A bit of recent history to open with, and luckily there are no uncomfortable frogs involved or affected.

In 2024, I wrote every day. In 2025, I gave myself permission to not write every day, and did not use that permission–I think I missed one day that year. maybe

For 2026, I renewed that permission and, well, overused it. In April I wrote four days.

No real reasons for this, other than relaxing a bit too much and putting off some changes to one of my longer stories.

I know some other writers I read and follow have had a rough time this year, and I feel for them. I just wanted to let you know this isn’t necessarily anything pervasive, or that I have a good explanation for.

It doesn’t help that I’ve started eleven new stories since the start of the year that wouldn’t stay in my head. Some of those may come out in collections of shorts, but a couple seem to have some potential for something more.

But what about this water warming?

“You Are My Water, My World” has been sitting for several months. A pre-release reader’s feedback made sense, but took me a while to focus and figure out how to address/implement the two issues.

One is done as of last week, and I’ll be focusing on the other, hoping to have the book released by Memorial Day.

This book works as a standalone story, but I have some ideas for where the story goes afterward.

That being said, there are a couple of other sequels that have been moving forward slowly, so this one may be later in the year.

Audiobooks and other platforms?

A few months back I asked about people interested in buying on other platforms than Amazon. I’m still pondering that, as feedback wasn’t overwhelming either way, and Amazon is an easy-button platform for me.

If you are one of my readers (or want to be, but this holds you up), let me know in the comments what platform you’d like to get books from. I could use Draft2Digital and the various bookstore sites, or Patreon or Gumroad, that I know of.

A new question though. I remember a couple of inquiries about audiobooks, and I’m wondering what my readers think about me doing those. With my massive sales volume, the budget would (at least initially) allow for using my existing Eleven Labs service for synthetic voice reading. I’m not sure I want to do Audible yet, with the 7-year lock-in situation, but maybe later I will reconsider.

That’s all for the start of May. For those of you celebrating a holiday, happy holiday. For those of you not celebrating a holiday, happy today and tomorrow.