2025 In Review (Patreon)

2025 is over. As usual, I'm going to do a year in review, with some highlights and discussions as I've experienced through the year.

Words Written

As many of you know, I try to write 6-12 months in advance. That's to give everyone, from editors to narrators to cover artists time to get the work done. It's a big change from what I used to do (often write, edit, proof and publish within 2-3 months or even less) and makes life a lot easier in some ways.

Harder in others, since sometimes, what you've written isn't on-trend anymore.

This year has been the biggest year in words written, with 801k actual words written. Obviously, the number of actual words that hit publication will change (edits often see word increases or decreases); but that's 25k more than the previous year, and nearly double the maximum when I wasn't full-time.

It also doesn't include non-fiction words.

Books Published

This has been a year of fewer books published (in English), from last year that had 7 books, 9 novellas and 1 short story released. Here's the list:

A Thousand Li: the Fourth Wall (book 12)

The System Apocalypse Short Story Anthology III

Magic Kingdom at War (volumes 9 to 12, released individually)

Climbing the Ranks III

Thaumaturgic Tapas (Hidden Dishes 3)

We also did a bunch of omnibuses like:

Magic Kingdom at War volume 1-12

A Thousand Li Omnibus: Volumes 7-9

System Apocalypse: Relentless Omnibus: Books 1-3

So, fewer works published, and part of that is because of...

Co-Author Works Delayed

Really, not much to say here. Real life took both Jason and Craig out, with both health problems and just day jobs eating up time. I will say, I've seen some of the work and we're all hoping to have works released next year from both authors in their continuing series. Don't despair, it's coming.

I've even had hints that KT might be coming back too... ;)

Longer Books, More Exclusives & Delays

A lot of the struggle this year has been the ever growing size of the works we've written. Immortal Connections (the sequel to A Thousand Li) is 300k words long, more than double the 'typical' book for A Thousand Li, and 1.5x the size of the largest work. It's an epic fantasy with the emphasis on epic. Love writing it, and it was a challenge, but editing and proofing and just working on it is a massive undertaking.

Dungeon Brawler, the series we ended up pushing back release to 2026 is similar. Book 1 and 2 are both 150k+ works long, with book 3 probably likely to be that long. We're hoping to write book 1-3 before we begin releasing, allowing us to do a rapid release of the series to keep interest high, with the whole work being only 5 books long.

Climbing the Ranks continues to be a huge series, with book 4 about 170k words long too. I figure book 5 to be the same, when I get around to it...

The only short work is Hidden Dishes, and I'm soooo looking forward to getting back to shorter works once Dungeon Brawler and Climbing the Ranks are done. Though Climbing the Ranks being 'done' is tricky too...

Conventions

Didn't do much. I missed Can*Con, even though I wished to go. I did do Word on the Street in Toronto, the Toronto Indie Author Con in May and the World Fantasy Con in Brighton, UK.

Lots of fun, but I expect I'll be doing a lot more next year including Emerald City Comic-Con and DragonCon.

Translations and New Covers

As translation rights (and the translations) come back to us, we've been releasing them out into the wild again. Not a lot of money with the translations, but it's nice to have them out in the world for our non-English readers.

New covers continue to be a major push, with the System Apocalypse (main series) having received some of the new covers. We're thinking of doing A Thousand Li recovers too but might hold off on a bit. We're slowly updating everything, hoping to revitalize the whole series.

Stumbling Blocks, Failures and Other Disappointments

Lots of things going on in the backend, some of which can't be discussed. A number of talks about potential new work or business projects fell through, or were delayed. It's been a little frustrating, watching it all; but it is what it is. The number of projects I've seen fail or not come to fruition over the years is not small, and most can't be discussed until it truly is 'put to bed'.

We had to push back the release on Dungeon Brawler, which was frustrating, but I wasn't sure I could finish the book in time and certainly not book 2 to allow a shorter release time. Rather than leave a too long delay between releases, the first book will release in 2026 instead.

Magic Kingdom at War finished this year. The choice to kill the series and leave the first, unfinished series, behind is a bit bitter. I will have to work on how to finish the series, faster; in some way, though I'm not sure if that's a possibility. I might, one day, go back to the short novella release method, but this time with a lot fewer stats to handle.

Too crunchy is BAD.

Facebook and Amazon Ads have been slowly growing worse, such that our ROI for advertising has fallen significantly. We're seeing this as a major change, which is why we're doing our best to gain access to 'owned' media. We're even considering going in as far as SMS marketing, which... yeah. shudders

Additionally, tariff troubles have caused headaches in how we ship signed books to the US, so we've had to scramble a bit to figure that one out. I think it's all sorted for now, but that might change again.

Successes and Celebrations

We published the final A Thousand Li book - the Fourth Wall to generally positive reviews. That's always a relief, to finish a series and have readers who made it all the way happy with what they've read. There is always a risk, that the ending falls flat.

Climbing the Ranks and Hidden Dishes continue to do well, with the Nameless Restaurant garnering some really intense fandom. Those who love the series, love it, even if it's not a huge reader base. Same with Climbing the Ranks, really, so the consistent sales are a nice pleasure.

Obviously, we can't end the celebration side of this without discussing the traditional publishing deal with Ace Books. It's a massive change, and something I cannot help but be grateful for. It, obviously, influenced a lot of what was going on this year (trad pub is a lot of work that you don't see!) and next year.

Health Updates

This year was... interesting. I'm - once again - feeling a touch burnt out at the end of the year. That almost always happens, because the winter is exhausting for me. The cold and dark never do good things to my brain; and also body.

On the other hand, physically, I'm in a lot less pain (generally) and am able to do a lot more. I'm back to doing judo and sword fighting on the regular, with some actual skill being built up in judo as I get to go more often. I'm still barely a yellow belt, but some things are clicking into place. Sword fighting is, as always, fun and relaxing.

I did, however, have go to into surgery. Nothing major, but it did require me missing Can*Con and taking nearly 2 months off everything towards the end of the year. All of which means I've piled on the pounds... so I'll be trying to shed some of them.

Funny, how I keep repeating that... Definitely need to fix it though.

Looking forward to 2026

Here's a little graphic....

That's right, we start the year off with Sorcerous Plates (Hidden Dishes volume 4) and then, the re-release of the print edition of A Thousand Li: the First Step. We've got pre-order programs running in the US & Canada, if you haven't seen them. For those who don't know, there's an exclusive short story (hah! closer to a novelette at 10k words!) in each of the A Thousand Li books. Those are only going to be available there, along with our first ever map.

After which, we have 2 new series releasing - Celestial Cultivation and Dungeon Brawler for next year, another Climbing the Ranks and then the co-authored works. Not as many new releases, next year, just because of the sheer amount of words each book takes, but I'm really excited to maybe include Dungeon Brawler 2 too, in 2026.

Other Projects...

I have a new project series that is sort of eating away at my brain. I'm working on it, when I have the time, though it can't be my focus. I have too many other projects...

I owe tradpub a new series, at least something to look at. I have an idea, and a 'feel' for what i need to write. At some point, I need to find the time (cue manic laughter) to write it...

Eternal Night 4 & 5 desperately needs writing...

I need to add 2-3 more short stories for ATL that I can actually release so I can put together the short story collection...

Power, Masks & Capes probably is not getting done anytime soon. Sorry, not sorry.

And that's about it. There might be a few other announcements coming up in 2025, but nothing major. At least, I don't think so.

Next year is going to be a lot of promo to get A Thousand Li re-release selling. I'll be doing as much as I can to support it, and I can just hope that it does well. If it does, though, it'll take away time from writing which is its own pain.