A first for me

This being the first installment of my newsletter - of which I hope I can send out many more and with more consistency than I did post on my website and/or Ko-Fi so far - I may need to clarify a few things about me and what I do:

• I am a writer of SFFH, author even, if one counts self-publishing of short fiction on Ko-Fi. Everything I have put online so far is free to read - sample as much as you want from about… 70(?) pieces of short fiction.

• I am also a father, a partner to a lovely lass and mother of my child, an IT professional and a PC gamer. Which means that some days/weeks/months/[insert vast span of time here] I don’t get much writing done. Thinking about writing, yes — putting actual words down? Meh.

• I always have trouble getting things done ahead of schedule, which makes it incredibly hard to polish things in time for release. As I am not a native speaker (born and raised in Austria), my English needs a lot of polishing.
  So, sometimes, things might be a bit messy, and I have no desire to fake perfection, yes? If you find any typos or grammatical errors, feel free to bury them in the depths of forgiveness which surely rest in your mind and heart.

All that said, I AM writing things - so, I probably should talk about that.

Right now, I am trying to come to terms with 2025 ending way too soon and not soon enough. It is a strange mixture, this feeling of having not done enough, while being glad it will soon be over and a fresh year (with fresh horrors, I get it, but 2026-Morris will deal with those, ok?) starts.
But there are some things I am planning to do in 2026:

Upcoming projects

Short story collection(s)

One of my goals for next year is to cobble some of my sci-fi short fictions together into an e-book. Eventually. I am selecting pieces for it and trying to get an editing schedule in shape. If that goes well, a fantasy collection might follow.

Develop new writing routines

There’s two things I want to write on a biweekly basis in 2026 - poems and flash fiction pieces. Which means I need a schedule for that, too.

Rewrite my novel

I have 110k words sitting in a steaming pile of… a bad first draft, to put it mildly. It has everything - plot holes, loose ends, missing character arcs, characters who went missing, too many boring descriptions… I could ramble on. It is the bad book I had to write to see that I must put much more work into writing a good book.

Now that I have written those endeavors down, it sounds like a lot - wish me luck, I guess? I’ll keep you posted.

A blink from the past

Last year around this date I put a short story on my Ko-fi:
Per My Last E-Mail Regarding Your Pet Dragon

It is an urban fantasy short story, and I enjoyed writing it quite a lot, as it was my first of its kind. Inspiration came from a chat about office culture and people complaining about coworkers and shared workspaces. Also by things I really would like to write in e-mails but don’t dare to. As I wrote in the introduction on Ko-Fi, the dragon idea initially came from Lou Yardley. In these testing times, it may be more important than ever to live by “do no harm”, even if your office space has no dragons (sadly).

Promotions

(Here you will find things I like - books, movies, music, projects of friends, the whole mix)

Book Sale by Victoria Audley

Victoria is a very talented author, has a really enjoyable podcast, and right now you have the chance to buy her books at a discounted price over at her Ko-Fi:
https://ko-fi.com/vcaudley/shop

Or at her itch.io shop:
https://vcaudley.itch.io/book-bundle

For just five quid you get four wonderful books for your reading winter! Don’t miss out on that, I say.

Sidequested

I would love you all to consider preordering Book 1 of Sidequested:
https://sidequested.com/preorder-book1/

Why you should? The book is beautiful; I saw an unpacking video of the author copy, and because reading it gives you joy, and that is doubled if you know that preordering the book will enable more books! You can sample the fun comic as well at the link above, and I really recommend doing so. It was a spot of delight for me in this mostly not ideal year.

Fizz & Bang

Sometimes my mind feels like a cooking pot where some lunatic has put in the strangest ingredients, reacting with each other, producing all kinds of noises. You will get a different taste of that stew with each installment.

One of the ingredients bubbling on the surface lately is my distaste of GenAI, and my impression that a lot of people are ready to sacrifice their personal growth in favor of fast results, however mediocre those may be. I understand the temptation, though, when I find my English lacking, when I struggle to express an emotion or an impression aptly in the face of a deadline (submissions, for example). But there is no quick solution to getting better at something. I have never used a cheat code in gaming, I won’t use a cheat code in writing. I stick with grammar- & spell-check, a thesaurus, and online dictionaries that provide examples of how words are used in phrases and sentences (those help a lot when I am doubting myself).

Because I want, no, I NEED to learn. I STRIVE to improve my writing, my storytelling, because only I can tell my stories. Only I can narrate them in my voice. It must be me. A human.

Because it is a human urge to tell stories, to communicate our dreams, our fears, our hopes and our experiences, all mixed up in a tale so the listener, the reader can enjoy it better.

GenAI does not help with being human in that way, but takes away from it. Cuts that part of us in slices and mixes them back together in a mockery we call AI-slop.

Whatever I write in the future, the words will be mine, and I will have grown by writing them, piece by piece, story by story. I won’t let the machine steal that from me.

We strive. We improve. We put our all into it. That makes it art. That makes us human.

Stay human, friends. Resist. Strive.

It’s wild out there — take my best wishes for your 2026 with you.

Best regards,

Morris

P.S.: Would love to read your feedback/what you want to know more about? Thx & bye!

What to expect in the next issue:

• _{How my projects are going}

• _{Links to interesting people’s projects}

• _{Fizz & Bang - thoughts about my writing process & expectations}