It’s time for my end-of-the-year retrospective. I started doing these when I lived in Japan, I think since 2021, so I regret that they have diminished and headed into the West (aka deleted beyond my control) since transferring to WordPress. But the tradition will live on! I’ve got new reflective questions sourced from Calm. There are a total of twenty; ten for looking back on this year, and ten for looking ahead to the next one. I will split these up into two different blogs. Now, let’s reflect on 2025!

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1. What was your biggest accomplishment this year? 

Getting a three-book deal with Oliver Heber books to develop my graduate thesis into a brand-new YA romantasy trilogy called The Darkening Gate. The Name and the Key, the first book, will be out in 2026!

2. What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them? 

My biggest challenge has to involve grading student work whenever I teach English Composition at college. Grading has always been an issue for me; I’m too slow, give too much feedback, don’t get started fast enough, or issues like getting sick or having an anxiety attack steamroll my chances to grade as I’m trying to calm down and get better. I don’t think I’ve overcome this issue, but I have noticed that the less feedback I give students, the faster I grade. I consider limited feedback detrimental to my students; however, after doing massive in-line comments for their very first academic essay rough drafts, I did note that like 98% of them ignored what I wrote and barely revised for their final. So…tough lesson. I’m a teacher, not an editor, and while I think I’m helping students, they just do their own thing anyway. Now I use a rubric and simply list the points and achievement levels and refer students to the rubric if they want to see more detailed feedback. Sped things right up.

3. What moments brought you the most joy? 

• Signing a three-book deal with Oliver Heber Books
• Finishing my draft of Book One of The Name and the Key and sending it off to my editor and publisher
• Finding out I am a Finalist in the Young Adult Category in the American Writing Awards for Son of the Siren
• Son of the Siren getting a placement at the ALA conference at the Ingram Spark table
• Son of the Siren getting an audiobook with an incredible narrator (J. Kindred)
• Presenting Fanfic into Fiction at Matsuricon to over 30 people
• My brother kindly making me a watchlist of videos of him playing Silent Hill F. It might sound weird but it really means a lot to me and it was a very generous gesture.
• Running into my best friend from middle and high school randomly at the dentist and reconnecting after all these years
• Visiting my sister for Thanksgiving
• My mom celebrating another birthday
• Christmas Eve with my best friend, her husband, and her kids–and my brother coming along, too!
• Christmas with my extended family as well as Christmas with my mom
• Jackbox nights with the family
• Sleeping in a comfy bed to ring in the New Year

4. What did you learn about yourself this year? 

Kind of a good thing/bad thing situation: The bad thing–I procrastinate on writing my books way too much. If I have a difficult scene crop up, I don’t keep going usually; I just take like two weeks off of writing. Booooo. The good thing–I don’t have to write every day, but if I write consistently, I can finish my books faster than I ever have before. I pumped out a ton of writing when The Name and the Key was due to my beta readers, and then again when it was due to the publisher. I learned that I *can* keep writing if I push myself to, and to do my best not to let a lot of time pass by without writing.

5. Who made a positive impact on your life, and how did they help you? 

My friends and family, and my coworkers and embedded tutors at Zane State. First off, my friends went above and beyond supporting my book release of Son of the Siren, which meant so much to me, as it was my very first published novel. My family swooped in and did the very same thing (even extended family!). As for my Zane State people, I really felt warm and welcomed when I was hired as a new English adjunct there. The students were generally awesome and I loved teaching them; the English department and assistant dean were so supportive of me; and my embedded tutors were such a delight to work with and talk to.

I want to take a moment as a special aside to shout out my mother. With work being precarious and me being poor; with my mental and physical health being topsy turvy this year; and me sharing every wild thing happening in the publishing world, and my tumultuous moods while writing, Mom has been my rock. I love our morning habits where we both wake up really freaking early, ask each other how we slept the night before, and then talk about random things after that as we do our “get-ready-for-the-day” rituals. These are small things, but they make me so happy. And I’m so overjoyed that Mom is still here. I’m technically middle-aged and Mom has already been through that, so you start to get paranoid about the end of the road…so every day with Mom is a treasure.

6. What are you most grateful for as the year ends? 

My dear family and my dear three-book deal. Lol!

7. How did you spend your time, and did it align with your priorities? 

I did not always spend my time well, and I did not always do it in service to my goals or priorities. As I mentioned before, there were plenty of times where I could have been writing, or using the time better in order to get through grading, but I would just freeze and hit a brick wall. I also spent a considerable time napping, which sucks away free time. It’s been years since I’ve not napped, and as much as I prefer not to, I always end up doing it. I think my body and brain are just permanently exhausted.

On a more productive note, I did spend time reading, which is always beneficial; some time exercising (which is more than the zero I’ve done for the past three years); and even though it wasn’t as much as I’d hoped, I still made some time to write…and if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have finished anything.

8. What habits served you well, and which ones didn’t? 

• Sleeping all the time – I want to say nay, but there were times I genuinely felt like I needed sleep
• Reading and writing regularly – yay
• Eating sweets and drinking soda regularly- nay
• Waking up daily at 4am – surprisingly, yay. This is the time I wake up to commute to Zane State, and it’s so ingrained in me I keep getting up at this hour. I get a lot accomplished when I wake up freakishly early! Spring semester involves a later class schedule, so I’ll probably wean off the 4am wakeup, but I like being awake early. I’m going to try to wake up between 5:30am and 6am.

9. What are you proud of that you didn’t expect to achieve? 

I’m still shocked about the 3-book deal. Obviously because I can’t stop talking about it. The Name and the Key has been living in my head for a long time, and I had always wanted to rewrite it and expand on it. My publisher simply found out through social media that I was working on it, and made the offer then and there. Truly something magical, I would say. Now, I’ll still be writing the trilogy into 2027 (I think) and it’s the first time I’ve written books under tight deadlines with a relatively quick release, so that will continue to challenge me into the new year. But the fact that my publisher and editor trusted me to write three more books for them has made me so proud and honored.

10. If you could sum up this year in one word, what would it be? 

Rollercoaster!