Saying Goodbye to 2025 Stuff While Also Planning (and Hoping) for 2026 Stuff

It’s that time of the year again! With the very last month of the year nearly upon us, it’s time to finish up the things I have been working on in 2025 so that I can start 2026 with the new stuff … as well as old stuff that I hope to complete

 

As far as reviewing books is concerned, I am putting a hold on accepting new books to review on my blog for this year. If an author doesn’t mind sending me a review copy of their book now and waiting until January for that review to be posted, that’s fine, but I won’t be posting reviews of any new books until then. I plan to finish reading and/or reviewing some other books in the queue, and all other new books in December will have to wait until January for me to pick up for reviews. My selection of books that I review for Reader Views, however, will remain the same. I plan the submission of my book reviews to them weeks in advance (as long as I meet the deadline), so there’s no change in books I select to review there.

 

Here are the things I plan to say goodbye to at the end of the year:

 

·   A manuscript I started work on earlier this year. This book was previously self-published as one of my “12 Books in 12 Months” project. I have since unpublished it because I want to revise and expand this book. I am still waiting for something to be emailed to me for this book and I am also going through a loooong list of content someone sent to me for the book so that I can decide what parts of it to include in the book (he is the author of this content and I have his permission to include his work). I really want to finish working on this book before January gets here!

 

·   A novel I started writing this month. I hope to finish writing it by the end of the year!

 

·   Revisions on the eighth GHOST Group story.

 

·   There’s another WIP I hope to finish writing before the year is over: A poetry book. It is a collection of poems about the current presidential administration. Some of the poems are about things that have happened during this time, my personal feelings and thoughts about these things, as well as responses to certain vitriol I have received from MAGA in response to my comments or things I have shared. At first, I was going to trunk this book, thinking no publisher would accept it and that I will be hated on by ALL of his supporters (I actually imagined such supporters burning the book!). I also figured that a book about these horrific times is the LAST THING that people would want to be reminded of with a book, so no one will read it. But now I am beginning to feel that this book is valid. This book needs to be published. There is too much deletion of history and too many lies being spread (and which will continue to spread long after he is gone) and all of this will result in people questioning what they remember about this period of history. Just as President Eisenhower instructed troops to take photographs of the atrocities done at the concentration camps so that this horrific period of history will not be forgotten or can be denied, nonfiction authors, poets, bloggers and journalists owe it to future generations to document and write TRUTHFULLY about the things our current president is doing so that these things, our own atrocities, cannot ever be forgotten or denied. And I hope to the gods that this book will serve as a reminder that we should never again allow that tyrant to take office in the White House after his term is over.

 

Here are the things that are planned for 2026:

 

·   Twisted Dreams Press will begin publishing shorter stories (anything under 10K words and up to 15K words) as standalone ebooks to purchase

 

·   Sadly, my co-author, Martha Jette, passed away this year. I was devastated by this news, as I had grown close to Martha. I was also still revising and editing our haunted houses book, as well as still doing research for and writing a book Martha had asked me to write for her. I have been communicating with her daughter and received her blessing to continue this work for Martha. Her name will still be on both books and I will still be able to include the content she provided for both books. I am very grateful for this and plan to get back to work on these books in the new year

 

·   My first erotic horror book, with the publication of my novella Love You Still (slated for a February 2026 release)

 

·   I am also looking forward to the publication of two short story collections in 2026 (well, three, if I ever finish revising another one! And if I can sweet talk my favorite publisher into adding it to the publication schedule). These two books were originally slated for publication this year but, with life being what it is, things happened, and so these books were bumped to next year. It will be nice to see them get published!

 

·  Writing a new nonfiction book! I recently got the idea for this book after thinking of an experiment to try next year. And since it is something that I’ll be doing all year, I thought, “Why not turn those 12 months into 12 chapters for a book?” After some thought in how to make those chapters doable, I decided that, yes! I will write this book about this particular experiment! (I’m not calling it a challenge because It’s something that I already do all year long, so it’s not really a challenge at all, but I thought of how to change things up with it a bit to make it more interesting and beneficial to the public. Plus, hopefully, it will promote a sense of altruism in more people.)

