R.H. Walker, Author

(Cover image by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash)

Hi all! Happy New Year! (I’m sorry this is a month late, I promise I wrote this in January, then I wanted to let it rest so I could edit, and then forgot the post existed, oops lol).

It’s time once again to reevaluate and set intentions for the upcoming year! Since I was upfront and laid out specific goals last year, I wanted to revisit each of my resolutions from 2025 and see where I actually landed on some of these.

• Goal: Receive 25 submission rejections
  • Result: I received a grand total of 11 submission rejections (8 if you’re not counting the publications I still haven’t heard back from, lol). This was just largely due to how slowly publishing works; even in the short fiction circuit it just takes a long time to hear back on cold submissions like I’m doing here, and I also just didn’t have a lot to submit (I currently have 2 short stories on submission, and nothing else is ready to go out). I had hoped to remedy that by writing additional short stories throughout the year, but as we’re about to see, that fell through pretty quickly. Still, the aim with this goal was to relax my rejection sensitivity just a smidgen, and I think it’s worked gangbusters. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done what I set out to do with this goal.
• Goal: Complete at least 5 short stories
  • Result: LMFAO. This did not happen, not even a little bit. Too much else was going on– a new Solace draft in the spring, getting through the logistics of my move this summer, progress on Child of the Dawn in the fall. My one real attempt at a short story this year turned into a novella that is still in progress (whoops), and the rest just fell by the wayside. Alas.
• Goal: Finalize the script for Solace Curse Holdings
  • Result: While I did finish the second draft for Solace and managed to complete the alpha feedback cycle, it is clear that this still needs much more work, which will come with me into 2026. I feel like I’m learning so much more about this story each time I complete a new draft, and I hope that someday soon it will be ready to share with the world!
• Goal: Complete the first draft of Thea of Merecastle
  • Result: This also did not happen, but not for lack of work. Another draft I’ve had on the back burner, a project called Child of the Dawn, ended up subsuming a large portion of my attention this autumn when I’d originally planned to focus on Merecastle. This turned out to be for the best; Merecastle still needs time to cook, and it was gratifying to have another project to take its place in the meantime!
• Goal: Attend Narrativity 2025
  • Result: I did end up attending Narrativity 2025…. for one day. Sadly I got sick and was forced to miss the second and third days. I don’t know if I’ll be able to return for 2026, but I will still be very eager to return in the future. I love attending smaller conferences, and the writers I met here were lovely, lovely people.
• Goal: Make progress on By Writers For Writers
  • While I only managed to complete two books for the By Writers For Writers project this year, I’m pretty content with the books I finished. Refuse to Be Done, which I finished in February, is perhaps the single-most useful book I’ve come across in this project to date. I am also content to let progress on the individual books slide in favor of focusing on developing my craft. There’s only so much you can really read about writing, I’m finding. At some point you just have to go and do the dang thing. And I’ve been doing the thing, in higher quantities than I ever have before. So like. I think it’s working.

All in all, this year was pretty great! Some success, some failure, but all of it means I’ve been taking steps in the right direction (the write direction hehe. No no, don’t worry, I’ll see myself out).

I also want to take a moment in this year-end wrap-up post to celebrate the publication of The Arkham Autumn Festival in Lovecraftiana Halloween 2025! Baby’s first real-life publication credit, I still can’t believe it’s real. (You can get the collection here!)

Now the fun stuff: setting intentions for 2026!

Bekah’s 2026 Writing Goals:

• Make progress on Solace Curse Holdings
  • I am officially in-progress on the third draft of the script! I am optimistic about this draft being the “final” version, or at least the base for the final version. As this version is far shorter than either of the previous drafts, I’m expecting to finish this fairly quickly.
• Complete the first draft of Child of the Dawn
  • This is currently sitting at around 50%! The draft chapters I did in November of 2025 felt really incredible, and I’m excited to sink back into this world to finish the first draft.
• Complete and publish Degenerates: A Degrading TTRPG
  • I am trying to be a little less embarrassed about my amateur game writing, which really means I’m trying to talk about it a little more publicly. I have LOVED writing Degenerates so far; I just need to complete the item tables and then it will be ready for a couple of quick play-tests, at which point it will be released onto the unsuspecting masses. I’ll be sure to post about it here when it releases!
• Attend school for creative writing
  • Okay fine, I’ll stop beating around the bush. I will be returning to school to (finally!) finish my bachelor’s in creative writing! I have plenty of personal goals revolving around passing my classes and graduating within a certain time frame, but mostly the meat of this goal is “learn as much as you can, from as many different sources as you can get your grubby little paws on”.
• Complete the first draft of The Humorists
  • This is partially complete (probably around 25-30%?), but progress has been slower than I’d like lately. Still, I adore this concept, and I’m excited to try and bring this story to life. I’m optimistic that I can complete at least a first draft by the end of the year.
• Write a short story in a genre I haven’t tried before
  • My personal theme for 2026 is “variety”. In the spirit of this, I have set a goal to write one (1) short story in a genre I have not tried writing before. Right now I’m thinking of maybe trying a Cory Doctorow-esque tech thriller? He’s an author I have long admired, and I’d love to try my hand at some of the themes he centralizes.
• Bonus: Sell another short story
  • Though I was grateful for the contributions to my “rejections” goal for 2025, I really would like to sell another short story in my lifetime. My first step in this, if I have time, is to rewrite The Belle of Red River Crossing and Iowa Red Eye, my two short stories currently up for submission. I really think these have potential, but the lack of interest in them so far tells me that they can probably use another edit pass (or two) before I send them out again. From there, we’ll see if interest piques! If not, I’ll just have to keep writing short stories and try again. Thus is the cycle.

Thanks so much for bearing with me for another year– I’m excited to see what the new year brings us!