The Mead Hall: Reflections on 2025

A roundup of writing, reading, and life events

Hi everyone,

I hope you have all been having a wonderful Christmas season! As the year wraps up, I wanted to share a brief reflection on my writing journey in 2025 and talk about what’s ahead.

2025 in Review

A lot has happened in 2025. This year, I launched my writing career by publishing my debut novella, Son of the Thunder Goddess in March. This is book one of The Lays of Athewain, my epic fantasy series set in a world inspired by Iron Age Britain and Celtic mythology. The series follows the young shepherd Athewain as he becomes embroiled in a war of the gods after a demigod slaughters his village. In his pursuit of revenge, Athewain becomes a skilled warrior and struggles with his newfound power granted to him by an ancient and mysterious deity known as the Maker.

I wanted to start my publishing career with a short novella so that I could learn the ropes of proper self-publishing with something manageable. It also served as a sort of “proof of concept,” to see just how viable self-publishing could be.

When I first started taking fiction writing seriously in 2020, just after finishing my PhD dissertation, I didn’t have a specific publishing goal in mind. I knew only that I had stories to write, and I was determined to improve my craft to the point where I could take pride in what I’d written.

After cutting my teeth on several, ultimately scrapped projects, I completed War of Princes, a full novel-length manuscript of 140,000 words, in 2024. This book is set in a medieval fantasy world and follows the story of the talented but arrogant warrior Connal. Betrayed and exiled, Connal finds himself caught up in a holy war which tests the limits of courage and conscience, threatening to pull him ever further from the land he loves.

While exploring traditional publishing, I soon realized that the industry had shifted in recent years. Most agents seem to be looking for romantasy, cozy fantasy, non-Western settings, short wordcounts, and light worldbuilding, none of which fit with my chunky, detailed epic inspired by twelfth-century Britain.

This realization pushed me to look more seriously at self-publishing as a way to retain creative control and reach the readers who still love the kind of epic fantasy I enjoy reading and writing.

One practical reality of indie publishing is cost; professional editing and cover design are real investments, especially for a 140,000-word novel. Since I had no way of knowing whether I could realistically earn that money back, I decided not to start with War of Princes. Instead, I wrote Son of the Thunder Goddess, a much shorter book set in the same world, as a way to learn the publishing process, keep costs manageable, and test whether self-publishing could be viable.

After only a few months, the results were heartening. Son of the Thunder Goddess did not achieve runaway bestseller status, but that was never the goal. I’m aiming for slow, dependable growth, not virality. Through a mix of online promotion, the growth of this newsletter, and attending in-person book signing events, I’ve managed to reach readers and receive a number of generous reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. More importantly, this experience has shown me that self-publishing could be a sustainable path forward, and that there was an audience interested in the kind of epic fantasy I want to write.

With that in mind, continuing with The Lays of Athewain felt like the natural next step. Building on an existing world and cast of characters allowed me to capture momentum and give readers more of Athewain than what the novella alone provides. From a practical standpoint, it also made sense to deepen one series before branching off into another, especially while I was still learning the rhythms and realities of indie publishing.

That decision led to Rage of the Raven Queen, the second book in the series. This was three times the length of the first book and allowed me to explore in far more detail, the world, characters, and themes set up in Book 1. Everyone says that the best way to market your first book is to write a second one, and I have definitely found this to be true. While Book 2 has found readers, its biggest impact has been in bringing more attention to Book 1.

When I started this experiment, my modest goal was simply to recover my initial publishing costs within a year and see whether this model could support longer, more ambitious projects. With a few months still to go, I’m very close to reaching that milestone, and I’m hopeful that next year I’ll be able to recoup the costs of Book 2 as well.

Looking to 2026

As many of you know, I also had twins this year, making me a girl dad x3! They’ve been a real joy and blessing, and also a major distraction. Between sleep deprivation and the general chaos of life with three young kids, finding consistent time to write has been a challenge.

