Unexpected: Masters in Death, Religion and Culture

Another year ends, and once more, it's time to reflect on our creative goals.

I hope you can take the time to review your goals and you're welcome to leave a comment below about how the year went. Did you achieve everything you wanted to? Let me know in the comments.

It's always interesting looking back at my goals from a year ago, because I don't even look at them in the months between, so sometimes it's a real surprise how much they've changed! You can read my 2025 goals here and I go through how things went below. 

In the intro, Written Word Media 2025 Indie Author Survey Results, TikTok deal goes through [BBC]; 2025 review [Wish I'd Known Then; Two Authors], Kickstarter year in review; Plus, Anthropic settlement, the continued rise of AI-narrated audiobooks, and thinking/reasoning models (plus my 2019 AI disruption episode).

My Bones of the Deep thriller, pics here, and Business for Authors webinars, coming soon.

If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn.

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

• J.F. Penn books — Death Valley, The Buried and the Drowned, Blood Vintage
• Joanna Penn books — Successful Self-Publishing, 4th Edition
• The Creative Penn Podcast and my community on Patreon/thecreativepenn
• Unexpected addition: Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester
• Book marketing. Not quite a fail but definitely lacklustre.
• Reflections on my 50th year
• Double down on being human. Travel and health. 

You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com.

I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor.

J.F. Penn — Death Valley. A Thriller. 

This was my ‘desert’ book, partially inspired by visiting Death Valley, California in 2024. It’s a stand-alone, high stakes survival thriller, with no supernatural elements, although there are ancient bones and a hidden crypt, as it wouldn’t be me otherwise! 

The Kickstarter campaign in April had 231 Backers pledging £10,794 (~US$14,400) and the hardback is a gorgeous foiled edition with custom end papers and research photos as well as a ribbon.

As an AI-Assisted Artisan Author, I used AI tools to help with the creative and business processes, including the background image of the cover design, the custom end papers, and the Death Valley book trailer, which I made with Midjourney and Runway ML. The audiobook is also narrated by my J.F. Penn voice clone, which took a while to get used to, but now I love it! You can listen to a sample here.

I published Death Valley wide a few months later over the summer, so it is now out on all platforms. 

J.F. Penn — Blood Vintage. A Folk Horror Novel, and Catacomb audiobook 

I did a Kickstarter for the hardback edition of Blood Vintage in late 2024, and then in 2025, worked with a US agent to see if we could get a deal for it.

That didn’t happen, and although there were some nice rejections, mostly it was silence, and the waiting around really was a pain in the proverbial. 

So, after a year on submission, I published Blood Vintage wide, so it’s available everywhere now. My voice clone narrated the audiobook, listen to a sample here. 

I also finally produced the audiobook for Catacomb, which is a stand-alone thriller inspired by the movie Taken and the legend of Beowulf set in the catacombs under Edinburgh.

I used a male voice from ElevenLabs, and you can listen to a sample here. The book is also available everywhere in all formats.

J.F. Penn — The Buried and the Drowned Short Story Collection

One of my goals for 2025 was to get my existing short stories into print, mainly because they exist only as digital ebook and audiobook files, which in a way, feels like they almost don’t exist! 

Plus, I wanted to write an extra two exclusive stories and launch the special edition collection on Kickstarter Collection and then publish wide.

I wrote the two stories, The Black Church, inspired by my Iceland trip in March, and also Between Two Breaths, inspired by an experience scuba diving at the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand almost two decades ago. 

There are personal author’s notes accompanying every story, so it’s part-short story fiction, part-memoir, and I human-narrated the audiobook. 

I achieved this goal with a Kickstarter in September, 2025, with 206 Backers pledging almost £8000 (~US$10,600) for the various editions. I also did my first patterned sprayed edges and I love the hardback. It has head and tail bands which make the hardback really strong, gorgeous paper, foiling, a ribbon, colour photos, and custom end papers.

The Buried and the Drowned is now out everywhere in all editions. As ever, if you enjoy the stories, a review would be much appreciated! 

Joanna Penn Books for Authors

Early in the year, How to Write Non-Fiction Second Edition launched wide as I only sold it through my store in 2024, so it’s available everywhere in all formats including a special hardback and workbook at CreativePennBooks.com. While I didn't write it in 2025, I made the money on it this year, which is important!

I also unexpectedly wrote the Fourth Edition of Successful Self-Publishing, mainly because I saw so much misinformation and hype around selling direct, and I also wanted to write about how many options there are for indie authors now.

The ebook and audiobook (narrated by human me) are free on my store, CreativePennBooks.com and also available in print, in all the usual places. If you haven’t revisited options for indie authors for a while, please have a read/listen, as the industry moves fast!

All my fiction and non-fiction audiobooks are now on YouTube

After an inspiring episode with Derek Slaton, I put all my audiobooks and short stories on YouTube. Firstly, my non-fiction channel is monetised so I get some income from that. It’s not much, but it’s something. 

