Welcome one, welcome all to the biggest yearly event of the Archefire Newsletter: The Odyssey of JoshSE! For those who are new to my little corner of the Internet, I send out this yearly retrospective on my birthday, full of reflections from the past year, a judgment of whether I hit my writing goals, and a slate of future plans and goals. Strap in, they're a doozy this year!

In Year 34, I set out to write the first draft of Sibling Suns 3 while still learning to be a dad, commuting into the office more and more, getting sick approximately one billion times, discovering faith and spirituality, and launching waaaay too many random website features.

The big question is: did the book get done?

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty of writing statistics and OKRs (we're going corporate, baby!), I should warn you that this is a long one, even by my standards. The first draft of this newsletter came in at almost 6000 words.

So grab a drink, settle in, and maybe consider reading this on my site – otherwise, you'll reach a point where the email gets clipped off, probably mid-sentence. We'll begin with some reflections on the year as I turn 35, but if you want to skip around, you can use this table of contents to get to whatever bits you find most interesting.

Table of Contents

The Dad Schedule

Before Benny was born, my writing life looked very different, and much more ritualized. I would get home from work, brew a cup of late afternoon coffee, sit down at my desk with my snack and my cup of joe. Maybe pull up a Writing Excuses podcast and listen for 15 minutes, maybe read over what I wrote in the last session, anything to get the creative cogs turning. Then I would aim to write for about 2 hours, but often keep going after I hit that point. During good streaks, I would do this every weekday, and I tried to set aside time to write for an even longer stretch on the weekend as well.

Now, the writing schedule looks pretty much like: I'm on a train! Go, go, go!

I mean that literally. I now write almost exclusively on the train I take to and from work. 45 minutes there, and 45 minutes back. It's an extremely effective time box, and much better than staring at my phone for the entire ride. But it does mean I'm limited to writing based on how many days I go into the office. That's usually 3 times a week now, the days on which Nazgul goes to daycare (his favorite place in the world).

When I get home, there's no time to set up the perfect writing environment. Nope, I get off the train, pick Benny up from daycare, prep dinner with Rachel while making sure King Baby doesn't throw a fit waiting for whatever's in the oven to be ready. After that, it's playtime with Benny and Naz until bedtime. Benny's bedtime, that is. (That boy is a miracle. He goes to bed at 7:00 PM every night, 7:30 if he's staying up late, and he sleeps until around 8:00 AM.) Rachel and I get most of the evening to ourselves, but we're usually pooped by then. We typically wind down with a crossword or a movie, or maybe some alone time, during which I'll either work on coding projects or veg out with a video game (Crimson Desert is my latest obsession).

All this to say, I knew going into fatherhood that I would have much less time to write. But I didn't expect how much it would sharpen my focus (now that we're past the early sleep-deprived months). I know when I'm on the train that it's very likely my only chance to write that day. It's not going to be like, "Oh, I don't feel like feeding Benny today, I want to write instead." Not an option! There's no more time to spend 15-20 minutes listening to a writing podcast before starting – that would eat 33-50% of my commute. What a waste! No time to spend scrolling on social media doing "marketing" – hah, as if it could even be called that. But I don't miss these things; when putting them next to the delight of raising Benny, there isn't even a comparison.

Not to get all sappy (okay, it's totally going to get all sappy), but I realized during Sibling Suns 3 drafting just how much he's changed my worldview. Scenes with kids hit so much harder now, holy moly. The Lion King hits different when you're Mufasa, not Simba. Writing about the joy of parenthood is like getting to share a little sliver of that deep fulfillment with my characters, and by proxy, my readers. I won't gush too much, I'm not trying to convince you to have kids (do it! do it and don't look back!), just trying to convey how much of an unalloyed good it has been for me and Rachel.

Of course, I have to mention Rachel, because without her support, none of Archefire Publishing would be possible. She's an incredible mama bear, and when I see her boundless love for Benny, it makes my heart swell.

Yes, becoming Dada has been an unalloyed good. No downsides whatsoever. Not a single–

The Plague Season

Okay, so there miiiight have been some low points this year. I wouldn't try to claim parenthood is easy breezy, even though I'm pretty sure Benny does his best to make it as easy as possible for us. But it's just a fact: if you've got kids, they're going to get sick. And if they get sick, you are going to get sick.

I knew that, and even knew that statistically he would be sick something like 50% of the time during his first few flu seasons at daycare. But, my God, knowing something and living something are different beasts altogether.

