2026 Goals
It’s the first day of the year and it still has that bright, shiny new year smell to it. This also means that 2025 has now been relegated to the dustbin of history. You can see my recap in my previous post of the year and how I did compared to my goals. Now we’re looking ahead and let’s just say it’s stacking up to be a busy year for writing and publishing. In fact, yesterday I started formatting First Step for the print version. Let’s take a look at the list of goals, shall we?
Publish First Step
Publish Assignment Day
Write three seasons of The Drop
Publish three more seasons of The Drop
Enter First Step and Assignment Day into at least three contests each
Pretty simple, right? And achievable. I tried to think of a stretch goal but if I achieve all these it’s going to be a full year. I mean, I could try and write four seasons of The Drop instead of three, but I know each book takes about three months to write and then a good month of editing, both developmental as well as copy and line, and multiple passes for proofreading. At least I have story ideas in mind for the series through the next several seasons. Anyway, that last item on the list is to add in something for marketing and advertising. I don’t think I entered any contests in 2025 and I’m too lazy to go back and check. With major new books coming out I’ll need to get them in front of the bookreading public and hopefully win some awards. I’m optimistic for what I can accomplish in 2026 and looking forward to all the joys of writing.
2025 Review
It’s the last post of the year! If you are new to this site, thank you for checking in and I hope you keep coming back in 2026. If you’ve stuck with me all or part of this year, many thanks to you as well. It’s been a good year overall from the writing perspective, with a little bit of an interruption when I broke my collarbone at the end of October. I was a third of the way into writing the third season of The Drop and the injury ended up meaning less typing for a while and more editing, allowing me to polish Next Step. I’ll talk more about my goals for the new year in the next post; in the meantime, let’s list those 2025 goals one more time and see where I landed:
Publish First as an audio book - Year-End Status: Sadly, this never happened. Professionally-narrated audiobooks are not cheap and I just didn’t have the funding this year. I don’t know if this’ll happen in 2026, either. We’ll see how it goes but I don’t think I’m going to list this as a goal next year. If it happens, it’ll be a nice bonus.
Publish Assignment Day - YE Status: That’s another whiff and that makes me 0 for 2 on the goals so far. The book is in a publishable state and it’s just been sitting in the drawer due to lack of funding. WIth my experiences publishing The Drop, I think all I need is a cover for Assignment Day and I can publish it on Amazon KDP. This should happen in the first half of 2026.
Edit First Step and prep for publishing - YE Status: Yes! One that’s done as of last week. The book is ready for the world and all it needs is formatting and a cover. Expect this in the first few months of 2026.
Finish writing the first book in the new series - YE Status: Done and published. It’s good to see people reading and enjoying the series. Now I just need to come up with an effective advertising approach since the ads I run every weekend aren’t as successful as those I run for my other books.
Write the second book in the new series - YE Status: Also done and published. I’m not sure yet how to make sure people keep reading the series. I say this because the page count in my Kindle reporting view shows more pages read for Season One than for Season Two. I hope this will change as I release more books in the series.
Set a publishing date for First Step - YE Status: Done. As soon as I get confirmation in January about a few financial things, I’ll commission a cover and publish the book faster than Usain Bolt racing for a bathroom. As of now, the publishing date is January 2026.
Set a publishing date for first book in the new series - YE Status: See #4 above. Done. The Drop: Season One debuted at the beginning of September, followed closely by Season Two in October. The audiobook versions for both went live in November.
I set out to do a lot this year, and I did do a lot. 2025 overall was a successful year and the first time I had more book income than expenses. Not by a lot since we’re talking small numbers here, but enough to make sure the IRS doesn’t consider my writing a hobby for tax purposes. That was a nice surprise and let’s hope the trend continues next year. It’s not about money for me; it’s about writing stuff that people enjoy. Based on the ratings and reviews that came in during 2025, I’d say I was successful in that as well. Both First and Next Time maintain an average of 4.4 stars on Amazon, which I feel good about. I went beyond my goals in the publishing of The Drop and I want that momentum to continue. Thank you for your support of my writing endeavors!
