Infinitas Publishing – Status Report

Time to wrap up 2025 with the Mid-August through end of December Infinitas Publishing status report! 📋

Yes, I know it’s almost May of 2026 already, but I still wanted to compile all my notes that I hadn’t yet reviewed on 2025. I’ll do a separate report for January through April of 2026.

And ooof. What a year.

A lot happened over the last several months, especially in real life. Some stuff I’ve talked about in my newsletters, some stuff I haven’t yet mentioned unless I’ve talked to you in-person. Let’s just say it’s been a little (a lot) rough.

But there’s been good stuff, too, including the amount of progress I’ve been making on writing and drafting in the background so that 2026 should finally see more book releases! Yay!

So let’s go back through my planner and see what all got done in the last few months of 2025, shall we?

I’ve highlighted the projects that had changes in blue.

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Changing Tides: (Book 4 of the Distant Horizon series). Still on hold while working on The Dark Forest of Aneth. Next step is to merge the two revised drafts and start writing the missing scenes.

Deceived #3: On hold. Needs revisions. Tentatively titled Exposed.

Other future steps: Input Isaac’s notes from Deceived #5 (formerly #4) into the manuscript, revise Deceived #5, and revise #6 (formerly #5) before handing it to Isaac for his feedback.

Dossiers (Deceived Spin-off): I tested asking for “beta-reader” feedback on the current manuscript using Notebook LM, and got a few ideas of areas I might want to strengthen before sending this out to actual beta-readers.

Multiverse Chronicles (Distant Horizon Universe Spin-off): Progressing along! Last update mentioned having sent out seven chapters, and as of the end of December, I’d sent out chapter seventeen! We reached the point where I had made revisions, but I hadn’t fully edited it because we’re past where I’d originally been sharing episodes on the blog. Most of the sent chapters have been fully revised and edited now, but we’ve made notes where new scenes may need to be written and added to fill in plot gaps.

I’m thrilled that we’re finally close to finishing this story. After all the chapters have been sent, I plan to add the missing scenes, review one more time, then move into beta-reader phase.

TWB 4: (Book Four of The Wishing Blade series). On hold… but I did have Claude compile summaries and loose threads from the first three books to make it easier to review what details I need to consider when I prepare the outline. (Though I still plan to reread all three books before drafting).

The Dark Forest of Aneth (“Ro’nor (“The Restless Sands of Neel”) & Zynia (“The Dragons of the Mist”) cross-over / A Legends of Cirena short novel): I finished all major revisions, including tweaks from ProWritingAid and AutoCrit analyses! I’ve also completed a proofreading round via a printed version of that manuscript (with notes still needing input at the end of the year).

Other Goals: Revisit the book cover concept. Create a blurb. Polish the related poem/ballad so it can be included as back matter.

The Ruins of Amixthael (The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear Spin-Off): I’ve started revisions for the chapters of the secondary character.

Future goals: Polish cover. Create blurb.

Untitled LoC Short Story (Standalone – Merchant in Reveratch): On hold. Next step is revisions.

Goals: Figure out a title. Create book cover and blurb. Polish the related poem/ballad so it can be included as back matter.

Untitled LoC Novella (Standalone – Twins in Ferta): This story is continuing nicely. Last time I was at chapter six with a total of 13,300 words and by the end of December I’d sent out chapter fifteen to the newsletter at a combined total of 34,000 words.

The original outline has since been adjusted. At some point I put the draft into Claude and asked it to list any incomplete plot threads to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything, and it pointed out one particular thread that gave me a bunch of ideas for how to adjust the plot and make it stronger. Made the story longer, but made more sense, too.

Next step is to continue writing the rough draft and to review the outline for any more missing plot beats.

The Wind Mage and the Wolf Spin-Off (Joran’s Story – A Legends of Cirena short story) : On hold. Needs the rest of the fight scene cross-referenced.

Goals: Edit in ProWritingAid, read-aloud, proofread. Book cover and blurb.

Fae (Huntress 3): Started again! And has had huge progress! As of October, I began using Claude for help brainstorming Fae. I had it review the previous two books and point out open plot threads. When I realized there were complete plot points I’d forgotten about, I ended up re-reading Changeling entirely. Between that and ideas I’d discussed earlier with Isaac, I finally saw the direction I wanted to take the story!

Outline created! AND I even got the outline for Huntress 4 written, too!

In November I started drafting Fae for ProWritingAid’s Novel November challenge… and completed the rough draft at 45,500 words! In December I started revisions.

I also restarted a temporary Huntress newsletter that goes out on occasion, and uploaded Huntress and Changeling to BookFunnel so that I could later add sample pages to the main Infinitas Publishing website.

