Setting Sights on 2026
I can’t believe it’s already the beginning of another new year. 2025, for all its eventfulness, seemed to go by so quickly, and yet I still managed to accomplish a significant number of my goals both writing and otherwise. Hope you did, too! And if you didn’t get to everything you wanted to, consider this a fresh start to set some new goals and reflect on how far you’ve come.
While I definitely made progress writing-wise in 2025, it wasn’t without its ups and downs. For those who don’t know the full story behind my latest WIP, “Knight School,” the short version is that it’s one I’ve been working on perfecting for over ten years now and has gone through numerous iterations to get to the story it is today: one that I’m truly more proud of than anything I’ve written up to this point. I started 2025 with what I believe was a fully-finished manuscript: a bit long, granted, but one I felt supremely confident in as I passed it off to beta readers, expecting no real notes of consequence and no more roadblocks on my way to finally getting into the query trenches.
You can probably imagine how that went. To be fair, most of the feedback I got from my readers was very positive, and where it couldn’t be all positive, at least constructive and valuable. However, it shattered my (over)confidence and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this story, in fact, had a long way yet to go before it was ready to see the light of day. Yeah, it hurt; but after giving what I’d heard consideration I saw the points others were making. So instead of perfecting query letters or researching agents, most of 2025 was spent once again going back to the drawing board and reworking “Knight School” from the ground up. Most of the biggest revelations and revisions have only happened in the last couple of months, but as I enter 2026, I finally have a clear roadmap in my mind about what needs to be done to get the story to where I want it to be.
So, what’s next for 2026? Well, in the short term, I need to finish “Knight School”: I still love this story with all my heart but I’m definitely to the point where I’m also getting sick of it and just want it to be done. My hope (and goal) is that I can spend the next few months finalizing my edits and getting the final draft together so I can begin to query it to agents in the spring (March-April). Of course, I’m also a newcomer to querying, so is this realistic? Perhaps not. But whether I meet my ideal deadline or not, “Knight School” WILL be out on submission sometime this year. The prospect is very exciting to me, but also quite nerve-wracking, so if you’re reading this and have any tips on the process for a first-timer, I’d greatly appreciate them.
Beyond finishing and querying “Knight School,” my goals for 2026 are fairly loose right now. I could, of course, start work on “Knight School 2” (it’s a planned three-book series), but with how burned out I’m feeling on the story right now I’m thinking it might be a good idea to take a break from it for a while once I’m on submission. I have several other stories I could pursue in the meantime, the most attractive and built out of which has the absolutely killer (if I do say so myself) title “Spartacus & Spartacus: Attorneys-at-Law.” In keeping with the historical fantasy genre that’s becoming kind of my trademark, it’s a detective story that takes place in Ancient Greece and involves a pair of toga-wearing private investigators who cross paths with a runaway oracle and uncover an immense conspiracy including gods, kings, senators, and other mortal minions. I wrote about half of a first draft early in 2025 during a break from “Knight School,” but ended up getting stuck on a few plot points and running out of steam. I’d like to revisit and revise what I’ve got before possibly finishing the draft entirely — so if I could have one story on submission and another in the hands of beta readers by the end of this year, I’d be very happy.
That’s all for now, but I also hope to make this blog a regular feature (probably monthly) in 2026, so I’ll keep you all updated on my progress! I hope the beginning of your New Year is filled with possibilities.