In various writing fora, fellow writers are fond of emphasizing there is nothing wrong with not seeking publication. The common comparison is to music. If you pluck a few chords on the guitar on sunny afternoons, your friends and family don’t immediately start asking when you’re going to quit your job, start a band, go on tour, and become a jukebox hero, the implication being that, when you tell people you like to write stories, the response tends to involve an assumption that your goal is be professionally published and make a living from your writing. I’ve found this is not really the case, and also that there is a bit of an undercurrent in the internet age that any and all hobbies should be transformed into side businesses. With either extreme, what is often neglected is the middle ground. In musical terms, perhaps this is playing the violin in a semi-professional orchestra but not making it your primary career. In writing, this would be the person who seeks to publish, but is not seeking to make writing their primary occupation.
I reflect on this to begin this year’s update post because it is a useful reminder to myself of my own writing and publishing goals. This site, and the writing that I do, is not the mere side effect of a hobby I am content to do only for my own enjoyment and perhaps to share with a small circle of family and friends. Neither, however, do I seek to make writing my primary career. I mean, if my stories were to “go viral,” and I became able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from them, I certainly wouldn’t complain, but such supplemental income as might one day come my way from publishing is more like a bonus. For me, the purpose of aiming for publication is to share my stories with a wider audience, which is doubtless indicative of my prodigious ego. Many current authors describe a need for publishing at a minimum one book a year, which is not a pace I care to maintain, especially not for the kinds of stories I want to tell.
It is worth recalling, of course, that there are always exceptions. The podcast “Hardcore History” is an example of such an exception in a different space. Carlin releases massive, mini-audiobook length episodes about esoteric topics on an intermittent, irregular basis, completely at odds with most other successful podcasts. His focus is on the content, not the trappings of modern, high production value podcasts with sound effects, jingles, fancy art, and livestreamed video versions (apparently, I’m supposed to be watching podcasts these days, instead of just listening to them…no, thank you. I only recently climbed onto the podcast bandwagon, and I would jump off if it meant watching videos). This is enough to generate a loyal following and sustain the effort he puts into them, which is much how I would like to one day make my writing.
Is this a very long way of saying that I don’t have new publications to announce this year? Maybe. Aside from the stories I’ve published here on the site, none of the short stories I’ve submitted to various media have been accepted. Some of this is my own fault, as I’ve been terribly inconsistent about submitting them in the first place, and I produced far fewer short stories suitable for such submissions in the past year. Speaking of which, let’s move into our review of the past year’s work.
Year in Review
I finished Impressions around the time I wrote last year’s Intergalactic Update, and I expected to take a brief break before beginning Rogue Planet, my intended next major novel project. Aside from the brief break, that did not go to plan. I took a detour into working on an expanded version of the 25,000-word Golems and Kings story, which I intended to finish in April…and which may now be finished next April, instead. At this point, I’ve abandoned attempting to give projected timelines, as my usual estimates of my writing pace are all thrown off by my evolving relationship to my own writing, which I wrote about in more detail in an upcoming post, Progress and Revisions. Eventually, I will finish Golems and Kings, at which point I anticipate it will require significant revisions. Then, finally, I will write Rogue Planet.
After a bit of a hiatus early in the year, I’ve been making a point of writing more of those short, 2,000-word stories, mostly with the Elegant Literature prompts as impetus. Recently, those have included Terror of Age and Tastes of the Cosmos. At the time of this writing, Terror of Age was rejected from September’s issue, and I do not yet know the fate of Tastes of the Cosmos. Other short stories from this year include Heaven’s War, which I consider a particularly strong entry despite it not being accepted so far, Memories like Roses, an attempt to explore some of my thoughts around translation, a start on an Impressions-related short story called Erlmin’s Apprentice, a few pieces set in the Archmage and the Unicorn Queen world, and this month’s short story, tentatively entitled Space Arches. I also did significant revisions on Revising Memories, though it needs yet more to get into the shape I want it.
Not appearing in this accounting are a few side projects I’ve been fiddling with but haven’t brought to any kind of conclusion, even enough to merit an announcement post about their existence. These include more stories in the world of Archmage and the Unicorn Queen (which we will address a bit in our future outlook section), some incremental progress on Spring of Nations, and outlining work for Origins.
If this year’s review seems a little sparse, well, it is. My writing output is down significantly from the past few years – the lowest, in fact, since I’ve been tracking it. In 2025 to date, I’ve written only 90,203 story words, and 86,400 words in blog posts and book reviews, compared to 224,390 total words for 2024. Word count isn’t everything, and I am convinced that, at least recently, my reduced pace corresponds to an increased quality, but it is a useful metric. Hopefully, those numbers will improve for 2026.
Year Ahead
Speaking of 2026, in some respects you can expect it to be more of the same. There will be more short stories, both published here on the site and, hopefully, picked up for publication elsewhere. I really want to get Revising Memories into a strong enough state to justify submitting to high profile science fiction magazines like Analog, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Clarkesworld, and Asimov’s. I thought it was close at one point in 2025, but feedback from my writing group convinced me of some significant flaws in it that will require substantial revisions to rectify.
Assuming I don’t manage to finish Golems and Kings in what remains of 2025, I will finish it in 2026. I’m a little over halfway with the story, sitting at about 40,000 words, which matches rather nicely with my anticipated 80,000-word total. I finally feel that I have some momentum on it again, so now I just have to find the time to actually write it. As I mentioned earlier, I anticipate this will require significant revisions after the first draft is done, but that will come after soliciting feedback from my writing group.