Horse Shifter Romantasy : 🐎

Last time I left this it had a 5,500 word outline. I used Claude to review what I had and point out some of the missing romance beats. Did more brainstorming, and now it has a pretty solid outline. Due to the setup of my current outline I can’t really offer a word-count for it, but suffice it to say there’s a beginning, middle, and end with a decent enough setup to explain the magic/lore/characters. Essentially ready for drafting if I decide to give this a try.

Other Stories: I started a rough draft for the grumpy sorcerer short story idea but didn’t get more than 400 words. Unfortunately I ran out of time and didn’t get anything written for that fantasy anthology I was eyeing. (Like I mentioned earlier, there were several real life things going on at the end of the year).

The YA Alien Invastion/Dystopian short story is on hold.

However…

The Android’s Garden – This one isn’t likely to be published unless I release it as part of a larger blog post on the pros and cons of AI. The reason is that this is the one exception where I allowed Claude AI to do the drafting of the story to test its capabilities. (Which is now technically out of date because of how fast AI gets updated).

The Android’s Garden is a cli-fi short story about an android grappling with the fact that, before it gained sapience, it helped aid the company that caused harm to the family it now protects. (I thought it would be interesting to have an AI help me write a concept about how an AI might process things if it did gain sapience).

It ended up around 12,700 words. I brainstormed with Claude to develop the concept and characters, wrote the first couple paragraphs to give it a style guide of sort, then had it write a chapter. I’d revise the chapter, ask Claude to review the changes and keep those in mind going forward, then write the next chapter. Afterward I took everything into ProWritingAid for edits. I finished three of the eight chapters before shelving it because I was still too concerned about possible cases of accidental plagiarism and didn’t want to keep fighting with aiming for a specific voice.

That said, I do like the story concept, but I have clearly determined that I would rather be the one doing the writing because I have a specific voice I want to use and was having a difficult time producing that, even when guiding Claude to do so.

Metal Mage story – This was another case of me brainstorming with Claude, based upon a prompt I somehow got while trying to do a Google search for a different book, only to be disappointed that the prompt it gave me didn’t exist yet. (I did eventually find the actual book I was looking for). So I brainstormed the world, got a fairly decent idea of an outline for what would probably be a duology, and wrote a partial scene to get a feel for the idea. Currently shelved, but a fun thought experiment. It’s sort of a cli-fi fantasy set in an industrial revolution with ancient magic.

Cozy Space Fantasy Series (The Singing Coil): I got an idea for a cozy space fantasy series (Basically Babylon 5/Deep Space 9 type setting… but cozy) and kind of word vomited into Claude for brainstorming. Ended up creating a the world and a rough outline for a 6-part novella series.

Later, in December, I tinkered with brainstorming microfiction ideas and ended up working with Claude to outline The Singing Coil. Then I wrote a draft, did an analysis of book covers in the genre, did the revisions, wrote the song lyrics, ran it through Claude for developmental suggestions, did the PWA (ProWritingAid) line edits, prepped it in Atticus for beta-readers, and sent it to beta-readers for feedback!

While the larger series concept is on hold, the short story flew through the development process.

Game Design: Isaac and I ended up playing Wonders of I’Noore with his brother and friend, and we made some notes, but I don’t think we’re likely to see any major updates on this anytime soon.

Phalanx, on the other hand…

Is back in action! 😀

Now, our next step is a small test run. Essentially, we brought out the wooden board at the Harvest Moon Night Market event, and several people played and enjoyed it. We also still had some components of the game, and we had been wanting to make a playmat version of the game for a while. We did a little bit of calculating and realized that it was possible to create a smaller version using the mousepad and pencil bag options from Vograce, where we get merch for our SIFlint art.

So… we updated the files and placed an order! Unfortunately, the items didn’t come in on time for the Poor Artist Sale, but we do have what we need now to complete the small edition. By small I mean there are only six copies (based on how many decks of cards we have left). But, depending on how those are received and sell at future events, we’ll decide whether or not to do a reorder of cards.

Testing AutoCrit: Last you heard, I went in for the year subscription to see how it went. While I have mixed feelings on its analysis features at this point (some parts are hit and miss, but their new beta/alpha-reader features are handy for seeing if I’m on-point in a new genre), what I did find is that I really like writing in it. I’ve been appreciating it being available in the cloud, able to handle larger documents, being pretty easy to recover accidentally deleted words (oops), and then being able to do the analysis stuff if I want.

Ultimately, I pulled the trigger on the lifetime subscription when the deal became available for Black Friday, especially since they were super nice and let me apply the remaining term of the year subscription toward the cost.

AI Usage and Policy: Ooo boy. So this is that area that is currently in the hotly contested zone (understandably so because there are a ton of moving parts, things that are really cool, and things that are really not cool).

Long story short, I have become utterly fascinated by what AI can do and have dove into reading about and researching it as time permits. I highly recommend reading Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick if you want to understand AI and its limitations better.