It started with yet another bout of Covid in September. I think that was something like the third or fourth time I've been bit by that exquisitely engineered superbug. So I was already in struggle mode, because Covid meant no in-office time, which meant no train ride, and therefore no writing time. This continued throughout October. I didn't even send out a newsletter in November, the only month I missed this year.

And then, as soon as I'm starting to feel better – BAM! Pizza poisoning. Ended up in the ER with severe dehydration, losing consciousness, slumped over in those God-forsaken little waiting room chairs and sipping as much Gatorade as my fragile little tummy could manage.

That was a Monday. Somehow, by Friday I was in Vegas at an Elvis wedding. What a wild week. The ER trip absolutely sucked – I would take another two weeks of recovering from abdominal surgery over that single day of all-consuming nausea. But it's funny how it all went down, in retrospect.

On top of this Age of Illness, which lasted several months and seemed like it was never going to end, I was feeling the pressure to hit my writing deadline. I think the metrics will show that I hardly made progress during this time. I wanted to write, but my body was plainly telling me no.

In December, when I was still in the midst of it yet somehow wrote over 14,000 words, that was probably the first sign the misery cycle was ending. Life took an unexpected and unpleasant detour, but we got back on track.

Speaking of detours...

The Side Quests

The main quest this year was to finish Sibling Suns 3. But stepping foot into the open-world RPG of life, my quest log quickly filled up with side quests. A farmer asking me to deliver a turnip to the sick child across the village? An armorer asking me to check on his honey delivery at the apiary so he can wax his shields on time? No, my side quests looked more like this.

1 – The Joshword Mini

I got really annoyed when the New York Times locked their daily Mini Crossword behind a paywall. So I built my own – the Joshword Mini – and it's received a conspicuous amount of updates since launching. Only me and two friends play regularly, but this brings me daily joy. (Join us!) Playing each day only takes a few seconds, but the dev work behind that has eaten more hours than I want to admit.

2 – Website Feature Releases

I started the year intending to ship monthly website improvements, and actually did it for a while. We now have a sitewide search, an indie reviews hub, a self-hosted Archefire Store with built-in ePub reader, and more! But sometime around the Plague Season, this spinning plate came crashing down. I don't consider it a failure though. The website got some useful upgrades; the novel simply had to come first after that, especially following months of slow, sick progress.

3 – Nonfiction Essays

I planned to write more essays around mythology, language, fantasy, and archetypes, focused around a bunch of books I dubbed The Stack. I did manage to publish a few, Tolkien's On Fairy-Stories and Barfield's Poetic Diction. But I never did get around to finishing the essay about Lewis's The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength. (And don't even get me started on the long abandoned essay about AI and the arts.) Once again, the novel took precedence. Any chance I had to write, I felt obligated to move Sibling Suns 3 forward.

I never got to share most of my thoughts about those books with you, but they've deeply affected me and woven their way into my daily life in ways I never could have predicted.

The Return of Meaning and Spirituality

Looking back, it's hard to untangle exactly what happened here, but it's clear I went through a very transformative period. I don't know what changed first, my reading, my writing, my beliefs, or just the growing sense that the modern world feels spiritually...thin. Okay, it's probably that last one.

I've been interested in the so-called Meaning Crisis for years, listening to podcasts and reading books by broad and sometimes combustible figures like Jordan Peterson, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Bret Weinstein, John Vervaeke, Jordan Hall – the list goes on. I always thought of this in very abstract, intellectual terms. I never thought this milieu of ideas was leading me on the path toward Christianity – not until Jordan Hall's public conversion to the faith. His podcasts and discussions have always resonated with me, but he comes from a very materialist, tech-focused background, so that caught me by surprise. I think, however, it also granted me permission to look more deeply into the faith myself.

So I ordered a Bible. A nice copy, NRSV (thanks for the suggestion, El!), leathersoft cover, multi-color formatting. It sits closed on my nightstand most of the time; I prefer the YouVersion app on my phone. Regardless, holy moly, did it prove so many of my assumptions wrong. I was a stupidly confident atheist – stupid in the way you can only be when you haven't done the reading. I apparently never thought, "Hmm, maybe I should check this out for myself." Yet with my fifth grader's understanding of the Bible, I thought I knew it all, that it was a book full of outdated instructions and Aesop-style fables rather than a timeless, richly intimate, complex, and generative narrative.

