A tourbillion of successes and failures.
Excuse me for a moment as I stumble out of 2024, wobbly and checking myself over for scratches and bruises.
Whew, wow, okay.
While I can’t spill the beans on everything that made up this tumbler-shaker of a year, I can give you the highlight reel of my Wild 2024:
- A cat adopted us. After my neighbors had moved and abandoned their cat, we adopted her and named her Nyx (after the Greek goddess of night). She’s our 4th cat, and despite her hatred of other cats, our ragdoll, Kira, has taken it as her personal mission to befriend Nyx. So far, through an onslaught of nuzzles and creeping closer and closer with her snuggles, she has mostly won Nyx over.
- I quit. I crashed and burned in the query trenches. Upon receiving a particular agent’s rejection (and that’s a story in of itself), I yeeted my towel into the ring and quit querying…
- Jk, no I didn’t. …Only for a week later to receive an email that changed e v e r y t h i n g (however, that’s incredibly long story that I’ll tell in a future How-I-Got-My-Agent blog post). Needless to say, the proceeding events took so many twists and turns that icy Alpine roads now seem effortlessly straightforward.
- An editor’s faith led to me being agented. A Big5 editor personally pitched All Is Well to agents on my behalf (I’ll forever be blown-away by this!), and (again) a long story short, I ended up signing with Amy Collins at Talcott Notch Literary! From the start, she’s always been one of my top dream agents, and I’m beyond happy to be working with her.
- Puzzling for sanity. Meanwhile, to distract myself from the live-wires that overtook my nervous system throughout this rollercoaster year, I completed (and destroyed) two 1,000-piece puzzles and one 500-piece one.
- Desert moths. I also journeyed out into the desert to see the sphinx moth caterpillars. These not-so-little guys absolutely swarmed the roads and desert, requiring every step to be surveilled for green bodies before being taken.
- My lung gave out. In the middle of the night, I woke up in a panic attack and couldn’t breathe. At least, I thought it was a panic attack. After waiting six days for my “panic” to subside, I went to urgent care, only for them to kick me over to the ER, where…
- …I had the worst day of my life. If you’d like to read about medical body horror told from the POV of an I-can-only-process-trauma-through-dark-humor narrator, check out my story here: That Time My Lung Rudely Collapsed.
- Chest tube adventures. For three weeks, I lived with a chest tube dangling out from beneath my left clavicle. Nothing makes a woman feel sexier than having to drain a latex glove full of mystery fluids every day. And did I mention that whenever I coughed, sneezed, or exhaled hard that the tube’s valve would make a loud “kazoo” sound? Let’s also not talk about what it’s like having four cats and a two-foot long chest tube swaying about.
- 5 nights in the hospital. Unfortunately, my pneumothorax refused to stop slouching like a phone-addicted teenager with a bad attitude, so a thoracic surgeon “hot-glued” it to my chest wall during a five-night stay at the hospital. However, I healed remarkably well, and went from maxing out all pain meds immediately after the surgery, to a week later being off everything, including ibuprofen (red-head genetics for the win!).
- And the cat was also hospitalized. On the same day I was admitted to the hospital, Nyx also ended up hospitalized due to an acute kidney injury (apparently, she ate something outside that she shouldn’t have). She’s perfectly fine now, don’t worry, but it looked dicey there for a weekend.
- Outlined the sequel. As for my writing, I came up with the concept for All Is Well‘s sequel and outlined the complete novel in six days.
- Broke ground on The Witherwood Choir. After spending most of the year outlining, researching, and worldbuilding, I officially begun writing my speculative Appalachian thriller novel. It’s high-concept, it’s weird, and it’s deeply unsettling. I’m loving writing it (as I like to say: all my happy places are dystopias).
- Connected with new friends. I’ve made a number of friends over on X’s #WritingCommunity and through my agent’s Discord server. They’re all amazing people, and it’s been a blast getting to know other writers and supporting them through their own journeys.
- Started a new company. In October, a wild hair took one look at me and said “yes, I shall possess that woman into doing my bidding.” Since them, I roped my partner and two friends into starting a new company with me. We haven’t even launched yet, and I already have two clients! Indie authors: keep an eye out late next month for Fablesmithy’s official launch!
In short, I’ve ended this year with a little less lung and a lot more wild-eyed hope. For 2025, some goals of mine include:
- Finish writing The Witherwood Choir.
- Start and finish another TBD novel.
- Launch my new company, Fablesmithy.
- Box, row, jump, and lift regularly.
- Paint and draw more often.
- Travel to Japan or Iceland.
What about all of you? What are your aspirations for 2025?