2025 in Review

Most of this post will be my analysis of the year as well as extensive thoughts on the publishing industry, but first we have a lovely little uncomplicated section. The above is another imaginary scenario fanart commissioned by Argo the Ratfolk, which I hope you will all enjoy! It's not canon, but he did consult with me about what a felidae might look like. ^-^

On top of that, a nice piece of holiday-themed fanfiction was posted on my subreddit, if that interests you:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheBrightestShadow/comments/1pv3wm5/fanfic_christmas_on_the_9/

Okay, on to the review!

Too often in these yearly posts, I express negativity and feel like I'm baiting people to be encouraging. This year I'm going to try to avoid that pattern by talking about how I see the industry and my potential place(s) in it.

Genre Definitions

Let's start away from indie or Amazon, with the tradpub industry, the Big Five publishers that dominate physical sales. Several industry insiders said that this year in traditional publishing, the genres were "romantasy" and "non-romantasy". Now, I don't intend to be insulting to genres I don't enjoy; I don't think that's productive. But I'd say it's fairly clear that it would be futile for me to try to write romantasy because it just doesn't align with my interests.

The one time I tried to think about a romantasy idea I began imagining a series where the protagonist starts timid and becomes increasingly assertive until she becomes the villain. Now, this entertains me but it's so far from the fundamental appeal of the subgenre that it would be silly to try to write something like that; readers would consider it mediocre romantasy at best. There's no one gatekeeping me out of romantasy, I just don't think it would be productive for me to spend a lot of effort trying to break in.

You all see where this is going: the romantasy case is a real element of the industry, but it's also a parallel to how I feel about progression fantasy. No one is keeping me out of the genre, and of course I always try to express gratitude for all who have tried my work. But I think it's relatively clear that working in the genre will mean that a significant portion of my readership views my work as only a pale imitation of things that I don't want to write.

Of course I'm going to fulfill my promises, because there are various progression fantasy ideas that interest me (and some percentage of the audience). That means I'll be going the distance with The Weirkey Chronicles, no matter how attention declines, and finishing the five book arc of Depthless Hunger. Beyond that, I'm not sure.

Other Books

I'm passionate about a wide variety of different things, so I've actually finished a number of other novels, including three that I hope to do something with eventually:

• The Final Testament of a Fallen Thief: This is the "heist progression" novel I've discussed in the past, though it isn't close enough to the center of the progression fantasy genre. The premise of this and the series is watching a group of young thieves go from running street cons up to Ocean's Eleven heists.

• Nematic Souls: Straight first contact science fiction, my take on trying to write truly alien aliens and explore a variety of topics in a thoughtful way.

• Necrosurgeon: A tighter standalone fantasy set in a world where necromancy won centuries ago, following the eponymous necrosurgeon as she's embroiled in a broader plot entangling her city.

I love all three of these books and think they're good, but there's zero correlation between the things I care about and success. So these three continue to languish without a proper home. There are broadly two paths that could be taken with them...

Indie and Tradpub

In theory you can publish anything you want on the internet, but in practice only certain sorts of books find any success. My impression so far is that none of my novels mentioned above would be successful on Amazon or similar platforms... but I would love to be wrong. There are over 10,000 books published every single day, so obviously there are huge parts of publishing I'm not familiar with.

Those of you who read self-published books, would you say there's traditional idea-focused science fiction being self-published on Amazon? My experience is that almost all the big books are military SF (not my thing) or engineering porn (which I enjoy reading sometimes but don't write). On the fantasy end, I feel like most Amazon readers are looking for Eragon-type books.

Based on this impression, I have long believed that these novels would be likely to find more success with the big traditional publishers - not certain, they'd just have a chance. Unfortunately, up to this point I have gotten "interest" but not actually closed any deals, which counts for nothing. Publishers don't really have slush piles anymore and querying literary agents is a tough process when I doubt many would be interested. Of course, an entirely valid critique is that I'm self-selecting out of submitting to many agents, but it's not without reason: if an agent says she is looking for romantasy-styled books, is it really very probable that she would enjoy my work?

I am frugal by nature, so even my modest success publishing has put me in a stable financial position. There is nothing stopping me from saying "Screw the algorithm" and throwing up whatever books I want. But, frankly, it sucks to pour months of work into something and then see it disappear with barely a trace. Having people actually care about my work, while fraught at times, has also been very rewarding as an author.

Could I try to put up one of these works on a site like Royal Road, which is one of the few that still offers some real visibility? Yes, but it's again the Amazon problem: I don't see anything like that gaining any traction there. Likewise, if I serialized any of these on Patreon, a few people might read and enjoy, but it would lead to confusion and upset people who only want TWC.

Anyway, that's me trying to articulate my view of the industry instead of reporting on my emotional state. If anyone has insights, that'd be great, but I hope at minimum it gives some idea of where I'm coming from.

So what will happen is I'll keep steadily writing the series I've promised, I'll make desultory attempts at trad publishing, and maybe I'll try one or two new things. It's still a privilege to be able to have a career like this, but I'm not sure what direction it will go in the long term. In the short term...

Looking forward to 2026

TWC11: Deadgold will be completed during this year, then I'm going to do my best to promote the release with a big sale, an AMA on r/fantasy, and whatever else I can figure out.

TWC12: One of my main writing objectives will be completing this. It will be a little tricky, as this book is the culmination of a great many ongoing arcs. I hope that means it will be satisfying for all the readers who have followed the series this far. This one is likely to go long.

Depthless Hunger: The second ebook/audiobook will be coming out in March, and the others based on Audible's schedule. More about this when I have more financial reports.

Audiobooks: The DH audiobooks will continue to come out, as per my contract with Audible. No idea whether or not Travis Baldree will narrate any TWC.

Side Projects: Right now I am feeling kind of tapped. If my schedule ever clears up, I have two more progression fantasy ideas I might explore at some point.

Thanks to everyone for supporting me.