Now that 2024 is over, I’m glad to see my creative calendar lighten up significantly. Last year, I had something to work on for every single month. While many of the tasks were easy and only took a couple days to complete, others expanded and took more time than I expected. Having sat down and worked through what I want to accomplish this year, I’m glad to see it’s slower than usual. Of course, there’s a lot of moving parts in multiple projects, so here are the broad strokes of what I want to accomplish in 2025.
The $1,300 Alphabet
With last year’s release of Bountiful Bunnies, I’m on a bit of a children’s picture book kick as I continue to work with artist Nancy Anderson to illustrate this year’s release, The $1,300 Alphabet. I am convinced that if kids can memorize the Latin names of dinosaurs, then they can also learn “$50 words” like “Akimbo” or “Defenestrate.” This book has been a wonderfully collaborative project with the artist as we work out the best way to represent these 26 different words in a collection of 13 different two-page spreads (first spread example shown here). We completed most of our initial planning in 2024, so all we have to do this year is create the final illustrations and get everything put together for a late September release.
“The Physics of Equus Monoceros”
While I technically wrote this short story and had it accepted last year, it is releasing in 2025. Part of the Midnight Menagerie short story anthology, “The Physics of Equus Monoceros” follows the adventures of a woman following in her mother’s footsteps—continuing her research into single-horned creatures that could lead to the discovery of unicorns. Some obscenely rich people eagerly seek to exploit this research for their own benefit, hoping to extend their lives. After all, rhinos almost went extinct in the same way for equally selfish reasons. However, the hypothesis here borders on astrophysics more than biology, thus leaving this researcher dealing with her research all by herself, having been abandoned by the scientific community. What happens if she fails? What would the world be like if she succeeds?
Courier to the Stars
This Jules Verne re-write that I drafted in 2023 is now ready for its editing phase. Sharing the same public domain shenanigans as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Courier to the Stars is a science fiction space opera based on the Jules Verne Russian spy novel, Michael Strogoff: Courier to the Tsar. Most of the text remains unchanged, but it’s not so simple as to just do a “find and replace” to make this kind of adaptation work correctly. I’m looking forward to polishing this up in May so I can get it released in 2026.
The Next Big Thing
Last year, I planned on doing extensive world-building for my next series of books. This ultimately didn’t pan out because I had a much stronger idea I wanted to work on (which became the first draft for Rift). This year, I know whatever I choose to write, it won’t just be a one-off novel like before. I’d like to get into the Exiles trilogy, but my mind is burning hot on a middle-grade LitRPG based on the Wizard of Oz series of books by L. Frank Baum. I’m already a few books into reading the source material, so I see myself being ready to do world-building by July and writing the first draft of the first book in this series by November. This is something I don’t think will be a 15 book series like the original books, but it’s definitely something bigger than I’ve ever done before. Ultimately, I have a few months to decide on the schedule of what I want to work on next. Whatever it is, it’ll be what I write for the next three years.
Online Shopping
With transferring my website hosting to a new service last year, I’ve considered adding a new sub-domain that contains a shop for everything that I make that you can buy. This will include signed copies of all my books (which you can already buy at my Square online storefront), but will also have options for buying my photographs (from my photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com sub-domain) as well. I’m also considering having a section where people can buy some of the Pokémon cards from my collection. This might be in tandem with setting up eBay and Etsy seller profiles, but I’d like to have control over it here on my personal website at a minimum. I’ve seen that this could be quite easy with Shopify or WooCommerce, so we’ll see how it pans out when I dive in this summer.
Family Project
Since I don’t have as many big creative projects this year compared to 2024, I’m also working on updating a cookbook from my father’s side of the family. The current one has lots of great anecdotes and recipes, but now I think the next generation (i.e., myself and my cousins—and our spouses) have something to add to it. Having put together a fairly well-received ice cream cookbook in 2023, I want to use what I’ve learned to upgrade this piece of family legacy. You won’t likely be able to purchase this cookbook, but I might offer this service in the future for those who might want to have one for their own family recipes.
Reviews
After reaching 1,000 reviews on BMW the Critic at the end of 2024, I’d like to create a bit of a buffer by catching up this year. I have a few months of reviews that I can write right now, but my busy schedule last year prevented making progress on this. If I can get to where I can review something shortly after finishing it, that would be a nice goal to reach by the end of 2025. Right now, that’s only 77 reviews I have to write and schedule. Doable, I think.
I’m still on a hiatus for writing blog posts for this website, but if something big happens that I need to discuss, I’ll make a post for it. Right now, check back in come December to see how I did on all these creative goals.