Shall we start with the numbers?
- Books published: 1, Tales of the Hucked Tankard, flash fiction fantasy collection
- Short stories published: 7, “Shadowrun: Shadowbytes”, “Not Birds of a Feather”, “Observations of a LARP in Three Acts”, “No Matter the Shape” (co-written with Samantha Chalker), “BattleTech: Praise for the Honored Dead”, “More than Blood in the Water”, and “Lady Affra’s Curse” (co-written with Marie Bilodeau)
- New words written: 55,000
- Anthologies published: 1, Gudnak Means War (co-edited with Christopher Schmitz)
- Magazine Issues published: 4, Augment magazine issues 1-4 (Spring 2083, Summer 2083, Autumn 2083, Winter 2083)
- Fiction Lines/Projects Managed/Edited: 6, Shadowrun Monthly Free Fiction (CGL), Shadowrun Novella line(CGL), Augment magazine (CGL), Shadowrun anthology line (CGL), Shadowrun GTM fiction (CGL), Titanskeep (Hexed)
- Awards nominated for: 1 (Finalist for the Hugo award, Short Form Editor)
- Kickstarters completed: 1, Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980 was completely fulfilled!
- Stories submitted: 12
- Stories sold: 6 (50%)
- Stories rejected: 6 (50%)
- Stories outstanding: 0 (0%)
* * *
Thoughts about the Numbers…
(TL;DR: I did a lot more than I thought I did, and a lot less than I wanted to do.)
I did so much more editing and managing of fiction than I did writing it. As you see, I didn’t even finish a novel in 2025. On the other hand, I created a whole year’s worth of a magazine, managing/editing 14 authors, 5 fact checkers, and a slush pile just for it. That, in and of itself, is worthy. On top of it, I solicited, read for, curated, and edited three Shadowrun short fiction lines (Novella, FF, and GTM). That included so much overhead.
On one hand, it was a lot of work and I don’t really want to do it again. On the other hand, all of these Shadowrun fiction lines have a long tail and 80% of the hard work of them is already done. Now that I have them up and running, all I have to do is keep the ball rolling.
As for writing. I did get 5 new short stories written and sold them all. I’m in the throws of my third Colors Quartet Shadowrun novel, Imre Grey, after its released date got pushed from 2025 to 2026. Am I disappointed? A little. But not enough to castigate myself over it.
It’s taken me a lot of freelancing years to understand that I am not the sum of my output.
Decluttering: I’d say we got about 2/3rds of the way through the Declutter project list box. We’re still working on it, pulling a project out of the box each week. Mostly. Between my schedule and the Husband’s graduate school, we’ve had some “amnesty weeks” where life took precedence. So, it will continue on.
The Year of the Unfinished Book: In 2025, I read 33 books.
- 8 New books. The best of which was Overgrowth by Mira Grant
- 12 Unfinished books. The best of which was Becoming Crone by Lydia M. Hawke
- 13 Books for work.
One Day Off the Internet a Week: By-and-large, I stuck to this. Boy, did I ever need that time away from the computer/work. This is one of those habits that will stick. I’ve got a new one I want to start but that’s a blog post for next year.
