Blog

Year in Review: 2025

It all gets better from here... right?

Josh Sutphin

19 Dec 2025 — 7 min read

The older I get, the more I feel like the winter solstice is the true beginning of the new year.

Astronomically speaking, it’s a much more significant date than January 1, and culturally speaking, it’s been a more meaningful date for most of human history. It drove ancient celebrations like Yule and Saturnalia, inspired structures like Stonehenge and Newgrange, and served as a signal for the return of the sun to cultures around the world.

And it’s that last point that resonates most with me these days, especially as every year lately has been a more exhausting ordeal than the year before it. On the winter solstice, we reach the darkest point; then we reassess, and we start to grow back from there, in the ongoing cosmic cycle that has kept humanity alive through every natural disaster, every political revolution, every pandemic, every war.

More than anything, the winter solstice is the renewal of hope.

2025 Retrospective

My biggest step this year was definitely co-founding Shiraki Press in February with my wife, Brianne. We’re fast approaching the first anniversary of the press, with four books signed and underway!

In late winter, I finished working through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, which I can’t recommend enough to creatives of all types. You’ve likely heard of morning pages—a concept introduced by this book—but more important for me were the concepts of synchronicity, and of your inner artist as a child that you must treat with care.

In late spring, I completed the year-long speculative fiction workshop I’d taken from Nisi Shawl at Hugo House. That workshop produced my first two stories—Tribute and Witness—as well as the extremely lovely writing group I’m still fortunate enough to be a part of to this day. ❤

In late summer, Brianne and I went to Seattle Worldcon, our first big books-focused event, where we met loads of wonderful people and learned a lot about the book publishing industry.

In early fall, I launched Horror × Hope, which is both an outlet for my own short-form writing across the horror-hope spectrum and a place to start experimenting in earnest with social media and intentional audience-building.

Writing

I set myself a goal to put several titles into publication in 2025. I had hoped one of them would be a book, but given all the effort that went into starting both Shiraki Press and Horror × Hope, that one didn’t happen.

Still, I put out five short fiction pieces, and given what else I had going on, I’m pretty proud of having published any at all:

Tribute—The deposed leader of an authoritarian regime meets the Devil, and pays his due.
Witness—A moody exploration of the aftermath of an obsessed writer's sacrifice to an ancient god.
When the Black Wind Blows—A pair of criminals are caught between the police, the storm of the century, and their own ghosts.
We Are All Terrorists Now—Fascist vigilantes raid an antifa coven.
The Gilded King—He knows that good things come to those who take.

I also really enjoyed doing the graphic design for these cover images. I’m feeling a lot of imposter syndrome around this aspect of my art, but prior to this I never thought I’d be a visual person at all, and it’s been surprising and thrilling to discover that part of myself.

I was equally surprised by how much I enjoyed writing The Gilded King, my first poem, after long considering myself a poetry-disliker. I guess I just had to get mad enough to start rhyming out of spite?

Reading

I set myself a goal to read 24 books in 2025, mostly fiction. I ended up reading 33, of which 24 were fiction and 9 were non-fiction. Here are my favorites.

Top 3 in horror

Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram—A story about suicidal depression, with brutalist/backrooms vibes and some truly terrifying imagery. The elevator scene will stick with me for a while, and the twist that comes after that—which cannot be commented upon without being spoiled—is sublime.
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill—Breathless horror struck through with empathy. Wonderful character development, with stakes I cared about so much. I aspire to write horror this affecting and memorable.
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling—Medieval horror that powerfully subverts the concept of divine intervention. It starts grim, offers deliverance, then pivots into delicious madness. Its broad tonal arc ranges from the gritty, grounded fantasy of George R.R. Martin, all the way to the unhinged cosmic horror of Clive Barker. And in the end, when we learn the truth of the Saints—and the truth of the siege—well, I won't spoil it, but it’s so worth the ride.

