I’m winding down (slowly) from a very stressful year so I’m taking some time and distance to assess what I’ve achieved and have not achieved this year.
- Since my last post I’ve submitted a couple more articles (things I’d been working on for awhile) and this brings article submissions up to 7 (there’s one submitted by a co-author which brings it up to 8 but since I didn’t do substantial work on that one I’m not considering it a personal achievement, and one co-authored article was rejected, but we’re resubmitting soon).
- I’ve had another work of fiction published, this one a reprint, over at Inner Worlds (Moult, my bilingual slipstream pontianak love letter/song/whatever).
- I’m working on publishing my first poetry collection, What The Woods Mean by year’s end. It contains my favourite poems that I wrote between 1995-2007. A couple have been published, and I’ve read/performed a couple more at readings. Most of them have been published on this website or on my Geocities hypertext. One was the inciting work for the original hypertext, the world of Yrejveree and the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms, my Cupid & Psyche retelling. With the internet being ephemeral in nature and with the continuing enshittification of it (as Doctorow puts it) I feel a need to have something in physical form. I’ll probably try to get the paperback version to be as cheap as D2D would allow it but not with zero profit to me because that will make me sad. The ebook version will be set at USD2.99 but I’ll have a discount period (as I usually do) till at least the end of January for around USD1.99 as it is a rather slim book.
- Submissions-wise, I ended my fiction submissions for the year at 41-42 (I don’t remember exactly) submissions. Which is a huge improvement since 2020. I’m slow at writing/finishing newer short stories in my old age but I hope to have at least 3 more new ones to lob at markets in 2026.
- After nearly two years of promoting Watermyth, I seem to be winding down because I need to focus on the next books and the next adventure: going back on the agent hunt and trying for tradpub again. I actually stopped after only 30 agent submissions for Watermyth because 2020-2023 was a lot, between health scares, re-injury and disablement. I just didn’t want to wait that long to have the book out in the world and I was betting on myself. But now, I want to bet on myself in a different way.
- In short, my plan in 2026 is probably to be quieter on the socials but more productive in another way both academically and creatively. For the poetry collection, I’m very much keeping it to a minimal promotion strategy.
- I’ve actually accomplished (in terms of submission and work done, if not actual results) a GREAT DEAL in 2025. I just want to keep that focus and momentum going albeit improving that focus.
- And yes, even if I get an agent, the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms and probably my other Bunian Empire/Sesen stuff will remain indie. I’m not willing to sign away my serial rights, not when all of these worlds are interconnected. Although, if anyone wants to turn stuff into movies or tv series, I’m willing to consider other rights. I’d probably need an agent for that, too. So, an agent is a good thing to find, all around! I just want someone I can trust and work well with and who can help me with all that stuff so I don’t have to do everything alone.
I didn’t quite expect this to be a year’s end roundup but it does sound that way, doesn’t it? I’ll probably have a couple more blog posts here before year’s end but the most important thing I wanted to write in this particular post is this: I need to set smaller and more achievable goals for myself for these little accountability posts!
For the rest of December:
- Work on Rosemirror and Tower of the Rosewater Goblet (collection)
- Submit a couple of other articles in the pipeline.
- Process documentation for another PhD supervisee submitting his dissertation in early 2026.
- Course admin, teaching, grading.
- Publish What The Woods Mean. Soon!
- Prep for taking the delayed (again) classical guitar exam in early 2026 (sigh).
- And most importantly: REST! Rest is also battery for the brain.
- Well, there are also my reading goals for the year. You know us readers and how we get by December…