2025 - Writing Year in Review
Another year in the books. It’s been a less stressful year for my family, now that we’re settled after the big move last year. We moved into our house over Thanksgiving 2024, and by Spring, it began to feel like our family was returning to normal. For the most part.
Summer was pretty relaxing. We didn’t do any traveling, and instead explored nature near our new home, along with a couple of summer gatherings on both sides of our family.
But the year wasn’t without change. After a year-long stint in elementary, my wife Kaitlin returned to teaching middle school art this fall, a return we were all glad for. Our oldest started junior kindergarten and our youngest started pre-school. We’ve been enjoying being close to our kids’ grandparents, along with my brother and his wife. Seeing some old friends a little more often, and making some new ones.
Meanwhile, this was my best year yet as an author, and a year that brought a transition to becoming a full-time writer.
That has been a dream and goal of mine since I first started writing books, and still feels pretty surreal.
And it would not be possible without all of you. So before I go on, to all who have been a part of this journey in any way, I am deeply thankful to you for sharing your time with these stories.
A little about the transition to full-time:
Like most things, this transition didn’t happen all at once. I’ve been working for myself for a couple of years now. I began the year splitting time pretty evenly between freelance web design projects and my writing.
Over the past few months, I decided to slowly phase out the web projects, and focus entirely on writing. The year had seen my biggest surge in writing income by quite a large margin, and I’d reached the point where the best way to continue that growth was to focus solely on writing. I spent the fall about ¾ time writing and wrapping up my last web projects.
So now, 2026 will officially be my first year as a full-time writer!
Publishing is a volatile industry, but for me, my income has steadily grown year over year for 8 years now. And I’ll be doing all I can to continue that onward and upward trend.
A little about the writing year:
Ironically, this transition year was one that seemed to involve everything except writing for much of the first half of the year. LOTS of editing. Lots of book creation. But 2025 produced about half the new writing that I am used to.
Winter/Spring 2025 - I was entirely focused on editing Children of the Gods, and promoting and launching the book on Kickstarter. This campaign surpassed all expectations I had for it. We ended up raising over $50k, and accounting for all the late backers that came in over the past several months, the final tally came in at $54,500. This funded the editing, artwork, audiobook production, along with the physical production of 1500 hardcovers.
While Children was with my editor, I briefly worked on the opening chapters to the next Pantheon book. Unfortunately, I was not happy with them, and have been brainstorming a different start.
Summer 2025 - By the time editing and audio production was wrapped for Children in early June, we were shipping out copies of the deluxe edition of Rage of Saints, and it was time to gear up for another Kickstarter–the third Shadow Watch Deluxe Edition. Darkling Queen raised another $40k, and funded extra artwork and an audiobook for our bonus short stories and novelettes.
I spent August working on the Darkling Queen prequel novelette, Hunter in the Red City, which was the longest bonus story yet at about 12k words. I also played around with an Age of Fire prequel short story, that I hope to come back to and finish soon.Come September, it was time to gear up for the Children of the Gods digital release.
Fall 2025 - Kickstarter backers received the digital book back in July, and it was released on Amazon and Audible on Sept. 30. Lots of wonderful book reviewers gave it positive reviews, including Kirkus, who gave it their GET IT recommendation. A cool new author moment.
It was a different sort of release with the physical copies waiting until early January to finally go out to backers. But it was a lot of fun to finally have people read the book, after so much buildup.
End of 2025 - I’ve spent the past couple months writing Age of Fire #2, which currently sits at 25k words. I completed the final light editing pass on Darkling Queen and finished the preparation for the Darkling Queen Deluxe edition. I sent off the files to the printer yesterday. I also commissioned the first several pieces of artwork for the fourth and final Shadow Watch Deluxe Edition.
Reflections and Takeaways:
CotG Launch
Overall, Children has by far been my most successful book out of the gate, in terms of profitability, mostly due to the Kickstarter. It has had the best critical reception of any of my books to date, with a 4.5 avg. on Goodreads and 4.7 stars on Amazon.
The Kickstarter was a game-changer in many ways. It allowed me to print way more books than I initially needed, which I’ll be selling in 2026, including with a partnership with The Broken Binding in the UK.
On the digital side, it hasn’t exploded in sales, but has been steady thus far. This is likely, at least in part, a result of the Kickstarter stealing a lot of sales that would have otherwise gone toward the Amazon release. Short term, I was hoping for a little more Amazon visibility out of the gate. Long term, I’m not worried.
I’ve never had a book truly take off on Amazon. None of the Shadow Watch books had big launches, but they have gone on to be, by far, my most profitable books. On the other hand, Den of Thieves, was my strongest digital release, even though the Pantheon series has been significantly less profitable in the long run.
One of the things I love about being an indie author is that I have more control over the long term viability of my books. If I can run ads profitably, the series will grow. Children ads have performed well, and will be a lot easier to scale with the next book (more on that later).
Business Trends
Physical copies have completely overtaken digital, in terms of the profit-share for my business. What I saw with Children of the Gods, is the same for my business as a whole. One major reason is that the margins are way higher on physical books (through Kickstarter or Direct Sales).
I am leaning more into this in 2026. I launched a Shopify store this year, and will be doing a lot more with it in the New Year.
But digitally, it was still my second-best year on Amazon for e-book sales. Algorithms changed and AI has been making waves in advertising, and I’ve had to revamp things more than once.
Ebooks and Kindle Unlimited were pretty steady. Audio was down a bit from last year. Physical copies are way up.