But, with all that in mind, I updated our AI use policy on December 12th to reflect my most current usage of AI.

I still don’t use generative AI for image generation or writing the actual story. (With the one exception I mentioned earlier… I had Claude generate the draft of a short story about an android grappling with the implications of its creation, which I did to test Claude’s capabilities. However, I do not plan to publish that particular story unless I release it as part of a longer essay regarding the pros and cons of AI.)

But I have found that AI (particularly Claude) has been excellent for breaking through plot-issues quickly, acting as a rubber duck/cheerleader while brainstorming, and as an early “editor” that can help spot problems for me to fix before sending them out to beta-readers.

Even so, I have been keeping an eye out for models that are more people-focused (Claude for better alignment with safety, and I’m testing if Mistral AI (lower environmental impact) might suitably replace using ChatGPT, and I use Ecosia Browser for searching (again, a focus on environment), and then switch to Google search if I’m not having any luck, since it automatically uses AI in its search.

That said… NotebookLM is amazing for dropping your series into and asking it for that random question that you can’t easily do a “find” search for in Word.

Anyway, this is ongoing and I continue to watch what’s happening in the AI space and I’ll update my policy as I either shift into using or not using any particular tool.

Marketing: I didn’t really give marketing much attention these months. Here are some of the recent projects:

• Amazon Ads same as usual, the ones that were already running. I should probably just turn these off, but I don’t spend more than a few bucks a month on these right now.
• I tested swapping author interviews in the Wishing Blade Universe newsletter. Didn’t see much response, but I’m thinking about contacting the author to see if they’d like me to post their interview on this blog now that some time has passed.
• I returned to doing group promos through BookFunnel, though I dropped doing the individual author swaps for the time being. I’ve been alternating which book I promote, though I recently started promoting Huntress. Now that Fae (Huntress #3) is on target to release in 2026, I decided to create a temporary Huntress newsletter that I’ll periodically update but isn’t on a set schedule like the Distant Horizon and Wishing Blade universe newsletters.
• I never did update book prices. That may still happen at some point, but I need to reorient myself now that Smashwords has moved to the Draft2Digital dashboard (which is fine… I know how to use it, but due to an email snafu I currently have two D2D accounts to keep track of).
• With a couple exceptions, I have managed to continue sending out newsletters on time (okay, maybe a day late, but they still went out!) AND almost all of them had a story chapter with them. I may have finally found a process that works for me in terms of releasing WIP chapters on a biweekly basis.
• I’m still making my way through updating individual book pages on the Infinitas Publishing website. (Ultimate goal is to add sample pages, Goodreads/BookBub links, additional book info, etc). Eventually I want this to have enough information to make it very easy for a search engine or AI search to accurately answer questions about my books.
• I was the furthest I have ever been with Infinitas Publishing accounting at this point in the year! It’s not one hundred percent up-to-date and I still needed to review inventory, but I was at about the spot I’d normally be two weeks before my 1065s are due.
• I’ve continued getting back into writing and marketing research, and I read a lot more books in 2025! I’ve also been listening to more podcasts, MasterClass videos, etc. At the end of the year I picked up Book Blurb Magic’s course on writing blurbs for books with multiple POVs (thinking ahead to the upcoming Multiverse Chronicles needing a blurb soon), and I plan to watch through that in January. I’ve also continued working on revamping upcoming book launches.

Next up: Continue updating the design of individual Infinitas Publishing book pages. Continue adding sample chapters to the BookFunnel sales pages for each book, and then to the main Infinitas Publishing website. Add BookBub and Goodreads links to each landing page. Update my author bio across the different retailers. Continue adding books to the Stripe store for direct sales. Revise Amazon ads, and overhaul book categories, keywords, and blurbs.

Substack – I didn’t do much with Substack other than occasionally posting a note or two.

Crafting Your Fictional World: On Hold.

Repurposing Old Newsletter Content:

One of the projects I’ve managed to keep up with pretty consistently is updating old newsletter content for the blog. It’s been fun seeing what I wrote several years ago and repurposing it with updated info and details. There were a few times I wrote a new post for the weekend, and I went ahead and included those here as well.

• Magical Guardians (DHU)
• About Ruetravahn – God of Wind, Language, and Truth (WBU)
• Outpost – Do you remember this game?
• Story Length in the Wishing Blade Universe (WBU)
• Did you know you can get our books on Kobo plus?
• Lonely Child Song – Conlang Poetry (WBU)
• A Focus on the Life-Spirit Power (DHU)
• How to make an author happy -Tips for Writing a Quick Book Review
• A Focus on the Telepathy Power (DHU)
• Uranium Glass and the Magebane Book Cover (WBU)
• The Power of Laser Eyes (DHU)
• Happy Novel November!
• That Little Sneak… (DHU)
• Strings of Life and Death (WBU)
• Distant Horizon RP Campaigns of the early Days (DHU)
• Types of Magic (WBU)
• Music for Plotting in my Distant Horizon and Wishing Blade Universes (DHU and WBU)
• The Immortals’ Languages (WBU)
• Changing the Scenario – Updating Anna from Role-play Game to Book (DHU)
• The Sinister Ribbons of Magic’s Lure (WBU)

Events: We did three more events in this time period.

