Well, here we are: a new year, and a new outlook on writing! Or, well, more of a refreshed one, really. Though it’s still early, I’m happy to report the first few weeks of 2026 have been much better, writing-wise, than the latter part of 2025 was.
I think part of it comes down to a change of mindset. Last year, I kept getting caught up in a) not having finished much recently, and b) trying to make the first draft really good. Point A, naturally, is something that snowballed the more I kept not getting much done. The more I got stuck, and the more I muddled in doubt over whether my book’s plot made any sense, the more frustrated I would get with my lack of productivity. And point B just made things even worse: of course, I want to make everything I write as good as it can be, but in getting so far into the weeds and micromanaging everything I wrote, I lost sight of another basic truth of writing: it’s better to get something done than nothing at all. A bad draft can always be improved; it’s hard to improve a draft that doesn’t exist.
And so, after taking my much-needed break from writing, I came back to work on the Blueblood sequel with a new goal: just finish the damn thing. It doesn’t matter if there are a billion plot holes; I can fill those in during rewrites. It doesn’t matter if the dialogue doesn’t shine, if the descriptions are vague, if the writing itself is clunky. All that can be improved later. What matters right now is getting something down on the page. And so far, as the first month of 2026 trickles by, I’ve done that.
As I hinted at already, work on Blueblood 2 is going well. It helps that I finally figured out something to do with Dyson, one of the main characters, whose storyline diverges a bit from the others in book 2. For some time, how to pace his story so that it lines up with everyone else’s, and figuring out exactly what he’d be doing, was giving me fits. But around the time I started writing again, I had a stroke of inspiration. And so, recently, I’ve been focusing on Dyson’s storyline, and it’s been going well! I’ve kept pretty close to my 2000-words-a-day goal, which is the first time in a while I’ve been able to say that.
Of course, Blueblood 2 will need major rewrites once this draft is done. There’s also the fact it’s already over 100,000 words long, and even when I finish Dyson’s storyline, I’ll still need to finish off the other three (!) viewpoint characters. Though I originally had a 150,000-word budget for this book (book 1 is about 120,000 words long), it now looks like I’m going to blow past that. That, plus some developments in the new Dyson plot I came up with, has made me wonder if this series shouldn’t be four books, instead of just three. How I structure that exactly will be something I’ll need to figure out…but again, I can figure that out after. For now, I just want to get the words on the page.
On a different note, I’ve also continued marketing The Ravage to agents. So far it hasn’t gone well. Lots more rejections to add to the pile. It’s disheartening, but of the three books I have closest to completion—The Ravage, Blueblood and Kosan—The Ravage is probably the least marketable of the three. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that, in a day and age where agents and publishers are less willing to take a chance on a newcomer with a weird book than they’ve maybe ever been, that no one’s biting on that one. Even though, when it comes down to it, The Ravage isn’t really that weird. It does star a dragon as its main character, though, which is maybe a bridge too far for some agents. Not a lot of books out there starring non-humanoid characters.
Or, you know, it could be the writing is crap.
Alright, alright. I shouldn’t sell myself short. The writing probably isn’t crap. Back at CanCon 2023 (which was over two years ago now…man, what even is time anymore? How is it going by this fast?) one well-established agent, whose panel I attended, said that lots of great stuff gets written all the time, but is never picked up. Not saying The Ravage is necessarily great, of course…but that’s just the nature of the industry. It’s a ruthless machine, by its very nature. Even if most of the people in it are nice, and sympathetic to your situation. It just becomes a numbers game after a while. And going through that long, slow grind can be disheartening.
But I won’t give up. If no one bites on The Ravage, I’ll market Blueblood and Kosan, and I’ll probably seek some professional feedback on my pitch before I send it out. And if no one bites on those…well, I’ll think about that if and when that time comes. But maybe if that happens, the time will have come to think about self-publishing.
Which would be a whole other can of worms.
Anyway, I’ve kept you all long enough. To all who read these blog posts, thank you. When you’re trying to grow your audience and get people in the industry to notice you, it can be easy to forget about the people you already have reading your stuff. So for those of you who do read these posts…thanks. I hope you’ll stick around, because who knows? Maybe 2026 is the year something really exciting happens.
And if not…maybe 2027. Alright, well, that’s it for me. Until next time, have fun, stay safe, keep reading.
