This is my attempt to keep an annual marker of my progress as a writer. The words are mostly for me, but I put them here so you can follow along as well, if that’s your thing. Much of last year was taken to marketing myself, something I am loathe to do. It’s one of those jobs that are necessary and boring and sometimes makes you feel icky, but no one else can do for you.
In 2025 I wrote:
1 novel. Not a Man to Back Down, which is book 2 in the Speaker for the Dead series. It is just over 100k words in length, and I will be sending it out today for my Beta readers. (if you wish to be a beta reader, send me an email, and I will hook you up).
6 new short stories from scratch. These are stories that were finished in 2025. Some may have been started earlier, but not finished. An additional story that was finished in 2019, and was “held for consideration” this year (but not purchased), I gave a heavy edit this year and then put back into circulation.
At one point in 2025 I had a full dozen stories out trying to find a home in the various places. For most of the year it was nine or ten stories out. Currently, I am down to seven that are out, with at least five that either need to be retired, or wait for the market to open for that type of story. All that to say, I am hustling.
1 story sold. C’mon Boys, a 6,700 word SF short story I wrote in 2024 was published by Baubles From Bones in December. I am still pretty excited about this.
A whole bunch of marketing materials: Bios, Query letters, Synopsis, etc., all in an effort to find a Literary Agent. I don’t know how much I wrote, but it was probably something like 4-5k words.
10 Essays on various topics, much of it related to be creative. All of them posted here.
Earned a whopping 74 rejections for short stories. When you have a lot of stores out, the rejection can come flying fast. Even the story I sold, C’mon Boys, was rejected seven times before it was purchased.
Got turned down by 38 agents for both Speaker for the Dead, and Mind The Slice. This was pretty brutal. I sent out 38 packets and got all of them rejected. To be fair, this was my first time sending query letters. Next time I will switch some things around which should improve my chances slightly, but these changes are all pretty much window dressing. In truth, there are hundreds of thousands of novels written each year. A healthy percent of those novels are queried to agents in an attempt to get someone on the author’s team. My little letters are just one of thousands. Some agencies get hundreds of queries a week. No one can read them all, and make good decisions. Most agents only take on one or two new authors a year, if that. With thousands coming in, and only 1 or 2 going out, the math is not all that great.
This isn’t a complaint, this is a description of the process. Rejection is absolutely a guarantee. It’s also not necessarily meaningful. I mean a truly bad novel and a truly great novel can both be rejected, even if they are rejected for different reasons. And I don’t for a minute think I write great novels. I mean I try, but I’m also still learning.
Started a non fiction book on the nature of culture and stories. Right now it has no title. I’m not even sure of how broad it’s going to be. It’s one of those things that is so complicated I have to write about it to know what I’m writing about. But I’m researching and writing notes, and writing little 1k-2k diatribes that might one day be cobbled together into something meaningful.
2025 was not my most productive year in terms of writing fiction, but it was my most productive year in terms of selling stories and selling myself to an agent. I learned a lot, even if some of it was what not to do.
Read 65 books. I add this number here so you understand that it’s not just writing that I’m doing. There’s a whole lot of reading going on. Sometimes it’s for research, sometimes it’s for pleasure, and sometimes it’s a little of both. The majority of these I got at the library. I track everything I read now with an app called Reading List. I also use it to write little reviews of what I’ve read, mostly to remind myself of the story and what I got from it.