2025: The Year of Creative Renewal
Enough with the “Best of 2024” – it’s time to start looking ahead.
The first week of 2025 is in the books, and we’ve done the “Best of 2024” thing to death.
So now, it’s time to flip the calendar (metaphorically, anyway) and look ahead to 2025. It’s a year fraught with uncertainty, and more than a fair share of angst, but there’s also opportunity here.
I haven’t published a book since Summertime, Assassins, and Other Skullduggeries dropped in November 2023. I also didn’t write much in 2024, partly because I was spending the year acclimating to a new day job, and partly because we were in the throes of an existential presidential election.
(Spoiler alert: that election did not go the right way. Hence the aforementioned angst.)
While I didn’t write much in 2024, the creative wheels still spun. To the point where 2025 will be the year I rediscover the beauty of creating. Of the written word. I’m not committing to any release dates or other firm deadlines (because frankly, none of my projects are anywhere near that point), but if nothing else, I will be busy these next 12 months.
The Land of Fiction
Summertime was never supposed to have a sequel.
I wrote it as a standalone story. A beginning, a middle, and an end.
But then… the 2024 election happened. The UnitedHealthcare CEO was murdered in broad daylight. I watched the first three John Wick movies (and had… thoughts).
So now, I’m writing a sequel to Summertime. It’s still a love story. It’s still violent as all hell. Lola, the love interest from the first book, is the protagonist this time around, and with the will-they-or-won’t-they settled, I can focus more on character development and trying to think up new, more inventive ways for my assassins to do the whole assassin thing.
Don’t think I’ve forgotten Jill Andersen, either. I realize there’s the seventh book in her series, Big Apple, to get through. Problem is, I wrapped up a rather large plot with the last entry, Bitter End, and the series now faces an existential crisis of sorts.
I’m starting to see why the comic book companies never permanently ditch their villains.
Big Apple has an outline. Of sorts. There’s also the concept of a first draft, but I’m probably going to ditch it and start all over.
A New Way Forward?
Not sure if you’ve heard, but being a self-published author is expensive. And if people aren’t buying the books you’re selling… well, you end up putting a lot more money into this endeavor than you get back.
So, the prospect of a second series—the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/The West Wing mashup inspired, in part, by my fantasy novel Notna—was sending my bank account and my credit card into a panic. Several books’ worth of editor bookings and cover artists, to say nothing of the time it would take to write all those books…
Yikes.
But there might be another way. I’m toying with the idea of turning the series into a web serial. Maybe right here on Substack. I’d have to make sure I have a lot of it written and made publish-ready before I start posting—that way, you don’t get invested in the story, only to get ghosted when the story well inevitably dries up—but the option’s on the table.
The Internet is a dumpster fire. But there are still ways in which it’s worth something.
The Non-Fiction Well Overfloweth
When I published The Art of Reading in 2021, it marked what I thought was my first and only non-fiction book.
I really need to learn how to never say never.
Because I have not one, but two ideas for non-fiction books. One that centers on creativity and storytelling and is as much a byproduct of my day job as a higher education marketer and copywriter than anything else; and one that examines my political beliefs in the wake of the 2024 election.
(Hint: the title for the latter will be The Original Big Lie, if you’re wondering where I’m leaning on this.)
No release dates are on tap for these books, either, or I may realize at some point these are more essays than books. But for now, I’m going wherever the muse takes me, because I neglected my creative urges in 2024, and 2025 is the year I stop doing that.
There’s no telling what 2025 will bring, and to a degree, that’s concerning. But I’m a big believer in worrying about the things I can control, and now that January is staring at us right in the face, I’m going to sit my butt down at the keyboard and peck away.
And I hope you’ll follow along.