It’s that time of year.
A time of endings and beginnings. A time to eat too much and drink less responsibly. A time to make definitive plans to join a gym for the year ahead.
For me, I’ve been thinking about celebrating my achievements more, instead of always focusing on what’s next next next next.
That’s what this email is about: a glance over the shoulder at what I managed to achieve with my writing in 2025.
2025 highlights
I had big plans for 2025, and I’ve made a good stab at them. Here are the highlights:
Completed Draft 3 of A Phantom in the Forge
I finished the third draft of A Phantom in the Forge (Book 2 of the Slip Saga) all the way back in January.
This book has been kicking my butt around the parking lot, and had huge chunks rewritten, but as I’m working on the fourth and close-to-final draft now, I’m really happy with how it’s shaping up.
Personally, I think it’s better than Book 1, and that’s where I want it to be. A huuuge shout out to my beta readers for your feedback. It’s helped tremendously.
Almost-but-not-quite finished Book 1 of new series
The first book in my new series is taunting the finish line. Some of you lovely people are beta reading it for me right now, and a couple of you have already sent me your feedback.
I’m confident I’ll be ready to send it out to agents in February, which will be the first time I’ve queried anything.
Completed Draft 2 of a new Slip Saga novella
For some reason I thought working on two books in tandem wasn’t enough, so in 2024 I penned a first draft of another Slip Saga novella that explores the side characters from A Spectre in the Stream.
I bashed out a second draft of that this year, too, finishing it up in July. I think it’ll be good fun for fans of the series, particularly those who wanted a to spend a bit more time with Styx & Ors.
Still a few more drafts to go, but it’s getting there.
Setup the Kickstarter prelaunch for A Phantom in the Forge
This one wasn’t a huge task, but it was nice to knock it off the list and allow people to follow the upcoming campaign.
If you haven’t already, you can follow the campaign.
Changed mailing list providers
I switched my mailing list provider from Mailerlite to a self-hosted one called Listmonk. It took much longer than I expected because I’m a software engineer and enjoy automating all the things, but I’ve been happy with the result.
It gives me a lot more control over the emails I send you, and it’s cheaper, too. I hope you’ll notice gradual improvements to the emails I send over time as I add capabilities to it.
And that’s a whole year captured in a few paragraphs. It’s not as far as I hoped to get (ie. publishing A Phantom in the Forge earlier in the year 🙃), but it’s solid progress nonetheless.
My biggest learning for the year is that I’m doing this author thing because I enjoy it, and I should focus less on done and more on doing.
So that’s what I’ll be doing in 2026, too.
Happy New Year, dear reader.