November 2025

First: The Theme.

My apologies for the late issue, this past week has been very and while I intended to start writing this at the start of the week—ironically to save myself from a last minute mad-dash—time got away from me due to work demands and so we’re running a little behind. The reasons are good, though. I got a lot done this month, and we’ve got a theme to back it up. This issue is gonna be a tad shorter than previous ones, but it’s got some good stuff. The theme for November is acceleration.

Let’s get going.

Second: The Work

After twelve years, Glassblade is finally done. I’ve gone through all the line-edits, checked and double-checked spelling and grammar as best as I can, and have changed the last minute little things that I wanted to change. The phrase that art is never finished, just abandoned applies well here, but it also sort of doesn’t. After this long poking, prodding at, playing, and fiddling with it, I was ready for the story to be complete. To move on from it to the next section of work to do and say “yeah this is done. I don’t have to do anything else with it.” That’s honestly a feeling I didn’t expect, and I’m tickled.

So, here’s the next piece of character art, as promised, drawn by the always-incredible Nik. This is Agnes:

Agnes is a seventy-five year old swordswoman, the child of Russian immigrants who fled the revolution in the old-country, a retainer to a powerful and ancient family who has up until the start of the story been enjoying her retirement with her husband John and who has lived the last thirteen years of her life protecting and raising the children under her care. Through a combination of bad news, changing winds, and new threats, she is forced over the course of the story to come out of that retirement and fight not just for the memory of those she served, but for those she protects now. Agnes is a complicated woman who has done and seen terrible things, but through it all has been driven primarily by love. If that sounds overly simplistic however, there’s much more to it than that. Agnes is the vehicle for a view on both age and youth that I’ve been ruminating on for a long time, and she is a lens on both love and violence and how they can intermingle in a way that I find super interesting and engaging to write.

Alright, other projects.

Drifting Lands 4 is still in outlining, and Broken Vessels is creeping up on one hundred thousand words, which is unnerving to write because it’s not quite half-finished yet. Glassblade is about 142k, so watching the sequel get exponentially bigger has been a bit of a case study in my nerves steadily stretching out as the story lengthens. I’m sure there will be cuts, because there always are, but that’s a problem for future Joe, for whom I am currently making those problems. Hi, future Joe. I’m so very sorry.

I mentioned the theme of acceleration the other day, and it’s definitely boiling behind a lot of my thoughts as I enter into the last two months before Glassblade’s first chapters start dropping. Everything right now feels like it’s a game of whack-a-mile where I’m constantly swatting down unexpected problems even as I try to stay on track for what I have planned. I intend to introduce tiers and paid subscriptions in December, which means I need to roll those out soon. I can definitively say however that there will be an author discord server coming, as well as a quarterly QnA. Author’s notes on each chapter will be a part of the tiers at some point in the hierarchy, and early access to the chapters as they come out will probably be one of the lowest ones.

With that said, let’s jump to the next thing.

Third: On Craft

Writing has been hard, this past month. Some of that is because life is full of distractions this time of year, and some of it is because I’ve been so deep in the editing trenches. But the daily walks and gym trips have persisted through this, and as I’ve mentioned in previous newsletters, these are as much a part of the process as anything else. This plus the theme though has had me thinking of what happens to me when I get towards the end of something. I usually go from a slow pace at the middle where I’m very ponderous and discerning to all of a sudden hitting a tipping point where I go from writing maybe 400-1k a day to suddenly blasting out 600-10k in marathon sessions that leave me gassed afterwards. It’s pretty telling that after I finish writing a book I’m usually down for a month.

It used to torch me. My entire writing cycle was deeply affected by my long-unmedicated bipolar disorder, which caused me to have feast or famine phases pretty much in-line with my manic and depressive ups and downs. Now that I’m properly balanced these phases are rarer, but that tipping point, manic explosion of finale still usually happens. The only difference is it drains me far less than it used to and doesn’t leave me wiped for as long.

I’ve been getting a lot of value out of writing early in the morning. I currently rise at 6 and get the kids up, then head downstairs and start the coffee brewing. Once that’s down the fresh day has a tendency to make me creative earlier than I used to be, and I’m able to get out at least 500 words (my daily minimum) before the kids need to be taken to school. The routine is good for me. It’s letting me get things done, and with Glassblade now complete, I should be able to leverage this energy for the next month which will let me get ahead on things while I also prep for release.

My advice to you is that when you find a routine that works for you, embrace it, and protect it at all costs.

Fourth: What I’m watching/Reading/Playing.

Reading:

Ascendence of a Bookworm: I’m on volume 7 of part 1, now, and the series has been surprising me with how nuanced of a take it’s giving us through a ground-up view of the society Myne has been dropped into. I wont do any spoilers, but Miya Kazuki is really good at presenting tension that doesn’t rely on terrible things happening on the other end.

Ravenor: Dan Abnett’s sequel to the Eisenhorn trilogy, Ravenor is excellent, focusing on an Inquisitor who—due to extreme injuries sustained in the aforementioned trilogy—is severely disabled and continues to do his work by projecting himself through the minds and bodies of his retinue with his psychic powers. It’s a really interesting take on a disabled protagonist, and continues Abnett’s ability to showcase the world of Warhammer 40k as a place people would actually live in. I wasn’t ready for this when I first bought it, but picking it up years later, it’s excellent.

Watching:

The Apothecary Diaries, Season 2: I know it’s been a month, but if I’m a slow reader, I’m an even slower watcher, so you’ll have to be patient. That said, it’s as good as I said last time. It also does something rare, though, that I feel like I need to mention: this show doesn’t spoon-feed you information. Instead, it gives you snippets and tidbits over the course of many episodes that let you put things together on your own, often just before Maomao does. That sort of revelation happened to me with the last episode and my first response was to go “holy shit.” The second was to scream in horror. I guess it’s fitting that we watched it the night before Halloween.

Playing:

Warhammer 40k: I got to finally play Warhammer, y’all! It was so fun! My opponent was my son playing Aeldari, and I finally fielded my Grey Knights. The rules were actually less complicated than I expected, and even though I got thrashed by my kid, we had a blast. I foresee many more games, and I think we’ve made a new family tradition.

I need more models. Dammit.

In Conclusion, or What’s Next?

While Glassblade is done, I still have a lot to do, but there’s plenty that’s in-progress. You have one last piece of character art plus subscription tiers coming next month to look forward to. The cover is in-progress and will probably come in a special newsletter next month. I’m continuing to work on my books, keep house, build characters, and get the necessary work that often requires a bunch of small and boring steps between the important and exciting things done. As we head into the holidays I hope you’re all experiencing what joy you can amidst the chaos. This time of year is, even when it is good, very tiring. Taking care of ourselves and each-other will be of paramount importance.

Two months until we start dropping chapters. Get hype.

Stay healthy, stay friendly, stay curious.

-Joe