Notes on 2025
The end of year update that wishes it was a State of the Union
Every year, presidents give a State of the Union address to Americans, Brandon Sanderson gives a State of the Sanderson to his legions of readers, and I’m now giving you a State of the…um…well, what should I call it?
End of Year Update?
JoshReadsBooks Wrapped?
I don’t know. Still workshopping.
Social Media
I didn’t actually record this anywhere, but I think I had something like 20k followers on TikTok, ~1k on Instagram, and >1k subscribers on YouTube this time last year.
And this newsletter didn’t exist.
Flash forward, and if my math is correct, there are now ~210k of you wonderful folks following my content across platforms.
That unbelievable jump is incredible, hard to fathom, and has changed how I view content in a major way.
I began my TikTok account in April of last year, hoping that maybe, eventually, I could manage to create something meaningful and also build a community of folks who care what I have to say.
At the end of 2025, some of the dreamland scenario goals I set for myself actually seem feasible, and that’s in large part due to the many of you who have subscribed, liked, and commented on the various things I’ve put out into the internet black hole over the last year and a half.
Thank you.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
My family is being blessed because of the last year, and dreams I’ve bound up in a box and shared with only a few people are now more real to me than they have ever been before.
Thanks to you.
Compendium Podcast
Just like on social media, Compendium saw incremental growth in 2025!
6 beefy narrative shows, 8 interviews, and 2 ‘current events’ shows went up in the podcast feed in 2025.
We rounded out the Hell in a Small Place series about the French and American wars in Vietnam (~1945-1975); kicked off The Sound of Distant Guns about the American Civil War; and went on a jaunt with Alexander the Great along his conquest of Persia.
Those narrative shows are my babies. They take way too long to research and make, and I sit in my recording booth/closet for far too long recording them. But I love them, nonetheless. And, according to the numbers, they’re your favorite shows, too.
But I’m going to hijack the End of Year Roundup (or Wrapped) to make a little announcement:
I’m making a little bit of a content pivot for at least the first half of 2026.
Compendium will feature more interviews or shorter narrative shows (probably more interviews than anything else) because….
Writing
I’ve been writing!
Not just one book. But two!
The first is a narrative history about 1861. My pitch for it at the moment is:
A Secession crisis becomes a cascading series of emergencies: a vulnerable capital, a civilian military, and a fragile constitutional order maintained by a political outsider. It looks at 1861 as a year of improvisation, where the results are defined less by a defined plan than by decision-makers operating by the seat of their pants.
I’ve got a fantastic mentor helping me through the process, and the proposal for this one is coming along! No working title as of yet, but if you enjoyed the Distant Guns podcast episodes, you’ll like this.
The second project is a Western novel in post-Civil War America about a young man who joins up with a cattle outfit going to New Mexico, only for things to go sideways. If you liked elements of Lonesome Dove, Comanche Moon, Warlock, Butcher’s Crossing, True Grit, and Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, there might be something for you in this story.
The working title for the project is Named Wild by the Hunters. It’s sitting at roughly 20k words as of writing this newsletter, and even though it’s the fourth novel I’ve written, it’s the first that I feel has a chance to be publishable. I do think, hope, and pray that as 2026 goes along, there will be news regarding this story. For now, I’ll write the first draft, and we’ll see what happens after that.
My ultimate goal with all of this was to one day walk into a bookstore and see my name on a shelf. Before I made any videos or worked to satisfy algorithms, there was a dream.
My family and I are closer to that initial goal today than we were a year and a half ago. Miles closer.
But time is finite, so I’ll pull back a bit from working on and researching Compendium narrative shows in 2026. The priority will be writing. I’ll still send an email roughly once a week, and I won’t disappear from social platforms, but I feel like some things are aligning, and I’m going to do my best to take advantage.
This Newsletter
I began this newsletter because TikTok shut down for fifteen hours in April. I thought initially, “Wouldn’t it be silly if I put all this effort into content for it to go away because of something I can’t control?”
Thus, a newsletter, a direct line to you.
I’m still figuring out the best way to utilize Substack, but I think over the last couple of months I’ve found a cadence that works. Paid subscribers will receive access to a private Discord to talk about books and access to online discussions about the books we read, and early access to Compendium episodes. I’ll post about history sometimes, Literature or lit-adjacent topics often, and you’ll probably get more posts about writing projects (maybe some excerpts??)
2025 has been a fantastic year. Thank you all so much. I never expected any of the things that happened in ‘25 would happen. I began the year with hope and not much of a plan, and I’m ending it with more hope and a little bit more of a plan.
I’m looking forward to reading some more great books with you, talking about them, and working toward a future moment where that book with my name on it welcomes me into a bookstore.
Thanks again,
Josh.