27/03/2021
TL;DR - Next full-size episode on indefinite hiatus until at least autumn, more bite-sized pieces of the Heliosphere coming starting this April.
Hello all! Sorry I've been silent for the past several weeks, I was worrying myself into a corner about my progress on the next episode and put off saying anything about it.
Short answer to the question of "when's the next episode releasing," the next full-length Tale From the Heliosphere won't be releasing for a while. Back when the previous episode was in production, I had already decided I wanted to go an a hiatus for a bit while I figure out a few things on production flow (as well as work on some other personal projects), but I'd intended to do this after telling the next tale. Unfortunately, the scale of the story got away from me and I went back to the drawing board, and my intention to release the first part of the next tale in the beginning of March clearly didn't happen. After some deliberation, I decided that at this point it's best if I just go ahead on hiatus right now instead of dragging things out. I don't have an exact timeline for when the story of the Passage to Dione will continue, but right now I'm looking at September or October.
That said, I do want to continue making little bits of stuff during the hiatus - bits not connected to the overarching journey of the travelers from Ganymede to Dione, and not full-sized short stories. More along the lines of little legends and things of that nature, five minute snapshots of the world of the Heliosphere. The first of these "Heliosphere Shorts" will release in April, and will release regularly from there - these will be much smaller productions, telling much shorter and simpler stories, so I'm confident that, unlike what ended up happening so far, I'll be able to craft these in a significantly shorter timeframe (perhaps as quickly as two a month?) while simultaneously giving them more polish and continuing to work on improving my currently rather amateurish production skills.
From there, it's a matter of figuring out what I'm doing with the "main story" going forward. And "going forward" is certainly what I intend on doing - I do have more stories I want to tell in the world, not the least of which being the full story of our travelers' passage to Dione. I kinda jumped into this without knowing what I was doing or where I was going, which has its pros and cons, and I'm definitely feeling the cons right now. Currently, I'm toying with the idea of telling the rest of the story in the same format as these shorts, though that would mean abandoning my initial format and concept for this podcast as "fantasy Canterbury Tales in space."
Whichever direction I decide to go in, though, I hope those of you who have been listening in will still enjoy this little experiment of mine. Thank you all for listening so far, and I hope you continue to do so!
