December Update

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Dec 01, 2025

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The State of Gibberish

I’m overwhelmed just thinking about all that’s been going on here at Gibberish, so I’m going to give you a quick ‘n dirty summary of what’s coming and then we’ll get into a rundown of what the heck happened this month. How’s that sound, everyone?

The Offseason

We’re in the offseason! This means things around Gibberish are slowing down, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be hard at work. My Dev Diary posts will go from weekly to biweekly; Flash Fiction Friday will stop until February (Though there’s an Offseason project for the adventurous among us!) No new fiction will post. This is my rest and recharge time, but it’s also very much a preparation for the new year. Speaking of:

The Next Season

In 2026 we’ll be pivoting to a Season Structure, as I’ve mentioned. Beginning February 1, we will enter Sandbox Earth Season and with it there will be a headline serial and I’m hoping for one Flash Fiction story every month. Starting in July we will enter Blackpage Season where there will be another headline serial and more Flash Fiction. Expect more to come on this as we get closer to each event.

Rebrand

I promised that in November, and due to a comedy of errors this was delayed. This is coming, along with a dedicated post about it, approximately as soon as I can get to it. Stay tuned.

What You Missed

Let’s dive right in!

LIVESTREAMS & PODCASTS
- Fiction Cartel: Finding Your Voice - A return to Jaime Buckley 💎’s Fiction Cartel, expect more of this! Here we talk about finding our voice as an artist and the tension between that and writing for an audience.
- Nothing About This Is Safe: The Myth of the Starving Artist - Another one of Jaime Buckley’s projects, this time intended to be a candid and forthright exploration of the tough topics that we artists and creatives face. This is a great podcast and JaimeBuckley.com is going to be a great resource going forward—watch this space!
- Star Spun: Discussing Scoot’s Books - I did an interview with Thérèse Judeana about my eBooks (see more on these below). I had a great time chatting about the stories and I always enjoy my conversations with Therese. Check out the interview at the link above and check out her newsletter Star-Spun here!
FLASH FICTION FRIDAY
- The FFF Offseason has begun! You can now check out the whole year’s worth of prompts, and if you write anything you will be entered for a raffle for a paid subscription at the end of the offseason. Every story based on the 2025 prompts will be a new ticket in the raffle, so don’t wait! And don’t forget to share the link to your story in the FFF Offseason Chat Thread!
🔒DEV DIARY
- My weekly Dev Diary posts and occasional Interstitials continue, though in the offseason they will proceed biweekly instead of weekly.
FICTION
- No fiction this month as I wound down the 2025 season!
PUBLICATIONS
- I published some ebooks of my substack serials, check them out at my shop link, HERE!

What Is Coming?

The 2025 regular season is over, so we are taking a break. Watch this space in January for more information on the coming 2026 seasons!

The Paywallening

The inexorable icewall of paid content marches forward through time at it’s new accelerated pace! Everything from June 2024 and earlier has already gone behind a paywall as of publication of this post. Check out the previous update to see the stories that have gone behind the wall!

On January 1st, everything from July and August 2024 and earlier will go behind a paywall. The next stories to go under are these:

Writing Exercises
Fiction
- Scout Mission - This is an alternate history/fantasy story about World War One! Eventually I hope to add parts to this story, and earlier I promised it would come in the latter weeks of the 2025 season but I wasn’t able to get it together. If and when I continue this story, I will take it out of the paywall for you all to enjoy—until then, this is your last chance to check this story out for free!
Serials
- No Serials were published in this window!
Essays
- No essays were published in this window!

This is your last chance to read these stories for free! Check them out now!

If a paid subscription is not something you can manage right now—never fear! Using the Referral program, you can earn a paid subscription by referring someone else to subscribe using your custom link!

Get your custom referral link!

By sharing this link with a friend or family, when they subscribe you will get credit for referring the subscription, and starting at 2 new subscribers, you will earn 6 months or more of paid access!

black and silver retractable pen on blank book — Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash

A Final Word About 2025

With the end of the 2025 regular season and entering the offseason, this is basically the end of the year for Gibberish. It’s a good opportunity to reflect and think about where I started and where I’m going.

First and foremost, I can’t thank you readers enough. This was a relatively light year for Gibberish as far as fiction, but my confidence has grown dramatically as a writer and I keep meeting new and wonderful people with new and wonderful ideas, I keep seeing creative and clever new ways to use substack and to collaborate with the fiction community. Your enduring support of my project here at Gibberish has meant the world to me, and I am grateful beyond words.

As usual, my plan for 2025 was dramatically different from what actually happened in 2025. I’d say this has been a year of rehabbing my relationship with my writing, which I think was a success. Getting Find the Blackpage published as both serial and ebook was a spiritual journey for me. I did about 50% of The Artists Way with Shaina Read; did 2x2 livestreams with Jaime Buckley 💎 and Tell Me a Mystery, which evolved into podcasts; collaborated on Weather Reports with Jon T; was reviewed by Keith Long; wrote an entry for Ynnysfall organized by The Chronicler; planned another collab with Leigh Parrish. All this to say, no man is an island, and at every turn the Substack Fiction community has been right there in the fray with me, and it’s been an honor and a pleasure to write along side all you fine folks.

This is, hands down, the finest place to read fiction and write fiction that e’er existed on the internet, and I am grateful for each and every one of you.

2026 is the most structured I’ve ever planned a year, and I am sure life will throw curveballs as life is wont to do, but I know I’ll have all you fine people to talk to as I navigate it.