Tentative Writing Schedule for 2026
Jan. - May: This is almost entirely dedicated to writing Age of Fire Book 2, which is officially titled… Children of Ash & Stone.
June-July: Edits for Age of Fire #2
Aug: Send to Editor
Sept - Oct: Final Age of Fire #2 Edits
Nov: Audio Recording
Dec: Digital Release for Age of Fire #2
I’ve been working on an Age of Fire prequel story, which I hope to finish and release sometime this year. And I’m also hoping to make progress on the Pantheon sequel series. But Children of Ash & Stone is the priority. So it all depends on how progress is going on that front.
Releases and Fulfillments for 2026
Jan: Children of the Gods Hardcovers ships to backers
Feb: Pantheon: Rogue System Audio Boxset
April: Watcher Origins Digital Release
May: Darkling Queen Deluxe ships / The Well of Shadows Kickstarter
Summer: New Shadow Watch Audiobooks Release
Sept: Children of Ash & Stone Kickstarter
Dec: Children of Ash & Stone Digital Release
Series Updates and Future Projects
The Shadow Watch Saga (New Audiobooks and the End of the OG Covers)
2026 will mark the true end for my first series. It had a huge learning curve, both for writing and publishing. I was figuring everything out for the first time, trying to keep expenses reasonable, and so on.
Along the way, my standards for professionalism have changed. And it’s time for some updates.
Audiobooks: When I commissioned the first Shadow Watch audiobooks in 2019, audio was an entirely unknown format to me, and I was very nervous about over-spending on something that wouldn’t sell. I elected to work with an amateur narrator. The original audiobooks were great for that time in my career, but a lot has changed since then.
I’ve said before, the Kickstarters have provided me the opportunity to revisit the past, and make it better. I’ve done a light editing pass on each book as I’ve prepared the deluxe editions.
I'm thrilled to announce that this Spring, Tim Campbell (who recorded Children of the Gods) will be producing brand new audio editions with the definitive texts for the books, including the new epilogue that will be included in the final deluxe edition for Well of Shadows. He is one of my favorite narrators, an award winning performer, and I can’t wait for these new audio editions.
OG Covers: Along the same lines, new individual book covers have come together for the illustrated paperbacks for each book, and with the final installment wrapping up this Spring, the old covers are going be phased out going forward.
In truth, this has been a long time coming. I shifted away from the YA branding for the series with the digital boxset, which has been the primary sales driver for the series for the past three years. Those covers were great for the time, but it’s been seven and a half years since book one released. And it’s time for a more unified branding for the series.
Follow Up Series: Still planning for this, tentatively a trilogy called the Watcher Chronicles. Once the definitive editions are wrapped for the original Saga, I’ll be starting to work more intentionally on this. Probably set about ten years later or so. Maybe 2028?
Pantheon (Audio Boxset and what’s next)
I released an ebook omnibus for the trilogy at the end of last year. I was hoping to release an audio boxset as well, but the first book wound up being included in Audible’s Premium Plus catalog (a good promo opportunity) for most of the year, and so this was delayed.
But I’ve spoken with my publisher Podium, and we are aiming to release the audio boxset in Feb or March this year.
Sequel series: Tentatively called Swordslinger. I spent some time playing with this, and figured out some things that weren’t working. It connects to the Rogue trilogy, but begins with a new character. I hope to make progress on this, but it really just depends on how Children of Ash & Stone goes this Spring.
Special Editions: I’m also in the beginning stages of planning special editions for the trilogy, hopefully with an illustrated player’s guide. Den of Thieves will likely launch on Kickstarter in 2027.
Age of Fire (Book Two and beyond)
I was hoping to be a little further along with Book Two, if I’m honest. But I was feeling pretty burnt out following the release of Book One in September, and I’ve tried not to rush the beginning, and really let the plot develop as it needs to. I’ve been finishing out the year doing more outlining than I usually do. And I feel ready for a hard writing push in the first few months of 2026.
By the end of Book Two, I should know for sure whether this series will wind up a trilogy or a quartet. Right now, I’m still leaning trilogy, but I’ve got to see how several things come together.
Joe Requeza is all set to begin designing the Book Two cover in February, so stay tuned for a cover reveal.
Other Future Things (maybe)…
As I figure out full time writing this year, my goal is to have time for more books that I haven’t had time for in the past, especially shorter projects in contrast to these thick epic fantasy books. Some ideas that continue to tease me…
The Tales We Used to Tell (a cozy fantasy) - Decades after the defeat of the dark lord, an old warrior and a bard obsessed with the old days discover that there are still meaningful adventures to be had in a world of peace…. this has been brewing for a couple years, and it’s short enough (probably 60k words), if I need a break from the epics… I may suddenly have news about it. I love the idea. But we’ll see.
Blade of Fire (progression fantasy / academy trilogy)... I still have about 50 pages here. And ideas for the rest. This one probably has shorter books than Age of Fire or Shadow Watch, but still gets pretty epic, and it's hard to imagine working on it until after Age of Fire and maybe the Shadow Watch follow-up too.
A Dark & Twisted Wood (horror / urban fantasy mystery) - Ideas. Standalone for now. But could be a series. Ninth House meets Stephen King. Who knows if or when at this point, but I daydream.
Conclusion
It has been a busy surreal year. I am really excited for what's ahead, and very thankful for everyone who has joined me on this journey.
Wishing you and yours a year filled with friends and family, dreams and good memories.
Burn bright,
Stephen