2025 was a good year for me.

This year, as of tomorrow, I will have completed 62 writing presentations of one sort or another. Let’s break that down into categories.

23 COST TALKS at libraries.

11 PODCAST interviews.

9   Bookstore Signings.

8   Festivals, Fairs, and Sidewalks.

3   Mystery Making Events.

2   Crime Conferences.

2   Television Interviews.

2   Noir at the Bar.

1   Interview for a Book Launch (Jule Selbo & 7 Days).

1   Judge of a writing competition (Joy of the Pen).

It was an off year for publishing, as only two of my books were published. The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed was released on April 8^th and Glow Trap pubbed on August 13^th. The interesting piece of this is that Max Creed is the first book in a new series, The Modern-Day Chronicles of Max Creed and Glow Trap is the final book in the Clay Wolfe Trap series. The truly interesting aspect of these two books is that it is quite possible that they will weave together at some future point in time….I did get a short story into an anthology. Dead Men Don’t Kiss appeared in Celluloid Crimes in August. I wouldn’t rule out the possibilities that Elton Connor, a 1950s Hollywood PI, might just get his own series one of these days.

I wrote three books this year.

Bob Chicago Investigates is looking for an agent with hopes of going to the big dance. Bob is a retired schoolteacher, recently divorced, and struggling mystery writer who gets mistaken as a real PI and takes a case looking for a stolen katana, which turns out to be a priceless Japanese sword originally gone missing at the end of World War II.

Max Creed Takes the Spice Road is the second in the Modern-Day Chronicles of Max Creed slated to come out with Level Best Books in May of 2026. Max and his band take on a social media mogul who has developed a terrifying new algorithm called Triangulation meant to cause anarchy.

1956 is the second book in the Jazz Jones & January Queen Mysteries set in 1950s Raleigh, North Carolina. The first, 1955, is slated for an October of 2026 release, and this one will publish in October of 2027. Jazz Jones, with January Queen, is hired to prove the innocence of a civil rights leader arrested for embezzlement and is filled with shadowy figures, Irish gangsters, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

I was asked to join the Crime Wave committee this year and helped plan a rousing crime conference in September that incorporated the exciting new feature of Round Tables for conversation about various writing topics to go along with the regular components of panels, speakers, workshops, and networking opportunities for writers and readers.

And most importantly, I met many new friends in the crime writing community, both writers and readers—people who make all the work so special and rewarding in my life.

That is my 2025 in a nutshell. How about you? What did the year hold for you and what makes it all worthwhile?

Write on!

About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published six books in the Mainely Mystery series, starting with Mainely Power. He has also published six books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, starting with Wolfe Trap. There are two books in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series, starting with Velma Gone Awry. For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed began a new series this past April. Glow Trap is his eighteenth published book.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. They have been replaced in the home with four dogs. Cost now spends his days at the computer, writing.