Somehow, it’s already time for another yearly update post. It feels premature to me, partially because the year has rushed by, and partially because I don’t have nearly as much writing on which to reflect as I usually do after twelve months’ effort. Contrary to what you hear about years going faster as you get older, I find the perceived rate of passage for a year as much more to do with what happens over the course of the year and how busy it becomes. The past year’s busyness definitely affected my writing time and output, which means this post, as much as I’ll try to focus on writing, reading, and other IGC Publishing-relevant matters, will contain an unusual amount of discussion of tangential matters, for which I apologize in advance.
Between moving, a new (busier) job, a master’s degree program, and various house projects related to the aforementioned move, my writing time has been much less this year, but my diminished output cannot solely be blamed on time constraints. My storytelling requires more than a few minutes here and there to sit down at a keyboard and put words on a page – that might be writing, but it isn’t storytelling. I must find the mental space to think about the stories before I can sit down and write them, whether they are stories for which I’ve already had the core ideas, or new stories to spin into being. I’ve mentioned before the difficulties of holding longer, more complex stories in my head during the writing process, and some of the outlining and notetaking tools and tactics I’ve implemented to address that challenge; it’s felt, for much of this past year, as if I was holding too many other things in my head to have room to hold any stories. I’d say it’s only been in the past two months or so that I’ve begun to have a little spare mental space to devote to storytelling again.
This should not be read as a complaint, as I chose to take on these tasks and obligations (to varying degrees). It is merely to provide some context for this post, and a bit of an apology if you were counting on a certain schedule of publication. I’ve always tried to be clear that any schedules and dates I offer are goals and guesses, not promises, unless I specify otherwise, but I know how dismaying it can be when an author puts dates out into the world which then blow past with nary a word. If my projections for the next year and future work seem even more ambiguous than usual, that’s probably why. Even my book reviews and Tuesday posts have been affected: I burnt through my entire backlog of book reviews and Tuesday posts, and I missed a Thursday book review for I think the first time since I started posting them. I’ve managed to keep pace since then, but I haven’t rebuilt that backlog, and getting through a book each week is proving a struggle (I’m not reading less than usual, but I can’t post book reviews for a dozen scientific papers I read for class). All I can promise is that I will continue doing my best to produce quality content, that I will be open with you all about what you can expect, and that I will keep writing, no matter how few words it might be.
Enough justifying and agonizing about what didn’t get done; let’s look at what I did accomplish (writing-wise) this past year.
Year in Review
Surprise, surprise: Golems and Kings is…still not finished. I am past the halfway point, and I’m making slow progress on it again, but what was supposed to be an easy, short “palate cleanser” between Impressions and my next major project is proving unexpectedly complicated and challenging. In reflection, it seems like I may be attempting to write the two hardest chapters of the book (at least, for me), full of political intrigue, a lot of new characters and places that need to be introduced and incorporated quickly, without bogging down the story but while building the world, enriching the storytelling, accomplishing significant character development, and setting up key factors for the climax. Trying to write these two chapters while I’ve not been able to devote more attention to the story has not been a recipe for success or progress. Once I get through them, I think the writing pace should pick up as pieces come together and we move into the final third of the book, for which I have a clear vision (unusually, I went into this story knowing exactly how it has to end, at least the main beats). I am trying to remind myself that, however bad these two chapters might be, I can always fix them in revision.
I did manage to finish a couple of short stories, which I chose to post right to the site instead of revising them and shopping them around – I don’t feel they’re my strongest work, and I felt guilty for not having more content to share with you this year. By “this year,” I do mean since the last update post in September 2025, not calendar year 2026. We start off, therefore, with Terror of Age, which I actually think is a pretty good short story. Not exceptional, but a fine piece I think you’ll enjoy, especially if you like thoughtful fantasy that plays with genre tropes. Tastes of the Cosmos also falls into this year for purposes of the update post – it’s a science fiction story that doesn’t necessarily try to do something highly original with the idea of first contact and civilizational rise and fall, but it tries to do it from an alien perspective. I mostly wrote this as an exercise for myself in writing an alien perspective that feels suitably alien while also being relatable enough to be read and understood in just a couple thousand words.
This next one isn’t technically a finished story, but I shared a start of a story which I may or may not continue at some point in time: Engineer’s Fairy Tale. Think post-apocalypse story meets A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I don’t know if or when I will go back and finish it, but there’s a lot going on for what’s basically just a quick story start. If nothing else, it’s insight into how my brain works when I’m coming up with new story ideas and in the early stages of drafting. In a sense, it’s stronger than Metropolitan Strata, a finished story we published on the site just a month ago. Not that Metropolitan Strata is bad, and I shouldn’t be biasing you against it, but it’s not quite the story I wanted to tell when I started writing it. It’s a good story for what it became, just not what I originally set out to do. That happens at times.
