I started this year in a deep depression due to the election results, anticipating a lot of things that were going to go wrong and how bad it was going to become. In a lot of ways, it ended up just as bad as expected, in a lot of ways worse, and in some ways better.

I’m discouraged by the swift right lean of legacy media (after a slow creep for the last twenty-five years), but encouraged by most of the legal outcomes, slow though they are. I’m discouraged by a Congress barely willing to hold on to its own power, a government swollen with corruption and amputated of any ounce of self-interested integrity, an anti-immigration force that should be goose-stepping, and one of the worst presidents in our history who is barely even steering the steamboat anymore (that’s run by even worse people now). I’m encouraged by all the little efforts to counteract this descent into incompetence and fascism. We’ve been lean authoritarian for a long time, but Trump started a march into strong authoritarianism in his first term, then ran headlong this term into its wall, but also into Americans who generally don’t like being told so brazenly what to do and who bristle at corruption, especially as obvious as it is now.

2025 was a swollen, Lyme-disease-ridden tick. I’m just waiting for someone to burst the body and pull the head out with tweezers.

It took several months in the beginning of 2025 before I was able to engage in any kind of writing exercise. I had plenty of edits to work on, but I was finally able to write in March to complete Tooth & Claw (Meridian Book 7), under my other name, after several false starts. It was edited, submitted, and ultimately published after Book & Candle (M5) and Tattered & Torn (M6). I recently finished writing the last book in the Meridian series, Never & Forever (M8), which should be published this year.

I have a standing goal of 24 short stories/articles written every year, but I only managed 12 short stories this year, mostly for the Shallow Waters flash fiction contests, although I wrote a few longer pieces while I house-sat for some friends and got to know their two cats very well. I’ve been catless for some years now, so going through the process of acquainting myself with cats again was a balm during a rough time. Dealing with this world, plus worrying about an upcoming colonoscopy/endoscopy in the following month… The beginning of 2025 was awful. The screening didn’t indicate anything wrong, though, so that was a huge relief.

I also received some amazing news twice this year after submitting a number of novels and novellas. In the Dollhouse We All Wait was acquired by Crystal Lake’s extreme imprint Torrid Waters, who also published my short novel Question Not My Salt (which has hit over a hundred ratings on Goodreads…unthinkable). It’s slated to be released April 2026. I’ve already done the major round of edits, and now I’m just waiting for the proofread. I’ve also gotten a look at the sketches for the cover and scene breaks. It’s going to be awesome.

In addition to that, my alt-history novel Masque (is it horror? is it fantasy? is it noir? is it gothic? a little bit of everything and nothing?) was acquired by Quill & Crow Publishing, which has been a goal for me for several years now. It’s slated to be released around July 2027, which means the edits are scheduled for the same time this year. This will be my first mainstream novel published by someone other than me. I get to promote it without warning people about the content! Shocking, I know.

I prepped my seasonal horror poetry collection A Nightmare for All Seasons and my short supernatural novella May Cooler Heads Prevail for publication. But I decided to have MCHP looked at by one of my indie editors first, and I still have to edit based on that. My cover artist is also recovering from a lot, so although I’m hoping to self-publish it this month, we’ll have to play it by ear a bit. And I had to wait for the last of the submitted pieces for Nightmare to be passed on before I could publish. By the time that happened, I needed to focus on writing Never & Forever, so I delayed that self-publication, too. I’m aiming for a spring release in March.

I had a number of smaller pieces published, though. My total writing income is still only in the high three figures, but with fewer markets and simply writing fewer things, that’s not surprising. If anything, I’m surprised I managed that much.

Poetry:

“Dunce,” Memento Mori Ink: Morsus Vitae, Issue 2, January 15, 2025 (free to read)
“Exhibit,” Memento Mori Ink: Morsus Vitae, Issue 5, April 28, 2025 (free to read)
“Sacrificial,” The Cleansing Power of Fire, Infested Publishing, June 21, 2025
“Sins of the Asylum,” Gathered Here Today: An Open Casket of Art and Poetry, Graveside Press, July 19, 2025

Short stories/Novelettes:

“Delirium,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction 3rd place winner, Crystal Lake Entertainment, January 26, 2025
“Weed Killer,” Horrific Scribblings, Horrific Scribes, February 25, 2025 (free to read)
“Marginalia,” Rescuing Curiosity: A WriteHive Anthology, Inked in Gray Press, March 4, 2025
“Exile,” Carnival of Horror, Undertaker Books, April 4, 2025
“Turning Tail,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction finalist, Crystal Lake Entertainment, April 18, 2025
“The Devil’s Bathtub,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction 1st place winner, Crystal Lake Entertainment, May 11, 2025
“Floaters,” Undertaker Books, June 3, 2025 (free to read)
“Origami,” Shallow Water Flash Fiction finalist, Crystal Lake Entertainment, June 15, 2025
“From Black Clouds,” Kosmos Obscura, Graveside Press, June 27, 2025
“Growing Things,” Shallow Water Flash Fiction 1st place winner, Crystal Lake Entertainment, August 10, 2025
“Infiltration,” Out There, Sans. Press, September 7, 2025
“Eviratum,” Shallow Water Flash Fiction finalist, Crystal Lake Entertainment, September 13, 2025
“Wandering Lights,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction finalist, Crystal Lake Entertainment, October 7, 2025 (reprint)
“Glory to God,” Dark Paths: A Queer Horror Romance Collection, A Coup of Owls Press, October 31, 2025 (novelette)
“Come In From the Cold,” Cemetery Songs Vol. 1, Eldritch Cat Press, October 31, 2025
“Chrysalis in Chrysanthemum,” Gavagai, November 5, 2025 (free to read)
“Zombie Lesbian Bed Death,” Necro-Sapiens, Savage Realms Press, November 10, 2025
“A Swirling Light,” Shallow Waters Flash Fiction finalist, Crystal Lake Entertainment, November 13, 2025
“Weed Killer,” Horrific Scribes Presents: Invasions of World, Home, Body, and Mind, Horrific Scribblings, December 16, 2025 (reprint)

