This writing year, so far.
What I've been up to in 2026.
It’s suddenly the end of April.
What happened there?
It doesn’t seem to have been any time since I was looking at my achievements for the end of January. Somehow, the end of February and March have passed me by.
It’s time to see what I’ve actually done this year. And compare it to the plans I had.
On the plus side, I’ve written over 70,000 words so far in 2026.
However, this is only about a quarter of what I wanted to write by this point in the year. In mitigation, life has intervened, as it always does.
I haven’t finished anything. I still have the same works in progress as I did in January. Worse than that, I have another one to add to the list. A new story that sneaked into my head while I was trying to concentrate on the others.
They have a habit of doing that.
The novels are all very different; among them there’s a Sci-fi crime noir, a first-contact-with-aliens story, a Steampunk sequel, and the next Andorra Pett adventure.
My only real progress has been on the short story front. I’ve written several for both of the series that I’m posting here on my Substack.
Captain Starlight and The Adventures of Raf and Cat are going strong, with new episodes planned. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve managed a couple of locally-based stories for an anthology that my writers group is putting together.
I’ve also been writing short stories for volume two of my Kalyn Deere series. These are the case files of a reluctant private investigator and her friends in a far future world. The first volume was moderately successful when serialised on Medium, and now I’ve had ideas for more adventures for the all-woman group of sleuths. One of the stories has the potential to become a standalone novel, so I’m actually writing two versions of it: a novel-length one and a short story.
In other writing news, I’ve been keeping up with my twice-weekly posts to my website and two monthly subscriber newsletters.
And, I published a book in April. Novel number 28. Which I guess is pretty special, as I never thought I’d even write one. It’s actually sold some copies, too. I’m now waiting for the first review.
And I opened my Substack shop. Which you can find here.
The thing I haven’t done much of is marketing. Largely because I hate doing it. I can always find a reason to do something more enjoyable. As a consequence, I’ve had zero sales of my back catalogue.
Now we come to my plans for May and onwards.
More of the same, with an attempt to increase my word count and maybe, just maybe, get something finished. As for marketing, we’ll see.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
I’m Richard Dee, and I write all sorts of stories. From Sci-fi and Steampunk to Psychological Thrillers, Cozy Crime and Fantasy.
Ive been in a bit of a similar rut. I posted a roadmap not long ago, and ive only achieved about forty percent of where i should be by now.
Progress is progress no matter how you look at it. There’s magic in your words so keep on going and the sales will grow.