We’ve had a lot of reasons to celebrate in 2025—as a family and as indie authors / publishers. But there’s also been a lot to lament. As any reader of my social media posts knows, I’m what our president has taken to calling “radical left scum,” and I’m more determined than ever to embody the RLS ethos in the coming year.

I'm usually not big about making New Year's resolutions, and given what a political / societal disaster 2025 was, I decided to think about resolutions a bit more broadly this year. Instead of what I'm going to do more (or less) of in 2026, I'm thinking about what's important overall and how I want to frame my life going forward. Especially, considering I turned 65 this year and am looking forward to retiring from my full-time job in 2026. So, I came up with an abbreviated framework for thinking about life in America as a creative person.

Introducing Ten Tenets to Live By for 2026 (and beyond):

1. Politics is not and never has been "just politics." It is about justice and the moral and ethical choices a people make to elevate others, treat them fairly as equals, or actively oppress them.

2. Democracy cannot survive without an active, engaged citizenry. Silence is collaboration and not voting or not being informed is acquiescing to oppression.

3. Institutions will not save us. SCOTUS and Congress have abdicated their roles as co-equal branches of government and it is up to those of us who support our Constitution to hold them accountable—and that means demanding more of all of our elected officials.

4. Science is essential to society. Generative AI based on the theft of intellectual property and exploitation of shared energy and water resources is not.

5. Universal health care—including access to abortion—along with food and basic shelter are human rights, and those who treat women as less deserving, inferior or as second-class citizens are bad guys. And those who exploit children or cover up for pedophiles are especially evil. Also, racism and bigotry of any kind is evil, and the law should not be enforced according to the color of your skin, your sexuality, or your faith.

6. The billionaire class is de facto immoral and should not exist. Laissez-faire capitalism, trickle-down growth, and the "pull-your-self-up-by-your-bootstraps" mythologies are simple-minded cover stories used to justify psychopathic greed. Individuals who receive government subsidies and exploit shared resources we've all paid for through our taxes or we all own as a nation (like our parks, lakes, rivers, and forests) to build businesses that manipulate the tax code for personal benefit while underpaying workers are nothing more than dragons hoarding treasure while destroying the countryside and destabilizing society.

7. Blind obedience to any politician, preacher, priest, religion or nation will lead to tyranny, oppression, and cruelty. Those who demand such obedience are always the bad guys.

8. People who support banning books are always the bad guys.

9. Writers and readers should ignore anyone who tells them what they should or should not write or read. My stories will continue to be based on what I want to read and will be inspired by what's going on in the world, what makes me happy, and what interests me. And if my stories find readers who enjoy them, that's a huge bonus.

10. Art, music, dance, writing, and scientific inquiry are the highest expressions of human creativity and should be celebrated, not offloaded to for-profit plagiarism machines.

And Bonus Tenet 11: True families are made not just by bonds of blood, but by bonds of love.

And speaking of those reasons to celebrate, I am thankful for the creative people in my life and celebrate their ideas and imaginations every day. From entrepreneurship and inventions to photography and watercolors, the Makansi family as a whole is a creative lot. For now, I am delighted to showcase the beautiful watercolor Elena painted based on a photograph I took during my trip to Egypt with Jason. This is of Saqqara, the oldest pyramid in Egypt.

Another reason we had to celebrate recently is that we officially passed the 40,000-copies-sold threshold for THE SEEDS TRILOGY and we passed the 1,000 mark for copies sold of THE ALCHEMIST OF ALEPPO. Thank you to every reader who made this possible!

And in March, we’ll be publishing NEMESIS IN LOVE, Book One of the PANTHEON LEAGUE series. It’s a tale of goddesses, gods, demigods, and mortals banding together to fight tyranny and finding love in the process. It’s a classic HEA/HFN romantic suspense series with a bit of fantasy, sci-fi, and a lot of political intrigue thrown in. If you’d like to learn more, you can follow this link over to Book Funnel, sign up for our newsletter, and download a copy of the ARC.

Or, if you’re on NetGalley, and you’d like to read and review, visit the book page here: NEMESIS IN LOVE.

I’m hoping to get Book Two ready for publication in the Fall of 2026.

Also, please sign up for our newsletter for more information and a release date for Jason’s next novel, WREQUIEM AT THE RED ROCKS. It’s a dooooozy! And we’ll have another non-fiction book coming soon from Jason as well. In the vein of his award-winning PAINTING BY NUMBERS, he’s working on a book on knowledge—what we know, what we think we know, how we know it, and why it all matters.

As always, stay tuned for more!

Ten Tenets to live by in 2026

Indie Author MilestoneS Unlocked!