Sometime in the fall, I was in a whirlwind of discovery. I don't know how many books about Christianity and the history of Christendom I read. Not enough, because I'm still reading them, but anyway, at some point I came across David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. That book is somewhat overly condescending in its tone, but it revealed to me another facet of my misunderstanding: my assumptions about God were all wrong too!

Once again, fifth-grader understanding, that God is something like an all-powerful guy who exists as part of the Universe, and maybe, I don't know, kicked off the Big Bang or something. Hart argued directly against this misconception, noting that this version of God exists in an entirely different ontological category to God as I understand Him now. The God of the ancient theists does not exist within our Universe but beyond it, giving continual rise to it, supporting it eternally, the source of Being. This was an idea I could get behind, especially as it was becoming more and more clear that materialism is an insufficient worldview. There's obviously more to this world than what we can see with our eyes (or our orbital telescopes, electron microscopes, laser spectroscopes, any scope you can think of).

To be honest, I kind of miss the feeling of the early transition. It felt like I was constantly discovering new things that all clarified my understanding of the world, washing away a bunch of gunk that muddled my thinking. It was clearly a time of great spiritual change. Now things feel... settled. I'm more active within my faith community and I still obviously have so much to learn, but it feels more routine than renegade.

In the midst of all this soul-churn, I noticed my writing changing as well. Even before I started writing Sibling Suns 3, I realized I was tired of cynical characters and stories. I wanted this book to feel more earnest. No Marvel Moments ("Well, that happened"). And I think I achieved that with my latest story.

In the end of Sibling Suns 3, there are some pivotal scenes about grace and forgiveness that I never would have written before finding faith. Don't worry, I'm not trying to smuggle Christianity into this fantasy world; their religion is still very much centered on the Book of Light. But my vocabulary has expanded as a direct result of what I've learned since becoming a churchgoer.

I'll also mention that the theme of the Mathemelodian novella – tentatively titled The Rhythm of Time – is meaning. It turns out I've got a lot to say on the topic, so I'm excited to get started once the Sibling Suns trilogy has a bow on it.

Did you just get a title reveal for my next book before the current book? Yep, you sure did. Things don't always make sense here in author-land, even to me. There are a lot of plates spinning. Too many, probably. So let's take a look at everything we've got going on here at Archefire Publishing.

The State of the Archefire Empire

"Everything the Lightmother touches is our kingdom"

The Archefire Empire currently contains the mainline Sibling Suns books, An Ocean of Others and To Burn All Belief, a hodgepodge of short stories, a secret collaborative project (which is still moving forward, if slowly. That's all I'll say about it in this newsletter), and of course the first draft of Sibling Suns 3. These projects all hang together and support each other.

But then there's the dark horse: Grave of the Waiting. This is an excellent book, and one I'm very proud of. But it's no secret that this book has struggled to launch. It's got 8 reviews, all favorable, but no momentum. Maybe it's because I'm not doing my job selling it, or maybe it's harder to sell sci-fi than fantasy. Sadly, it didn't make it to the semi-finals of the SPSFC, so this one is going to have to go on the backburner for the foreseeable future.

Apart from the books and short stories, we've got joshse.com hovering in the background, my home on the net. This started the year as a pretty simple blog, but took on much more scope in 2025 – including direct sales store and indie review hub. Indie reviews are yet another side quest that I fell way behind on this year, so that review hub hasn't seen much action. But the work on the store laid important groundwork for the Archefuture. We now support direct sales of ebooks and signed paperbacks, have dedicated store pages for each book, and an ePub reader for prospective buyers to sample the works.

I really want to add a lore archive called Joshipedia, but my CEO (hi, that's me, I'm the CEO) says I need to defer that until I've done a lot of work on the store, making sure the buy flow is silky smooth and the marketing copy is converting at a higher rate. He says I've got OKRs to hit this year and Joshipedia needs to wait until after Sibling Suns 3 launches. He's no fun, but he's got the company's best interests at heart, so I think I should probably listen to him this time.

You see, Archefire is at one place creatively and another place financially. Creatively, it's never been better. The books are improving, I'm still working on my craft, and I'm super excited about the plan for this year and beyond. Financially...well, it's not horrible. As you'll see in the financial report section, we didn't lose that much money this year. We also didn't make that much. So I'd say we're in a stasis, of sorts. But I still have to pay for artwork and editing for Sibling Suns 3, so this is going to be a big spending year. Only the support of dedicated readers will ensure that Archefire isn't hemorrhaging money after this book launch.

