preparing for new beginnings

Is your inbox filled with end-of-year posts yet? No? Maybe you can handle just one more?

I’m writing from a new home on beehiiv! After well over a year of wanting to move off substack and not having the time to really dig into the alternative options, I finally had the chance to make the move. So welcome and I hope this email finds you well!

a year in review

Not gonna lie, 2024 feels like someone took all the pieces of my life, stuck them in a snow globe, and shook the crap out of it.

I don’t have a clean and tidy wrap-up. I don’t even remember a lot of what happened this year unless it was a Big Life Event. Which, to be fair, those events are likely the source of the chaos.

• I started a new job. Complete career change. Thrown on a big project. Still not fully transitioned into my long-term job after 11 months (no one’s fault, just the nature of the work in this case).

• I finally FINALLY moved into my house. You know, the one I bought in September of 2023 🙃 Took over a year to get in but finally happened!

• I adopted a dog. Unexpectedly. Wasn’t supposed to be me adopting. He picked me over my parents. I love him dearly. He is the bestest boy 💜

• I might have read some books? StoryGraph says I did but my memory’s a bit fuzzy 😅

• And I wrote words. No projects finished, many projects given that 1,000-word trial run. Most of what would have been writing time ended up going into house renovations and moving.

bluesky and birds fly

I finally pulled the plug on my Twitter account. To be honest, I was mentally done a while ago but clinging to my handle as if it mattered but it really just… didn’t. I mourned the loss of the place where I first found the book community as a newbie book blogger back in 2011, the place where we had hashtag parties and weekly chats, where there was community and discovery and information sharing. It’s where I connected with so many other writers with that same goal of seeing their books on someone else’s shelf.

It was, well, networking. For someone like me, who struggles with networking on a good day, Twitter was kind of the best. At least for a while. And now we have BlueSky.

Is the site perfect? Hell no. But gods does it feel like a return to those early Twitter days. Social media often feels like a necessary evil but I don’t hate being on BlueSky and that’s something. I’ll likely still be posting to Instagram and cross-posting on occasion to Threads, but they’re certainly not my primary platform these days.

on future words

It was… not a great year for writing. Lots of projects started and stopped in their tracks. But toward the end of the year, I had an idea. It stuck in the crevices of my brain until I couldn’t take it anymore and had to put something on the page. It’s a forest of monsters under a new moon, a creepy manor on a hill lorded over by a broody immortal, masks that devour their creators, and the sound of the horn as the Wild Hunt approaches.

It’s my project for 2025 and maybe, just maybe, it’ll be the one that gets to go out in the world in the future.

the TBR continues to grow…

As with writing, the reading didn’t exactly go as well as I hoped either, but I did manage 62 books which I’m considering a win! But it wasn’t enough to offset the many, many books still on my TBR 😅 Here’s hoping that the Beat the Backlist challenge will help me continue to chip away at that stack!

Of my 2024 reads, I had a few that stuck out, in part because they hit at the right time for me. Two were anthologies surprisingly (to me) enough. A Cathedral of Myth and Bone by Kat Howard hit me with ALL the vibes. It’s moody and atmospheric and made it easy to escape into for a little while. The other, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories by GennaRose Nethercott was, in one word, weird. In the best way. Each story I thought I knew what was happening and it set out to prove me wrong, and I couldn’t stop listening.

For my fellow romantasy readers, I have to recommend The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. It’s cozy and sweet with a talking plant, a fun magic system, jam making, and a (former) librarian that is just trying to figure out how to fit into the world. This book is a warm hug and I can’t wait for the next in the series!

And I just finished The Witchwood Knot by Olivia Atwater as my last read of the year and it was delightful. I loved Atwater’s Half a Soul and was excited when my library hold for this one came in. It’s fun, imaginative, and exactly the blend of fantasy, romance, and mystery that I couldn’t get enough of.

creating in chaos

For all that 2024 was determined to make a mess of my creative life, I think things are looking up in 2025. Because the chaos won’t stop, but learning to work with it comes with time and there’s something about this coming year that feels promising. There are always stories to tell, new books to read, people to connect with and share in life’s experiences, and just maybe, this will be the year.

I’m off to enjoy some delicious peach cobbler to celebrate the last couple hours of this year. Wishing you a happy new year and all the good thoughts for a great 2025!

💜 austine