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So, enough people know about this website now that I think this would be a good time to talk about the roadmap for the rest of 2025, as well as give a little bit of an overview for some of the internal terminology I use to refer to different things in the scope of the Darkholm Project. Hopefully, this will give an idea of what you can look forward to for the rest of the year, and serve as a reference point for what I'm working on at any given point in the year. If I've ever told you something about my plans before this, this blog post takes precedence.

The main tl:dr of this post is that if nothing else, you can look forward to the rest of Nightlight Blues, two novellas, a full-length novel, a short story, and a complete overhaul of the UI and UX of the website. Nightlight Blues, novella 1 (Quincy) and the UI/UX overhaul will be throughout 2025, while the second novella and the full-length novel will be uploaded throughout 2026. And of course, you can keep expecting these blog posts; I'll be experimenting with them throughout all of 2025 to try make them interesting to read.

Also, there's a good chance I'll take a short break around exam period, so that I can focus on passing my subjects. In my defense, I suspect that my readership will probably be too busy to read my work during that time anyway, so no harm, no foul.

For people who have a little more time to read a silly little blog post, here's the full breakdown:

Writing

Perhaps the most exciting part of the roadmap, I have fairly ambitious writing plans over the rest of this year; in fact, I'm not entirely sure whether or not I'll be able to write all this in time, but I'm confident in my capabilities. As stated above, the goals is the following:

• One novel, expected at around 100k words
• Two novellas, expected at around 30-40k words each
• One short story, expected at 5k words
• The rest of Nightlight Blues, expected at around 11k words total

They'll be coming out in the regular weekly release cadence, which will be on Saturdays from now on, because I have more time on Saturdays to update the website than I do on Sundays. Also this way, you'll be sure that no matter what, there'll be soemthing new to read on Sunday, regardless of whether I update the site at 10am or 10pm. You'll be getting the rest of Nightlight Blues over the next two weeks, Followed by the short story, and then hopefully that'll be enough time for me to upload chapters of the first novella. After that, there'll be another update once I have a better idea of what my project progress is looking like.

Novel Codenames

In order to avoid confusion with these writing projects, I'll be assigning them codenames, so you know exactly what I'm working on when I refer to one project or another. The codenames are based off the American presidents, from Washington up to Kennedy. Once I actually reach Kennedy, I'll start a new list, maybe Australian prime ministers or something.

Furthermore, I have a specific terminology for the time periods within my main setting of Darkholm. Generally, the time period of a story is defined in relation to a major character within that time period: for example, Nightlight Blues is set during the "Hamlet-Era" because the major character of that time period is Hamlet himself. Expect me to be referring to time periods when I talk about the settings for my stories!

Nightlight Blues

As you've all probably read by now, Nightlight Blues is my current major project, and it doesn't have any unique codenames attached to it; Nightlight Blues is the final name.

Nightlight Blues is set on Tesseran, which is the parent setting of Darkholm, the world this business is named after! The relationship between the two is simple; all of Darkholm exists on Tesseran, but not all of Tesseran exists on Darkholm. In addition, generally speaking, if I'm referring to Tesseran, I'm referring to a specific time period of Tesseran called the "Hamlet-Era", which is the modern-to-scifi setting that Nightlight Blues takes place on. In addition to chapter 2, which is out now, you'll be getting two more chapters of Nightlight Blues over the next two weeks.

Obviously, Nightlight Blues is already finished; it's now on the metaphorical presses, outside of the author's hands. Which means that no matter how little I write over the next few weeks, you'll still be guaranteed the next two chapters. (I am still doing final edits, but they won't make a big difference to the final product.)

Nightlight Blues

I&G | Short Story

As a member of the Monash Creative Writers, I'll be writing a piece for their yearly publication, Incisors and Grinders! This will be a short story, around 5k words long, and I'll be calling it "I&G" in future reference. This will probably be the most unique thing I write this year, since it's the only piece I'm planning that isn't set on Darkholm or Tesseran. You'll have more information on the short story once Nightlight Blues is finished, and I've started writing it in earnest.

I&G is currently on its pre-write, meaning that I'm still brainstorming, planning, and playing with ideas for the piece.

Since I'm talking about them, you can check them out here:

Incisors and Grinders Website

Quincy | Novella 1

Named after the American president, Quincy is the first of the two novellas that I'm writing this year. It's set on Darkholm, during a period known as the "Delilah-Era". It features the story of the Holmes siblings, Edward, Rachel, and Delilah, the leaders of a secret society whose goal is to understand and navigate a strange phenomenon across Darkholm known as the mistfall, in which the seas and the skies are thickened with mist, blotting out the sun and making ocean navigation impossible. I won't spoil too much else now, but expect to see more information about them once the winter break starts.

Quincy is also on its pre-write, though at a later stage than I&G. I'm currently worldbuilding, character building, and structuring the story, but the main outline of what I envision Quincy to be is already finished.

Monroe | Novel

Monroe is my main novel of the year, which I've been working on since Feburary. There's a good chance you've heard of it already, and some of you will also have read the sample chapter, the link to which is below.

Monroe features the story of Leeroy Callahan, the last gunslinger of Avenburg, alongside Hitorikame, the last samurai, Anna Belle, the last privateer, and Silas Damon von Karma, the last Cainhurstian, on their quest for a mythical artifact which can save the world; and in doing so, save themselves. It's book 1 of The Redemption Crew , a series I plan to finish if Monroe becomes published. Also set during the "Delilah-Era", Monroe is a revisionist-western with the main goal of playing with the idea of these different beloved 1800's sterotypes within the scope of Darkholm's world. You'll hear more about it throughout the year, but I won't be releasing chapters of it until it's been rejected by publishers, since it'd be bad practice to publish for free a book that I plan to sell commercially with a publisher. If I don't get picked up by an agency or a publisher, you can expect to read it around Jan or Feb 2026.