I made some progress on other stories, especially a few set in the world of Archmage and the Unicorn Queen (more on that later), but in terms of other content for the year, I would be remiss if I did not mention the poetry exercises, which may not be high in word count but which take a disproportionate amount of time and writing energy, and which are (hopefully) improving my prose through practice. Ever since reading The Rhetoric of Fiction I’ve become especially self-conscious about my writing, and I am actively working to improve the quality and caliber of my prose (and I do blame some of my lack of substantial writing progress in the past year on that increased attention to the technical craft of writing, which I hope will be a benefit in the long run).
Last, we started a newsletter a few weeks ago, which has little to do with writing, but which I think at least some readers of this site will find interesting. You can read all about why I chose to launch this particular newsletter and why I chose to do it now, when I’ve spent far too many words of this update explaining how busy I’ve been. With that, I think we should turn our attention to the year ahead.
Year Ahead
Someway, somehow, I want to finish Golems and Kings by the end of 2026. I know I’ve pushed this date off again, and again, and again, so I accept your skepticism – I’m skeptical, too. At some point, though, I have to get this story written, so that’s the deadline I’m imposing on myself, even if it means I have to skip this chapter I’m stuck on and come back to it after I’ve written the rest of the story. In fact, that actually might be a good plan. Put a hold on chapter 12, maybe chapter 13, as well, and pick up from chapter 14. It’s not my usual approach, but by now I think it’s worth trying something different. I’ve built some writing momentum, too, with the help of a quick diversion in the form of a short story, which should be finished in the next week or so.
That story is called Archive Retrieval, and I already alluded to it in my post about a science fiction/fantasy-style adventure story. Although a little longer than I originally envisioned (I thought it would be a six-thousand-word story and it’s coming in closer to ten), I’m really pleased with it, enough that I’m going to put it through revisions and try to shop it around instead of posting it right to the site. Just the act of finishing a draft, even though it’s unrelated to Golems and Kings, should help me getting back into the larger project.
Once Golems and Kings is finished, whenever that ends up being, I’ll begin revisions on Impressions, but with a small intermission. It’s a targeted one, though, because that intermission will be to write Erlmin’s Apprentice, a related short story. It won’t be incorporated with the novel, nor will it be required reading to understanding anything in the novel – just a bit of expanded world, and something to get me back into the Impressions mindset before I start the revisions. I have several ideas already for what needs to be revised and how I want to do it, and my writing group has been exceptionally helpful and generous with their feedback, so I’m looking forward to this effort, which I expect will take six to eight months. Once revisions are done, I can start shopping the novel around to see if anyone would be interested in publishing it.
Throwing in a short story or two will probably fill out the year up to the next update post. There are several short stories I’ve had in the almost-complete stage for some time now, and it would be good to clear out that backlog, put them through revisions, and either shop them around for publication or publish them here on the site. Beyond that, I’m hesitant to project what I’ll start after finishing revisions on Impressions. This will be my first time going through a full, thorough revision of this nature on a project this extensive, so I’m not sure how I’ll be feeling after finishing it. I know I needed a bit of a respite after finishing the first draft, but I may feel differently after the revision. We’ll see, but I have plenty of future projects to choose from, and my main guiding principle is that my next major undertaking should be something science fiction.
Future Work
I’m not going to bother putting any dates on anything in this section. Everything here is at least short novel length, and most of the projects are large, long-term undertakings. These include, in no particular order: Spring of Nations, Rogue Planet, Origins, an untitled Hiarathala series, a yet-to-be-retitled Fo’Fonas series, the Archmage and the Unicorn Queen story collection, and Tantha Chronicles. This section is broken up amongst these projects, with my current thoughts and status given for each.
Spring of Nations
This should be a short novel-length work, on par with Golems and Kings (but hopefully not subject to quite so many delays when I get around to writing it fully). I started it a couple years ago and work on it here and there, enough that it’s now just shy of 20,000 words. It can probably be slotted into my future writing schedule wherever, because it is a stand-alone that doesn’t seek out to explore too many ideas at once or include too many plots. Impressions, Golems and Kings, and Spring of Nations all fit into “historically adjacent fantasy,” despite being quite different stories within that genre, so if Impressions does get picked up for publication, I may prioritize this story to capitalize on that readership.