More importantly, it’s marketing for my books, and many audiobook listeners go on to buy other editions especially non-fiction listeners who will often buy print as well. I’m one of those listeners!

It’s also doubling down on being human, since I human narrate most of my audiobooks, including almost all of my non-fiction, as well as the memoir, and short stories. This helps bring people into my ecosystem and they may listen to the podcast as well and end up buying other books or joining the Patreon.

Finally, in an age of generative AI assisted search recommendations, I want my books and content inside Gemini, which is Google’s AI. I want my books surfaced in recommendations and YouTube is owned by Google, and their AI overviews often point to videos.

Only you can decide what you want to do with your audiobooks, but if you want to listen to mine, they are on YouTube @thecreativepenn for non-fiction or YouTube @jfpennauthor for fiction and memoir.

The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community  

It’s been another full year of The Creative Penn Podcast and this is episode 842, which is kind of crazy. If you don’t know the back story, I started podcasting in March 2009 on a sporadic schedule and then went to weekly about a decade ago in 2015 when I committed to making it a core part of my author business. 

Thanks to our wonderful corporate sponsors for the year, all services I personally use and recommend — ProWritingAid, Draft2Digital, Kobo Writing Life, Bookfunnel, Written Word Media, Publisher Rocket and Atticus. 

It’s also been a fantastic year inside my Patreon Community at patreon.com/thecreativepenn so thanks to all Patrons! 

I love the community we have as I am able to share my unfiltered thoughts in a way that I have stopped doing in the wider community. Even a tiny paywall makes a big difference in keeping out the haters.

I’ve done monthly audio Q&As which are extra solo shows answering patron questions. I’ve also done several live office hours on video, and shared content every week on AI tools, writing and author business tips. Patrons also get discounts on my webinars.

I did two webinars on The AI-Assisted Artisan Author, which I am planning to run again sometime in 2026 as they were a lot of fun and so much continues to change.

If you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com/thecreativepenn We have almost 1400 paying members now which is wonderful. Thanks for being part of the Community!  

Unexpected goal of the year: Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester

During the summer as I did my gothic research, I realised that I was feeling quite jaded about the publishing world and sick of the drama in the author community over AI.

My top 5 Clifton Strengths are Learner, Intellection, Strategic, Input, and Futuristic — and I needed more Input and Learning. I usually get that from travel and book research, but I wasn’t getting enough of that since Jonathan is busy finishing his MBA. 

So I decided to lean into the learning and asked ChatGPT to research some courses I could do that would suit me. It found the Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester, which I could do full-time and online.  It would be a year of reading quite different things, writing academic essays which is something I haven’t done for decades, and hanging out with a new group of people who were just as fascinated with macabre topics as I am. 

I started in September and have now finished the first term, tackling topics around thanatology and death studies, hell and the afterlife in the Christian tradition, and the ethics of using human remains to inspire fiction, amongst other interesting things. 

It was a challenge to get back into the style of academic essay writing, but I’m enjoying the rigour of the research and the citations, which is something that the indie author community needs more of, a topic I will revisit in 2026.

I have found the topics fascinating, and the degree is a great way to expand my mind in a new direction, and distract me from the dramas of the author community. I’ll be back into it in mid-January and will finish in September 2026.

Book marketing. Not quite a fail but definitely lacklustre.

I said I would “Do a monthly book marketing plan and organise paid ad campaigns per month for revolving first books in series and my main earners.” I didn’t do this!

I also said I would organise my Shopify stores, CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com into more collections to make it easier for readers to find things they might want to buy. 

While I did change the theme of CreativePennBooks.com over to Impulse to make it easier to find collections, I haven’t done much to reorganise or add new pathways through the books. I’m rolling this part of the goal into 2026. 

I said I would reinvigorate my content marketing for JFPenn, and make more of BooksAndTravel.page with links back to my stores, and do fiction specific content marketing with the aim of surfacing more in the LLMs as generative search expands.

I did a number of episodes on Books and Travel in 2025, but once I started the Masters, I had to leave that aside, and although I have started some extra content on JFPennBooks.com, I am not overly enthusiastic about it!

I also said I would “Leverage AI tools to achieve more as a one-person business.” I use AI tools (mainly ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) every day for different things but as ever, I am pretty scatter gun about what I do.

I lean into intuition and I love research so I am more likely to ask the AI tools to do a deep research report on south Pacific merfolk mythology, or how gothic architecture impacted sacred music, or geology and deep time, rather than asking for marketing hooks.  

I intended to use more AI for book marketing, but as ever, I was too optimistic about the timeline of what might be possible. There’s lots you can do with prompting, finessing things and then posting on various platforms, but I’m not interested in spending time doing that. 

My gold standard for an AI assistant is to feed it the finished book and then say, “Here’s a budget. Go market this,” and not have to connect lots of things together into some Frankenstein-workflow.