On the personal side, I have had no luck with my weight, but my health numbers are on the edge of apocalyptic and my right knee is protesting. I really think I need to buckle down and try to push beyond my comfort zone to bring my weight down, for my own sake. It doesn’t improve things much aesthetically, but I think it’ll make me feel better in general. It’s going to take a combination of food adjustments and working out more, both of which will be difficult. My later working hours means that I’m often eating dinner and decompressing at 10 or 11 PM, which makes setting aside a lot of time for working out at night harder. I started on a supplement that was supposed to regulate my hormones into helping with my insulin resistance, but I’m not sure how much that’s working. It is, however, clearing up my hormonal acne quite a bit, though.

I also was unable to procure an office job, something with regular hours and benefits. I have health care through the Marketplace (and it didn’t go up too, too much after the subsidies expired, which I know makes me lucky) and I started working through Instacart. I love some things about it and hate other things, but I’m good at it, and it’s allowing me to subsist until I can pull myself together. I don’t think I can pull myself together until this country pulls itself together. I just don’t have the stability to be stable. But I’ve developed something of a routine, unconventional though it is, and although I started out working six days a week, I’ve adjusted it down to five, although that usually means working a little longer on the working days. Now that I’m writing more regularly, I appreciate the extra day off.

In the coming year, I have a good number of things coming out, as detailed earlier in this post: May Cooler Heads Prevail (novella, Jan/Feb 2026), A Nightmare for All Seasons (poetry collection, March 2026), In the Dollhouse We All Wait (novel, April 2026), and Never & Forever (M8, novel, TBA).

I’m playing with possibly putting out Hear You Scream, a short collection of horror short stories and a novelette, for Halloween. I’m still wondering whether I should self-publish the Dracula reimagining or find a traditional publishing home for it. But although I put aside a little of my paycheck every week, it’s still wicked expensive to get pieces edited, so these things will mostly be determined by whether I can afford it.

I also really want to get into writing some creative non-fiction/articles that have been knocking around my head for a while. They’re on my list this year.

The rest of my writing/editing schedule this year:
-Complete fix of Dracula reimagining
-Final edit of May Cooler Heads Prevail
-Edit and submit Never & Forever (M8)
-Rewrite We Follow You in the Dark
-Write The Twelfth Wife
-Q&C edit of Masque

This is actually quite a spare schedule. I may add writing Hearts & Heads (Thorns 6) onto the list or tackle some of my shorter pieces that have been waiting. I may finally do that rewrite of War House that I keep putting on my list and never doing.

But although I’m tackling The Twelfth Wife, which I expect will be quite epic in scope and has been one of my bucket list stories that I wasn’t ready to write until recently, I want to seriously pull back on how hard I’ve been working on the writing front for over two decades. Under my Aurelia T. Evans name, I’ve completed two trilogies and two series. Under this name, I’m halfway through the Thorns series, which is its own kind of epic. I’ve written a slew of short novels and novellas, some published and some not. I need to finish the Thorns series. I need to write the rest of the UA duology or trilogy. I have pieces I haven’t even touched yet. I’m not lacking for work or ideas. Ideas are rarely the problem. The problem is always and everywhere Time. And Time is Money. The previous two years, I went through a lot of Money to have enough Time to write a lot again, but now I’m working for Money and have less Time.

I’m not in my twenties anymore. I need to take care of my body. I need more sleep. I can’t do all-nighters. I’m turning forty this year, and I’d like to figure out how to mark this milestone, especially given I have trouble seeing myself after forty, and that’s created a bit of superstition on my part.

I’m still going to be writing. I don’t know how to not write. I’m just going to…slow down. Take my time on things rather than rush to a finish line. Work on patience. Read more (I miss reading and I have so many wonderful books to read or reread). Try more art, like crochet and drawing and cross-stitch. Play more piano. I got into it earlier this year, but it fell back when I started working.

2025 needs to be taken out and summarily shot, but everything in 2026 is going to remain agonizing for a while, too. Rest and rejuvenation are going to be an important part of enduring this. And I’m still going to accomplish some pretty amazing things. Between Masque, the Dracula reimagining, and The Twelfth Wife, it’s like I’ve finally reached the point in my writing career that my experience finally meets my ambition. If I can write The Twelfth Wife, I might just burst.

I’m going to skip tomorrow’s blog post, so I’ll see you again next Friday. Take care of yourself, and have a low-key happy New Year’s Day. Me and my family will be eating junk and watching Monk Season 7. Cheers!