Susan Fanetti

Greetings, friends!

2025 was a tough one for a lot of us, and I expect there aren’t many who are sad to see its back. I hope, though, that the year left gently for you and your holiday has been full of joy, peace and love.

Our Christmas was quiet and content, but we got some heartbreaking news the next day (the details of which are private). 2025 gave us a swift, hard kick on the way out the door.

I’m honestly not much in the mood to reflect, but I’ll mark a couple milestones that happened as we slogged through the past year. As for writing, I published Freak, the third book of the Signal Bend Heritage series, as well as two SBH short stories for subscribers here on the blog—“Interview: Eight Ball” (Gia’s interview notes and transcript for her dissertation) and “A Very Mindy Christmas,” in which Thumper and Mindy Jasper have a Christmas encounter.

2025 was my least productive year where writing is concerned, but I’ve stopped stressing about that. I’m writing when I can and when I want, and I’ll publish when I have something to publish. The years of releasing a new novel every 6-8 weeks are well and truly behind me, and I think working at that pace for so long kind of drained my mojo anyway. Now that I’ve worked through the panic of not producing like I had and have reconciled with this new way of approaching writing, I’m getting my mojo back.

The other big thing I did in 2025 was put in for retirement at my day job. After the spring semester, and 26 years teaching college, I’ll be retired. 😳 I’m planning to teach one semester a year for a few years as a professor emerita, but that depends on a few factors beyond my control.

Otherwise, my biggest accomplishment of 2025 is surviving it.

I’m hoping 2026 is kinder, but it’s profiling, at least, like it might be pretty damned busy and not a little chaotic. A lot of the biggest stuff that might happen in the coming year is not for discussion here, but there could be more changes than simply my retirement. Or everything could still be basically the same when next I write one of these end-of-year posts. Who knows?

I am not a fan of uncertainty, but here I am anyway. Wheeee!

As for writing, which I imagine is what you reading this are most interested in, I am planning to write—and, if that is successful, release—Book 4 of the SBH series. Right now I know the broad strokes of what needs to happen in the club story (if you’re reading the series you probably have some ideas about those broad strokes), but I haven’t decided which characters should lead us through that story. I’m playing out a couple of options now.

I also hope to finish a book I wrote 25K words of a few years ago and then bailed because I didn’t feel I was up to the challenge I’d set myself. At the time, I was still writing just about every single day and striving to publish at least four books a year, and when this project challenged me enough to slow me down, I bailed, thinking I couldn’t sustain it. I moved to safer territory and wrote a biker book instead.

I had been inspired to write a romance within a 1940s noir detective story (think Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe), using the style and diction of noir writers like Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. Right in my wheelhouse as a reader, but WAY out of my comfort zone as a writer.

I read those 25K words a few weeks ago, though, and THEY ARE SO GOOD. I was doing it! I love my detective and the woman he falls for, I had achieved a distinct noir diction for my detective without sounding like I was simply tracing over Hammett or Chandler, and I was even handling the murder mystery part well. So what if I had to write more slowly to get all that right!

I’m going to pick that one up and see if I can’t finish what I’d started. I would LOVE to be able to release this story. And I think now, maybe, when I’m not so stressed about publishing, I can enjoy the experience.

If it works, you’ll be hearing about it in 2026. If it doesn’t, let’s all forget I ever mentioned it. 🤣

All in all, my 2026 could either be full of big changes and new things, or it could be pretty much the exact same life rolling along. Not sure which I would prefer, actually.

I wish for you a safe and happy new year, full of exciting adventure, if that’s your thing, or calm predictability, if you’d prefer that. I hope you family and friends are well and safe, too, and you are surrounded by love and care.

Let’s hold up hope as a lantern as we cross this threshold into the new year.

❤️❤️❤️

s—