Goals for 2026 and Beyond
2025 was a big year for me. There was a lot of change, most of it for the better, and just a lot of general stuff that happened, as most years tend to bring. I moved in with my girlfriend this year, I came out to my parents, I dropped out of university to focus on my writing and creative projects full-time (which is something I'm still getting used to), and all along the way I've been supported by wonderful friends and readers who have followed with me through all of this. To the people who have given me support over the last year and beyond, thank you so much. I don't know how much I say it, but it can never be too much. Thank you so much for everything you've done to help me and support me, it really does mean the world to me, and it's enabled me to keep going this far. I'm not done yet, and I still need help to get there, but I'm closer than ever before, and I absolutely would not be here without you.
Moving into the science-fiction distant year of 2026, I want to move into it with specific goals in mind. Wading through this year creatively, I was sort of aimless, even if I had end-points in mind, and it lead to some things taking longer or not getting done when I feel it absolutely should have been better. To try and alleviate part of this problem, I wanted to compile some of my goals for 2026 and beyond, so I can have a sort of benchmark to compare my progress to whenever I need a self-check.
My main points are as follows:
- Launch my Patreon
- Get a new laptop
- Work on more art/comics
- Start taking commissions(???)
Launch my Patreon
I've been working on the content for this for a while. I'm incredibly nervous to finally launch, because I have zero experience managing something like this, and I'm very worried I'll crash and burn. Now, in reality, I know that I'll feel my way through things, and before I link to anything I'll make sure to test everything myself and see that it's how I want it to be. That part's easy.
The part that's not so easy to getting people to join. I think I'm a decent enough writer, pretty good even, and I have a lot of ideas that I feel are really interesting and worth exploring! My real worry is that people won't feel the same when it's on a monetized platform where you can subscribe for a month, read everything you want, and then never come back again. Or, for the people who choose to purchase stories, download the PDF and never come back, maybe even sharing that PDF around without any money coming back to me. I know these are all average artist concerns these days, and my situation isn't exactly unique, but these are the kinds of fears that seep in when I start thinking about launching a platform like this.
In the purchasable PDF-versions of the stories, I'll likely include a cover page of sorts that mentions the story is from my Patreon, and that if you're reading it for free, I'd appreciate a little tip on my Ko-fi. I don't actually mind people reading stuff for free, or stories being passed around, that's fine. My main concern is that it may make it harder as an indie author on the Internet to make money off it and keep going with things. I'm sure this won't be as big an issue as I think it will be. I suppose we'll see.
For the Patreon itself, there will only be one tier. It's a simple $5 supporter tier, which gives you access to the whole Patreon (as far as I have planned). The main draws are that you'll have early access to everything I write, as well as continuous access to all finished works without the need to purchase them outright. For early access, I intend to post new chapters as they're finished, so subscribers can read them as soon as they want. Additionally, subscribers will be able to read any and all chapters - as well as the full, compiled works - included with their subscription. A non-subscriber would have to wait for me to finish an entire story, and then purchase it to read online, as well as obtaining the file version to download and read whenever (may be as simple as a PDF, remains to be seen). I consider those to be the real draws, but I also want to post some behind-the-scenes type blog posts about working on certain things, progress updates, Q&A stuff, etc.
To talk a little about the stories I'm working on, I figured I could share a little about what I'm working on, including what I want to publish at the start of the Patreon :3
The big launch title I have in mind is a story about a robotgirl lost to time. Society collapses amid a global power-struggle, and the state of the world of wake of it is left largely empty. We're skipping the apocalyptic grunge, the grimdark future, and going forward by a few thousand years, to an era where the scars of the past are still felt, but the earth has healed around them, and the people who are left alive have formed new lives. Our protagonist is a robotgirl who was entombed in an old basement area in a city overrun by forests now, and she is discovered by a young mechanic who brings her back to her town in the middle of nowhere. Beyond the obvious grappling with a new world so different from her own, and lacking the amenities a robotgirl may have preferred, we also watch as she seeks to piece together what exactly happened all those years ago, what happened that brought humanity to its knees, and what became of her creator when she was abandoned in that basement. Some chapters will be slower, more slice-of-life, focused mostly on what a daily grind looks like for these people in the new world. Some will be about small discoveries, advancements, recovering scraps of the way things used to be. Everything together will be building to the uncovering of those major points of what happened, and who went where in the wake of the end. I hope people will become as attached to these characters and this setting as I am, and look forward to exploring the healing earth with them and uncovering the secrets together!
