My social media break is mostly over. I haven’t raised the enthusiasm for marketing yet, but I’ll get there.

This is the first blog post of 2026, and I promise I’ll try to stay out of politics. It’ll be hard since 2025 was the worst year politically that I’ve lived through in my life.

‘Nuff said.

2025 in Review

I kicked 2025 off with another surprise January release, Every Day is a Test, a new novella that gives some back story on a new character, Cybill Fleming. Am I going to have a surprise release in January 2026? Probably not. I don’t have anything short ready for publication, but we’ll see. Maybe later in the spring.

In March 2025, I released Ewington Mysteries No. 2, Mournful Influence of the Unperceived Shadow. In November of 2024, I had drafted Ewington Mysteries No. 3, tentatively titled Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters, but I wasn’t happy with it. I worked on it off and on in 2025 then set it aside to work on some more in 2026.

Then in August, I released a novel that had knocked around in my head for more than 30 years. The Devil Passed By includes one of my characters’ earliest missions in Northern Ireland in 1979. I wrote, researched, rewrote, researched numerous times since the idea came to me, and finally, it was ready to be book born.

In November of 2025, there was no more National Novel Writing Month, as the non-profit that supported it shut down. However, one of NaNoWriMo’s sponsors, ProWritingAid, came up with an alternative, Novel November. So I did that and drafted a very (very) rough draft of The First Mission. As the title indicates, it’s about my characters’ first mission as partners in 1977. This is another one I was not really happy or enthusiastic about. The concept is good, and people have asked me to write about how the two characters got started in their partnership. The story is good, but the problem, I think, is the execution, i.e., the writing.

Indeed, last year I had trouble gathering enthusiasm for anything writing related: marketing, blogging, podcasting. I gave up my podcast in mid-June, and that freed up a lot of time. I did write. I can’t not write. I simply wasn’t happy with any of it.

So, stay tuned. As I usually do with a November novel draft, I’ll put it aside for several months and pick it back up later this year.

I had several in-person book events last year, but not as many as usual. I’m going to remedy that this year.

I did four writing retreats in 2025, one virtual in March where I taught a couple of workshops, too. My usual June adventure at Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop was great. In August my group of four writer friends and I spent a week at Porches Writers Retreat in Nelson County, Virginia. Then, in November, I returned to Porches for a mini-retreat for a long weekend.

Then, it was time for the November-December holidays, which went well, and I hope yours did, too.

What’s Happening in 2026

Now, as for what’s coming in 2026. I’m going to re-release my 2020 novel Dangerous Truths, book 2 of a series about the Balkans entitled Self-Inflicted Wounds, after some minor editing and with a new, better cover. (Book 1, Welcome to Belgrade, I re-released in 2025, again with minor editing and a new cover.) Later in 2026–I’m aiming for late summer or earlier–I’ll re-release book 3 in the series, And Justice for All with, you guessed it, minor editing and a new cover.

My major release in 2026 will be book 1 of a new series, Enemies Domestic. The first book in the series is Mine to Kill, a very Bond-like title, but I like it. Mine to Kill has been dispatched to beta readers, and I hope for a fall release, probably September since the action in the book begins in September of 2014.

Mine to Kill jumps forward a decade after book 4 of Meeting the Enemy, RENDITION. Minor spoiler: At the end of that book Mai Fisher becomes the deputy director of the Directorate, and in the ensuing decade, she assumes the job of Director. So, we see Mai Fisher not as an operative but as a spymaster, and we also see Alexei Bukharin as a house husband exclusively. Natalia Bukharin, Alexei’s granddaughter whom he and Mai raised, is the mother of three children (Yes, Alexei is a great-grandfather.) and a human rights lawyer for the U.N.

I’ll be working on finalizing Ewington Mysteries No. 3 for a March 2027 release, but let’s not get too far ahead.

I’ll have an in-person book event in April, September, and November and maybe one or two more; probably three to four retreats in 2026, not to mention Novel November; and, of course, marketing, blogging, and newslettering will occur.

I’m looking forward to the writing aspects of my 2026. Other things, like our crash into autocracy, meh, not so much.

See, I kept the politics to a minimum.

Best wishes for your 2026.

You can purchase any of my published or re-released work HERE.