job in the last two years. I have to make all this work around that.

I will post more updates as often as I can from here on out.

I know I said last year I wouldn't go into it, and I'm not obligated to explain the delay, but a little context is deserved for all your patience.

I'll put the rest below because it's a little heavy so you can stop reading here if you want, and leave you with this snapshot of editing on an interim episode between S1 and S2 which is coming together very nicely.

If you do want to read on, CW's are death of close family, general illness, and cancer. Thank you all so much for being patient with me. It's often very hard to create when you're going through hard times, and the state of the world hasn't cut any of us a break either. But it feels amazing to be back in the saddle.

💜💜💜

So, my story.

It started back at the end of 2022 right after Season 1 wrapped up, when I lost my grandfather very suddenly, which would turn out to be the first in a series of horrible events. A member of my immediate family got diagnosed with cancer less than a month later, and Ashe and I were planning our wedding at the time when I suddenly got sick myself. It took months for the NHS to diagnose an autoimmune illness, which I've been struggling with every since.

Then less than a year later my grandmother passed too from Alzheimer's. It wasn't unexpected, but it was hard and brought heaps of legal stuff with it. I got a muscle atrophy in my leg in April 2024 and had to start walking with a cane, and recovery is still ongoing from that (but we're almost there!) - and I went through a lot of self-discovery after learning how much adhd had been ruining my life for decades, and trying to adapt to that.

I was pretty depressed and very anxious, and every piece of world news was making it harder to want to write (and especially something set in America). How was I supposed to write a story about rising up against how cruel and strange the world can be, when in reality the weight of the real world was crushing me?

For the next year, I became a complete hermit and spoke to nearly no one besides my wife, best friend and family. I stopped going on social media. I worked, put on a happy face to my colleagues, then played D&D in the evenings to escape.

When I posted the update last year, I thought I was on the mend at last. My work mentor was helpful, but I found that whilst I could be creative again, I couldn't bring myself to work on Night Shift. I drafted out a whole novel in that time, 100k, guilt eating away at me with every page that I wasn't working on the thing I was supposed to be working on. Night Shift stopped being fun and started feeling like a ball and chain.

'I'll start on it next week'. I must've told myself that a hundred times. And as last year closed out, I started to think I might be able to.

Then in January, my mother's partner of five years also died suddenly in a very traumatic way. It's wrecked the first half of my 2025, to the point where I was ready to just give up on being able to make anything again. When we finished S1 in 2022, I never, ever could have guessed I'd lose three very close family members in less than three years, let alone everything else in-between.

Just last month, I even deactivated the Night Shift website thinking about how I was going to announce the project was done for. I'd thought about it over and over for the last year. But I waited, just a little longer, because deep down I knew I didn't want to do that.

Maybe that was the release I needed, allowing myself to close it down and then realising I didn't actually want that at all. I saw a few things and read a few things that filled me with hope and inspiration.

And it struck me: what I need more than anything right now is to write a story about rising up against how cruel and strange the world can be.

Suddenly, all this nostalgia and love for the show came flooding back in, and I got my groove back; I've put four episodes together in four days, and reactivated the site again. I'm still figuring out the shape of Season 2, and it'll be what it'll be, but I hope whatever that is, you enjoy it.

I'm not writing this all down for pity, more just to get it off my chest. It's been an incredibly tough 2.5 years, both personally and globally. To all the people who've sent messages of encouragement and love for the show, know that I see you and I appreciate you.

My big hope is that when this little show releases, it can bring everyone a bit of hope and escapism. At a time when everything feels dark, we need visibility and togetherness. I hope our little queer show can be a drop in that ocean.

Lots of love, and I'm going to do my utmost for you all. Wish me luck ❤️

If you have any questions, please feel free to send them through to our inbox. I'm going to try not to avoid it any more.

- Skye (formerly Julian)

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A humpback whale cruises along the shore. Filmed in Alaska, USA. From Whale Wisdom (2018).

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Queer Historical Fiction Book Bracket: Round 5

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

The Radiant Emperor duology (She Who Became the Sun, He Who Drowned the World) by Shelley Parker-Chan

Endorsement from submitter #1: "extremely nuanced portrayals/discussions of gender and sexuality within the relative historical context; very primarily historical, secondary genre is arguably more magical realism than straightforward fantasy"

Endorsement from submitter #2: "A cast full of queer characters who do awful things to get the throne"

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future her brother’s abandoned greatness.

Setting: 14th-century China (1345), Yuan and Ming Dynasties

Fantasy, historical fiction, alternate history, epic fantasy, 1340s, series, adult

The Last Binding trilogy (A Marvellous Light, A Restless Truth, A Power Unbound) by Freya Marske

Endorsement from submitter #1: "A trilogy of books set in a magical Edwardian England, the Last Binding series focuses on three queer couples who come together in order to solve a conspiracy threatening all magic. It’s a masterful blending of fantasy, historical fiction, and romance, with a splash of mystery and Wodehousian romp. Expect magical manor house parties with beautiful wallpaper, as well as explorations of power, trust, and what we owe the land. The prose is absolutely gorgeous and evocative. The characters and their emotional arcs form the beating heart of the story, intertwined with beautifully crafted romance. The worldbuilding feels organic and deeply rooted within this hidden magical society. These books are thoughtful, tender, scorching, and fun all at once."

Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.

Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it��not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.

Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles—and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.

Setting: Edwardian England, 1908–1909

Fantasy, historical fiction, romance, magic, Edwardian, 1900s, gaslamp fantasy, series, adult

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The Right Spot

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I’m never getting over the oa btw like how does it make me feel this much?

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Roger Roger…

Drawing in the 2003 art style continued!

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I finished the shrimp socks!!!!

The joy I got making this is literally unmatched, I had so so so much fun with this project.

I also learnt so much, this was my first time doing colour work in knitting, and jogless stripes took a bit of getting my head around before it made sense, but I’m so pleased with the end result!

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devastated that today i had to return a book to the library because i'd renewed it the maximum number of times (i'd had it out since last may) (i've renewed it like 20 times) (i only just started reading it a couple of months ago) (i'm not even that far into it)

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Fatiha El-Ghorri, Taskmaster Series 19

❤️

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Orde-Lees cruising around in the fuck ass car!!!!

(feat. one of the first ever Oop I'm in front of the camera*awkward run out of frame*)

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still thinking about when my coworker left his copy of wind and truth on the train when he was 50 pages from the end ... it had taken him months to read and to lose it so close to the end! so anyway he ordered a secondhand copy off ebay and in the time between ordering it and it arriving his friend gave him his copy so he went from one to none to two in the space of a week

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ALYA WAS THE MVP IN THIS ONE. ABSOLUTELY love that Alya was mad because throughout all of Miraculous's run we have never seen her be genuinely upset at Marinette, and I think it's completely consistent with her character. She's a journalist; of course she'd despise the fact that Gabriel Agreste got to be seen as a hero and the fact that she even straight up told Mari, "Idgaf; I am not keeping that secret" and basically erasing her memory as a second chance for Mari because she doesn't want to be the source of her suffering but also leaving her with "You don't get to make that decision for him." Someone needed to confront Maribug about her decision, and she was the perfect person. "Why would I hate you Marinette" SHUT UP SHUT SHUT UP

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Okay but actually what the fuck is going on in season 6 this is off the wall bonkers

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no thoughts head empty Ko-Fi