You can now read chapter 11 of The Desert Crossing. In this chapter, Ren prepares for the contest, and Valen comes to warn the group about an assassin that will stop at nothing to kill them.

On to my plans for this year!

Writing plans

I have a number of goals I hope to meet before the end of the year.

1. Submit Ashbranded

Ashbranded is the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo. Not only did I manage to finish the first draft in a month, but I actually liked what I wrote.

Then I started editing and now I’m a puddle of frustration and despair. Nevertheless, I’m going to continue to edit the chapters and submit them to various critique sites throughout the year. After that, I’ll put it through a couple beta readers. By the end of 2025, I hope to have the novel ready to submit to multiple publishers.

2. Write Dreamworn

I’m currently planning a sequel for Ashbranded. The novel, called Dreamworn, covers the continuing story of one of the two main characters from the first book. As Verel joins a battle against fate itself, his dreams are plagued by a serial killer who is systematically murdering the Instruments of Judgment.

I’m really excited for this book, as it’s a dual POV novel like the first, but with a major twist: one of the two main characters is insane.

I don’t think I’ll have too much difficulty finishing the novel this year. If it still isn’t written by November, it will be my next NaNoWriMo project.

3. Finish Loyalty Fallen Book 2

The second book in the Loyalty Fallen series has turned out to be quite a bit longer and more involved than the first. I have an outline for the rest of the novel, and I hope to finish it within the next six months and have it fully uploaded here for you to enjoy. Then I’ll get started on book three!

4. Continue to expand my audience

At the moment, the best places for this seem to be MythicScribes, Reddit, DeviantArt, and critique sites like Scribophile and Critique Circle. So I’ll be working on uploading more art and interacting more on these sites. I’m also hoping to begin to get a bit of an audience on YouTube by uploading snippets of Loyalty Fallen and other media.

5. Enter more writing competitions

I hate entering writing competitions because some are expensive to enter and it’s a downer when you don’t win. Nonetheless, it’s one of my top goals for 2025. I hope to enter at least five contests this year, compared to two last year. We’ll see how it goes!

The future of the blog

I’m also hoping that 2025 will see a lot more interesting blog posts here, beyond just letting you know the latest chapter is up. I want to offer a lot more advice and information about writing resources I find helpful. I may do a few book reviews as well. Next week I’ll write about some of my top writing mistakes I didn’t realize I was making.

Until then, enjoy Loyalty Fallen!