Hello! What am I doing here, you ask? Well, I was going through the end of 2024, looking over everything, and I got annoyed because I couldn’t remember most of the books I’d read this year or the latter part of 2023. I’ve had a book blog to track my books for so many years that I’ve come to rely on having my thoughts down on those things. (And I don’t leave reviews/thoughts on StoryGraph.)

Life has changed so much in the last 1.5 years. I’ve traveled tons, exploring so many new locations and countries that I’ve never been to, making so many friends. I’ve returned to writing, and have written six full-length novels and half of two others, plus several short stories. It’s all fanfiction in the Good Omens fandom, which (despite my initial biases about fanfic) has made me a much better writer, and has expanded my world exponentially. I’ve made friends from around the world, several I’ve met in person now and many others I plan to in the next year. I was able to process a lot of the trauma from my 2014-2015 year in Boston, channeling it into one of these novels and letting go of a lot of weight from my shoulders. J and I have officially chosen to make our marriage completely platonic and join the poly/ENM community, and I am now dating another nonbinary person who I met through the GO fandom. I’ve embraced my nonbinary gender a lot more fully, including transitioning to they/them pronouns and choosing my own name, Thistle. I’ve also come to realize that I’ve never been bi/pan but far more lesbian/sapphic, and so add another type of rainbow flag to my collection (ha!). I’m more colorful in general, with my tattoos numbering 15 now when it was only 4 when I last posted!

Health-wise, I was doing really well until 2024. This last year, I had a really rough year with a (new) shitty insurance company that denied necessary medication for most of the year (until about three hours after the United CEO shooting, ironically…). The denied medication meant that my health really suffered a myriad of consequences, and I lost a lot of ground that I’d gained in mobility in late 2022/through 2023. Since the shooting, though, all requests have been approved (go figure…), and I hope that continues. I’d like to be able to walk and stretch without pain again! And despite the complications in health, I actually feel better about my body generally than I have for over a decade. Being part of a community (poly/kink) that is body neutral as well as having a companion who desires me has helped me to shed a lot of negative body image hangups that I’ve felt for a long time.

I’m so much happier these days. My long term goal is to move to the UK, which I hope will happen in the next 1.5 years. I’m still fostering kittens, still reading (though much of it is fanfiction rather than tradpub books), and I still do a bit of photography, though most of my creative energy goes toward writing these days. I’m not sure how much I plan to post here. Maybe eventually I’ll write in more detail about the last 1.5 years, as a record for myself and anyone who wants to follow along, though I haven’t had many regular readers for years. (Turns out, that doesn’t matter to me as much as having a record!) Mostly, I plan to write small posts about books, so that I have them in the future!

Happy new year to anyone who might find this, and I hope your 2025 will be lovely.