I’m choosing to take a long view of the creative life. There’s a lot of unhelpful “hustle culture” in the indie author world, where people brag about their wordcounts and exhort others to “rapid release” a book every 30 to 90 days. Even in my most productive seasons, I’m not that kind of author. I like to take my time mulling over ideas, writing and rewriting until I’m convinced there’s nothing I can do to make it better.

Artists are not machines, and creativity ebbs and flows, subject to a host of variables outside our control. In slower seasons like this one, I’m happy to make any progress on my books, whether that’s research, worldbuilding, or actual drafting. As things become less hectic, I’ll be ready to put in some serious writing sessions once again.

With that in mind, here is what I am hoping to accomplish in 2026:

• Book Three of The Lays of Athewain — I have sketched out a rough outline for the plot already, and have written the first few thousand words of the rough draft. The tentative title is Heir of the Dragon’s Fire and, if I’m able to get into a solid writing discipline again, I’m hoping to have it out in 2026.

• War of Princes — After publishing two Athewain books, I feel ready to return to this novel and prepare it for release as the first book in a separate series. The wordcount is rising as I make revisions and fill in important character arcs and worldbuilding details. Since I’m no longer worried about hitting traditional publishing wordcount limits (which get lower and lower every year) I’m letting the story be as long as it needs to be.

  • I’m also toying with the idea of serializing War of Princes for free here on Substack, releasing one chapter per week before eventually bundling and publishing it as a complete novel. If this is something you would be interested in, please reply and let me know! I’m still weighing whether this is the best option.

• The Mead Hall — Alongside the books, I plan to keep this newsletter active with roughly one author update and one longer article each month, with extra posts in more productive stretches. This newsletter continues to be where I share my work, the research behind it, and the ideas I’m currently wrestling with.

Favourite Books:

These were my favourite reads this year. I want to do more detailed reviews of many of these books in future posts, but for now I will list them here, starting with the fantasy titles.

• A Song of Ice and Fire (Books 1-3) by G.R.R. Martin.

  • As I mentioned several months ago, I’ve actually never read these books before, though I did watch most of the TV series when it came out. The books are much better than the show, and also far less sleazy. Even knowing all of the twists ahead of time, hasn’t ruined the reading experience for me. The “Red Wedding” in A Storm of Swords is one of the most masterful, heart-wrenching twists in all of fantasy, and knowing it was coming only made the buildup more tense.

• The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams

  • Classic fantasy from the late 80’s. It’s a slow burn compared to most modern fantasy, but it’s beautifully written and immersive, with top-notch characterization and worldbuilding.

• Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay

  • GGK is one of my all-time favourite writers (fantasy or otherwise) and I usually read one of his books every year. Lord of Emperors is the sequel to Sailing to Sarantium. Together these books are a masterpiece of fantasy, with beautiful prose, rich worldbuilding based on early Byzantium, and painfully human characters.

• Blood Song by Anthony Ryan

  • Great coming-of-age fantasy adventure story. It’s dark without fully entering into Grimdark territory and does an excellent job of drawing on medieval culture and history.

• The Gallic War by Julius Caesar

  • Classic of Roman military history. I’d read excerpts before but never the whole thing from start to finish. It feels silly to give a rating to a text this classic, so I’ll just say that Caesar was a brilliant writer (and propagandist) and his Gallic War is quite accessible.

• Dracula by Bram Stoker

  • Dracula is one of those classic novels I’ve been meaning to read for years. It shares much in common with Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of my favourite nineteenth-century novels. Dracula is told in an epistolary format (like Frankenstein) consisting of letters, diary entries, and newspaper clippings, leaving you as the reader to piece together what is going on under a fog of Gothic suspense and dread. It’s creepy, thought-provoking, and an overall great read.

What were your favourite reads of 2025? I’m always looking for new recommendations. Leave me a comment or hit reply to this email!