Christmas Message
Merry Christmas from Texas! We’re headed for a lovely high of 79 degrees today, which I personally think is awesome. White Christmases are so overrated. We did our celebration yesterday since one of the offspring has to work today. I feel very blessed to have family around to celebrate and feast with. My reading-related haul from the gift-giving included a spiffy bookmark of a cardinal (my favorite baseball team) and a few gift cards. I’m very excited to use all of the above. Moving the celebration a day earlier means that today is agenda-free. Seems like a good day to relax with some coffee and cigars. Let us not forget the reason for this day. May you have a wonderful Christmas, wherever you are!
800
First reached the 800-ranking club over the weekend. That’s a little less than two months from making the 700 club. Over that time reviewers have left some nice write-ups, and I’m thinking I’ll use at least one of the quotes for a new version of the BookBub ad I’ve been running for the book over the past year. Time for a refresh. Sales have ebbed a little the last few weeks, which I’m attributing to lower sales in general for books in December, as well as people spending their money on gifts and not books. If the trend of ratings continues, I should hit a thousand sometime in spring, which will be an exceptional milestone for someone who put the book out there and wondered if people would buy it, much less enjoy it. In other good news, I finished-finished First Step yesterday. No more revisions, no more editing. I’ve taken care of all the things I needed to and now it’s ready to go. I have to get a cover commissioned (that sounds so official!) and publish the book. I think it turned out great and I’m looking forward to getting ratings and reviews in abundance.
Dark
If you’ve read my posts at all over the past several years, you might know that I get up early each morning to write and do writing things. I do that for about 75 minutes before closing my personal laptop, usually for the day since I separate writing from the job that pays the bills. No doing writing stuff on company time. What people don’t tell you is how tough it is this time of year to get motivated when it’s dark. Let’s be honest, it’s a lot easier during summer when the sun comes up early, often around the time my alarm goes off. Here in December, it’s dark until I’ve been sitting at my desk almost an hour. I’m a sunshine guy and love the heat of summer. Not a fan of extra-long nights. The local high school seems to get started about the time the sun comes up. Even though we don’t have kids that age anymore, out the window I see students walking in the dark or approaching dawn, heads down, plodding along. Can’t be fun for them either. Anyway, this isn’t really a complaint and I hope it doesn’t seem so. More of an observation that getting up and writing can be more difficult than it looks.
Forward
We’re nearing the end of the year and in the next few weeks I’ll revisit my 2025 goals and come up with a final score. This also means that it’s time to start setting goals for 2026. I suppose some of them are rather obvious, like publishing First Step and Assignment Day. The latter has been ready, or near-ready, for a few years. I need to get it out into the world. Beyond those two events? Writing and publishing more seasons of The Drop are also high on the list. If I can get out three book in sequence in 2026, that’ll go a long way toward making it a real series that people can binge. Beyond these ideas, what else? Not sure yet. Probably stuff like entering First Step into some contests and for reviews and same with Assignment Day. I’m sure I can brainstorm more things to keep me occupied in the new year. Looks like it’s going to be pretty busy. And beware if another idea comes along and grabs hold of me. We’ve seen that happen before.
Done Again
I’ve completed my edits on First Step and I know I’ve said this before, but I’m now done with the book. I fixed some of the nagging thoughts I had when re-reading the manuscript, added background and depth to several of the characters, and even cut out some stuff. I’m going to read through it one more time for continuity and to catch any errors I introduced along the way. I don’t think there will be any major edits and now I have to decide how and when to publish it. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I don’t think it’s a good idea to make my own cover, which means I need to pay someone else to do it. Holiday season is not usually the time to fork out a chunk of dough for something that’s not a present for someone else. Unless something changes, I’ll see how the finances look after the first of the year and come up with some better idea of when I can actually publish the book.
Cover Charge
In spite of my prior advice regarding the creation of your own book covers, which I talked about ignoring in a previous post, I think the covers for The Drop came out looking pretty sharp. So, yesterday I had an idea of a cover for First Step. I thought, why not give it a shot? I gave detailed descriptions on what I imagined to the publisher for First and Next Time, so in this case why not take my prompts and see how it came out? Spoiler alert: it looked horrible. Seriously. It was like someone took a white piece of paper and ran it through a laser printer with my name and the title in nice, black print, with tiny image in the middle. It’s what I’d thought of, but the execution looked horrendous. This morning I had a completely different idea and used Grok to create a picture and then put that on a cover. It looked like a non-fiction book on nature. The ideas themselves aren’t bad. In fact, if I’d tried this exercise with the two aforementioned books, my output would’ve looked nothing like what the publisher created. Why am I telling you this? Because I need to tell myself again that the cover creation needs to be done by the professionals. Could I tinker with the idea and come up with something passable? Maybe. More likely, I’d end up with a cover that looks exactly like how it was made: by an amateur.