There was a winter-themed story in the works, but progress was slow and the timing was so tight, I decided to shelve it in favor of working on it through the year, and hopefully posting it next year around the start of the winter! It's very trans, very gay, and I hope people look forward to having a fun time with it when it's ready!
I'm working on a couple trans romance stories as well, and at least one of them is a story about two sisters. I'm very early on in the writing on these, so I don't want to call them launch titles by any means, but it absolutely is something I'm working on!
I am, first and foremost, a fantasy writer. Writing fantasy settings is what started me as a writer when I was a kid, and it's been a constant behind everything else that I've done ever since. I have several notebooks full of worldbuilding notes, I have a hand-drawn map hanging on the bedroom wall, I've worked hard on it this particular world for 6 years or so. While I don't have a particular story in mind to introduce people to this world, rest assured it will absolutely appear in my writing lineup as often as I can manage. I'm very passionate about fantasy as a genre, and about my world I've spent so long developing, so I'm very excited to delve deeper and show some of the legends of this world! Hopefully soon I'll be able to show off a particular story or stories, to give readers a small window into the wider world I intend to explore.
I'd like to launch it as soon as possible, so I may publish the Patreon with just the robotgirl story available. I plan to have four chapters available at the start, with the first two being a "free demo" that'll be on my website as well as the Patreon, and the other two being the standard early-access subscriber content. I plan to have plenty of free intros and free short stories or oneshots along the way, so people who aren't sure can have a taste before deciding to pay. The last thing I want is to create buyer's remorse at any point. I want people to feel like they get their money's worth, whether that's through the 5$ supporter tier or buying a story outright to read and download. I hope people look forward to reading some of what I have cooking, and hopefully plenty of people will be invested enough to subscribe and support me!
Get a new laptop
This is a big hurdle to cross. I posted about it recently, so you may already know, but my current laptop that has served me well since 2018 is literally, physically falling apart. It's far from her only issue, she's been breaking down in strange ways for years now, but an actual, physical problem with the laptop itself is the last straw as far as finally finding a replacement. I believe I've found a good one, another Acer even, but it costs around the $700 mark, and I can't cover that on my own. I've had a Ko-fi goal live for a little bit now, and I have some people who have DMed me specifically to say that they're going to help as much as they can with large chunks of cash very soon. To those people, if you're reading, thank you so much, you've saved me much of the headaches that would come with this logistical problem.
My current laptop is fairly delicate in her current state. Jostled just a little too much, and the screen starts to come apart again. I can't close the lid, and god forbid I want to travel with a laptop. This is gonna be more of an issue in mid-January, when the uni semester starts again and I'm going with my girlfriend to her classes and such. Last semester, this was a perfect time to get some work done. As of right now, I won't be able to even take my laptop with me. Hopefully I can order the new laptop soon, and mitigate time spent without one as much as possible. I've migrated 90% of my files to my portable drive, and I'm all set to use the Windows Recovery transfer tool once the new one comes in, I just need to scrape together the cash to do it. Once that's done, I know a lot more work will get done, and I'll even get to restart collecting stickers for the lid. I'm sure this old one can find a place on a shelf as a memento for 7 years of hard work.
The new laptop is decently stronger than my current one, I had to make sure it was at least as good as mine is now, and not some form of downgrade. It'll take me from 16GB of RAM up to 32, from an Intel i3 8th Gen to an AMD Ryzen 7, keeping the 1TB internal drive and standard 1080p screen, etc. I'll be loosing my optical drive and SD card slot, but I've already found an SD adapter to get, and I can use my Windows 7 as a DVD R/RW drive and just pass the files along to my portable drive if need be. What's most important is that the new one is sleeker, lighter, and more powerful than my current machine, and it'll do everything I need without going too overboard. No touchscreen, no finger scan, that's tech that's just waiting to fail as soon as I set it up. It's simple and reliable and it's what I need for work and leisure, especially on the go.