But overall, I think what I've made of Archefire Publishing is something to be proud of, even if the business side hasn't caught up yet. Most of all I'm proud that despite all the time constraints and new responsibilities, I still found time to write. I've dropped lots of other hobbies, but I didn't go a single month without meaningfully progressing my writing goals. I wrote almost entirely on the train in bullet-point form in my Obsidian notes, because that's what the year called for. I didn't need the perfect schedule or the perfect energy. I just wrote. When I was tired, I wrote tired.

In fact, I distinctly remember walking onto the train platform after sleeping terribly the night before. I was so tired, and I was debating in my head whether I should write. It's so easy sometimes to convince myself I shouldn't do what I know I should do. So I told myself, fine, just write 100 words. Even if they're terrible, they're something. And on that train ride, I wrote my favorite scene in the entire book, completely unplanned and driven by the characters revealing new facets of themselves to me.

That's sort of what this whole year has been like. Lots of unexpected changes, lots of being tired, but so much joy. What I'm trying to say is:

The State of the Archefire Empire is strong.

Goal Assessment

I had one goal last year. Complete the 1.0 draft of Sibling Suns 3. I also mentioned something else:

In fact, after finishing the first draft of AFTS (👀), the plan is to prepare the long-overdue second editions and maybe even hardcovers for An Ocean of Others and To Burn All Belief.

But more on that later.

First, the big news!

Yes! The trilogy is complete! I had a huge smile on my face when it hit me that book three is done. So many people set out to write a book but never finish. Even among those who do finish, they rarely finish an entire trilogy.

As expected, progress was nonlinear throughout the year. I had a few very productive months – like July and August, December and January – but most of the time the writing was a bit slow and unsteady. Despite that, it was enough. I even finished early! Meaning I've had almost two weeks to prepare this yearly Odyssey post for you. Fancy that, not having to rush a newsletter out the door!

Having this extra time to breathe has been immensely helpful, because it's let me think hard about what next year's goals should look like.

New Goals

Usually I set nice, straightforward goals like "publish the book" or "finish that draft", which are easy to judge. They're either done or they're not. This year is going to be a bit different, because we've got big plans here at Archefire Publishing.

With the first draft of Sibling Suns 3 complete, it's time to start preparing the entire trilogy for its best chance to find readers. So here are my goals for Year 35:

Goal 1 – Deliver the 2.0 draft of Sibling Suns 3 by November 30, 2026

This is my first priority of the year. I've got a solid first draft loaded onto my phone, and as soon as this newsletter is complete I'm going to be reading through it and writing copious notes. I expect some chapters are close to what they need to be, while others are going to need big changes. My job through November is to turn the book into something I'm comfortable sending to my editor and alpha readers.

The target is November 30, which gives me just under 6 months to complete it. To Burn All Belief's 2.0 only took one month, which is still insane to think about. I'm giving myself ample time to make sure the finale hits exactly how I want it to. Plus I still need to write four epilogues and get the continuity between all three books under control, because the next goal is bigger than just Sibling Suns 3.

Goal 2 – Prepare the Sibling Suns Trilogy for a proper completed-series relaunch

I've heard from a lot of readers that they wait until a series is finished before starting it. In the era of long-unfinished fantasy series we live in, I get it. No one wants to be burned by a lack of closure for characters they love.

Once Sibling Suns 3 is ready, the plan is to relaunch the entire Dance of the Sibling Suns as a complete epic fantasy trilogy. That means preparing fresh, polished editions of An Ocean of Others and To Burn All Belief, making sure they're in proper relation to the third book so the whole series feels cohesive from start to finish.

In addition to Ocean and Burn v2, I'm planning to finally release hardcovers for all three books, refreshing the store pages, updating the blurbs, and generally making the whole trilogy easier to approach.

I love this series dearly, but I haven't always done the best job of explaining what it actually is. "Fantasy books with monsters" is true, but it's pretty vague. The real heart of the series is memory, friendship, power, and people trying to survive a world that's losing its grip on reality. And yes, sometimes dead people turn into reality-warping nightmare beasts.

This year, I need to do the hard marketing work I should have done from the start. Rewriting blurbs, clarifying the series hook, making sure new readers can understand why they might want to start this trilogy now that the ending is in sight.

