October 2025

First: the theme.

Goddamn these months fly by. Every month I promise myself I’m going to get this thing done earlier than the day before the month turns and every month (so far) I find myself on the day before the 1st, realizing I haven’t written it yet because there’s been so much else to do that it falls by the wayside. The good news is this past month was eventful so there’s a lot to talk about. The theme for October is Thriving. That’s what I’ve been doing, even though it doesn’t always feel that way. There’s a quality to being busy that can make it seem like you’re drowning even when everything is going well, and it took me until almost today to realize that the problems I’ve been having are largely good ones and that they’re a sign of better things to come.

I have a lot of irons in the fire, right now, but also, I’ve promised y’all some updates and I haven’t missed a 1st of the month yet so lets get into it.

Second: The Work.

I have edits for Glassblade back, yay! This is the final pass and was done by my editor at Falstaff Books, John Hartness. But I’m also now balancing those edits with Broken Vessels drafting and the third book I’m working on for my agent. There is also the Drifting Lands to consider, and since all of these projects are happening sort of side-by-side rather than do an overview I’m going to give a quick little summary of where everything else is at after we get to the next piece of character art.

Glassblade: Drafted and in just about final form. I just have to go through John’s edits, then a little bit of final tweaks for grammar and any last minute additions based on things that occurred to me belatedly or work that got left out in previous drafts for the very last second. Fortunately there should be very little of that. I am basically ready to start dropping chapters in January as-promised. I’ve settled on Wattpad as the primary hosting platform and at this point I’m working on getting art and cover commissioned, and speaking of which, it’s time to introduce Glassblade’s next PoV character!

Claire is a member of the powerful and ancient House of Vallais, and the daughter of its currently seated Prince. Like Gabe’ she is fourteen years old at the start of the book, and has been studying with Jonathan Heart—last month’s revealed character—since she was a small child. A prodigy, Claire’s impetuous and impatient nature gets her into a whole heaping pile of trouble as the story progresses. I wont tell you much more than that because, y’know, spoilers, but I will say that she’s one of my favorite characters to write and that a single thrown punch can completely alter the political trajectory of both the world and her life. I cannot wait for y’all to meet her.

Alright, other projects.

Drifting Lands 4 is in the outlining stage. There’s a pattern in the Drifting Lands of a fast-paced book followed by a slower paced one, and similar to Dragon Road, Home is a song (working title) is looking like it’s gonna be a story that deals with the aftermath of Prince of Clay and once again takes us into the political machinations of multiple factions in the setting. Also if you’ve enjoyed the Clutch PoV’s in the previous books, you’re gonna love this one.

Broken Vessels is at 90,000 words, which feels like an unreal number, especially when you consider the fact that it’s not halfway done yet. Glassblade is 142k, and Broken Vessels is on track to be about 40,000 words longer which is kinda dizzying to think about. It’s still not approaching the longest thing I’ve ever done (I worked on Mongoliad y’all, that was long) but man is it getting close to the longest thing I’ve ever done on my own. Editing this thing is going to be a beast when it’s completed, but I’m forcing myself to not think about the next thing before the current thing is done.

And at last there is the [REDACTED] project that I can only talk about little bit because it’s in the early drafting stages, but I will give you some bullet points of what you can look forward to:

-Paladins

-Murder Mysteries

-The question of what Justice, itself, actually is.

Also ravens the size of clydesdales because everyone needs corvids that are as big as draft-horses.

Are you excited? I’m excited. Okay, let’s move on.

Third: On Craft.

The theme of the month is Thriving, and the realization that you’re doing it when you didn’t think you were. I spent a lot of September running around like a decapitated chicken, between kids school and autumn sports starting up, returning to everyone’s autumn and winter training arcs at Grit City and a host of other stuff I’ve been up to there was a huge sense of overwhelm that’s made realizing “hey, I’m actually coming out the other side of this okay” kinda… dissonant. I’ve been sleeping better. I’ve been eating better. I’ve been finding the things that bring me joy and actually doing them for a change rather than saying “I’ll do that later when I have time.” You have to make time for the things you love, and it is really really easy to decide that you’re not going to do it because you don’t have the right or permission or the option or whatever. The answer to this is to guard your time. Pick an amount of it that suits the things you want to do for yourself, and when it comes to that specific chunk of time, be downright miserly with it. That’s what I’ve been doing and it’s working out pretty well.