That’s not available yet. Maybe in 2026 … 

Of course, I still do book marketing. I have to in order to sell any books and make money from book sales. We all have to do some kind of book marketing!

I have my Kickstarter launches which I put effort into, as well as consistent backlist sales fed by the podcast, and my email newsletter (my combined list is around 60K). I have auto campaigns running on Amazon Ads, and I have used Written Word Media campaigns as well as BookBub throughout the year. This is basically the minimum, so as usual, must do better! I’m pretty sure I’m not the only author saying this!

However, my business has multiple streams of income, and I have the podcast sponsorship revenue as well as the Patreon, plus sporadic webinars, which add to my bottom line and don’t require paid advertising at all. 

Reflections on my 50th year

I woke up on my 50th birthday in March in Iceland, by the Black Church of Budir out on the Skaefellsnes peninsula. As seals played in the sea and we walked in the snow over the ancient lava field under the gaze of the volcano that inspired Jules Verne Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and my short story, The Black Church, which you can find in my collection, The Buried and the Drowned. 

On that trip, we also saw the northern lights and had a memorable trip that marked a real shift for me. I’ve been told by lots of people that 50 is a ‘proper’ birthday, as in one of those that makes you stop and reconsider things, and it has indeed been that, although I have also found the last few years of perimenopause to be a large part of the change as well.

A big shift is around priorities and not caring so much what other people think, which is a relief in many ways.

Also, I don’t have the patience to do things that I don’t think are worth doing for the longer term, and I am appreciating a quieter life.

I’d rather lie in a sunbeam and read with Cashew and Noisette next to me then create marketing assets or spend time on social media. I’d rather go for a walk with Jonathan than go to a conference or networking event.

In my Pilgrimage memoir, I quote an anonymous source,

“Pilgrim, pass by that which you do not love.”

It’s a powerful message, and I take it to mean, stop listening to people who tell you what is important. Listen to yourself more and only pay attention to that which you feel drawn to explore.

On pilgrimage, it might be turning away from the supposedly important shrine of a saint to go and sit in nature and feel closer to God that way. 

In our author lives, it might be turning away from the things that just feel wrong for us, and leaning into what is enjoyable, that which feels worthwhile, that which we want to keep doing for the long term. Let’s face it, as always, that is the writing, the thinking, the imagination. 

As ever, I have this mantra on my wall:

“Measure your life by what you create.”

It’s the creation side of things that we love and that’s what we need to remember when everything else gets a little much.

Many authors left social media in 2025, and while I haven’t left it altogether, I don’t use it much. I post pictures proving I am human on Instagram @jfpennauthor which automatically post to Facebook. I barely check my pages on Facebook though. I’m also still on X with a carefully curated feed that I mainly use to learn new cool AI things which I share with my Patreon Community. 

Double down on being human. Travel and health. 

Yes, I am a human author, and yes, I continue to age! When you've been publishing a while, you need to update your author photos periodically and I finally had a photoshoot I loved with Betty Bhandari Photography, which means I can add the new pics to my websites and the back of my books. Are you up to date with your author photos? (or at least within a decade of the last photoshoot?!) Here are a few of the pictures on Instagram @jfpennauthor.

Healthwise, I gave up calisthenics as it was too much on top of the powerlifting and the amount of walking I do.

I did another British Powerlifting competition in September in the M2 category (based on age) and 63kgs category (based on weight). Deadlift: 95kgs. Squat: 60kgs. BenchPress: 37.5kgs. While this is less overall than last year, I also weigh less, so I’m actually stronger based on lift to body weight percentage. I have also done a few pull-ups in the last week with no band, which I am thrilled with!

On the travel side, Iceland was the big trip, and I also had a weekend in Berlin for the film festival, where I met up with a producer and a director around an adaptation of my Day of the Vikings thriller. That didn’t pan out, as most of these things don’t, but I certainly learned a lot about the industry — and why it doesn’t suit me! Once again, I dipped my toe into screenwriting and then ran away, as has happened multiple times over the years. When will I learn? … 

Over the summer of 2025, I visited lots of gothic cathedrals including Lichfield, Rochester, Durham, York, and revisiting Canterbury, as part of my book research for the Gothic Cathedral book. I have tens of thousands of words on this project, but it isn’t ready yet, so this is carried over into 2026 as it might happen then, depending on the Masters.

I spoke at Author Nation in Las Vegas in November 2025, and before it started, I visited (Lower) Antelope Canyon, one of the places on my bucket list, and it did not disappoint. What a special place and no doubt it will appear in a story at some point!

How did your 2025 go?

I hope your 2025 had some wonderful times as well as no doubt some challenges — and that you have time for reflection as the year turns once more. 

Let me know in the comments whether you achieved your creative goals and any other reflections you'd like to share.

The post Review Of My 2025 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.