I will be appearing at two poetry readings this winter.

I’ll be reading from Pilgrimages this Sunday, January 18th at the Accent Open Mic Cactus Press 20th Anniversary Bash at Bar le Record (7622 rue St-Hubert, Montreal, QC) at 8pm.

I will also be at the Poetry Reading Night at the Thomas More Institute on February 11th at 6:30pm with my good friends Jerome Ramcharitar, Willow Loveday Little, and Carolyne Van Der Meer.

I’ll pick selections from my poetry chapbook Pilgrimages at both events. If you want get a copy, I have only two copies left to sell at the Cactus Press 20th anniversary. However, you can always order from the website and ask me to sign or personalize your copy. That money will go to Cactus Press.

By the time of the Thomas More Institute reading, I aim to have my fourth printing, so I will have more personal copies available then.

Personal copies are mine to sell and benefit me personally. Ordering from the website is also great because you’ll be supporting Cactus Press.

It’s been a while since I sent out a newsletter, so my apologies if you were wondering where I went. I aim to keep the newsletters short and monthly from here on out.

I’ll report that my 2025 goal of sending 100 submissions in one year (including short stories, individual poems, and novel query letters) was fairly successful even if I didn’t attain the 100. My count rests at 76 with my last submission of the year being a horror fiction submission to Polymorphic magazine.

With job applications included, of course, I’ve sent well over 100 submissions last year.

I’ve set the same goal for 2026 since it worked so well last year. I had 6 submission acceptances in 2025 with 8 if you include the submissions from 2024, namely my chapbook and my Lothlórien Poetry Journal submission.

I have all my submissions tracked using Scrivener in outline view, which I can manage like a spreadsheet using custom metadata. This way I always know what publication has which stories without having to manage the cells. I keep track of which platform I submitted on and which poems, so I can withdraw if they get picked up elsewhere (Submittable, Moksha, Google Forms, etc.).

I can’t believe I’ve had Scrivener for years and never used it this way. It makes me feel in control, and it wasn’t hard to set up.

Just thought I’d offer you that view into how I’ve been organizing myself lately. 2026 is going to be awesome. I know the Unréal anthology with my science fiction story about pirates in the Montreal métro will be coming out this year.

I also just received a full manuscript submission request for my novel. It might seem a longshot, but if I can end 2026 , this could be the year, even more so than I was already expecting.

Those are my hopes for 2026. Signing out for now. You’ll hear back from me in February!