As for many people, for me this is a bittersweet time of year. I love the weather and the holidays and the sense of tying up a year and unwrapping the next. I also have a bit of seasonal What the hell did I do with my life this year? that pokes at my insides with little needle fingers. So, mostly for me but for also you if you’re interested, I’m going to look back at 2025 and determine if I managed to make anything of it or not. And, while I’m not a goal setter by nature, I’m going to ponder 2026 and what I hope comes of it.
Long story short: In late 2024, my mom’s aorta ruptured and she almost died. Then, in March of 2025 when she was all but recovered, she had a massive stroke that left her unable to use her left side. About a month later, in April, my dad was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. So, family stuff has dominated my 2025. My sister – who might be a literal angel – is taking care of my parents’ daily needs (which are many). I’ve taken on my parents’ documents (turns out we all ought to have wills and whatnot) and my dad’s medical care (scheduling appointments, transporting him and keeping him company, and listening to the doctors and nurses when he can’t or won’t). That is not meant to be a sob story – it’s just life for people who are adult children of aging parents.
Oh, and there was the day job to keep afloat and two kids starting middle school and and and…
Needless to say, writing sort of got shoved in a corner aaaand I missed a deadline for the first time ever. There will be a fifth Blight Harbor book – maybe called Dear Desdemona – but you won’t see it until Summer of 2027. It’s written, it has been delivered to my wonderful and patient editor, it was just very late. In the midst of all sorts of real life happening I couldn’t seem to engage the part of my brain that tells the dark, whimsical, and hopeful stories that make up the Blight Harbor books. But, it turned out, I was very much in the right headspace to tell a different kind of story.
Unnamed Bones, a YA creature-survival-cosmic horror, is coming out July 2026. It is hopeful in its way (I can’t entirely escape that) but it is also far bleaker and bloodier than my books to date have been. I took four teens and dropped them in an impossible place with an unseen antagonist and had a field day doing all sorts of terrible things on the page. That book was a delight to write and I’m excited it will be out in the world next year.
So, 2025 wasn’t a complete wash.
Along with drafting those books I made plans for some others which takes me to 2026.
Early next year I hope to go out on sub with a new middle grade series. I’m about 60% done drafting the first book and should have it and the proposal ready to go in January. The series takes place in another magical town – Edna’s Keep – but it’s definitely not Blight Harbor. Edna’s Keep is a hard-luck town where autumn in always in the air and magic is in the dirt. There’s no second world here. All the action happens in the small town. And around it. And below it…
My other writerly goal is to go out on sub with an adult project. More to come on that. I put the project aside until I felt like my craft had leveled up enough to tell the story the way it deserves to be told. I’m ready. I have nearly half of it written (it is in need of some rewriting) and I’m excited to get back to work on it and some other adult ideas I’m pondering.
So those are the 2026 bookish things that are in my control. I’d love opportunities like auditioning to write IP or to be in an anthology again, but we’ll see what the universe delivers. I’m going to focus on what I can shape and keep an eye out for other opportunities. I very rarely give advice but that’s something I’d share with any writer – only worry about what you can control. And there isn’t much – aside from the writing – that you can control.
I don’t have a pithy way to close this. There’s that saying about God laughing at plans, but planning is sort of all we can do. We make a plan and life does its thing and we see what happens on the other end.
If you want to celebrate anything from 2025 I’d love to hear it. If you want to share your plans for 2026 I’m here to listen.
All the best as the year closes up and a new one opens.
Oh – and I’m currently reading King Sorrow by Joe Hill. It’s good. At like 900 pages it’s a lot longer than I usually like my books, but it has been fun to really get lost in a fictional world for a bit. Next up I think I’ll read Good Boy by Neil McRobert. And then who knows. I heard Johnny Compton has a new one so that’ll go pretty high up on the TBR list. And I need to read Buffalo Hunter Hunter. And then Catriona Ward has a new one coming in February. There is never a shortage of things to read.
Anyway, take good care of yourself. For real. No one else is going to do it for you.
🖤Lora