Misc
How’s it going with one arm, you ask? Getting better. I’m back to typing with two hands, albeit for short spurts. Not quite ready to sit for an hour or more and type on a manuscript draft. This situation lends itself better to editing and that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve tightened up some scenes and plot points in First Step. I have probably another week of that, at least, at which time I’ll need to give it another complete read to make sure I didn’t mess up anything. I’m still pondering whether I should commission a cover and then go ahead and publish the book to Amazon, or if I should use my prior publisher to do all the formatting and distribution far and wide. The first option is definitely cheaper. And 99% of my book sales have been on Amazon. Still, it’s nice to have the book available everywhere, especially since it’s a sequel to First, which is distributed through all the major and minor booksellers. I still have time to decide. I thought about just doing it now since the holidays are coming up, but I don’t want that artificial deadline to put pressure on me to make a decision I might regret later. For now, I’ll just keep working on making the book better and decide later.
Questions
As I mentioned previously, I’m working through First Step and tightening it up. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks editing, other than when I put out The Drop in audio format. Can’t remember if I mentioned this before, but the chapters alternate POVs between Eve and Ray, the narrators of their respective stories. Parts of Eve’s story lagged or seemed repetitive when I did my look at it from a higher level. I’ve fixed a lot of that and am changing an entire chapter today to show more action as well as foreshadowing of later events. I’ve told people before that it’s okay to scrape and patch the story - nobody who reads it knows when you wrote each word, so there’s no flashing light when people read a paragraph added in the last round of editing. Beyond that, I’m reading through Eve’s chapters and asking the following questions about each:
Is this a set piece? Like a vivid scene from a movie
Does it advance the plot? In other words, did something change between the first sentence and the last?
Is it repetitive?
Does each character feel developed?
If I can’t answer each question with full confidence, then it means the chapter needs some work. That last question includes development of “off-screen” characters. You can flesh out a character with what people say about them just like you can with what they say and do. I’m sure there are author sites with better questions and approaches, but this is what works for me. The first two questions help make the story and each chapter stand on their own and give the reader something to remember. If I have a chapter where I want to show the character doing something routine, I’m probably going to bore you. But if I show the character in a routine that is interrupted and places the character in danger, that becomes interesting. Anyway, that’s what I’m doing these days. I hope to be finished by next week so I can return to my draft of The Drop: Season Three.
Audio, Too
The audiobook versions of the first two seasons The Drop are live. I took the time the last few days to listen, add pauses where needed, and change pronunciations. I think they both turned out well. Not as good as a voice actor, obviously, but you get what you pay for. In this case, I paid nothing. I know people who prefer audio to print or electronic, so I’ll be interested to hear what they have to say. Honestly, there’s more inflection than I expected when I first started listening. I still heard some instances where the AI doesn’t pronounce the same word consistently, or pronounces it differently based on context. For example, it pronounces the word “contestants” a bit stilted when narrating. When I highlight that word and check the pronunciation, it’s correct. It only does it oddly when in the flow of reading, but there’s no cure for that. I suppose I could have edited that word’s pronunciation, although I don’t know if that would’ve made a difference. Anyway, that little annoyance means it’s not 100% perfect yet. You know, like a regular person.
Audio
While I’m off work and have extra time this week, beyond fiddling with First Step I’m also revisiting audiobooks for the The Drop. I had to revise the ebooks to only include names of the remaining players. When players dropped out, I had them in the list with their name stricken through. Apparently the Amazon algorithm treated those like regular text and read them anyway. I uploaded the new versions yesterday, which means that today they’re available for me to convert to audio. That will entail further editing of how words are pronounced and many hours of listening. Not sure how long that will take but I do want to get a good chunk done this week if possible. I’ll let you know how it goes, particularly the editing part.
