Annual Writing Report

 

It's nearly the end of the year and time to do my annual report on writing accomplishments and activities. It's been a good year! I had some goals in mind when the year started and met most of them, but a few unexpected and unplanned-for things happened as well, all of them good.

First, I set a goal to submit more stories and poems this year than in recent years. My goal was 75 submissions, a 50% increase over last year, and I met that goal and then some, with 77 submissions. This effort was helped along by participating in the Rejection Competition, in which writers compete with one another to receive the most rejections. This, of course, requires a lot of submissions--it definitely works, and also helps to ease the sting of rejections a little bit. There will be another round in 2026, and sign-ups will start soon.

In addition to lots of rejections, I did get a few pieces published: two stories and one poem. My strange little sci-fi/fantasy tale, The Pack, was published in July by the Literary Fantasy Magazine, and I recently had a second story, I Know You're There. Somewhere, appear in Macabre Magazine. Finally, my poem, Dreaming Double was published back in February by the Tipton Poetry Journal.

I was also very happy to finally publish my novella, Silver Rush, in June. This is a prequel to my earlier novel, Belle o' the Waters, and is available on Amazon or through your local bookstore. Belle is currently out of print, but I plan to re-release it next year as the second in a series of books about the fictional mining town of Silverton, the setting for all the stories. Stay tuned!

I also re-released two of my earlier stories that had been published by literary journals that no longer exist. Both The Black Forest, originally published by Chantwood Magazine, and Master Gardener, published by Mulberry Fork Review, are now available as inexpensive e-books for Kindle. 

In order for all these things to happen, I knew I had to spend more time actually writing. And although some writing definitely happens when I'm walking or even washing the dishes, nothing will make it to the page unless I sit down and actually write. I've been keeping track of my "real" writing time (also known as "seat time" or "butt in chair time") for several years now and have made a concerted effort the last two years to turn the downward trend around. I'm really proud of this graph and hope to see an even higher number next year.

Some unexpected events this year have also contributed to my writing life. First, through a series of unlikely events, I stumbled upon SpecFic Writers, a group of speculative fiction writers located largely in the Mountain West, although several active members are from other parts of the country and world. This group has been fantastic, offering support and comradery and lots of fun activities, in addition to a weekly critique group opportunity. We mainly meet on Zoom, but I enjoyed getting to meet several of these folks in person at the September conference hosted by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.

Another thing I did not plan to do when the year started was to attend a poetry workshop in Iowa, but I'm glad I signed up, since the event turned out to be the last time the Iowa Summer Writing Festival will be offered. The organization was unable to weather the funding cuts that so many arts and humanities programs suffered with this year, and finally had to shut down. The group of poets I met in that class decided to stick together and form our own online support group. I'm very happy to be in this group and am hoping that having a regular critique group for my poetry will help me in that genre.

Another thing I did not expect to do this year, but which has been so helpful for everything else I've been trying to accomplish, was to participate in the StoryADay May project, hosted by Julie Duffy. I used this program to write 700-800 words every day in that month, and several of these attempts turned into full-blown stories that I have continued working on and even started submitting. A couple of these beginnings coalesced into a novel, which I've spent the last two months working on. More on this project in the coming months!

Reading has happened as well--lots of it. In addition to much reading of works-in-progress by my writing partners, I also read several published books, and managed to reach (barely) my Goodreads Challenge of 25 books for the year. A couple of these books were assigned to me for reviewing by the Washington Independent Review of Books, which named my review of Tim Weed's The Afterlife Project as one of its most popular posts of June.

Finally, I continue in my role as Nonfiction Editor at Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. Our December special art issue is available now in print at this link or as an e-book here. A portion of the proceeds from this issue goes to the "Space for Art Foundation," which supports kids involved in creating space-related art. 

I hope 2025 was good to you. Onward to 2026!