I realise I’ve been very quiet in 2025.  I’ve not been blogging, or doing a lot of social media. But in more ways than one 2025 was a huge year for me.

At the end of 2024, work sponsored me to do a law course. The content was brilliant; it was just that there was a lot of it.  An awful lot. I soon realised that to complete the whole course I needed to do at least 10 hours of study a day without fail. And that’s after a full day of work.

I enjoyed the content, but there was just too much of it. All my publishing plans, as well as every other aspect of life, got put on the back burner as I worked until 2am most nights studying contract and copyright law. I learned a lot, to the point that I would – later in 2025 – get into an argument with a rival’s legal counsel and point out that he was wrong on international law. Get me!

The problem was that it burned me out. I was doing the equivalent of a full law degree in just 6 months, all whilst working a very complex and demanding job.

By the end of March, I was miserable. I’d spent close to 6 months doing nothing but studying, and I was stressed, behind, and burned out. I kept telling myself that after May I could get back to the other things I loved, but the law content was neverending, I needed more time. It felt like it would never end.

I was reminded of the time back in 2021 when I ran my experiments – a number of pen names to try my hand at self-publishing before deciding to go that route. Back then I’d lost some of my mojo (but in that instance it was writing burnout) and proceeded to write anything and everything.

Now one of the great things about publishing is that once you’ve published, it earns you money. Now without promotion that number dwindles down close to nothing, but I found one of my pens was making a solid $70 a month. Not bad when you consider I’d not touched it for 4 years.

So I decided to resurrect it… mostly for my sanity but also because if those books were evergreen, then having more of them would be a good thing.

And so began my little publishing empire that no-one knows about. That’s fine. It means my data is very pure, and I used that data to inform improvements. I took my newsletter with 8 subscribers and started sending out updates. I added new books to the catalogue. I even started translations.

And as the months went on, the empire continued to grow. I used to believe that success in publishing was about doing everything perfectly. I soon learned it was about fighting fires. I became very good at putting out fires and not wanting to quit because I made a mistake.

I built systems in Notion to handle the project management of publishing books. I connected with other writers in my space, and when the latest internet drama occurred, I just ignored it and worked on my craft.

By September, I had a process. I was working almost as hard as I had been on studying, but I was still having fun.

 

And then my father passed away, just before I was due to do a special event for Halloween.

I honestly think the publishing helped. My world was chaos, but I had books with multiple milestones, each with its own deadline.  I had processes I just needed to follow and for most of that month and November, all I could do was to follow as I unpacked my grief. I don’t remember much of late September and October, but those milestones and the publishing schedule got me to keep putting one foot in front of another.

2025 was My Year of Foundations – the idea being to lay down the groundwork for things to come, both with my law studies and what I had hoped at the start of the year to be my fantasy books. And in a way, I did just that. I didn’t continue my studies past May, but I still have all my notes, and I go back to them from time to time. What I learned has already helped in the day job. Maybe I’ll return to it in the future, maybe I’ll be too busy.

Because, you see, that $70 a month pen has grown… a lot and is now a decent five-figure business… and it’s still growing. I just hit a new monthly record for the 9th month straight. And yes, my overheads are low… very low. I’m always reminded of Youtube channel that is boasting how it’s made a student of their online course $100k, yet spent $95k on ads. Most of my outlay is software subscriptions (Photoshop, Notion, etc.).  I’ll probably need to do more advertising in 2026, but that’s OK, because my 5 figure business still has 5 figure profit.

2026 is going to be my Year of Growth. Whilst I want to continue to grow the pen, I also want to get moving on my fantasy books as well. The schedule for the first half of 2026 is already tight, but I’m going to try to fit them in.

 

The only other thing I made time for in 2025 was teaching swords. For many weeks, it was my only time off and something I looked forward to. But as Dad got sick, I really struggled over the summer, and I’m thankful to my students who picked up a lot of my slack.

In early September we got a bunch of new students who are great, and the seniors helped get past their safety test. I’m really proud of them and am excited about the lessons for 2026.

Unfortunately my health meant that I’m still not competing. At the start of the year, I went to a bunch of chiropractors and found that, yes, for some reason my SI joint is jammed, but I was too large for their x-rays which was pretty depressing. I lost a lot of weight in the first half of the year, but I suspect I’ve put some of it back on over the last couple of months. My standing and walking has become easier though. In 2024, I struggled to walk further than 200ft. Now I can do close to a kilometer. It still hurts, my leg still goes numb, but my plan is that if I can lose the weight, someone can crack me back into place.  Currently, I joke that I feel like I need someone to throw me down a flight of stairs.

 

In other forms of entertainment, I’ve been lacking. I’ve been working so hard that I couldn’t listen to audiobooks or find time at night for reading. As such, I’ve not finished a book since March. I want to carve more time out for reading in 2026.

Likewise, the only game I’ve really played this year has been World of Warcraft, and even then I have a load of gaps in my playtime, dropping out of the last raid.

I’ve also made the decision that the price hike in Gamespass is too great and so in 2026 I’m going back to Steam. I’d rather buy a discounted game, play for a few hours and then move on than pay Microsoft’s exorbitant rates.

 

I’m planning on going to my first writer’s conference since that Eastercon I got Covid.  I’m still in two minds about Eastercon, but honestly, a lot of the publishing drama just bores me now. It’s petty and short-sighted and I honestly can’t be arsed to argue. I still have friends in the industry who I’d like to connect with again… but maybe when that 5 figures a year becomes 6 or 7. Instead, I’m going on a writing retreat with indie authors where I intend to write some Adrian Faulkner books.

My biggest enemy is time, and the hidden win this year is the work I put into systems to project manage book releases – writing, editing, line editing, ebook production, newsletters, promos. I have interconnecting databases for the lot and feel like I’m doing the work of 5 people, juggling the launch of one book, whilst doing the first draft of another and editing a third.  I put a lot of my success this year into the systems I’ve built in Notion.

 

So all in all, 2025 was a strange one. On one hand, it was an amazingly successful year, and yet it sucked losing my dad. It was both the best year and the worst. I’m still a little numb from it really, sad that he’ll never get to see the publishing empire I built, but at least he got to see the start.

It’s impossible to predict a year. Nothing ever goes entirely to plan. There’s always complications, and things that slightly alter the focus. After all, 365 days is a long time. But I hope that whether I grow my pen, or put it on ice to develop my books, or do something entirely different, I hope I can grow the momentum I’ve built this year.

When I stepped away from traditional publishing, I couldn’t help but feel it as a bit of a defeat – a “not good enough” – even though, indie publishing makes more sense commercially and artisitically.  There was part of me that felt I needed to prove that, but this year’s success have got me to a healthy point where I don’t feel like I need to prove anything to anyone. I got my first Amazon All-Star Bonus, made the top 500 in both France and Italy, and made more than I dreamed possible with a 4 year old pen name.

I’m doing OK!