Monroe is on its first draft. However, it's also on the backburner because Nightlight Blues, Quincy, and I&G take priority, and so progress on Monroe will likely be slow until semester 2, when I finish writing Quincy.

Monroe Sample Chapter

Jackson | Novella 2

Because one novella wasn't enough, I'm writing a second one this year as well. It's set on Darkholm during the "Volkner-Era", and features the story of a vampire noblewoman named Ashleigh Ellis during a crucial period of time in Darkholm's history; the Holy Wars. It takes place sometime before a novel I'm writing next year, but perhaps that's a conversation better saved for another time...

In any case, Jackson is a novella I plan to write over the summer holidays, and should release between Quincy and Monroe. You'll hear more information about Jackson sometime around the mid-semester break of semester 2.

Jackson is currently not in its pre-write, meaning that the information here is subject to wide and sweeping changes.

Website Overhaul

Let's be real, the website isn't great. It's certainly passable, and the skeleton of a decent website is there, but you can definitely tell that it was the result of a few nights of an amateur programmer doing their first project. And so, I'll be remaking most of the site over the winter break in an attempt to make it look a little more professional. That'll come alongside the public release of Darkholm Project, which is scheduled to happen at the beginning of semester 2 2025, so sometime around July or August.

So, what happens to the current site as it is when I overhaul it? I'm not sure yet. Because of how html and css works, and because I'm hard coding instead of using a third-party development tool, it means that if I wanted to keep this version of the site, I'd have to update each individual webpage manually if I wanted to keep the formatting properly. In all likelihood, I'll either have to make an archival link for people from the closed beta to access, or all of the pages will have to go down. If you're reading this, let me know what you'd prefer.

For the most part, the website will look and navigate the same way it already does, but just better than it was before. It'll be more intuitive, look neater, and have a lot of keynote art instead of all formatting being based off text. It'll probably also have more features, but I talk about that a bit more in the Newsletter and Monetising/Publishing section, I'll leave a pin on that for now.

Blog Posts

Blog posts are a bit of a forgotten relic of the past. Most people just prefer to use social media, though I still remember when people ran blogs on personal websites and tumblr, and when game devs communicated through blog posts instead of Youtube updates. Indie devs still do that.

Right now, I've been using the blog posts to just have some fun and talk about things that've been on my mind throughout the week, but I recognise that's not the most interesting or useful thing to read. I'm not entirely sure what the goal with these are right now; I'm not exactly here to be like Mark Manson and dish out pieces of life advice every week. In any case, I'm going to continue experimenting with the format of the blog posts to see if I land on anything that matches that balance of being both interesting to write for me and interesting to read for you. I'll probably doing some retrospectives and annotations on Nightlight Blues and Quincy once they're fully released, and more writing advice in general. Let me know if that's something that interests you, kinda like the Mistborn annotations that Sanderson did on his website.

Newsletter

Some of you may know that I've been preparing a weekly newsletter. Its purpose is to provide a bite-sized slice of the website each week, giving an overview of all of the new changes and links to anything you might be interested in reading. It's mostly ready, though I haven't commissioned a logo for Darkholm Project yet which looks a bit ugly. There are just a few little changes that I have to make, but it should be prepared by next week for a beta release.

If you're interested, use any of my contacts and give me a name and email address. If I can get enough people to express their interest, I'll start doing weekly releases of the newsletter as well.

Monetising and Publishing

Here's the financial part of the update. As you all know, I'm hoping to one day be able to write full-time, and unfortunately that means that I need to somehow cover my overhead costs. Because of that, I'm going to have to start opening up ways to monetise my work.

Of course, the optimal outcome is that Tor or Harper picks up my books and I don't have to worry about it at all, but getting published traditionally is an infamously luck dependent task, and in any case, having a secondary source of income in the meantime will really help justify the amount I spend writing every day. If, by the end of the year, a publisher picks up Monroe, then this part of the blog post will have aged like a fine milk. At least we can all look back and laugh at the irony.

Reasonably assuming that I won't be published for at least another few years (the average author gets published on their fifth or sixth novel, and Sanderson famously got published on his 13th novel), I'm going to need some way to justify how much I'm writing instead of working elsewhere or focusing on university.

Which is why, alongside the full public release of the Darkholm Project at the start of semester 2 2025, I'm also planning to launch a patreon and ko-fi. Details regarding both will come soon, but the important thing to note is that you will not have to pay for any of the content you're already seeing. I may put Jackson behind the patreon, alongside any other short stories I write and whatever else I choose to put onto the patreon, but you won't have to pay to keep seeing a novel and a novella each year. So if you're just happy with having something to read every week, this won't make a big difference to you.

However, if you really like my stuff and want to support me, I'd really appreciate it. That'll be in the future, but I thought it'd be good to let everyone know early, since it's something I'm definitely going to be doing. Just know that there's absolutely zero pressure to sign up for that once it's out.

Conclusion

Alright, this ended up being a long one, but that's probably a good thing. It'd be a shame if all I had to say was "I'm writing a book that'll come out in Jan 2026" after all this time spent getting people interested in my writing. Hopefully this gives you all a better idea of what the Darkholm Project will look like going forward. If you got all the way to the end, thanks for reading, I appreaciate it!

Oh, also let me quickly answer a frequently asked question:

Question: "Hey Philip, how do you write so much?"

Answer: Make your point of reference for what a good author looks like to be Brandon Sanderson; that man writes faster than most people can read.