E.S. Raye

It’s the week of Christmas, and let’s face it, one of the most chaotic times of the year–second, perhaps, only to next week, in the limbo that is the time between Christmas and the New Year.

All that is to say, I very likely will be taking next week off, and there probably won’t be a blog, so now may the best time to do a year-end roundup of what 2025 meant for my budding writing career.

In my final blog from last year, I said that I would probably look back on 2024 as the year my writing career began. It was a year of limited success, with my first short story begin publishing, another accepted to an anthology, signing a contract for Gas Giant Gambit, and a handful of screenwriting opportunities.

However, despite this year blowing last out of the water, I still think I’ll look back at 2024 as the year it all began.

But 2025 will always be the first year I felt like an author.

First Podcast Appearances

I started the year strong, and recorded my first ever podcast appearance with Glen Weatherhead on his Creative Writing Wizard podcast. I was honored to be among Glen’s first guests, especially since I had not yet published my first novel! Glen and I had met through my quarterly magazine Perseid Prophecies, and he invited me on knowing Gas Giant Gambit would be coming out later in the year.

More recently in November, I appeared on Jason Shannon’s podcast to discuss Gas Giant Gambit and my writing in general. We also did a reading from early in the book!

I’m looking forward to many more conversations like these in the future!

Rare & “The Stuff Legends are Made Of”

In April, Rare: A Dark Anthology of Unusual Secrets was finally published! Containing my short sci-fi/noir story “The Stuff Legends are Made Of,” Rare has received positive reviews on Goodreads (with many readers specifically pointing to “The Stuff…” in their review), as well as a glowing Kirkus review.

Additionally, Alex Parker Publishing submitted Rare to the American Writing Awards, where it won the anthology category!

Web Series & Screenplays

Unfortunately, screenwriting is the one aspect of my writing career that took a bit of a downturn over 2025.

At this time last year, I was eagerly awaiting word on funding for a short horror web series I had co-written. I was wildly excited about this project, as the subject (which I still can’t really discuss) was an adaptation of one of my favorite public domain horror stories.

Unfortunately, the funding fell through and we were not able to film it. Still, the director/co-writer still wants to see if they can pursue completing the project in another form, so we’ll see. If nothing else, I have made a strong creative relationship with this director, who has already expressed interest in working with me on future projects.

As for the other screenplays I was working on, all of those projects have been put on indefinite hold. Some of that it timing, some of it is the busyness of my partners. I’m not so dour about it that I think that part of my career has atrophied, but there really is nothing more to report at this time. Hopefully that will change, but I am also happily busy with other projects of my own.

Gas Giant Gambit

The big news was, of course, the release of my debut novel, Gas Giant Gambit: A Tall Tale From Beyond the Cygnus Rift, on September 16th!

It started strong with an incredible review from Kirkus, complete with a coveted Kirkus star, before going on to be named as one of Kirkus’s best 100 indie books of 2025–one of only six sci-fi books to make the cut!

GGG was also named a finalist in the American Writing Awards Fiction: Sci-Fi category, and has made the Chanicleer Book Reviews Laramie Awards for Western, First Nations and Americana Fiction short list!

While I am overjoyed by all of these incredible accolades, I am especially tickled by the Laramie Awards. The fact that my space-western has made it even this far is an incredible validation for all the work I put into making outer space feel like the old west!

And there may be more to come!

GGG has already been submitted to the Compton Crook Award, presented by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, and will be submitted to at least the Readers’ Favorite Book Award, and the Aurora Awards presented by the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association in April 2026.

Keep your finger’s crossed!

The release of GGG also meant my first book signing (which you can find photos from here) and attending my first comic con as a vendor! I’ll be at my second one this Saturday, Dec. 27th, in Oshawa, Ontario, and my 3rd on January 4th in Peterborough. If you’re in southern Ontario for the holidays check my Events page for details!

Short Stories & Rejection Goal: 200

For my 2025 New Year’s Resolution, I had set the goal of going from around 95-ish short story rejections to 200.

My thinking here was, and remains, if as Ray Bradbury suggested, I look at rejections “not as an indication of personal failing but as a wrong address,” than volume should lead to success.

Unfortunately, with just over a week to go in the year, I have reached only 118 rejections, with five submissions pending.

I got nowhere near my goal, but I’m okay with it.

During the course of the year, my priorities shifted. I had to do both a developmental edit (albeit a brief one) and a copy edit of Gas Giant Gambit before it could be released, and then I turned my attention towards writing my follow-up novel. Short story submissions inevitably got put on the back burner and, to a certain extent, forgotten.

However!

Despite that, I had three more short stories accepted, breaking the record of two I set in 2024!

The first, a dark horror short called “Mortem Moratus,” was published in Exquisite Death’s December issue, and can be read for free here.

Another, titled “The Séance” will appear in Blood Moon Rising‘s April 2026 issue. Finally, the third, “Thirsty,” will appear in Lovecraftiana: Walpurgisnacht 2027, coming in April of that year.

A fourth was accepted pending edits, but once those edits were made I never heard from the editor again. Similarly, a fifth received a “revise & resubmit” request, but again, I never heard back from the editor, so we’ll see what happens there.

All in all, with how busy I found myself this year, I’m okay with this result–in far fewer submissions when compared to last year, I had a significantly higher success rate!

Perseid Prophecies

And finally, my quarterly speculative fiction magazine, Perseid Prophecies, is still chugging right along! Since it’s just me doing literally everything, I sometimes fall behind on website maintenance and social media marketing, but despite that, every quarter brings a larger number of submitted stories than the previous!

It’s been wonderful reading them all, including every story I must reject–which is, without a doubt, the hardest part of creating the magazine. I would publish every story if I had the time and space, but alas, six stories per quarter is all I can handle.

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What an incredible year it’s been! I suspect 2026 will be somewhat less exciting when it comes to publishing news (I do not have anything scheduled for release except that short story in April, nor will my current work-in-progress, Shallow Trenches/Open Skies, be ready for release in the coming year), but hopefully just as thrilling when it comes to Gas Giant Gambit, Rare, and the ongoing work of my new five year plan!

I hope you’ll stay with me to see it!