2025 has been a weird year for me. And with the year now coming to an end, I think it’s time for me to finally start talking about my experience with it. I came into 2025 with two goals as a writer: to finish Book 2 of The Santara Commentaries and also to continue The UEC Stories series.
Needless to say, I was unable to do either of that this year. I’m still working on Book 2 of Santara (check out the Preview) and The UEC storyline remains where they are (with some extras).
So does that mean 2025 was a failure to me? Absolutely not. To steal the words of the basketball great Giannis Antetokounmpo: it’s not failure, it’s steps to success.
Of course, Giannis and the Bucks since he said these powerful words hadn’t really done anything in the basketball world (other than winning the joke known as the In-Season Tournament I mean, the NBA Cup), so in retrospect this sounds a lot like cope from the Greek Freak. Yet the point stands.
Now could I have done better in 2025? Could I have been more focused in doing what I had set out to do? Absolutely.
Now while I wish I had done better in finishing what I started, I can’t say that I regret 2025. It’s not that I’ve failed; rather, I took a detour. And where did this alternate path took me? Well, for one thing…
Agent Jen
The Agent Jen series, AKA (in my mind) the Electrosphere Defense Corps/EDC series is arguably my most significant work when it comes to writing. And believe me, this series basically came out of nowhere.
The premise for Agent Jen is simple: a female secret agent who gets captured a lot and needs to be rescued (by her male love interest, obviously). So instead of some cringe “badass grrlboss” of the Joss Whedon variety, this lady agent is much more vulnerable. However, she’s not a simple “damsel-in-distress” (not that there’s anything wrong with that). She gets the job done. But getting the job done doesn’t mean beating up 20 guys three weight classes above her with kay-rah-tay, or some bullshit like that. I never like that trope; as pulp writer Henry Brown have said before, it’s a fetish born of gender confusion. And like the Aedes aegypti in the tropical swamplands of Jakarta, it’s almost impossible to avoid and they need to die.
But enough of my culture war rants. Anyways, the series took place in the 35th century, which if you pay attention to my Holy League Universe lore (which would be about 7 of you, a liberal estimate). This means the Agent Jen/EDC stories takes place about 1000 years after my UEC/Cisalpine Legion stories. I even put in references and breadcrumbs for the readers who would care to look. So what do those things mean? Not much, in all honesty, just that I don’t abandon my stories.
Speaking of stories…
The Way Between Realms
When I figured that there was no way I could have finished Book 2 of Santara by the end of 2025, I decided to pivot. At first, I was thinking of creating a collection of stories of my aforementioned Holy League Universe; but not just any story collection, I was thinking of putting them into a coherent narrative in the vein of The Canterbury Tales or One Thousand and One Nights. But I got a bit lazy, and kept pushing that off until I realize that I no longer have the time to finish that project by the end of 2025.
At that point, I decided to instead put together my flash fiction pieces into a story collection (you can find these stories in my Substack too, including ones that are behind a paywall). And thus, The Way Between Realms was born. It’s currently on Amazon for $0.99 though I’m thinking of bumping it up to $2.99 so I can put in future editions of the Based Book Sale.
What’s up with the name? It came from the first story of that collection, The Realm of the Tao. In the Substack edition of the flash fiction piece, I said that it was inspired by the drawings I saw at an art museum I visited. That was true, but only the second-half of the story.
Around this time, I had been reading the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu’s collection of wisdom. And I was struck. Not in the white hippie goes to India and became a Hindu sort of way (which is an oxymoron, a Hindu/Hindoo in the old sense word means someone from the Indian subcontinent). I didn’t become a “Taoist for the Pope” or anything like that. I saw what was good in the Old Master, took them, and discarded the bad. I’d like to think that my approach is in line with the rest of the Church including the late, great Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci and the people who translated the Bible to Chinese, as from my understanding, some Chinese translation of the first chapter of John uses “Tao” for “Logos”, as in “in the beginning was the Tao”.
So back to The Way Between Realms, I named this collection such because 2025 for me had been a “way” or a “path” rather than a destination. I didn’t do what I set out to do, but I’ve laid the foundations; the steps to success, if you will.
Everything Else
And obviously, there are other things. If you want to see what I’ve been doing as a writer in 2025, feel free to check out my 5/30 Report series at my second newsletter, Indonesian and American. I wrote them as a bit of an accountability thing and a way to track what I’ve been doing.
I’d rather not belabor it, so I’ll keep this section brief. Obviously there are other fiction-based writings beyond Agent Jen and The Way Between Realms. I also kept doing nonfiction writings in the aforementioned Indonesian and American blog, including works that I’ve been paid to do (it’s always great to get paid for your writings).
I’ve also had IRL things I’ve been doing, including running a small business and even taking law classes in an Indonesian university. For more details on that, check out the aforementioned 5/30 Report since I do touch upon those things when relevant. I don’t really like talking about myself qua myself, to be honest. The point is that I’ve been assimilating into Indonesian society after over a decade in the US. I’ve been touching grass; dirty and polluted grass, sure, but grass nonetheless.
Oh, and I also got a website, which is cool.
Conclusion, IOW What Now?
So that’s my 2025 as a writer. Obviously I could have done better, but I’m honestly happy with how this year had been unfolding. Moving forward towards 2026, I definitely want to return to The Santara Commentaries. I want to finish Book 2. As for The UEC Stories, I also stories in mind. I have the outline too. It’s just a matter of actually sitting down and write them.
Another thing that’s on my mind is printing my books independently. As you know, I live in Indonesia. What you might not know that Amazon have a limited presence in Indonesia, for better or worse. This makes it difficult to market or sell my books to people who live around me. It’s like trying to sell a Nintendo game in a country where everyone plays Xbox.
I firmly believe that the future is offline, and that the Internet is ephemeral at best and fake at worst. Here in Indonesia, one term we for it is dunia maya, which anyone familiar with Buddhist or Hindu thought will know refers to something that’s an illusion. Jean Baudrillard would call it “hyperreality”.
And that’s all I have to say. I hope you all had a great 2025, and here’s for a good 2026.
Peace.
-Michael P. Marpaung
The Bucks haven't done much post-season wise since they had Kareem Abdul Jabbar on tap before he joined the Lakers.