2025’s Writing Goals & My Writing Goals For 2026

Well, it’s time to take a look back at my writing goals for 2025, and then to see my writing goals for 2026.

First off, thanks to everyone who read my books over 2025!

2025 was an interesting year in both a personal and professional way, and sometimes in both the good and bad senses of the word “interesting.” Sales were down from 2024, but given all the economic turbulence of the year, I am grateful they were only down a relatively small amount compared to 2024. Facebook ads went from my main advertising platform at the start of 2025 to near-uselessness by the end of the year due to all the AI nonsense Meta injected into them. Spotify converted Findaway Voices to Inaudio and made a total mess of it, which is why I upload my audiobooks directly to Google Play and Kobo now. It seems like a lot of companies are pursuing AI in the desperate hope that it will somehow magically become profitable, even as the expense of running AI services devours them from the inside out and renders them incompetent at their primary missions.

I was so annoyed by all the half-baked AI stuff Microsoft shoved into Windows 11 that I did all my writing on a Mac Mini this year, and have been pretty happy with it as a writing platform. Apple has AI stuff as well, but what Apple has that Microsoft doesn’t is a switch that flips it all off at the system level, and it doesn’t do any of that “install later” passive-aggressive crap that Microsoft does.

On the plus side, my Super Summer Of Finishing Things let me finish THE SHIELD WAR, STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE, and GHOST ARMOR one after another. Five unfinished series at once was too many. Three has been much more manageable.

And after five years I finally got my weight down to what it was before Covid. Watching some relatives go on Ozempic and the side effects they experienced was very inspirational in the sense of wanting to avoid that experience myself. I thought it would take a lot of exercise and vegetables to lose weight – it turns out instead it takes a whole freakin’ lot of exercise and a truly staggering quantity of vegetables. I tell myself the carrot sticks are really just like potato chips when I eat them, and I can almost convince myself of it. They’re crunchy, right? Just like potato chips. I’ve told myself that often enough that I very nearly almost believe it. 🙂

So let’s start with a look back at what my writing goals were for 2025, and see how many of them I reached!

1.) Write as many words as possible, hopefully hitting one million new words of fiction.

I hit this one! 2025 was the second year in a row where I reached a million words of new fiction, and will come in at 1.12 million words once I announce WIZARD-ASSASSIN in few days. It got a bit tight, but I passed the million word mark with BLADE OF SHADOWS in November, so it was a nice milestone to reach. Two years of a million words in a row!

2.) Finish THE SHIELD WAR.

I did that one! SHIELD OF POWER, the final book in THE SHIELD WAR series, came out in July. It’s even available in audiobook, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills.

3.) Finish GHOST ARMOR.

I did this one as well! GHOST IN THE SIEGE, the final book in THE GHOST ARMOR series, came out in August. It’s also available in audiobook, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy.

4.) Continue CLOAK MAGE.

There was a year gap after CLOAK OF ILLUSION, but I’m pleased to report that I finally got back to CLOAK MAGE with CLOAK OF WORLDS in October.

As I mentioned earlier, in 2024 I had five unfinished series, which is way too many. So my goal was to finish some and then limit myself to only three unfinished series at any one time. By the end of summer 2025, I successfully achieved that. So going forward, barring illness or Unexpected Events, there shouldn’t be another year-long gap between CLOAK MAGE books. In fact, I’m hoping to write the outline for CLOAK OF SUMMONING this weekend if all goes well.

5.) Continue HALF-ELVEN THIEF.

It was tight, but I should be able to publish WIZARD-ASSASSIN shortly and meet my goal. Like with CLOAK MAGE, there was a year-long gap between books, but that should be much shorter going forward. I’m hoping to start on Rivah #6 in March if all goes well.

6.) Conclude STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE.

I did this as well!

I’m not going to lie, it was really challenging. I had originally thought of STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE as a seven or eight book series, but it sold weakly enough that I didn’t want to put six books’ worth of effort into it.

So I thought about it and figured out how to wrap up the story in one volume, and I wrote most of it at 500 words a day from like October 2024 to July 2025, squeezing it between other things as time allowed. Then in July, I was far enough along from all that cumulative work that I finished it in one quick burst.

I am very glad that people liked the ending for the trilogy and thought that it worked.

I’m hoping to release a single-volume edition of the audiobook sometime in 2026 if all goes well.

Fun fact: the book was 116,000 words long, and since I published 1,112,000 million new words in 2025, it was STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE: FINAL QUEST that got me over the million word mark.

7.) New epic fantasy series in the Andomhaim world.

Did this as well, with BLADE OF FLAMES and BLADE OF SHADOWS. I am 12,000 words into BLADE OF STORMS, and hopefully that will be the first book I publish in 2026.

8.) New audiobooks as time, budget, and narrator availability allow.

This worked out as well. Like I said in 2024, I’ve brought as many of my old series into audio as I’m going to, so instead we’re going to focus on recording the books in the new series. We had new books from THE SHIELD WAR and BLADES OF RUIN narrated by Brad Wills, new books from GHOST ARMOR and CLOAK MAGE by Hollis McCarthy, and a new HALF-ELVEN THIEF audiobook from Leanne Woodward.

So I am pleased to say I met all my 2025 writing goals.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what I would like to do in 2026.

I’m not planning on starting anything new in 2026, but I don’t think I’ll reach the end of any ongoing series in that year. So basically 2026 will be The Year Of Continuing.

1.) Publish a million new words of fiction.

I’m gonna try to hit a million words again, but there’s a chance it might not work out in 2026. I’m going to have to spend at least a couple of weeks on travel, and I know for sure there are a couple of mandatory Real Life activities that will take up an unknown amount of time.

The older I get, the more I can emphasize with former UK prime minister Harold Macmillan when he said his biggest problems were “events, dear boy, events.”

But assuming we can avoid too many “events”, I will aim to publish a million new words of fiction in 2026.

2.) Continue BLADES OF RUIN.

I also want to continue BLADES OF RUIN, which will be my main series for a while. I am planning for twelve books in this series, so we should hopefully make some good progress with it in 2026.

3.) Continue CLOAK MAGE.

I would also like to continue CLOAK MAGE in 2026. CLOAK OF WORLDS was #13 in the series, and I’m planning for eighteen. Since I’m only working on three series at a time now, we shouldn’t have those year-long gaps between the books like I’ve had in the past for CLOAK MAGE.

4.) Continue HALF-ELVEN THIEF.

I am also continuing HALF-ELVEN THIEF in 2026. I had planned for six books originally, but there was too much story to fit in just six. So I am planning to continue it in 2026 as well. There was a year’s gap between ORC-HOARD and WIZARD-ASSASSIN like there was with CLOAK MAGE, but hopefully we won’t have as big a gap for HALF-ELVEN THIEF now that I’m only writing three series at once.

5.) New audiobooks as time, budget, and narrator availability allow.

I did this in 2025, and it worked pretty well. I don’t want to bring any more of my old books into audio, but instead I’ll focus on BLADES OF RUIN, CLOAK MAGE, and HALF-ELVEN THIEF as time, budget, and narrator availability permit.

6.) Other opportunities as available. 

I think it is fair to say that we live in turbulent times, which is often unsettling. The flip side is that sometimes this can bring unexpected opportunities your way, so it’s wise to remain alert and flexible. So we will see what 2026 brings.

So those are my six writing goals for 2026.

Once again, thanks for reading, and I hope to have new books for you to read in 2026!

And as ever when I make plans for the new year it seems like a good idea to reflect on this quote from the book of James:

“Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.”

-JM