2025 End-Of-Year Wrap Up

It’s the end of 2025 (what the heck??). I figured I’d take some time to summarize this very hectic year, sort-of like a “Spotify wrapped” type dealio? This is not going to be the most eloquent thing I’ve ever written, because my brain is completely fried after a long string of exhausting events. I’ve spent the past few weeks wrangling an apartment maintenance emergency, trying to make time for my family, AND reading the worst romantasy book I’ve ever laid my eyes on. And let me tell you, said book was jam-packed with heterosexual nonsense and thinly-veiled misogyny & homophobia that I only read because I wanted something to make fun of. LOL.

Anyways, let’s dive in! 

WRITING WRAP-UP

2025 was a pretty productive year for writing. I wrote AND published The Divine Archive #0, Floodwaters, this year. This is the fastest turnaround I’ve ever worked with, having started that project in… February-ish, and published it in November! I learned a lot about the independent publishing process and am better equipped to publish future books as a result. 🙂 I don’t think I ever want to write something and publish it in the same year ever again, though. That was stressful! The only reason why I was properly able to pull it off was because Floodwaters is a ten-chapter novella. 

I had TDA #1, Blood of the Gods, edited this year. While I wasn’t admittedly the most impressed by the quality of edits I received from my line & copy editor, I did get some pretty crucial feedback from him. Since then, BotG has gone through its final revisions and proofreading, and is ready to start formatting for publication in January. There’s a lot of extra stuff I want to add to BotG—a map, a conlang dictionary, and maybe a tiny smidge of interior art? We’ll see about that last one, depends on if I have time for it! 

Blood of the Gods has an official publication date of May 14th, 2026.

I began my “zero” draft of TDA #2, which currently has just shy of 50,000 words to it. This draft is an absolute disaster, but that’s just the nature of a zero draft. It’s supposed to be messy! Especially since I generally prefer not to outline, haha. I’m a pantser, a discovery writer, whatever you want to call it—I prefer to just write and see where things take me. As of right now, I’ve hit a pretty solid wall in TDA #2 that I haven’t figured out how to overcome yet. 

Finally, I received my first editing certification from Poynter Institute, which is one step closer to finding my way as a freelance fiction editor.

READING WRAP-UP

In 2025, I read 18 books. I’m not always motivated to read, so I’m actually pleasantly surprised that I read that many! I was expecting maybe 10 total. This year I also got a bit more serious about leaving in-depth reviews on books—starting with ARC reading Songs of Broken Bells  by Lilly Lockwood, and moving on to other projects like my Queer Book Review series. Then, my reviewing just kinda bled into everything else.

I switched my primary book tracking app from Storygraph to Pagebound this year. I still use both apps, but Pagebound is enjoyable for its more social aspects and the ability to post in a book’s forums instead of just dropping a review and leaving. It’s fun to have a platform where I can react to a book in real time as I’m reading!

My favorite read of the year:

The Ascendants by Jazza Brooks! This book is a sci-fi survival horror that’ll keep you on the edge of your seat. I’d give it a 10 star rating if I could. Highly recommend.

ART & MUSIC WRAP-UP

Music

I wrote one song this year. I was inspired to get back into music writing after I started using my music in the background of my Twitch livestreams. Otherwise, music did not take much of a priority this year, as I was focused primarily on writing.

Art

I picked up one major freelance art project and a few smaller ones. The biggest one was a coloring book, which was such a joy to work on! Here’s one of my favorite pages (with a few things blocked out for safety reasons):

I took on a few smaller art commissions, including one illustration of a client’s friend’s SIX CATS, a super cool logo for an upcoming sci-fi series, and a portrait of a client’s child. 

After my freelance work wrapped up for the year, I set out to start a personal project: designing Tarot cards based on the characters in my seafaring fantasy series, The Divine Archive. Since November, I have completed five cards! 

2026 Goals

So, what’s ahead? Well, I’ve got quite a few things I’ve been toying around with, and since this time of year is great for setting goals I’ll forget about in 3 months, here’s what I’m aiming for in 2026.

Achievable goals

Stretch goals

We’ll see what 2026 brings! See you all next year!

Wren L. Rivers

@corvidarcana [Bluesky, Tumblr]

@corvid.arcana [Instagram, TikTok]

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