Looking Ahead to 2026

Every January, I like to look ahead to the new year and post what writing activities I have to look forward to. Because I have a couple of surgeries coming up, this year they will be previewed as I look ahead too. 

January: 

*An article I wrote will appear in Home Life (a LifeWay publication.) 

* Devotion on Arise Daily

* I will have knuckle joint replacement surgery on either the 8th or the 29th. I am currently on the schedule for the 29th but my doctor is going to try to move things around so I can have it on the 8th. I won't know which date my surgery if on until I go in for my pre-op on the 5th. This will be my fourth knuckle replacement. Arthritis has hit my hands hard. 

* Other things of note in the writing world in January: SCWC Notable Book Awards finalists are announced on 1/19.

March: 

*I will have a total knee replacement on 3/6. This is my 2nd (and last) knee replacement. I had the other knee replaced in '24 and now know just how hard a recovery I am in for. 

*Also, 3/20-3/21 is the MidSouth Christian Writer's Conference in Memphis. I am on the MSCWC planning committee and serve on the faculty selection committee every year. I hate to miss this year's conference but will not be able to go because of the knee surgery. 

May: 

* The EPA convention is in Nashville this year 5/10-5/13. I 'm hoping to attend depending on how my knee surgery recovery goes. 

Summer '26: 

*A book I contributed to titled, "God's Perfect Moment" published by Guidepost will release.

*An article I wrote is contracted to be published in Bible Advocate sometime in the summer too.

Fall '26: 

Ten devotions I wrote will appear in Open Windows (Lifeway) 

Other Things:

The above are all that I know are for certain happening in the months ahead but there are many other writing related things that keep me busy. Every month I attend a meeting of the KY ACFW as well as a zoom meeting of the EPA Freelancers. At one of those ACFW meetings, I will be teaching on writer's rights but I don't know exactly which one yet. As soon as the MSCWC is over, my faculty committee will start working on the faculty for '27, every month I have a devo in Arise Daily and every week I post a devotional thought on my FB author page. In addition, I have completed a fiction manuscript that I am currently pitching to publishers and hope to be able to report a contract on it in the not-so-distant future and as soon as that book is contracted, I will need to buckle down and write its sequel which has less than 20,000 words written in it right now. And I am always writing, and submitting freelance work, Last year, for instance, at this time I only knew of one Chichen Soup book that one of my stories would appear in but by the end of '25 I had had three CS books with stories in them. The same can be said for articles in "The Lutheran Digest."

Writing related tasks keep me busy but I absolutely love doing them! Blessings to you and yours in 2026. 

The Inside Story

I thought I'd share some information that mostly only book authors know. I'll give you an inside look at general things an author deals with and my writing life, specifically.

Author Central: If a person has books listed for sale on Amazon, he or she has access to a web page called Author Central. This page lists all books by the author and shows sales of the books (both paperback and ebook) via a graph. The author has some responsibility on setting this page up. For instance, she links all of her books to the page when she adds them to her public Amazon author page.

There are options on this page as to some books, such as anthologies to which  the author has contributed. I have contributed to three Chicken Soup for the Soul books but I do not choose to link them to my page. I have seen where other authors have. I have several reasons for not linking them: 1) their sales do not generate any additional revenue to me. (I was paid a one-time fee of $200 by Chicken Soup for the use of my story.) 2) I am one of 101 other writers in the books, and 3) I have a growing number of other books that I have either fully written or co-written with only one other author and I would rather direct traffic.

The Author Central page shows individual sales ranks of the various books, information that is also posted on the books themselves when people search for them on Amazon but it has an author rank, too, which only the author can see. For the past year I have averaged around the 200,000 rank out of millions of authors on Amazon. This rank goes up and down daily with sales or the lack of them. The highest I have ever hit was close to 15,000.

Reviews: Book Reviews posted on Amazon are so important to authors! The more reviews a book has the more exposure Amazon will give it. This is especially true if the book has 50 or more. I am always begging people to leave reviews of my books. It is such a simple thing to do but people seem to have a real resistance to it. There are ways to get reviews. Amazon does not allow a person to pay for a review but they do allow an author to pay for a blog tour where the bloggers signed up to participate agree to review the book. I have never participated in a blog tour but am scheduled for my first one in December after the prayer anthology is released. This is a book I am super excited about and am willing to pay for the blog tour in exchange for the exposure the tour will give it.

Social Media: There are numerous social media outlits that authors can participate in to help get exposure for their books. At this time, I have only a Facebook author page. My page currently has 387 "likes" but every one is what is known as an organic like, which means, again, I did not pay to get new likes on my page. Everyone who has liked it has chosen to like it. I probably will not pay to gain new likes because though it might look better to the public (as though my page is more popular than it really is) the people who really notice anything I put on that page will likely only be the organic "likes" anyway and the purpose of my page is not to impress, but to share with my readers.

And finally …
There are so many other writing related things I could share and may overtime, but to keep the blog post from being too long, I will stop with these except to tell you my best-selling book so far, a question I am often asked. Drum roll please …
My best-selling book, so far, is my first book, "Prayer: It's Not About You." This book has been sold in groups many times, however, when church groups and community groups choose to study it in their group Bible studies and I'm sure that helps in the over-all number that has been sold to date. My other books are also selling well, for which I am glad. Here's a link to my author page where my books can be found: Harriet;s Amazon Page