Higher Level
I’ve been taking a look at First Step from a higher level view. I’ve done a few things to tighten the story, add depth to the characters, and so on. Now I’m trying to step back and look at the plot and pacing from an elevated view. What does that mean? It means I want to treat it like a movie, where I’m assessing each scene (chapter), making sure it moves the plot forward, isn’t repetitive, and has an impact. One of the things I’ve mentioned before, I think, is that originally I wanted Eve’s journey on the raft to be similar to the one in Laura Hildebrand’s outstanding Unbroken. I quickly found out that while her narrative was compelling and never boring, adapting that scenario to a book was definitely boring, especially when shoehorning it into a bigger story. In an earlier draft, Eve floated alone on the ocean and that became a story adrift. With the next draft, I added in the company of her AI, which gave Eve someone to talk to other than herself. Better. Now I’m taking another look and intend to do some of the things I mentioned above. I’d thought the book was in shape and ready to publish, but coming back to it after several months certainly gives me the chance to make it better.
Death
Death is a big deal. Not only does it impact the person dying, but also the people around. Why so philosophical all of a sudden, you ask? Because we authors have the power of life and death over our creations and sometimes we overuse it, especially the latter. What do I mean by that? Let me give you some examples. When I’d finished the draft of First, I sent it to a consulting editor and received a ton of helpful comments on the manuscript. I’m thinking now of one in particular relating to the epilogue of the book. It’s a scene where Lewis, the narrator, is older and receiving an award with his wife, Eve, and friend, Colt. Lewis mentions that his parents died several years ago and his brother took over the family property and also says Colt is alone since his own wife died recently. My editor asked, “Why so much death?” Great question. Why? I wanted a bittersweet scene, but filling it with dead people came across as too much. I changed it so that Colt’s wife had been injured in a fall off a horse and that everyone wished her well. Small change, less death. Another example is the editing I’m doing on the sequel, First Step. i wrote a few paragraphs yesterday to fill in the background on one of the bad guys in the story. Most of it was fine, but after I finished I thought there was too much death. I’d basically made the guy into an unsubstantiated murderer, which gives the character a lot more of an evil edge than I wanted. If he’s into slitting people’s throats and hiding the bodies, he’s a psychopath and a character trying to stay out of sight from the law. It doesn’t fit. Too much death. What am I going to do? Take out all the death and put some life back into the story.
Momentum
This broken bone thing is not great timing. I’m not sure there ever is a good time for a broken bone, but in this case I had built up momentum on The Drop, having released the first two books in the series and about a third of the way through writing the next. As I’ve mentioned in the last week, I put it aside to work on editing First Step since that’s easier to do with one hand. I’d thought about getting a cover made and putting it out before the end of the year, but this unexpected medical expense kind of ruins that. We’ll see how it goes after the surgery. I’m supposed to get a little more mobility back, but I’m also supposed to wear a sling for the next 2-4 weeks so the collarbone can heal. In the meantime, I’ll keep editing First Step so it’s ready when my bank account is.
One Hand
I’m still working with one hand due to the broken collarbone. Tomorrow afternoon I go in for surgery where the doctor will insert a plate so the bone can grow back together properly. As he told me last week, I’ll go in with a broken bone and come out with a broken bone, but at least it’ll be set up to heal. Anyway, you didn’t come here to hear me whine about this, although it does affect my writing. I’m sure it’ll put me on the sidelines for a couple of days. I haven’t done much since the last entry since I went out of town for an annual guys’ weekend. In editing First Step as I did on Thursday, I’m finding it makes sense to add details to the lives of some minor characters. It really doesn’t take much to flesh out someone who, as they say in movieland, doesn’t get much screen time. I found this also with First, where I did character sketches after the fact and used those to make the bit players more vivid. One of my theories on great TV shows, especially sitcoms, is that every character is a bit psychotic. Not neurotic, but with just a little dash of psychosis to make them unique and interesting. Cheers was a perfect example - Sam was a womanizer, Diane a frustrated novelist, Coach suffered from being hit on the head one too many times with a baseball, Norm - well, Norm loved beer. Anyway, every character in a book doesn’t have to be psychotic, but they should have something that makes the reader realize there’s more to that character than just a few throwaway lines. Kind of like people in real life.
