Welcome to 2025, I guess!

Happy New Year, everyone! If you’re reading this, you made it through 2024 and we’ve kicked off 2025, which feels horrifying to say out loud. It’s hard to hope for a chill, relaxing year ahead when as I type this, Justin Trudeau is currently in the midst of resigning from his position as Prime Minister of Canada, but you know…we can still hope that everything else will be totally fine and chill, right? 😬

I took a long break over the holidays to really decompress, turn my brain off, and enjoy some downtime. It was honestly really incredible, and relaxing (mostly), and I’m back at my desk today feeling reinvigorated to get back to work. I played and beat God of War: Ragnarok, and watched a lot of TV and movies, and socialized a lot.

But while I was doing a whole lot of nothing (between all the socializing), I had a few new ideas come to mind, and thought about how I wanted to approach this year as a full-time freelancer. It’s been hard to not have as much work coming my way—I love to be busy, and I love to be creating. Not having as many outlets has been really stressful, but I’ve decided on my theme word for this year, and that is SPARK. I want to find my spark again, and in order to do that, I need to enjoy what I’m working on. In order to do that, I need to write things that bring me joy. So I’m reprioritizing my goals and instead of centering them around success (or my idea of it), I want to center them around happiness.

To everyone else out there setting professional goals for themselves: good luck, and I really hope you’re able to not only meet them, but exceed them and beyond.

PRINCE AND THE PAWPER PREORDERS

Pivoting a bit here, I want to talk about Prince and the Pawper, which is out later this month on January 28. I’ve been talking up this sequel to The Racc Pack for quite a while now, and I’m beyond excited that it’s nearly here.

Last month, I shared a little bit about why preorders matter so much. If you missed it, you can check it out here. With that being said, Whitney and I are still trying to drum up folks to preorder Prince and the Pawper, so that we can keep on telling capers and adventures featuring these delightful ding-dong raccoons. I have a brand-new bookplate that can fit into any of my books, and for a limited time only (until Prince and the Pawper is released), I am offering signed bookplates that I will send to anyone in North America who pre-orders our book.

All you have to do is DM me on socials or email proof of purchase, as well as your mailing address, and I will get a bookplate sent out to you ASAP.

BEST OF 2024

I obviously didn’t get around to doing a big wrap-up of the year before now, so I figured I’d include some of my favourites from the past year. I kind of have complicated feelings about doing Best Of lists before the end of the year since I do so much reading and enjoying of media during the holiday downtime…but no rules say I can’t do it now. And as a quick note, these aren’t necessarily things that all came out last year, they’re just the things that I consumed and enjoyed in 2024. Let’s dive in (picks are in no particular order):

FAVE READS (NOVELS)

  • The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young
  • The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
  • Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
  • Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
  • Thorn Hedge by T. Kingfisher
  • The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow
  • Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
  • The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
  • Thrum by Meg Smitherman
  • Diavola by Jennifer Thorne
  • Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

FAVE READS (GRAPHIC NOVELS)

  • Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath
  • Junior High by Tegan and Sara Quin, and Tillie Walden
  • Parasocial by Alex de Campi and Erica Henderson
  • This Land is Our Land by Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo

FAVE MOVIES

  • Anatomy of a Fall
  • Past Lives
  • Godzilla Minus One
  • Fall Guy
  • I Saw the TV Glow
  • Strange Darling
  • Late Night with the Devil
  • The Boy and the Heron
  • Lisa Frankenstein
  • Your Monster

FAVE TV

  • Betty
  • Ren Faire
  • Chimp Crazy
  • Hacks S3
  • Delicious in Dungeon
  • Extraordinary
  • Kaos
  • Evil

 

And that’s going to do it for my first update of 2025 (it always takes so long to get used to typing out the new year…)—I hope you all are taking care and having a great start to the year ahead, turmoil of the world aside.

SOCIALS:

I’ve been a little less active on socials lately, but if you want to follow me online, you can find me:

Stay tuned for some exciting updates, coming very soon. I’ll be sharing some fun upcoming events and promotional tours for the release of Prince and the Pawper, and I will hopefully see some of your faces at those. More on that to come!

Until next time…

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