I’m looking back at the whole of 2025, and what I managed to get written, published… and what I did not. This was a momentous year. In March of 2025 my long term work contract ended, with no possibility of extension as the entire department was getting the axe. I knew this was coming, of course, and had been diligently job-hunting from the last month of the old year, ramping up the tempo as I moved into the new year. Nothing. Crickets. Not even call-backs, much less interviews. I did everything I knew how to do, researched and tried new techniques, sent out hundreds of applications and nada, zip, zilch. Now, some of this was my own constraints: I had to have a remote position and the pendulum has swung away from work at home again. What I did have was something I’d been working on for almost fifteen years, as my retirement plan, and maybe?
I sat down with friends, professionals in the field, and laid out my ideas and thoughts on going full-time as a writer. I got encouragement and good feedback, and, well, jobs weren’t exactly knocking at my door. At the end of March, I took a deep breath, stepped off the solid ground of steady paychecks, and plunged into the deep end.
My plan for 2025 was to have a publication every month of the year. I did not succeed. There were life intrusions, of a fairly serious nature, and the writing faltered in the face of them. Still, though, I did a lot, and am on track to finish out the year with at least a short story in December as the novel is fighting me and won’t be complete in time.
January – Tanager’s Flight (novel)
February – The Luminous Citadel of New Atlantis (novella)
March – A Garden of Stars (Short story collection)
April – The Groundskeeper: Deadhead (novella)
May – Supporting Ragnarok (novel)
June and July fell to traveling and visiting family, and I have no regrets as it may have been the last time I’ll see my father on this side of the veil. I got to spend time with my beloved grandmother. I saw my Aunt Mel for what would be the last time, although none of us knew it then. I did experiment with releasing The East Witch and Running Into Time as Amazon virtual voice audiobooks, which was an utter failure.
August – Following Trouble: An Underhill Tale (Short story)
September – Days of No Ink: A Digital Art Sketchbook (non-fiction art book)
October – The Groundskeeper: Have a Dead Night (novel) and The Groundskeeper Book 1-3 print Omnibus
November – Wonderland (novella) and a short story in the library anthology Library Creatures
This month? I have a novel which is very much in-progress, but I’d set it aside to finish Wonderland, and I still have a third of it to write which is likely not happening in two weeks. I may release a short story, or perhaps a collection if I have some tucked ‘in the drawer’ I can pull out as needed. While it would be nice to have released four novels this year, I can live with three!
Could I have lived off my income this year? No. We have my husband’s income, which makes up about half the household income currently. I’m not to the point of replacing that, which is our goal in case of his death, I’m not left scrambling to find a job/bring up the income in a hurry. We have time. I have plans. Now, if we were doing this without a mortgage payment? I could survive now on my writing income, yes. As a matter of fact, I’ve made enough this year to pay the mortgage almost every month, and have done so. As mile-markers go, that’s not a bad one if you look at missed months and short story releases, not to mention the art book which was a net loss in every way but my pleasure in creating it.
Next year I may not be so ambitious in the sheer number of releases. However, I’m going to be learning and implementing ads, to start getting my books in front of new readers. I have a deep enough backlist to lure them further and further in my work… Hah! And I will be overhauling older books to make sure they have links to allow those new readers to find the whole series, or other books they might like if they liked the one they just read. Maintenance of the backlist is an important task, even while I work on the new books. I’m going to be looking into recording my own audiobooks, and likely will start by reading them aloud on my Youtube channel to begin with. I’m going to change tacks a little on my blog in hopes of generating more word of mouth and growing my readership there, which funnels readers toward my books. Oh, and there will be a cookbook, at long last.
And of course through all of this, the last two years, and the future as it is foreseeable, I’m working with Raconteur Press as their head of design, acquisitions editor for the Boy’s Adventure Books, and that keeps me busy for a few hours a day on top of my writing and marketing for personal reasons. If I achieve nothing else in my writing career, seeing the boy’s novels come into the world that I helped make possible is enough. I’m beyond proud of that, the team I work with, and what we’ve accomplished already with more coming every month.
We will see what 2026 brings for us. It will be an adventure. I think I can make it a better year for my production than the last, and next December can link to this post and report back. Time tells tales.
Mad Genius Club 
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