So how does this connect to Craft? Simple: all that stuff you do that’s not specifically writing but that’s related to your writing in that it helps deepen your understanding of story, or makes you feel the joy that drives creation, is part of work, which means it has to be protected and nourished as much as the time you spend in the chair typing with ass-glue yourself. It has to be cultivated like a garden and used to fuel the engine of your imagination. If I spend a bunch of time going for walks and using that time to figure out solutions to the story-snags or problems I’m dealing with, then that walk is part of work, and needs to be treated the same way when it comes to ensuring that I am making time for it. Does my time spent painting Warhammer 40k miniatures help me alleviate the brain-stress enough that when I come back to the work I can do so refreshed after what is essentially a brain-cleanse? Then yeah, that is part of the process and time needs to be made for it.

It is very easy to feel as if the things that bring you joy are frivolous when you have a full work plate, and especially when the world is as it is now, with bad news and chaos and other problems assailing our senses every so often. If you take only one thing from this month’s newsletter, let it be that this is categorically not true, or if it is, the lesson we should take from it is that it does not matter whether a thing is frivolous. A life without frivolity is a life in which we are all considerably less happy, healthy, and emotionally and psychologically well-fed.

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

Reading:

-Ascendance of a Bookworm (still), which is getting really good, and has taken a lot of little twists and turns that are keeping me glued in even if I haven’t had a ton of time to zero-in on it like I want to.

-Hidden in Plain Sight. This is a wonderful exploration of esoteric power generation and strength written by Ellis Amdur, who is a friend and martial artist I have admired for awhile. I’m only a little ways into this one, but every little piece of text is something to chew on that I have to put the book down and think about.

-Pieces of Ringeck. I actually got this book awhile ago and it’s been my primary teaching-text at Grit City HEMA for a hot minute, but I’ve been returning to it as we’ve restructured the format for our classes, as well as since I hurt my shoulder earlier this month and was limited in my ability to train for awhile. One of the things I like about this book is the translation is extremely accessible, and the historical unpack of Ringeck’s treatise at the front provides a lot of historical context that helps put his work in the constellation of its peers. Michael Chidester, Dierk Hagedorn, and HEMA Bookshelf really put together a banger in this one.

-Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo. All I will say about this book as I get further into it is that it makes me miss New England. Specifically New England winters, which is a hell of a thing to miss given how dry and cold I remember them being. Dark Academia wasn’t something I ever thought I’d like, but I’m enjoying being proven wrong.

Watching:

-The Apothecary Diaries, season 2. This show continues being excellent. Again, I’ll avoid spoilers, but every time the show comes up with a reason to dress Jinshi extremely femme it’s a riot that somehow manages to not fall into tropes that make fun of cross-dressing, which is honestly impressive given the medium.

-Ninjago, Dragons Rising. I’ve been watching this with my son, one episode a day, and I continue being impressed with how much a show about little lego people can make me actually feel something. I actually tell people that if you want an example of an ongoing series that retreads the same ground over and over, this is a good one to watch.

Playing:

-Fire Emblem, 3 Houses. We’re still working on my wife’s Blue Lions playthru, broken up over many nights due to being parents with limited time. The entire Blue Lions house needs massive therapy, and Dimitri is getting a serious side-eye from me even if his plot arc is letting him become a better person.

-Warhammer 40k. Okay so I’m not playing yet, but man did I fall into the hole with it this past month. It feels like any spare moment I get I’m painting, which tells me the addiction is feeding a need for attentiveness that gets me off screens. I’ve also been really fortunate to find some extremely LGBT friendly spaces for appreciating and discussing the game, and that’s been pretty awesome, not gonna lie. I stayed away from 40k fandom for a long time out of a fear of toxicity, so it’s refreshing to find so many kind and helpful people now that I’ve taken the plunge.

In Conclusion, or What’s Next?

As I write this, it’s almost 5 PM west coast time on the 30th, which means I have three months before Glassblade’s release, and everything that needs to be done for that feels like an extremely large pile. I will be in the hole for a lot of the next few months. The good news is that the book itself, which is the most important part, is basically reader-ready once I make this last pass. The text is the most important part. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s not the business side, or the marketing, or the fancy covers, or the fan-art, or the social media promotion. It’s the text. The text is prime. The text is all. And this one? It’s ready. I cannot wait to share it with you all.

Also, I’m trying to figure out how to do polls on Beehiiv, so there may be one coming in the next issue because I have some questions for you all about the sorts of things you’d like to see me try going forward. Not this issue, because I’m still learning the ins-and-outs of the platform, but soon.

Three months until we start dropping chapters. Get hype.

Stay healthy, stay friendly, stay curious.

-Joe