Update 2026

Yeah, it’s been a while. A lot happened over the last year, but at least I got some writing done. It’s been nearly a full year since I’ve posted, but it’s time to make some announcements because I am printing some new stories over the next few days to show at the Lakefly Book Fair! Read more below👇

I won’t go into the details but 2025 was a really hard year for me, filled with personal tragedy, but I have learned to use reading and writing as a coping mechanism for hardship. I stuck to my personal November writing challenge (I don’t associate with NaNoWriMo anymore due to their stance on AI and the ‘products’ they peddle to challenge winners) even though November ’25 was probably the worst part of my last year. I completed over 50,000 words in around 27 days. The bigger accomplishment is that I FINALLY wrote the mid-book climax point I thought I was ready for every November for the last three-to-four years. When that book finally sees print, it’s going to be Stormlight Archive/Song of Ice and Fire levels of huge.

I read a lot over the last year

With the Storygraph app on my phone, I have been able to keep better track of what I’ve read, and I accomplished my goal and then some. That is, unless you count graphic novels as cheating for a “total books read” challenge. Here are some things I read or started reading since my last update:

• I started Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings
• I started Frank Herbert’s Heretics of Dune
• I finished Jeph Loeb/Jim Lee’s Batman: Hush
• I started Robert Jordan’s The Great Hunt
• I started and finished Hellblazer: Original Sins (various) in a matter of days, which is really something for me.
• I listened through Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, which is the only way I’ve experienced the story. Haven’t seen the movie yet.
• I started listening to Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris
• I read Mark Waid’s Action Comics: Phantoms
• I finished Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring for the second time and started The Two Towers again since I got a really fancy hardcover trilogy+Hobbit collection with Alan Lee’s illustrations.
• I finished Jeff Lemire’s Robin & Batman
• To prepare for spooky season, I listened to Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, which is a sequel to The Shining, and honestly my favorite King book I’ve read so far.
• I read Jeph Loeb’s Spider-Man: Blue rather quickly
• I read Volume 1 of Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing, which just about blew my head off.
• After several frantic spurts and long gaps, I finished Heretics of Dune. Only one left of Frank’s Dune books!
• I began The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson, and it might be the best prose novel I’ve cracked this year, so far.
• I made incremental progress through Ian Fleming’s 007: Diamonds are Forever, which is actually good after Moonraker fell short of the books that came before.
• I started Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter x Hunter, since the author’s other manga, Yu Yu Hakusho is one of my favorite manga I’ve ever read.
• I read all 4 Volumes of Eiichi Shimizu’s (et al) Batman: Justice Buster, which is a manga despite it being a Batman title. Sounds bonkers, but it’s actually really good. Unlike all the other entries on this list, this one isn’t in chronological order because I forgot to enter it in Storygraph.
• I finished Dan Watters’ Batman: Dark Patterns, which is simply some of the best Batman work I’ve seen in what feels like ages.

What’s coming next…

I wasn’t just writing in November and reading throughout the last year. I’ve been working on Monsters & Steel this whole time. Perhaps I haven’t been as diligent as I could have been, but I am going to have at least 1 (aiming for 3) new episodes of the series available for sale.

Elodie’s adventures of fighting monsters are ongoing, but it’s my plan to print and start selling Episodes 0-13 before the year’s end. Episode 0: Wrath of the Widow Witch is already available, and I’ll have more information on the next 3 episodes in a future post. If you’re interested in purchasing a copy, you can reach me through the Contact page. I don’t have a formal store page set up yet, but I’m working on it. I’m not sure I can get books outside the US yet, but I’ll see what I can do.