 

Now for the stuff I hope to see happen in 2026!

 

·   I’ll get my script written! This is something I have been tiptoeing around all year. I really never committed the time or energy to finishing work on it. But I really want to see this project completed in 2026. Hey, a girl can hope! Will it also be optioned next year? More hoping!

 

·   If I’m lucky, 2026 will also see the publication of a children’s book! If I’m VERY lucky, there will be two. (I submitted quite a few of them this year and there’s no response yet on if they were accepted.) There is one still scheduled to be published this year, but we will see if that will still happen.

 

·   I hope I can make a return to songwriting in 2026. I have had a couple of song lyrics I wrote put to music, but unfortunately, I lost those tapes after they were made (GAH!) and nothing ever happened with them. I was talking about how I wanted to get back to this on Facebook and, after I said I couldn’t create the music for these lyrics myself, a friend suggested, “Find your Elton.” Well, guess what? I have found my Elton! After I learned that another friend literally came from a family of musicians and even plays instruments, I asked him if he was willing to create music for my lyrics. He said yes and to send him some of them. I sent him 10 songs I wrote and, well, he has been working on putting music to some of them since then. I hope that next year will see one of those songs being released to the world!

 

·   And, finally, I have a TON of stories, collections, books and other assorted writings that I still need to edit and revise. Will I get it all done next year? Time will tell!

 

After writing about all of that, one thing is for certain: No matter what does and doesn’t happen next year, it’s definitely going to be a busy one!

The SPARREW Newsletter Now Has Its Own Site!

 

 

When I started the SPARREW Newsletter in 2022, I had no idea or expectation that it would grow as large as it has today. I thought it would just be a simple little monthly newsletter that would exist only in a subscriber’s inbox.

 

But now, almost four years later, the SPARREW Newsletter has grown so big that not only did I need to set up an archive of past issues somewhere (which you can read here), but I realized that this mighty newsletter needed its own website.

 

In fact, I have known this for several months.

 

Lots of other newsletters have their own website. FundsforWriters. WritersWeekly. Authors Publish.

 

I realized the SPARREW Newsletter needed one too. But how was I going to make that happen?

 

I spent those months mulling over my options. I also reached out to the Tricky Edits contributor, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, to see if she had any ideas.

 

I thought about using Substack, because of the ease of organization, but I didn’t like the idea of my newsletter being posted on a site that I didn’t own.

 

No, I had to put it on a site that I owned. So I just stuck to the “dmcwriter” site I already had set up.

 

But even on there, the newsletter was growing too! It became part newsletter site, part writing portfolio site.

 

Meanwhile, I wasn’t sure how everyone I interviewed on there felt about that. Mostly, how they felt about the domain name not matching the newsletter’s name.

 

And ever since someone turned down being interviewed for the newsletter after I showed him the site the newsletter is posted on, I have always wondered if it’s because of that. (Or because my little newsletter is not so popular.)

 

That idea lingered in my brain. While I understood that the newsletter should be on a site with a matching domain name, I couldn’t figure out how to separate the newsletter from the writer.

 

Well, Life figured that out for me! It’s like Life said, “For goodness sake, if you can’t figure out how to do it, I’ll show you!”

 

So, recently, something messed up the DNS connection I had between the dmcwriter domain name and the site I had set up on another hosting platform. I am not very tech savvy, so I had a hard time figuring out what was going on AND how to fix it. And because I was using two different sites for the domain name and the hosting, I kept going back and forth between Customer Support for both sites, as well as the help guide links they sent to me, as I attempted to fix this problem and get the site I created back online. It went on for several days and I was increasingly frustrated that I kept running into dead ends, that I decided, screw it, I’ll just purchase a domain name on the hosting site and connect it with the site I created on there.

 

Plus, it was getting confusing going back and forth between two different websites just to fix ONE website!

 

So I purchased a domain name that I felt was a good fit for not only the SPARREW Newsletter but all things SPARREW, since there’s going to be some merch as well: SPARREW Site.

