New Year, New Voice, Same Attitude

a hospital stay, the inside of NJ’s skull, and planning.

It’s been a hell of a couple months here at Lantern Audio Works. Celosia spent three days at the beginning of December in the hospital due to an issue with her blood pressure, and then a few days later NJ underwent surgery to remove a massive polyp from his sinus that was threatening both his speech and his breathing. Celosia is fine, everything is back to normal, and NJ is healing well and has been cleared to start recording again. However, it did necessitate a quieter holiday season than they’d normally have.

But this lead to an opportunity for some forced down time. A chance to think and plan without active work underway.
What would the next year at Lantern look like? Sure, we have projects in the works(Horizon 13 being the primary example) but while releasing awesome audio drama projects is the goal of what we do, writing and recording is only one part of the dish.

There’s a lot more that has to be kept up to make those shows. Scheduling, file management, communicating with artists and collaborators, marketing, and much more have to be kept up.
Planning isn’t as simple as What are we working on next? Everything has to be in line and ready to go.

So we took that downtime over the holidays and stopped. Looked at the big picture. Something that can be difficult to do when you’re in the trenches of production.
NJ rebuilt our entire file management system from the ground up to make it more secure and easy to navigate.
We built a database of all the shows, including everything from finished productions to ideas still in the concept stage.
Then we started going through them one at a time, deciding what was viable to start work on and what had to be shelved, what would be a member exclusive on our site and what will be a public release. How long do we estimate each project will take to complete? What will the release order be?

Once we had that road map, we started looking at everything else. What will our marketing look like? Where is the best place to spend our energy in connecting with our fans, finding new listeners, and fostering community?
Considering the current environment and climate on social media, many creators are having this same conversation.

So what does this all mean?
Well, as far as our shows, we’ll be releasing multiple projects this year both for our members and the public that will include a mix of new shows and updates/continuations of shows that have been paused. We’ll be announcing more specifics about these as appropriate, and members will get those updates first.
On the marketing/social media front we intend to maintain a presence on Threads, Blue Sky, and Instagram. But we will be focusing much more heavily on our website, this blog, YouTube, and our Discord. Things we have much more control over and don’t have the volatility of social media.

So that’s where things sit as of now. We’re re-energized and primed to hit the ground running this year with new releases. After a year of setbacks and frustrations, we’re ready to show the world what we can really do.

See you next month!