It’s that time of year again, when we all start looking back, wondering what we spent most of the year doing, and what we might take with us into the next.

2025 has been a strange year for me. In many ways, it’s been much harder than I thought it would be. Balancing work with home, writing with reading, communicating and listening. It’s been a year when I realised that I didn’t have the right balance. Some months, the scale tipped one way, and other months, it toppled clean over in the opposite direction.

Writing-wise, I’ve been hard at work on the Sea Book. I’m so happy to say that it’s done now,and whatever happens with it is out of my hands. I hope – when editors read it – it transposes them to a different place, a different time. I hope it comes alive for them in the way that I intended. In writing it, I created Maudie, and she’s a character who I think about a lot, even now. So young, so accepting, but with a fierce fire in her, once she realises that things aren’t quite what they seemed. She’s strong in a way that I perhaps want to be.

That book will go out to publishers in 2026.

(Maybe in 2026, I’ll get the balance right)

I’ve also been drafting another novel, one that’s really had my questioning why I started writing in the first place. I’d practically finished the first draft when I decided to step back, and perhaps reframe the whole thing in a new way. It’s reminded me what I love about storytelling – that it’s a way of testing out human nature, to find answers to big existential questions.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a straightforward adventure, too. A cosy comedy. A ghost story. But it’s not what I want to write, not unless there’s something deeper in there. And it’s not surprising, really. It takes a long time to write a book, especially when you work and have a family and all the other things that fill life up. So you have to be passionate. You have to be aiming for something greater.

(We’ve played a lot of DnD this year. One of my alter-agos – this sorcerer – maybe has a lesson or two to teach me)

This revelation has also come with the lesson that I need to slow down. I’ve been really burnt-out most of this year, aiming for deadlines, trying to be everything for everyone, all the time. My head has been spinning, even when asleep. And now, on the cusp of a new year, I need to be mindful, conscious, and deliberate. And I’m not talking about taking years and years to write the next book. I just mean feeling OK about taking the time to step back and rework things. Not worrying that I’ve wasted time drafting, when every work is sand in the sandbox for me to play with.

(This is me writing late at night and being generally very tired)

After all, there’s a couple more projects on the horizon, too. A poetry collection with a twist. Illustrated, and telling a story that I love. This one is about halfway drafted at my end, and is the project I’m playing with now as I rekindle my love of words and work out how best to reapproach my novel WIP. On top of that, there’s a graphic novel, too. This one’s been in the works for a long while, and I have to do a big chunk on it before it goes back to my collaborator, who is also incredibly busy and wonderful and inspiring.

My children are growing, and been going through their own periods of change, too. Starting school, moving up classes at nursery. Learning how to play with each other as an almost five year old and a two year old. They need me, too. Lots of people do. And I need them.

(They also need scarves, apparently. Lots and lots of scarves)

I suppose the biggest lesson I’ve learnt this year is that I’m so, so limited by time. But that’s OK. And I have to learn to be OK with that, because it’s been my number one frustration as I’ve desperately tried to be everywhere, doing everything. I’m hard on myself every day. Perhaps I shouldn’t be. Perhaps I need to let go.

I hope that at some point this year, there’s a new book or two to announce. So many of you ask me on a regular basis when the next one will be, and it fills my heart. Thank you.

See you on the other side, friends.

(Keep growing, keep moving skyward, my friends)