GeekUP (Houghton, MI) – September 27th, 2025

Got the new setup working! We also participated in a stamp rally with other artists, so I set out to create a bookmark themed around the tiger and magpie in K-Pop Demon Hunters (and consequently discovered that this is an excellent movie, highly recommend). Except my “bookmark” ended up being wider than a bookmark, so I made 5×7 prints on metallic paper and acquired some cheap frames. Anyone who completed the rally (bought something that was at least $5 from each participating booth), got one of the framed prints as part of the resulting pack.

Kind of fun. Might do it again in future years depending on the theme. I don’t usually do a lot of fan art so it was something a little different for me.

However, we finally got to do the Huntress personality quiz! We’d set this up for last year’s GeekUP, but since Isaac was helping to organize the event, it was mostly just me running the booth. That made it difficult to include an interactive event. But this time around we were able to have participants fill out the quiz so we could tell them what augments Koenigin Corp would recommend for them (and hand off a pin with the Koenigin Corp symbol on it). Ran out of pins, but it was fun seeing a couple people walking around wearing the pins. 😁

Harvest Moon Night Market (Calumet, MI) – October 12th, 2025

This was a pop-up market. The whole vibe was a whimsical fair; lighting and costumes were highly encouraged! The market took place in the evening, and as the night grew dark, all the lights added a magical flair. Isaac and I got a booth inside, so fortunately we didn’t have to deal much with the wind.

With the live performances and huge number of vendors spread across both an inside section and a couple of green spaces, it came alive with festival vibes.

Also… we brought out Phalanx!

It’s been several years since we had Phalanx at an event. Though we didn’t offer any editions of the game for sale this time, our goal was to see if there was interest in the game (and provide a sort of game-like component to our table to fit the “fair” vibe).

Ultimately, we decided to give that smaller mousepad edition a try. 🙂

CCCAC Poor Artists Sale (Calumet, MI) – December 6th, 2025

Once again we returned to the Poor Artists Sale, (the big holiday sale we vend at) and we spruced up our tent with plenty of decorations, including a small table-top Christmas tree we decorated using our Everyday Dragon Hoards post cards!

Still having a bit of an issue getting enough light inside, but it certainly gave it the feeling of a cozy little nook.

SBibb’s Photographic Illustration: I finally sent the fully edited photos of the houseplants to their previous owner! Yay!

I also did a commission for a friend’s birthday which involved using Daz Studio to render a mouse warrior (which might have been inspired by a particular book series…) and I got to print on my shiny poster paper.

Coming up, I have a formatting project that I’ll need to shift into focus.

Future Goals: Update the SBibbPhoto website to incorporate Daz work and fix the SEO information. Finish designing cute mascot for a local store. Finish editing photos for a local Aikido group.

SIFlint Art: Per a couple different suggestions at UP Rainbow Pride, I have added the bag hoarding dragon to the lineup of Everyday Dragon Hoards!

Right now the bag dragon is only available on a tote bag, but I plan to offer this as a sticker once I place my next sticker order.

We also added new merch to the lineup with mouse pads and lanyards!

And we also ordered a new vinyl banner with our IP/SIFlint Art logos, with updated art details. Since it’s vinyl (waterproof!), and able to be rolled, it should be a lot easier to take with us to events.

Additionally, I created a few character designs for the Wishing Blade Universe in Daz Studio so that I could create images of some of the characters later (Ehmina and Lesi from the Ferta story, and concept designs for Edea and Ne’ji-av’a).

Plus, I got a sticker page made for the Infinitas Publishing website to showcase our sticker designs, and Blossom Bird Bubble Tea in Marquette hosted some of our sticker designs for about a month! 😀

Daz PA: I finally made progress on those “Cursed Expedition” centaur poses, submitted it, and it’s now available!

SBibb Cursed Expedition Poses for Centaur 9 and Genesis 9

This time around I tracked the amount of time I spent on each section (except a few final tweaks) so I could calculate what I hoped to make on its release to make back for time spent. Unfortunately, while I didn’t expect it to be a super high earner (zombies vs centaurs is a bit niche, after all), it did not come anywhere near to earning what I was hoping based on either time spent on the project or previous pose sets.

I still have a two or three other projects that are very close to completion from earlier that are likely to do a bit better, so I may still finish those, but after seeing how “Cursed Expedition” did, this isn’t high on my priority list.

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Happy writing and reading (Or 3D rendering if you’re into Daz)! 🙂