Night Shift Podcast: A 2025 Big Update
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.
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.