Top 3 in hopepunk

A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys—Inventive and optimistic. A masterclass in alternative family/social structures and conflict resolution. Stands head-and-shoulders above every other first-contact novel I've read. The very definition of hopepunk.
Saltwater Billionaire by nebulos—An imaginative, solutions-oriented solarpunk short that ties wealth and immortality to environmental stewardship. I can’t stop thinking about it.
Magica Riot by Kara Buchanan—A big-hearted hopepunk adventure that sets aside all pretense in favor of a concentrated blast of trans joy. I couldn’t love it more.

Top 3 in non-fiction

Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit by Steven Pressfield—Pressfield’s work is beloved for a reason, and this book is no exception. There’s a line at the top of my digital dashboard that reads: “Concept. Theme. Hook, build, payoff.” It comes from, and is the essence of, this book.
The Design of Books by Debbie Berne—This is a book about making books, and it’s a design nerd’s dream. Cover design, page layout, typography, printing; it explains it all, and it does so in gorgeous, compelling style.
The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger—Carriger’s instant classic outlines an opposing narrative style to the overused “Hero’s Journey”, with a focus on community, connection, and growth. This book gave me the words to describe the vibe we’re going for with both Shiraki Press and with the “hope” side of Horror × Hope.

It’s so interesting to see what rises to the top over time. Some of those favorites I just listed, I didn’t realize at the time would make this list at the end of the year.

2026 Goals

The big goal for 2026 is to build Shiraki Press into a sustainable and reputable publisher of hopepunk. We currently have four books signed for publication in 2026, the first of which launches in March, and we’re lining up loads of conferences, community events, and other opportunities for marketing and sales.

For my own writing, I want to start some long-form work. I love writing short fiction and I do intend to keep publishing that, but I ultimately want to put out books. In February I'll be attending the Rainforest Writers Retreat and I'm super excited to use that opportunity to get a long-form project underway.

I’d also like to explore audio storytelling in 2026. I’ll most likely start by recording performances of my short fiction on Horror × Hope, but audiobook production is something we’re researching for future Shiraki Press projects as well.

I aim to reprise last year’s goal of reading 24 books this year, mostly fiction. I’m adding to that a goal of reading 100 short fiction pieces this year; I subscribe to a half-dozen speculative fiction lit mags and I’ve done a terrible job of actual reading them, and if I only read two short pieces a week, I can hit 100 for the year and have two weeks to spare.

I saw an Instagram post a while back with an excellent piece of advice: to learn a “sustaining” skill—something that keeps bodies alive, like gardening, preserving, or mending—and a “sharing” skill—something that keeps souls alive, like storytelling, singing, or circle facilitation. My “sharing” skill lies in my art, for sure, but I don’t know what my “sustaining” skill is, and I feel a strong need to identify and develop one. I’ve never felt particularly handy—I can work miracles on a computer, but when it comes to things like DIY home repairs, yard work, etc. I’ve tended to feel rather hopeless—and I’d really like to change that this year.

And speaking of Instagram, my last goal is to drastically change my relationship with social media, starting with curtailing my own addictive consumption of it, and then focusing on using it in healthy and limited ways to share my art and find community without handing over the keys to my attention to irresponsible tech bros.

In conclusion…

I have no idea whether Shiraki Press and/or Horror × Hope are going to take off or flop. We don’t get to know our outcomes ahead of time; that’s just part of being human.

The uncertainty is scary, because with the god-awful state of the tech industry, I’m not confident that we can “just” go get tech jobs again if these ventures don’t work out. I could write reams on the collapse of game dev, on Big Tech crawling up its own asshole, and on generative AI ruining absolutely everything, but for now, let’s just leave all that at an existential scream of rage and call it a day.

I do know that I still have no regrets about leaving video games behind. I spent 20 years trying to tell stories in that medium and constantly being redirected into competitive multiplayer systems instead. Now, I actually get to tell stories—and to publish others’ stories, which is both an incredible privilege and a monumental responsibility—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.