Rogue Planet
This is the science fiction novel project I originally intended to write after the brief palate cleanser of Golems and Kings. It has an interesting intellectual premise I want to explore – the titular rogue planets – but I’m frankly not that excited about writing the story at the moment. I’m thinking I need to go back and rework the outline, especially the characters and their motivations/backstories. Doing that work might get me excited about the story again, but I’m currently thinking of putting off this one in favor of a different major science fiction undertaking, like Origins.
Origins
I could still change my mind, but this is the series I’m current planning to write after I finish revising Impressions. It might not be conducive to traditional publishing because of its nonstandard format, but it’s something I’m excited about writing. The overall story arc is divided into four “seasons,” each of which is composed of twelve “episodes,” which I expect would come in between ten and twenty thousand words. Each season is therefore equivalent to a pretty hefty novel. If I were to write the story as a novel or a traditional series, it would be much shorter, but part of what I want to capture is something of Star Trek-style episodic storytelling. Some episodes will move the plot more, some will move it less, and some might not move it at all, and that’s fine when I call them episodes, but less fine if I call them chapters. Most likely I would write the first season, write something unrelated, revise the first season, write the second season, and so on, with the first season being published only once the draft of the fourth season is finished. That makes for a long timeline to bring this one into the world, but a lot of material once it’s ready.
Hiarathala
Every time I write one of these updates, I think I go back and forth between whether I should write the Hiarathala story first, or the Fo’Fonas story first. Both are sprawling, complex, epic fantasies, probably best presented as trilogies, and each has its own complexities to navigate. One of these will probably be the major project that follows my science fiction outing, but that gives me plenty of time to keep vacillating. To be honest, I’ve not thought much about either one recently.
Fo’Fonas
Neither Hiarathala nor Fo’Fonas is historically adjacent fantasy, but there is slightly more historical inspiration to this one. It involves a larger cast and more complicating political intrigue than the Hiarathala story, but is simpler in other ways, especially as it pertains to worldbuilding. The first draft of the first book in the series was the first full length novel worthy of that appellation which I ever finished, which arguably puts it farther along than the Hiarathala story, but I’ll probably end up rewriting most of the first book, anyway. Still, I’ve spent more time actually writing in this world than in Hiarathala, which can be an advantage. Regardless, it hasn’t received much more thought than Hiarathala has in recent months.
Archmage Collection
It’s funny how stories evolve, and this one has had one of the most convoluted paths to its current form of any story idea I’ve imagined. Since I first drafted Archmage and the Unicorn Queen it’s settled into what I want it to be, with a few changes here and there, but this is really not about any one story. The world, the magic, and the style of storytelling I would explore with them is more conducive to shorter works, probably 80,000 words or less (of course, I say that now…). I envision this ultimately being presented as a collection of stories, each set in the world and set at a different place and time period. I have several entries already in draft – it’s an easy world to play around and escape a bit in, so it’s become something of an outlet for me when I don’t have mental energy to write something else, but I still want to write. The real work that has to be done, other than writing all the stories, is sitting down and solidifying the world and its timeline, which I’ve been delaying because it will end up forcing me to reference something every time I want to write in it.
Tantha Chronicles
This one fits into historically adjacent fantasy, with even more emphasis on the history than my other entries in the genre. Other than some very preliminary outlining, I haven’t done any work on this one, but it is an idea which keeps floating around in my head and occasionally poking me to do something with it. I see this as a series, but not one you would have to read in a particular order – at least, not from a plot perspective. Each novel would be a stand-alone plot, with the common thread being Tantha and her chronicler. If I do some work on the worldbuilding and outlining, I could see this being something I intersperse amongst other works.
Conclusion
This is the sixth Intergalactic Update, marking the start of IGC Publishing’s seventh year. It was, as mentioned, not as productive as I might have liked, but some progress was made, and more will be made going forward – Golems and Kings will be, must be, finished. As I turn my attention to revising Impressions, it will be time to think seriously about publication. Whether that’s through a traditional publishing house, or I go the independent publishing route and turn IGC Publishing into a genuine publisher, I think it would be great to see Impressions in print by the time IGC Publishing reaches its tenth year. That seems like plenty of time, though I say that now…
I appreciate your patience over this past year, and I thank you for sticking with me despite the relative paucity of new stories to read. It might take time, but I hope making progress and revisions on longer projects and pursuing professional publications will result in higher quality material once it becomes available. It’s one thing for these posts and even the book reviews to read casually – I do that with some degree of intentionality, and I make deliberate compromises on elements of quality to keep the posts consistent and approachable – but the stories deserve better. So, here’s to another year of improved storytelling. I hope you’ll join me.
-Lloyd Earickson
IGC Publishing 