 

And at first, I was thinking of removing ALL of my credits as both a freelance writer and as a book reviewer, but then I realized something: What if visitors to the site want to know just who this Dawn Colclasure person is? I say on the About page that I started the newsletter in 2022. Okay, who am I to be publishing such a newsletter? I talk the talk, but do I walk the walk?

 

I certainly do!

 

I took a break from self-publishing books for a while there, but now I self-publish a title every once in a while.

 

I am an author, and the link to my books is on the About page.

 

I am certainly a reader (booklover), as my friends and followers on Facebook and BlueSky have seen when I have shared pages from my reading log.

 

I am a book reviewer, and the link to my book reviews can be found on that site, in the navigation bar.

 

I have experience working as an editor, and I share this information on the About page.

 

And, of course, I’m a writer. Proof is on the portfolio page that is also included on the navigation bar.

 

So, if people want to know if I’m the right person to be publishing a newsletter for self-published authors, authors, readers, reviewers, editors and writers, the proof is all there.

 

And you know what? I am going to leave it all there, too.

 

I don’t know what I’ll do with the dmcwriter domain name in the meantime. As it stands, while I own it, I can’t do anything with it. I tried, but so far, no luck. And that’s the next problem that I have to fix! At least I can work on it in my free time.

 

UPDATE:

New dmcwriter site just dropped! 

I Don’t Only Submit to Paying Markets, But I Keep in Mind the Writers Who Do

 

Photo by John Guccione www.advergroup.com  via Pexels https://www.pexels.com

Before the month of August came around, I decided to take a break from not only my monthly newsletter, The SPARREW Newsletter, but also from my weekly Substack posts. My brother passed away close to the end of July and I needed time to focus on my grief. Plus, I had eye surgery coming up (or so I THOUGHT I did; it’s being rescheduled again! This time, possibly in September), so I did not want to stress over gathering material for my newsletter while recovering from eye surgery. (But rest assured, subscribers, that even with my eye surgery being in September, the September issue will STILL go out! I have a cut-off date of the 20 for every month on curating material for the newsletter, and the eye surgery will likely be AFTER the 20 and then that issue will go out on the 30 of September, which gives me a few days to focus on recovering from surgery!)

 

However, because there is a submission deadline coming up for one of the anthologies mentioned in previous issues of the Substack, I decided to take a break from my break to send out an “upcoming submission deadlines” issue tomorrow, August 18, to remind everyone about it. And because I recently gained 100 subscribers to my Substack (thank you, readers!), I am celebrating by throwing in other submission calls that also have forthcoming deadlines.

 

So, as I was gathering that material over the past couple of days, there is one call for submissions that made me pause.

 

This particular call for submissions did not pay writers. However, it was also hosting a contest, and only one lucky winner would receive $100.

 

That still counted as a paying opportunity for writers, right? Not in my book. Why? Because the odds of winning that contest and getting the $100 was seriously stacked up against anyone entering it, because they probably would receive a ton of submissions for it, making the competition fierce.

 

Even so, while I submit to both paying AND nonpaying markets, I understand that there are writers out there who ONLY submit to paying markets. I respect these writers, especially since I tried doing that once myself and I know how hard it can be to get an acceptance! I also keep these writers in mind when I am writing articles containing paying markets.

 

These writers would not be interested in the nonpaying markets! 

 

So in order to keep my own list of pending deadlines something that subscribers would want to know more about, I should only list the markets with forthcoming deadlines that pay writers.

 

This does not mean I frown upon the nonpaying markets. Heck, I used to be a nonpaying editor too! I have no ill will towards the nonpaying markets. They can go about doing their thing!

 

Also, the WOT anthologies which Twisted Dreams Press is still accepting submissions for only pays with a print copy of the anthology and not with money. With 70 writers in all 7 books, paying each writer with money would create bankruptcy! (Everything is out of pocket for us.) So until one of us gets an angel investor or someone makes a generous donation to the press or one of us wins the lottery, we can only pay our anthology writers with a print copy of the book.

 

But when I am the author of an article sharing about OTHER submission calls for writers, then I will list the paying opportunities. This will also apply to other submission calls I list in my Substack posts. I think that sharing only the paying opportunities for writers is my best bet, and what a majority of writers would be most interested in.