This is a post of two halves, with a little extra bit in the middle – you can skip to the heading ‘Big Announcement’ if you like. As I began to think about planning for 2026, I realised that this was also a good time to reflect on 2025, and also that January itself is named after a god who faced in both directions at the same time.
Review of the year 2025
So I begin with my ‘review of the year’. I will try and focus more on the writing than on other things as I’ve already bored on about my open heart surgery more than I like to do.
It was a pleasant surprise to find that I hadn’t actually written a lot less during 2025 than I’ve done in most other years, although I haven’t published quite as many books and I’ve fallen behind with planning new ones. According to my records, I was already writing Pitkirtly 29 (‘An Unsweetened Revenge’) while preparing Misplaced Heiresses 3 (‘Heiress in Exile’) for publication. Novels with a historical background always take longer, because of the added research that’s needed, although I did find myself researching Edinburgh bus routes later in the year, despite thinking I probably knew all I needed to know about them already. The overlap in writing schedules meant I published the Heiresses one in May and Pitkirtly 29 in June, when I also attempted a short story challenge. After that, I knew my operation could happen any time, so I didn’t want to embark on the story I had planned to embark on. Instead I began to write another in the Pamela Prendergast series while knowing the writing process might well be interrupted without very much warning. During July and the early part of August I also had to re-price all my paperbacks on Amazon because they increased the printing costs for them.
As expected, I had to abandon Pamela approximately in mid-novel in August, and return to writing later, while I was convalescing. At that stage I had to pause and summarise the chapters I’d already written because I was afraid I’d forgotten everything. Keeping track of what’s happened in the earlier chapters is always problematic for me, even without the surgery in between! This is where all the ‘dogs with 3 names’ come from.
I had written a novel during November every year since 2005 as part of National Novel Writing Month, but in 2025 this was no longer possible as the people who ran it by that time had made a complete hash of things and it closed down. However, thanks to a little group of writers I’ve often written with, I found another word count tracking option to sign up to, and, temporarily setting Pamela aside, I managed to get 30,000 words written in Pitkirtly XXX (Ice Cold in Pitkirtly) during November. It was really good for me to do this as I went back to writing something every day after a month or so when it had felt optional! I was also glad to be back in Pitkirtly. Incidentally, Pitkirtly XXX was at around 42,000 words the last time I looked, which means it’s about 2/3 complete, and I’ve made a trial cover to celebrate.
Big Announcement
As the end of the year approached more and more rapidly, I at last saw sense and decided to focus on finishing Pamela 3 and leave Pitkirtly XXX to the New Year. And only today (the 31st of December) I wrote ‘The End’, with Pamela offering coffee and biscuits to Mal Mitchell just as, coincidentally, my son brought me a coffee, which in turn reminded me that I hadn’t opened the Christmas biscuits yet. I am not sure how much editing this novel will take, but from the 1st of January I will be carrying on with writing Pitkirtly XXX in the mornings and editing Pamela 3 in the afternoons with a view to publishing it in the first two weeks of the year.
And so to 2026…
Writing Plan for 2026
For the last few years I’ve always made am annual writing plan at New Year, and at the beginning of each month I also have a new plan for the month ahead which is a bit more detailed as it includes writing-related stuff such as blog posts and short stories and sometimes behind-the-scenes tasks like the overall print price change mentioned above. So far I haven’t written a plan for January but I have done the annual plan, although it is very much subject to change as the year goes on. I’m sort of hoping the 2026 plan won’t go quite so badly off-track as the 2025 one did but you never know.
I’m quite hopeful about the first half of the year, in which I should complete and publish Pitkirtly XXX some time in February, and then start on a sequel to The Great Calamity (working title ‘The Prussian Alternative’). As there will be some extra research needed for this, I will probably start by writing a short story connected to it, which is what I did for the first one, and then we’ll see how it goes from there. In my draft plan, I finish it by the summer and then start on Pitkirtly XXXI, but that is by no means set in stone. Even less certain is what I do with the second half of the year. Pitkirtly XXXI will take up some of it, and then I’ll probably write either Pamela 4 or Max Falconer 5. The second of these is a little more likely as I thought a while ago of taking Max out of town again just for fun. Still, I might have an urge to write another historical novel or something completely different before then. Summer 2026 is still some time away!
One thing I’ve built into the plan that I hadn’t thought of until I was writing it down in my special elephant-fronted planning notebook is having two months that are set aside not for dashing off a couple more novels, but for working on my short stories and other pieces of writing such as some family or local history. Sometimes as well, short stories develop into something longer in due course, so that’s always a possibility. I like the idea of having space for new things, anyway.
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 