My 2025 started off by getting dropped out of an airplane into a marathon race that’s now escalated into a high-octane car chase. In other words, I started a new company while simultaneously taking on new copywriting & design gigs while also continuing to trade stock options and, oh, write novels while All Is Well is on submission.
Most days, I get up before 6am and don’t sign-off from work until 6:30p or later.
And honestly?
I love it. I’m a workaholic. Who needs street drugs when you can cross things off a to-do list? I live for that scratchy whisk of a pen across paper and the bleed of ink blotting out my vanquished tasks.
Writing Updates
Anyway, I’m keeping this month’s blog post short and bringing you some writing updates:
- My literary agent will be attending the London Book Fair next month and pitching AIW to editors while there — which is flippin‘ wild to me. If I keep pinching myself, I’ll probably turn into a crab soon.
- I’m chugging away on TWC (“choirWIP”) and am currently at the inciting incident. So far, the responses from alpha readers to the opening chapters have been splendid. However, I’ve paused this week to focus on fleshing out the antagonist/the second MC, given what a complicated weirdo this dude is.
- I’ve also been revisiting The Last Goddess (the first novel I wrote, which apparently was a romantasy that I started writing a decade before that genre came to ascension). The original novel was 190k words in length, and I’ve spent the past week cleaving it in twain. The first book needs a serious rewrite, and so I’ve been outlining its major overhaul.
- I also started a newsletter and would love if you signed up. It’s full of awkward mutterings, cat pics, writing updates, and the email equivalent of what you’d find rummaging through an overstuffed junk drawer:
In other news
- I’m in the middle of launching a new company for indie authors. We’ll be offering editing, cover design, and audiobook narration services. (I’m the graphic designer.) More details to come once we officially launch! In the meantime you can follow us at @fablesmithy on X, Facebook, IG, and Threads.
- I’ve already designed two covers for Lloyd Meeker’s The Last Lady of Albessind and The Garden Witch, which are books #1 and #2 of the Tales of Riardan series.
- I’ve also been working as a freelance copywriter, which has been delightful. The features are a series of actual courtroom dramas, and I’m describing how your brain can get mushed and your bones shattered in either utterly mundane or horrifically awful ways!
Reading recommendations
And to conclude, here are some of my favorite reads so far for 2025:
- The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo uses objects as an unconventional story device. The layering of story observers gives this novella a unique edge and adds to the mysteriousness and intrigue of the story’s Empress.
- Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton combines the gruesome possibilities of futuristic war with an AI’s winsome and charming persona. I grimaced and laughed the whole way through this one.
- The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler is a short read (98 pages), but it punches hard and fast. Nayler envisions a future where mammoths have been resurrected but poachers are willing to go to war for ivory. An anti-poaching activist has her mind installed in one of the mammoths. Carnage ensues.
Until next time, friends!