In the first half of 2026, I intend to do a complete revision (meaning going through all of my stages) of Impressions, based on my own improved understanding of writing, and on the invaluable feedback from my writing group. The draft that emerges from this process will go out to my writing group again for more feedback. More significantly, and in a first for me, I intend to begin shopping it around to agents. This will surely be a long process, but I want to get it started, rather than waiting for yet another round of revisions. The first round of revisions should put the story in a place I can be proud of, and strong enough to catch an agent’s attention if a story of this sort is going to grab them at all. Because of the story’s nature, I wonder if its potential audience would be too niche for a traditional publisher to bother, in which case I will explore self-publishing.
Yes, revisions for Impressions were supposed to wait until after I finished Rogue Planet. That was before Golems and Kings took far, far longer than it was supposed to, so I decided it’s worth delaying Rogue Planet just a little further in order to do those revisions. Once they’re done, I’ll turn my attention to Rogue Planet, which I expect will be my main focus for the next eighteen months, roughly from May 2026 to November 2027. If I can push a little faster, I will, but with my recently reduced writing pace and the length I’m expecting (this will be another 150,000-200,000-word book), eighteen months seems like a reasonable estimate, especially since I’ll continue writing a few short stories to keep my writing fresh.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention we have a Discord now. To learn more about that, you can read announcement or follow this link to join our server to continue the conversation and access exclusive opportunities to be part of the IGC Publishing process.
That’s likely to take us through, and past, Intergalactic Update 2026. From here, things become more speculative.
Future Work
Though I might throw out a few dates in this section, you should consider all of them extremely hypothetical and completely subject to change. This is more like brainstorming, but I share it here so you can have some idea what you might be able to expect from me in years to come. For this section, my usual policy is that the stories I reference will most likely be written eventually, but the when can change dramatically. With those disclaimers applied, we’ll jump ahead to November 2027 and assume that Rogue Planet‘s first draft is complete.
Like after Impressions, I anticipate needing a lighter project as a palate cleanser of sorts after finishing Rogue Planet, which I intend to be Spring of Nations. That story is currently sitting around 20,000 words, and explores a fantasy take on the idea that cultures used to emerge fully formed onto the world stage when they bumped up against a culture that kept records. Like Golems and Kings, I anticipate the novel-length Spring of Nations to sit around 80,000-100,000 words. Unlike Golems and Kings, it will hopefully take me only about six months to finish the first draft, taking us to spring of 2028.
It will be time for revisions after that, on Golems and Kings (unless I sneak those revisions in during writing for Rogue Planet), and on Rogue Planet. If both of them, I anticipate it taking most of the rest of the year. I’ll probably do some work in the Archmage and the Unicorn world, too, since I need to be doing some new writing. Let’s say that takes us to the end of 2028. 2029 will be the ten-year anniversary of IGC Publishing, and unlike the five-year anniversary which I forgot about until I wrote the update post, I intend to do something a little special for 2029. Specifically, if a publisher hasn’t picked up Impressions by then, that will be the year I self-publish it, whatever that ends up looking like.
My next big project will probably be Origins, and here is where things get murkier. Origins is set up a little like Blood Magic, with an episodic format gradually coming to a conclusion over a handful of “seasons.” I’ve been gradually building out an outline of episodes, currently up through four seasons, which I expect will be the extent of it. I’m planning each episode to be in the ten-to-twenty-thousand-word range, which means each season is equivalent to a substantial novel. Though I will probably release episodes like I did with Blood Magic, on a monthly basis, I learnt my lesson and will not be doing so in real time. So, though I will start writing Origins season one in 2029, I would guess that episodes won’t start coming out until 2030. The question I still can’t answer is whether I will write Origins straight through, spending four years (or whatever it ends up being) on just that project, or if I will intersperse the seasons with other projects.
What would the other projects be? Well, there are two options, really, two fantasy series I’ve been meaning to write for a long, long time. First, I think, will be the story currently known as Fo’Fonas, which some long-time readers will remember. Much about it will change from that first draft I wrote in 2018, including the title, but based on the plan I’ve sketched out here, it will be my first real foray into epic fantasy, rather than various historically adjacent fantasies. My original outline had this as a four-book series, but I think it can be done as a trilogy, and be a tighter, better story for doing it that way. Whether interspersed with, or following after, Origins, I figure these projects will take me up to 2040. From there, I will probably turn my attention to writing the fantasy epic begun in the snippet I shared a couple years back in our post about a “frankenstory.”
Conclusion
All of that is a long, long way off. Even were I writing at last year’s pace, I don’t write as prolifically as some authors, nor do I think the stories I want to tell are conducive to the same styles of storytelling. I am seeking and stumbling my way towards my own writing paradigm, with its own pace, its own conventions, and its own niche, a niche that includes you. You, loyal readers, who come here to read rambling posts about the functional role of language in thought, the intricacies of P3 phasing orbits, book reviews for thousand-year-old epic poetry, and occasional short stories that don’t appear as often as they should and which are often as esoteric as the writings which surround them. Through more writing, more reading, and more thinking, I hope you’ll continue to explore all regions of space and time with me in the year to come.
-Lloyd Earickson
IGC Publishing 
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