Historically, my marketing has been something like: 1) write book, 2) publish book, 3) yell "BUY MY BOOK" into the aether and wonder why the sales are flat. Sprinkle in a few giveaways, and you've pretty much reinvented my Twitter "marketing strategy".

I tried making shameless self-promotion a staple of the monthly newsletters, but even then I haven't been consistent. So it's time to be more deliberate about this stuff, figure out something that works for this trilogy and that will also work for the next books I publish.

That means planning the launch earlier, asking for reviews more systematically, making better use of the Archefire Store, coordinating with author friends and others in the scene, and creating a launch that gives the trilogy a real chance to find an audience.

Goal 3 – Make Archefire Publishing more sustainable

I love making these books, working with great editors and artists, and turning the strange ideas in my head into beautiful objects. Unfortunately, it's no secret that all of that costs money. Quite a lot of money, actually, and this year is going to be another big spender.

So another goal for the year is to get better about treating Archefire Publishing like a real business rather than a Rube Goldberg machine that converts my paychecks into fantasy novels. I don't expect to make a profit this year – those hopes will have to wait until after the trilogy relaunch. But it's time to lay the groundwork. Make smarter decisions, track costs more carefully, improve direct sales, and finally, once and for all, figure out how to make ads work.

It's not going to be easy, but the dream is simple. Make great books, find the people who will love them, and build something sustainable enough that I can keep making more.

The Unfortunate Non-Goal

If you've read this far, you're probably smart enough to realize the implication of these goals. What is missing? It's time for the sad news:

Sibling Suns 3 will not be published by June 2027.

I know it's been a long time since To Burn All Belief came out (today is the two-year anniversary!). But I assure you, this will not be a Martin/Rothfuss situation. This book is going to come out in a reasonable time, and as quickly as I can make it happen. There's just... so much work to do before that, and I want to get it right.

So, my tentative timeline for the release is this:

  • Late 2027, publish Sibling Suns 3 and refresh Sibling Suns 1 & 2
  • Early-mid 2028, publish hardcovers and omnibus editions

And if this all goes really, really well, my stretch goal is to explore putting out Deluxe Editions of the entire trilogy on Kickstarter. That, however, is entirely dependent on how financially successful the Relaunch is, so I can't make any promises yet.

Speaking of which, it's time for this month's sponsored segment, courtesy of fellow indie author Michael Michel.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelmichel/the-price-of-power-deluxe-edition

Only joking, Michael didn't pay me for this. I paid him.

Can you blame a man? Just look at that gorgeous book! It's no wonder it's been funded 4 times over and unlocked multiple stretch goals. I couldn't be happier for Michael that his Kickstarter is soaring. Really looking forward to adding this beauty to my shelf.

I need to hire whoever drew this monstrosity to illustrate a Benefactor.

The Kickstarter ends on June 17 2026, so get in there and grab a copy before it's too late!

Back The Price of Power Deluxe Edition on Kickstarter

This is exactly the kind of thing I'd like to do for the Sibling Suns trilogy one day. What a dream come true it would be. Bloody expensive though, so you guys are really going to need to turn up for the trilogy relaunch so I can afford to bring it to life!

All right, I think that's most of the exciting stuff for this newsletter. I wouldn't blame you if you skipped right to the Nazgul section from here, but I may have one last surprise for you nestled somewhere in the midst of the Writing Metrics and Financial Report numbers 👀

Writing Metrics

Last year I wrote:

I am not a full-time author. I'm a full-time software engineer, a full-time dad, full-time husband, and part-time author.

I think that shows in this comparison with prior years. Even in a year where I'm focused entirely on a single draft, my word count is nowhere close to when I was drafting To Burn All Belief and Grave of the Waiting. But that's okay, because I spent my time much more efficiently. My words per hour are up by 35% compared to the big-output Year 31. It comes back to the Dad Schedule and Benny sharpening my focus.

I really only did two things this year: writing the book, and keeping you in the loop. In retrospect, it feels like the year flew by. Crazy to think it's been 354 days since I wrote the passage that makes up this surprise sneak preview:

This defense is hopeless.

The Skardwarf charged, crashing through the marble wall to reach the cowering Paladin. Even across the sands, hiding in the shadows of my own cover, the trembling of his Fire-imbued glaive in quaking hands was obvious. When the Skardwarf roared, he scrambled to his feet, sand spraying, letting his control of Archefire slip.

