2026: Writing Goals

I was kind of prolific from a self-publishing perspective, last year.  The goal, as ever (beyond...actually selling books?), is for mainstream publishing.  Awaiting the fate of two short stories I submitted late last year (who knows?), and I have my comic book biography of Dr. Seuss hitting shelves soon (more on that upon release!), after more than a decade waiting and really, believing it was never going to happen, and...

My last book released last year was The Blizzard of '78, the latest of my annual publications for family and friends, and as it happens, I got the idea for this year's before 2026 ever showed up, so that's going to be fun waiting to write.

I completed Collider in 2025, which was by far the biggest accomplishment, as it was, as I keep pointing out, 30 years in the making, and at the time, I thought I could use it to finally sell the Danab Cycle to publishers, but...I think I perhaps went a little too...literary with it, more than I had with Seven Thunders, which itself isn't exactly the straight narrative readers, editors, anyone might expect from space opera...Which brings me to Lady of the Horde, previously listed here as The Fateful Lightning, which is actually the conclusion of this trilogy (although I've since figured out how the fourth book is also part of the same cycle within the cycle).  Horde is the name I gave it when I mocked up covers a while ago, but I'd been thinking of it as Lightning for so long I forgot.  But I love Horde and thinking of it that way again helped define how the story needs to be told.  It should once again shatter all my recent word count records, so I look forward...

If I somehow tackle two novel-length manuscripts this year, the other will be Book of Doom, the most ambitious book I've ever envisioned, which last year I took another crack outlining, seeing what parts needed changing, and which were fine as they've been for...well, two decades.  I never, ever understand writers who say they struggle for material.  I just don't.  I always have ideas.  Sometimes I tackle them right away, and sometimes...I really, really don't.  Sometimes it's just finding the courage to tackle the big ones, the ones I know I've gotta nail.  All this, meanwhile, in the shadow of the novels I wrote at this point "long ago," which even I sometimes overlook, but have tried to resurface with the hardcover update of The Cloak of Shrouded Men I retitled The Man Comes Around.

And who knows what else I'll write?  I already know the next Easter Tale, part of the string of stories I've been working on since 2017, and collected the results up to last year in their own book.  I always have a Star Trek story to write, which I've done at least one a year since 1999.  I don't want Seuss to be my only push for comics, either, even if that means writing more scripts that go nowhere other than my blogging material (or the pages of Man Comes Around, in the extras).

Well, who knows?  I also want to tackle another poetry cycle.  I have one that required...a decent amount of research, that I was very much excited to start last year, but that'll either happen in 2026, later, or...?

This is all cumulative.  It's fun to see what each year produces, which I managed to accomplish.  I released a lot of material last year.  This year will be more about writing itself.  But it always is.