2025 Retrospective

A bittersweet year

I am, I think, ready to look back at 2025. It was an epochal year, with huge life shifts, and I tried to work through it as best I could, while battling through those winds of change.

On a professional level, I entered the new year of 2025 knowing that my day job would be ending in March. I was job hunting, and not even getting callbacks to my hundreds of applications. It was a little like standing in the ruins of a city, with dust devils and pages of resumes fluttering past, but not another person in sight. I knew that it would be difficult, at my age and with the constraint of needing a remote position, I had not realized it would be impossible. My husband and I spent months talking, and ultimately decided that I would transition to full-time author and artist in 2025.

In aid of that, knowing it was a possibility, I began to prepare in late 2024. I planned to release something every month in 2025. I did not reach my goals, hitting only nine primary publications for the year, but it was more than I had accomplished in years past, and given what else happened in the year, I am pleased I did that well.

This is the list I put up on Mad Genius Club in December 2025, reflecting on the year.

January – Tanager’s Flight (novel)

February – The Luminous Citadel of New Atlantis (novella)

March – A Garden of Stars (Short story collection)

April – The Groundskeeper: Deadhead (novella)

May – Supporting Ragnarok (novel)

June and July fell to traveling and visiting family, and I have no regrets as it may have been the last time I’ll see my father on this side of the veil¹. I got to spend time with my beloved grandmother. I saw my Aunt Mel for what would be the last time, although none of us knew it then². I did experiment with releasing The East Witch and Running Into Time as Amazon virtual voice audiobooks, which was an utter failure.

August – Following Trouble: An Underhill Tale (Short story)

September – Days of No Ink: A Digital Art Sketchbook (non-fiction art book)

October – The Groundskeeper: Have a Dead Night (novel) and The Groundskeeper Book 1-3 print Omnibus

November – Wonderland (novella) and a short story in the library anthology Library Creatures as well as a short story in the Claus of War anthology.

In addition to my personal storytelling, I edited and illustrated the Raconteur Press anthology Goblin Souk in June 2025, finishing up that trio of themed anthologies for the Press. In February, I edited and then illustrated the Pinup Noir: Sultry Murder Jazz anthology for Raconteur Press as well.

In toto? Yes, I was overambitious in some senses, and probably slightly mad in others to have taken all of this on. I am doing almost all the covers and interior illustrations for Raconteur Press, in addition to other duties as assigned here. I served as acquisitions editor for the first year of the Boy’s Adventure books with the Press, having sparked that line in the first place, and I’ll be proud of that for the rest of my life.

I learned a lot about myself last year. I took the trip of a lifetime, visiting National Grasslands, which I am still digesting and pondering with the plan of putting my thoughts into publication sometime this coming year. I have the concepts for novels, short stories, and non-fiction this year. I have to work harder than ever in my life, to keep my income up enough to be here for my husband. And yet, it’s less like work than anything else I have done in my life. I love what I’m doing. I wake up in the morning excited to get out of bed (most mornings!) and write, or work on graphic design, or make art.

Last year I was Artist Guest of Honor at P-Con, and I put on a one-woman art show of my August dragons. ‘Thirty-one Days of Dragons’ was well-received and I was thrilled at seeing the reactions to my work there. I never expect to have a gallery show, so being able to do this was a life work goal achieved.

I had intended to finish out December 2025 with another book release. It became clearer, the closer the end of the year came, that other things were going to take precedence. My father was admitted to the hospital the day after Christmas, and two days later he was gone. I was unable to be with him in person, and although he had been very ill for some time, it was both a shock and a loss I could never have fully prepared myself for. I still haven’t been able to write about him but I will, at some point, talk about the man who made me. He was a huge supporter of my writing, and my art, and he is why I’ll be writing a book about gardening this year, as that was his passion along with beekeeping and re-enacting. It all fits together into the man he was.

I have another year ahead of me to live, as Dad would have wanted, with my hands in the dirt and my head in the clouds of dreams and imaginations. I feel him close by, some days, and he’s nearest when I’m digging in the garden.

1. I wrote this two weeks before my father passed away just after Christmas.

2. Aunt Melody passed on Thanksgiving morning after a brief illness. She was a bright soul with a terrific sense of humor. I like to think she and Dad are trading tall tales with each story being more outrageous than the last, and a lot of laughing going on from them and the inevitable audience.