New Wonk Media is my first new writing project since kicking off Cannibal Halfling Gaming back in 2016. I knew in reading my old blogs (there are at least three different WordPress blogs that I’ve aggregated under “The 563rd Attempt”) that there were varying missions and varying levels of discipline to my writing over the years, but even knowing that I thought I could give one more shot at something personal yet readable. At the same time, thanks to NaNoWriMo and some of my other writing ventures, I feel better about writing fiction than I have in a long time.

I don’t harbor any illusions about the audience I’m going to reach with fiction. Fantasies, of course, but I know that what I write here is mostly for myself and a little bit for that small network of readers who identify with what I’ve been doing more than just my particular opinions on roleplaying games. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want more, but…as I said, I don’t harbor any illusions.

So it’s about two months in and I haven’t stopped yet. A small milestone, but a milestone nonetheless. Writing for Cannibal Halfling has taught me that above all else, output matters when it comes to building an audience. Not everything will be your best, not everything will resonate, but if you sit and wait for just the best, resonant pieces, you’ll have nothing. It’s for that reason that I’m mirroring my cadence at Cannibal Halfling over here. One piece a week, every week, with a firm-ish deadline because late is always better than absent. In theory I have more to write about on this page, but I’m still finding the happy medium between being strictly fiction, just a blog, and a backchannel editorial page for my more negative opinions of the RPG hobby.

My goal for 2026 is, more than anything else, to keep going. I’m moving out of the creative backlog that inspired me to start this site in the first place, so now I need to take that gas and use it to actually build out my writing, my worldbuilding, and generally my thinking about stories and storytelling. There’s a lot to do, albeit a lot that’s fairly disorganized; I have a new game idea brewing, I still have the two of my more interesting NaNoWriMo drafts to analyze and mine for ideas, and I may do another rewrite of my drawn out first novel, Fratricide. Oh right, and I also still have DIE fiction bouncing around, both the work-in-progress I started to post last week as well as a few other ideas.

In short, 2026 is the first full year for this project, and now that I’ve gotten the proof of concept off the ground it’s time to see how things develop. There will of course be some growing pains, but I’m excited to have another place where I can share ideas and stories and where I give myself permission to be a little more self-involved, more subjective, and more personal. Stories can mean more if you know where they come from, though I am still trying to resonate with others besides just myself. Like everything else, it’s a balance.

I hope you have a happy new year, and have good things to look ahead to in 2026. This is a short post because this is a small page, and the year in review only covers two months. In the future I’ll have more to say and more to think about. For now, though, I hope you stick around; I’m quite excited about what’s to come.