Latest news: January 2026

Happy 2026, everyone!

The new year brings a sense of resetting and refocusing one's direction of travel, and this year feels particularly noteworthy. 2025 was a difficult year for me healthwise, and after quitting my day job in September I needed some time to focus on catching up on rest and the business-as-usual tasks that I'd been struggling with. Now that we're in January, I feel like I'm ready to do more than maintain my current status quo and start progressing my big ideas.

Despite all of the troubles, I did accomplish some cool stuff for Red Pens and Playwriting in 2025:

• I wrote approximately 66k words of blog posts and updates, including 49 new posts.
• I set up a Ko-fi shop, populated so far with Dissecting the Frog and a new PDF publication: The Great Multimedia Showdown.
• My platform set up a linked presence within federated sites (@index@red-pens-and-playwriting.ghost.io) and on BlueSky (@index.red-pens-and-playwriting.ghost.io.ap.brid.gy), which I've been using to share posts, comments, and sneak peeks.
• I started updating and re-releasing older reflection posts for the general public to read, beginning with posts on authorial voice and suspense. This will be an ongoing initiative, and I have another 3 planned to come out this year.
• Paid and complementary subscribers received monthly update emails about what's been going on in my life, which are also continuing this year.

But what about the stuff I have coming up? Read on!

Red Pens 101

I have to start with the most exciting announcement, don't I? If you've been following me for a while you may have heard me making murmurs about planning a writing guide, but no real progress on it. Well, that's all changing, because now it's actually happening!

Red Pens 101 will be a fun, accessible introduction to the nuts and bolts of writing: words, sentences, and punctuation. It'll be the perfect quick-reference point for those moving into a new realm of study, work, or personal growth who want to develop greater competency in the written word. Experienced writers might find it useful for refreshing themselves on particular sticking points, or as a tool for teaching and mentoring others.

I am currently in the process of writing this guide, using material I've already written for many of my Grammar Talk posts as well as a lot of brand new content for topics that haven't made it to the blog. You can expect to see it released as an epub at the start of April; members will get a preview ahead of the release. I'll also be sharing a few sections as blog posts to drum up a bit of interest! So keep an eye out for updates about that.

Growth

This year I also want to focus on growing my readership and subscriber base, since that was one of the things I didn't have capacity for last year (and the analytics show it). I have a few specific goals in mind that you might be able to help me with:

• Membership: I'd love to make the jump from 59 total members to 75 by the end of the year. I would also like to double my number of paid subscribers.
• Sales: Between my two existing PDF publications (Dissecting the Frog and The Great Multimedia Showdown), the PDF I plan to release later in the year of the ongoing series on textual analysis, and Red Pens 101, I'm going to have a lot of options for sale on Ko-fi by the end of the year!
  My initial goal is to make 5 sales there, and once we hit that goal I'll extend it to see how far we can go by the end of the year.

Some of these goals have a financial motivation; one significant underlying goal that I have is to make enough income through Red Pens and Playwriting to upgrade my platform plan. If I can do that by the end of the year, you can look forward to such goodies as more (and cheaper) options for paid subscriptions, new premium content, and additional newsletters (which may just include a serialised piece of fiction that I'm working on...).

I'm looking at different strategies for membership growth at the moment, starting with an increased social media presence, but I'd love to hear from you about what you think would draw people in. A few ideas include:

• A referral programme for existing members bringing people they know on board
• Giveaways and sign-up benefits for new members during specific time periods
• Giveaways or competitions around readers sharing posts on social media
• Collaborations with other newsletter-writers and creatives

It's still early days, though, so I'm still mulling these ideas over. Let me know what you think, and if you have other ideas I'd love to hear them! If you're a member, you can reply easily using the comments at the bottom of the webpage or replying to the email.

Thank you to everyone who reads Red Pens and Playwriting, with extra thanks to those of you who send me feedback, share the blog with your friends, and contribute financially. I hope you continue to enjoy what I do here, and happy writing!