year end updates—hello, farewell, see you again

For those receiving this newsletter for the first time, it's because you've entered the Asian Fantasy giveaway with Starlit Publishing—welcome, and y'all will be around for a long time!

For those who have been long subscribed, it's been a while since my last newsletter—2025 has been hectic, and 2026 I suspect will be even more so...

Somehow my publishing schedule has extended to the end of 2027. I've been steadily making headway in my long form backlog with four books yet to be sold and starting work on my ninth (!!)

Some personal updates before the writing updates:

This has definitely been a year of re-evaluating my priorities and trying to rebalance work and life and catching up with friends. I'd picked up snowboarding last year and struggled with it, but I seem to be making headway in it this season, while trying to increase the amount of badminton I'm playing each week—mostly because I realized that I'm 100% not made for the gym, and it's much easier for me to commit to sports than it is to weight training...

I've been thinking a lot too about relationships in general, not just romantic ones, but also platonic ones, and why they sometimes might fall apart. At least for me, I've discovered just how much work and effort maintaining multiple good relationships can be—with friends, with family, and my spouse—though not in a bad way. It's enjoyable work, like writing, but it's something that is conscious rather than subconscious, and something that can be endlessly rewarding and fulfilling. There's something to going out of your way to show someone you enjoy their company, that you want to help them out simply because, that you want to make their life easier, less stressful, or give them something to smile about without expecting anything in return.

This might also be the year where I have to be kinder to myself, step back a little from chasing ambition, and try to find, if not large, at least small moments of contentment, peace, and quiet, and work again from there. I hope everyone is being kind to yourself and each other this cold season (or warm, depending on where you are).

Now onto the writing updates:

It's been a wild year, and I've been very fortunate to have sold both my first poetry as well as short story collections, both of which will be forthcoming in 2027—short story in the spring, and poetry in the winter.

Preorder We In/Exhale Odysseys (Bad Hand Books)

Announcement for Memories Are Only Valuable If They Can Be Lost (Shortwave Publishing)

I have a few short stories in various anthologies as well for those looking to pick up something thematic and looking to read new authors:

“All the Men Who Cried Wolf”—HOWL: An Anthology of Werewolves from Women-in-Horror​

“Red God Waiting”—The Rack II: More Stories Inspired by Vintage Horror Paperbacks​

“A House That Cannot Fall”—Coven of the East​

“Unsewn”—ROOTS OF MY FEARS: Terrifying Stories of Ancestral Horror​

And finally, the second novella in the Natural Engines duology (following A Palace Near the Wind) is forthcoming April 21, 2026, titled A River From the Sky (indie preorder link here & general preorder link here with art by Nancy Zhang and David Bowman). My debut novel (!!!) is forthcoming September 8, 2026, retitled An Empire in the Clouds. The cover hasn't been revealed yet, but I've already commissioned art for preorder postcard giveaways by Peng Lu and 荒人.