I’ve done the retrospectives. I’ve done a “look ahead” post…but apparently I’m not done being excited for 2026 now that it’s here.

How did I spend New Year’s Eve (last night) anyway? I went to bed at around 8pm (lol) but woke up frequently through the night due to coughing, then was bright-eyed and bushy tailed by 4:30am, which was when I finally decided to get up and greet the new year.

We got a lot of snow last night. The wind’s been bad, too.

Anyway, it was great seeing celebrations for the New Year all over the world, and to see hope and optimism shine through. 2025 was rough for a lot of people, and I feel so strongly that this year will be better. I’m not entirely sure why, but maybe it’s because I have things to look forward to and it’s been a while since that’s happened.

I did some looking up and around this time in 2024 (the year of my release) I was given an editorial letter and book cover for Son of the Siren. That book had a specific schedule, though, and The Name and the Key isn’t solidly on the calendar yet–just the estimated month of release, which could change at any time. But I’m hoping this will follow the schedule like last time and that I’ll get my cover art and editorial letter soon. To be honest, I’m terrified about the editorial letter, but I have a good feeling in my gut about the cover. I’m mostly impatient about the cover because I want to continue to market the crap out of The Name and the Key, and a lot of my Canva templates can’t be filled out until I have a cover design in hand.

Patience has never been one of my virtues. Can you tell?

In the meantime, I’ll keep working on The Step and the Walk and also try to prep myself as best as I can for the new spring semester at ZSC. I’ll be attending the faculty workshops the week before class starts, so hopefully I won’t be as clueless about things like Blackboard this time around. There’s only a couple weeks left before school starts, and I promised myself that not only would I be more prepared to teach this time around, but that I would also write as much of my book as possible before the term starts (and things get difficult).

Readers, do you have good things coming down the pipeline? Are you excited for 2026?