AI Review
Yesterday morning I tried something a little different. Months ago, I’d run First Step through AI before to see what editorial comments I’d receive. This time I uploaded the latest copy to Grok and prompted it to review the book like a New York Times book review. I told it to give a five-star review. The results were quite impressive as well as somewhat ego-boosting. Then I told Grok to do the same, but this time give the book a three-star review with explanations for the rating. This go-around was much more eye-opening and included info on where the story or characters lacked. In a couple of words, it was extremely helpful and I’ve already started making some changes into the manuscript. For example, Grok told me a couple of the minor characters were basically cardboard cutouts. I can fix that and I already am. I would never use AI to write or modify a book, but I’ll take suggestions and see if I want to use them or not. Also, I’d never ask it for a one-star review. Three stars was low enough without making me cry myself to sleep at night.
Broken
If there’s anyone who reads both my running blog and this one, I’ve yet to find them. If you did, you’d know already that I broke my right collarbone while running last Thursday. Definitely not my finest moment. As one might expect, it’s put a damper on my writing. I’m in a sling for pretty much the whole of November. What to do? Over the weekend, not much. Yesterday I pulled up First Step and scanned through the manuscript, comparing to notes on things I’d fixed. Overall, pretty good, except there’s that little nagging in my head that it could be better. With a bum wing, this gives me the chance to sit back and contemplate what I could to do to make it the best book possible. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Book?
I’ve probably said before that it’s a good thing I can’t respond to reviews on Amazon. Otherwise, I’d probably have one of those late-night incidents where I’m fortified by liquid courage and say something I shouldn’t. There’s a review from earlier this week about Next Time that isn’t bad and if I could respond, would actually be thoughtful and not a rant. The gist of the review was that Next Time was too long, could have been a short story, and didn’t need some of the characters. That part about being a short story is something I really do ask myself when it comes to writing a book: is this story worthy of being a book? Is it worth several months of my life to write, rewrite, edit, and publish? In the case of Next Time, the answer to those questions was a resounding yes. When I got the idea for the story I knew I had to write it, and it wasn’t going to be short. Besides, if I wrote a short story, how many people would end up reading it? Hundreds? It’s not like the short story market is any easier to get into than finding an agent or publishing with one of the big houses. Was the book too long? First clocked in at 125,000 words, while Next Time ended up around 85,000. Heck, I thought writing a book that concise was a major achievement. Useless characters? Again, those were deliberate choices. I used the Boston detectives in the first part of the story as an on-ramp for the later, more serious Federal investigation. It would’ve been jarring to have a Fed show up out of the blue and raised the question of why nobody else had previously investigated Miriam’s disappearances. And William’s deadbeat brother-in-law added color to the different timestreams - while William lived a stop-and-go life with Miriam, his sister Addie had the off-camera drama with Luke. Their turmoil provided contrast to the main love story with the message that other people lived a normal life and even without the challenges experienced by the main characters, sometimes that life and love weren’t pretty. William was mostly oblivious to the growing gap in his sister’s marriage, which helped illustrate his character and single-mindedness when it came to Miriam. I don’t normally respond to reviews, but I found this one interesting because the disagreements are things I consciously planned and executed, and I’d do it the same way again.
The 700 Club
First reached 700 ratings on Amazon this past weekend. If I look back at these posts on reaching certain milestones, it looks like the book is getting about a hundred reviews every four to five weeks. And it’s leveled out at 4.4 stars for quite a while now, even with the spate of lower ratings I mentioned a few weeks back. It’s amazing that the book has sold so many copies and received so many favorable ratings and reviews. Thank you so much to each person who’s read the book and provided their feedback. I started writing the book in July 2021 and finished the first draft in October of that year. Seems so long ago. What’s interesting is that after that draft, it took another two years to get the book in the hands of readers in October 2023. Lots of work went on between the first draft and the completed version. I was just looking at the files on my computer and saw one called ‘Prologue.docx’. I forgot how much I struggled with whether to include a one-page prologue to the book. Even now, I wonder if it would make a difference. It starts in the middle of the action, but then the narrative resets and takes you through the characters training to be astronauts and you don’t get to the point in the prologue until about two-thirds of the way through the book. Nah, I did the right thing by leaving it out. Anyway, 700 ratings is another milestone on the way to greatness!