The Paladin swung the glaive in a wide, panicked sweep, missing his attacker entirely but forcing another member of the Order off balance as he dodged the flaming weapon. The second Paladin took one more step and toppled into the sand on his back, wheezing, heavy silver armor keeping him pinned like a tortoise on its back.

This was the army that conquered the Bright Empire? Against a Skardwarf, they looked like Agency new recruits.

Safe to say, if the Benefactors were as impervious as Skardwarves, no one would have passed Ulken's field tests.

Standard disclaimer: this is a first draft and subject to change, yada yada yada. Anyway, fun fact: in the final chapters of Sibling Suns 3, I crossed the 800,000 mark for words written across my novels and short stories.

My writing time and word count are almost perfectly correlated. I guess that's what happens in a drafting-heavy year. It's kind of crazy that the book was finished in 160 hours though. If I was a full-time writer, working 40 hours a week, that implies I could have written the draft in just 4 weeks. I know that's not how creativity works and I don't expect ever to be a full-time writer, but it's still interesting to think about. A boy can dream.

Finally, this graphic is basically an accounting of how much time I spent riding the train this year. It's kind of funny how well it lines up, actually. My train rides are 45 minutes each way, so 1.25h per writing day makes perfect sense. I have a weird thing where if I finish a chapter, I just can't bring myself to start the next chapter. So if I finish halfway through my commute, that's it for the day, and I spend the rest of the ride scrolling social media or, on better days, reading a book.

Hmm, I wonder if I can include my ticket fares as business expenses next year, get some sort of tax break... Oh! Let's look at the financial report next.

Financial Report

Let's just get this over with. Rip the bandaid off. I'm afraid to look...

Wow! I hardly lost any money this year! The final tally is about $302 in revenue, $547 in expenses, for a loss of about $245.

Revenue was down compared to the prior period, which is no surprise since I didn't release a book last year. But no book means no major book expenses. All I had to pay for were the crucial things that keep this company afloat.

Clearly, the website is the biggest cost – almost 80% of my expenses. I've got plans to slim that number down. Without that, this ship will be running lean.

Another 10% went to the Mary Cariola Center as proceeds from the r/Fantasy Holiday Mega Sale, which I hope to participate in again this year.

The software category is just another Scrivener license because I switched from a Windows laptop to a Mac Mini this year.

Shipping is always good to see because that means somebody out there held a brand-spankin' new signed paperback in their hands.

And lastly, Pennsylvania makes me pay $7 per year for the privilege of staying in good standing (which prevents Archefire Publishing from being legally dissolved. Yay!)

Overall, pretty low costs this year. But next year will be another big spender, like the previous two. That's when I'll be hiring professionals to elevate this book far beyond anything I could do on my own.

These next two images are instructive. As you can see, the vast majority of the books we sold last year were through Amazon. 234 out of 275 books – that's 85% of sales. Yet look at the revenue:

Amazon and the Archefire Store are almost even. And the books cost less on my store. Every ebook is priced better, and the paperbacks cost the same but they're signed. You pay less, I get more. In the biz, that's what we call a win-win, baby. Well, except for the giant corporation. I guess they get the short end of this stick.

So it's pretty obvious I need to be focusing my efforts on the Archefire Store. I don't plan to take the books off Amazon anytime soon, but I can now envision a future where indie authors are not beholden to that sole marketplace, because it isn't the dominant source of revenue.

Ah, what a world that would be. I'm doing my part, dear reader. If you're ever in the market for an indie author's books, check their website and buy direct first! More and more of us are setting up direct sales, you love to see it.

And with that, we come to the final section of this incredibly long update. The moment you've all been waiting for, the star of the show!

Naz al'Ghul

I confess it's getting harder to think of good nicknames for our lovable little shadow beast. Last year we used Gûlius Caesar, Schnauzgul, His Infernal Barkness, Gulius Schneazar, the Gulgoyle, and – my personal favorite – Nazgulius Sham Ivam Barksy.

If you've got any suggestions, leave a comment below! Here are some pictures that will surely inspire you.

look at me. i am the entertainment now
gotta go fast
enemy detected
ears up for danger

That wraps it up for this year's Odyssey of JoshSE. Thank you so much for sticking around for this chaotic writing journey. I've got a lot of work to do this year, but your support keeps the motivation high even when the dad schedule and the plague season try to keep my productivity low.

Next month we'll return to our normal programming – a newsletter that hopefully doesn't take two weeks to write. Until then!

As always, thanks for reading!
—Josh