2026

The shape of a year

What story do I want to tell?

There’s certainly a lot to choose from. 2025 was, after all, my most prolific year. So many new characters, so many tales.

The self applied pressure I feel due to my old foe, impatience

But that's the problem. There is too much. It's all heading off in different directions. There's no focus to the stories.

While this is a true reflection of real life, many lives heading in many directions, it makes being a writer listless. At the end of 2025, from November onward, I did three things that changed the course of 2026.

In November, I took the NovelEmber challenge with the intent of writing the bulk of a 60,000 word book in 3 days. I'd done this before and knew it was possible. This time, however, I stalled.

I looked at the 5,000 words it had taken me 12 days to write and simply had no clue where to go next. I didn't get it.

I had planned for two months for this month, this story, going over the details in my head in preparation for getting them all down.

But here I was, a barely begun story, a blinking cursor, and a cup completely empty of ideas.

What was the deal?

I wrestled with it for days as the month bled away. My impatience grew, that little creature that constantly insisted I should be at point X and here I was at only point C until something had to give.

I closed the document.

I stopped looking at wasn't there and instead asked myself, if I didn't have the impatience, if I didn't have the deadlines, what story did I want to tell?

So I opened a new document and simply wrote. Word after word, sentence after sentence, page after page, I wrote. And the words flowed.

This was sheer creation at its finest; messy, rough, raw, but undeniable. I could almost hear the faint thumping booms as the world formed around me. My research stints were brief and focused, no rabbit trails, no distractions, just a laser focus I had rarely experienced before. Get in, get out.

When I came up for air and looked at the story from a stats perspective, I had written a 12,000 word rough draft in 4 days. A complete, if not very detailed, book from beginning to end in less than a week.

During those four days, I hadn't looked at the first book at all. Now when I opened it up, the ideas flowed, and in the remaining time, I managed to write another 16,000 words in something like a week.

So what was the difference?

Both stories were in completely new universes, both feature similar protagonists, one was Sci Fi, and the other was fantasy. But in the end, there was one story I actually wanted to tell, and it wasn't the one I started with.

This led to the question, 'What else could I do with passion storytelling?'

This was the third thing I did: I wrote the tale of Amy in a long, exhausting burst of spontaneity that lasted for almost two weeks, I rode a wave of excitement at seeing this idea finally come to life, and had some of the deepest moments of introspection ever, to finish her story. The finale of that writing binge felt like that brief moment in the movie Speed Racer, where Speed has just crossed the finish line of the Grand Prix for the last time. He's worn out, the Mach 6 is worn out, but all that effort was worth it because the all-important goal had been achieved, and now he could just breathe before life invaded once more.

It was a singular wave of euphoria and the doing of a passionate deed that brought about that moment. I had stepped so far out of what I perceived as my bounds, grasped a new tool I was in no way qualified to use, and wielded it with great effect. There may never be another moment like it.

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Throughout December, amid the craziness of the season and squeezing in writing jags, I listened to the podcast Nothing About This is Safe featuring Jaime Buckley 💎 and Alicia McCalla and something just clicked.

My world of Grisham is a fine world with many interesting stories to tell, but it's been built like a wide tree with branches going out in all directions. Its roots, however sound, are not very deep. Grisham was my first written universe, but compared to some of the other ones in my head, it's not very old. It isn't fleshed out as much as it could be. For instance, the city of Grisham itself has no beginning. I have ideas, but no real lore behind why the city is there. I have many such unanswered questions about the world, but more are being made faster than I can answer them.

While I was finishing up Vicar's Lark with the help of John D. Pearce , I came to the conclusion that it was a much better story now than when it was a serial because of its purpose. Not the purpose of the story, but my own idea of why the story should exist, and taking the time to form the raw lump into the final product. I had always considered Les to be rather shallow, but by giving him motivation and reasons for building an experimental airship beyond 'because it's cool', suddenly gave the man himself a depth that was lacking.

The same can apply to whole worlds. Why is it there? So the story can exist? That's fine, but a shallow world can lead to shallow people.

When Alicia talked about building down and not up, I realized that I was going about things in a haphazard, slapdash sort of way that was not leading to the longevity of the world. The more I built on it, the more it fractured. Longtime readers know that I have been fighting with my timeline endlessly, which is a direct product of this thoughtless construction.

So, what does that mean for 2026? Deliberate construction, thereby defeating impatience. Typically As I write, the closer I get to the end, the more I feel the urge to just finish and launch the book. Honestly, I should have held back with Vicar's Lark, but I couldn't wait. This is the year I remove impatience's foothold.

A few of you know that I have another substack called the Mists of Ytterbia. This is a world of floating sky islands and a mist-covered mysterious surface. I have tried a couple of times to get some kind of Treasure Island story going there, but I didn't like anything I wrote. It didn't have an audience or a point, or rather, I didn't know who I was writing to. From the start, I have written stories directed at two people, my godson and the younger, 15 year old me.

I've never had the desire to write outside the interests of those two people, and yet I drifted into more adult topics like the nitty gritty details of war. I think that was due to experimentation, but regardless, it's not what I'm happiest writing. I want to make adventures in more of a Noble Bright theme. I want to make stories where little people are capable of massive deeds. I want to write stories where no one is insignificant. I want to write stories stuffed to the brim with hope.

This is where the long abandoned substack comes in. The story I tried to write in that world didn't work out, so I'm starting over from scratch. All that remains is the islands floating across the skies over an eternal mist. But it needs to be filled in. I’m going to relaunch the Mists of Ytterbia substack with backstories and lore.

This will serve as a basis for a fantasy world, aimed at the younger me and my godson. There is already lore, already a lost history, already a globe spanning mystery. The first story, the one I wrote in November, has been patiently waiting while I have crafted the world around it. Aside from Amy, this will be my first Fantasy novel.

I call it fantasy, but that has more to do with what I'm allowing myself to use. There won't be magic, but there will be airships (Of Course), ancient automatons, and crystals with seemingly impossible powers. I will dance at the edge of reality, stretch the border a bit, but never cross over. It's more fun for me to delve into pseudo-science than to invoke hand-wavium

Three years of writing means I now know many of the questions I will end up asking as I write, and I am preempting them with answers and ancient tales. Three years of writing means I know I need to develop not just the present, but the deep past, to give the future meaning.

Three years of writing have shown the value of lore.

These new characters will take actions that echo through time, the butterfly effect in the now, and the way I am building and organizing the world means that readers will happen upon these echoes and understand the tsunami that ripple represents.

The world of Ytterbia is reborn, its denizens wait to be discovered, and the goal of 2026 is revealed.

The experiments are done, the practice is over, and the lessons are locked and loaded.

What story do I want to tell?

The best one yet.