My Ko-fi will be linked below if you want to help out!
Work on more art/comics
This is something that I did a little bit of this year, but I'd like to do more in 2026. I have a small cast of OCs and a general world for them, and I'd like to do more little four-panel comics for them. If I can find the time and energy amongst everything else, I'd even like to do a longer comic that goes more in-depth with their characters and lives! Art will go under the same $5 supporter tier, but if I work my way up to the full-length comic, that would likely move up to a $10 comic supporter tier, considering the time and resources that would go into making that available. Pending that however, I definitely want to do more doodle pages, drawings, animations, etc. and those can probably go up on the regular Patreon as well. I wouldn't consider them major parts of the page, so consider them more as bonuses for subscribing and supporting me.
I want to talk about the long-form comic for just a minute. In terms of the tone, think of the more grounded, personal parts of Scott Pilgrim. Like the chapter we spend following Kim Pine for a morning and seeing a little glimpse into her life and what makes her who she is. I'm a big fan of comics taking pages just to portray silent action, maybe some sparse narrator boxes for good measure, and just letting the audience enjoy the art and bask in the feel of it all. So much of our lives are spent in motion, not necessarily in conversation, and I want my comic to have that same feel. It's fun and a little silly, there's a certain kind of sitcom attitude to things, but just like life, it's real, and it's hard, and it's emotional. The characters deal with very grounded issues and complications, their relationships to themselves and each other are complicated and ever-shifting, and I think there's a lot there that could strike a chord with a certain audience. It would take a lot of time and effort to work on a comic like what I want this to be, so this isn't a near-future goal. I can't even say for certain if I'll revisit the possibility in 2026; I don't know how this coming year will go for me creatively and financially. But I do hope that one day things will be in a good place where I can really work on this and make it a reality. Even if I only finish a page per month, I'd call that good. Right now though, I want to focus everything I have on the writing that I intend to carry me, and let my art and comics be a smaller background element to that creative practice. At the very least you can look forward to seeing these characters and their world through sketches, doodles, etc!
Start taking commissions(???)
That's a load-bearing (???) right there. I've never done commission work before, hell I've never even written by request before. It would take some thinking to work out the logistics of how to it would work, what kind of stories I would/wouldn't be open to writing, etc. I know for sure that it would require communication between the client and myself prior to any payment happening, to make sure I feel comfortable and able to write what they want, negotiate pricing according to length/content, etc. I don't have any clear-cut ideas on this yet, but I could see myself taking commissions for fiction pieces, commissioned requests for game thoughts or reviews on my game blog, maybe even fanfiction commissions if people are interested in that sort of thing. Like I said, it would take some figuring out the logistics of it all, gauging interest, etc. but I can definitely see this being something that I do. Could be a real win-win for potential clients and myself if I can get it sorted out.
But that's generally everything I have mind right now as far as goals! I want 2026 to be a big setup year for me, getting all of this rolling so I can start snowballing my online career for the future. I know it can take a long time to build up something like this, so it makes me all the more eager to get things started so it can start mounting, despite my hesitations. I really look forward to sharing art that I'm so passionate about making, and have been since I was a little girl. Putting my stories and ideas out into the world is the most important thing for me as a writer, and if I can garner financial support as a part of that, then I hope to continue to do so for as long as my hands will let me write!
Since you're already on my site, I hope you stick around and take a look at everything else I'm working on as well! I have a ton of stuff that's a work-in-progress, but depending on when you're reading this I may have some new stuff up around various places! Feel free to hang around and enjoy what I'm making here! I plan to keep writing on my game blog as often as I can muster, keep posting to this blog here, and continue working on things across the site. There's so much I want to do, and this will be a hub for everything me, so keep an eye on this place for more in the future!
Thank you again to everyone who supported me in 2025, and to everyone who has stuck around and been interested in what I'm creating. I look forward to sharing more of it with you in the year to come!
~ Alex Amelia Pine
