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2026—Writing Goals Update

  • Writer: Dan
    Dan
  • 11 minutes ago
  • 2 min read
Aerial view of a soccer field with scattered players, long shadows, and green-yellow grass around the center circle and goals.

It's time for the mid-year writing goals update! Am I scoring goals or missing them?


2026—Writing Goals Update


New Releases

Book cover for The Bane of Dragons by Dan Rice, with a red dragon silhouette over a glowing moon on a starry blue background.

Both new releases, Solarflame and The Bane of Dragons, dropped without a hitch! The Bane of Dragons has already garnered some nice reviews, including perhaps the best accolade one of my books has earned yet—it is a Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite. That's pretty darn cool.


Just as cool or even more cool, perhaps, with the release of the fourth and final volume of The Allison Lee Chronicles, I have a complete fantasy series under my belt. Bucket list item checked off!











Draft Vampire Dragon WIP

Blurred close-up of ornate red, gold, and white demon masks on a wall, creating a dramatic swirling effect

I write this blog post having recently finished drafting Chapter 33-Lost. Wowza! Chapter 33! Get out of here! How is that even possible? Honestly, the vampire dragon WIP is proceeding better than I dared hope. At this rate, I will easily have an 80K-90K rough draft by the fall. Now, if only the querying process could be so easy…






Finish Rewrite of Short Story: The Dream Service

Rows of LEGO Stormtrooper minifigures in white armor, packed in neat formation on a gray baseplate, creating a uniform sci-fi scene

Not only did I finish the rewrite of this short story, I got it published. On top of that, it's a featured story over on SpillsWord.com, so that's a nice bonus. This is a story I struggled mightily with for quite some time. It's nice to have it out in the world. The Dream Service is the latest in my loosely connected near-future dystopian shorts, which include The Future of Our Prosperity, The Wall, and War Machine.





Initial Planning for Solarflame II

Yellow sticky note on a black laptop keyboard reads I Quit!

As of right now, I'd say the chance of me pursuing Solarflame II is about zero. The Vampire Dragon WIP is what I plan to be pursuing for now.










All in all, I feel great about my writing goals. I'm hitting the mark on all of them, except for one I chose not to pursue. I've never been big on setting New Year's resolutions, etc. I always thought that only set me up for failure, and I typically felt I was reaching my goals without obsessing over them. However, I found setting writing goals is a useful practice as it gives me something to aim for. Now, if only my reading goals for the year were coming along so swimmingly…

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