Hi everyone! I apologize for my silence as of late. I’ve been busy with my dietetic internship (one month left), and have barely had time to think. But I just want to give you all a quick update with the progress of Hope’s Shadow and talk to you about some of the indie books I’ve read this year.
Hope’s Shadow is almost ready for publication. I am still waiting on cover art, though. Now that the holidays are over, I plan on putting a little more pressure on my cover artist to get it done. I’ve seen her concept art, though, and I am super excited to see what she makes of it, as all of it is a vast improvement on my idea! I can’t wait to see the finished product and share it with you! Because of my internship, I’m looking at a publication date of March 2026, just to give myself time to get everything finalized and ready so that I’m not rushing anything. I know I had been hoping to publish this book this year, but life just didn’t work out that way for me.
The good news about publishing book 1 in March is that it should be less time between book 1 and book 2! I just finished my second draft of the sequel to Hope’s Shadow. I’m going to let it sit through January so that I can finish my internship, then in February, I’m going to crack down on getting it revised enough for my beta readers to read it. Ideally, I’ll have book 2 ready for publication early 2027. I’m also in the early planning stages of book 3, though I probably won’t start writing the first draft until book 2 gets to my beta readers.
I’ve made a goal to read more indie books, and though I’ve not had much time for reading this year, I did still manage to get a lot of reading in. Below are the books I finished this year, if you’re interested.
My 2025 Reads
I started the year finishing the Tairen Soul series by C.L. Wilson. This series was amazing! The first two books were heavier on the romance part, and the last three books were very heavy on the fantasy, which I adored. I literally screamed at the end of book 4, which I finished on New Years Eve. Book 5 had a very satisfactory ending, and one of my favorite little moments that will live on in my heart forever. I can’t recommend this series enough!
2025 was the year that I discovered authors A.K. Caggiano and Laura Winter. I absolutely devoured Caggiano’s Villains & Virtues trilogy, plus the two spinoff novels. This was one of those series where I knew from the first paragraph that I was going to love it, and by the time I finished reading the first chapter of the first book, I’d made the decision to buy the entire series. Her sense of humor is exactly in line with mine, and there were so many delightful scenes! Villains and Virtues is, essentially, a parody of romantasy, and has a very D&D vibe to it. The humor’s not for everyone, but I loved it!
I learned of Laura Winter through A.K. Caggiano, as they started a series of cozy demon romance books together. 4 books have come out so far, and I’ve been fortunate to receive ARC copies of all four! They’re very enjoyable and I look forward to rereading them all back to back. I started reading Winter’s Smoke and Shadow series, which is an absolutely fantastic series! I’m half way through, but I anticipate getting time to read the last two books.
Most of this year has been good for reading, but I did have one dud: This Will Be Fun. I read a sample of the prologue, which was wonderfully written, and the concept sounded fascinating. Unfortunately, the execution of the rest of the book was not good, and got progressively worse as the book went on, with even the humor wearing thin really quickly. It suffered from being written by three separate authors. It was painfully obvious, too, as the authors couldn’t keep each other’s characters in character. A lot of the concepts were very lazily done, the plot felt contrived, and it was just not a great book. Not terrible, but I do sorta wish I DNFed it.
Not on this list, but I had the opportunity to be a beta reader for AJ Elmore’s sequel to The Nameless (Fae-Cursed series), The Stolen, which came out earlier this year. The second book is quite possibly even better than the first! These books are a lot of fun, and I highly recommend them! I think I even convinced AJ to write a third book, so I’m looking forward to that!
Well, that’s all for now. Hopefully my next update will include cover art for Hope’s Shadow. Stay tuned!
Happy New Year and I hope 2026 is a great year for everyone!