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Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026
- Josie Jaffrey
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Happy New Year! 2025 was a big year, and there's a lot of exciting stuff coming in 2026, so I thought it was time for an update.
2025 STATS
292,464 words written (42,118 of those in short stories)
9 books published (3 novels, 1 omnibus, 1 short story collection and 4 issues of Indie Bites)
3 novels, 12 short stories and 1 podcast half-season written
2 book fairs attended
What a weird year 2025 has been. I published a load of books, but not the ones I thought I was going to, and spent a huge amount of time on the Jack Valentine, Vampire Detective podcast (one of my greatest joys this year - the wonderful and talented new friends, the invigorating power of creative collaboration, the sheer enjoyment of working hard at something).
And there's a lot more coming in 2026!
The first half of the podcast is coming this year – we're currently at the rough edits phase witht he excellent Beth Crane at the helm. We also now have theme music by the wonderful Hedley Knights, who did our recording. You can hear that music in the video below, which is a little compliation featuring some of my favourite bits from the recording of the first part of the season.
Once the podcast is out, we'll be running a Kickstarter to fund the second part of the series by the end of the year. In the meantime, you can support us on Ko-fi if you're so inclined – we'd be so grateful for your help in making part 2!
I’m also planning to relaunch my Patreon alongside the podcast (http://www.patreon.com/josiejaffrey), offering ad-free episodes along with two BRAND NEW serialised stories. The first of those follows Jack Valentine in her first cases with the Seekers, and the second is a zombie apocalypse series contemporaneous with the Solis Invicti series (and the end of the Seekers series). I'll be starting with the Jack Valentine stories, and we'll see how it goes from there.
And speaking of the Seekers series, there's been a load of progress there, too. I finished drafting Seekers book 5 (DARK DAYS) in 2025, and it's currently due for publication in June 2026. This year's main writing job is Seekers book 6, the last one in the series, which I'm planning to release in 2027. That'll wrap up the novels for Jack Valentine's story, leaving me free to concentrate on the prequels in the podcast and my Patreon serials.
Things are busy with the fantasy magazine I co-edit, as well: Indie Bites. We'll be releasing four of our usual quarterly issues in 2026, and I’m hoping to write a short story for each of those.
And as a special bonus, we’re running a Kickstarter for the Indie Bites hardback special edition in February! You can sign up to be notified the moment the Kickstarter goes live. It'll only run for 30 days, so don't miss out on this EXCLUSIVE hardback edition.
Sign up here:
Then there’s all the other projects I have running.
In 2025, I got to the penultimate round of the NYC Midnight short story competition, so I’m entering again this year and hoping to get to the final round. I've also been participating in the NYC Midnight scary story competition since October, so we'll see how far I can get with that, too.
Those aren't the only short stories I'm writing at the moment, either. Over the past few months, I've been writing a new story every month to send out on submission in the hopes that I can get them published in new magazines and anthologies. That's a long process, but I'm going to keep grinding on with it.
And finally, I’ve been working on a domestic thriller to submit for traditional publication for a couple of years now, so I’m planning to finish that and submit it to agents.
So 2026 is going to be a very busy – and exciting – year, and I hope you'll join me on some of these new adventures!
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