Favorites from 2024

Sharing some personal and professional highlights from the past year

Hi friends,

Almost exactly a year ago, at the end of 2023, I wrote about how challenging my year had been, especially the first half of the year. Now, at the end of another year, I’m reflecting on my year again, as many of you are too, no doubt. I’m happy to say that this year I’m not thinking as much about challenges as I was a year ago. This past year had its challenges, but mostly of the ordinary sort that aren’t particularly noteworthy.

So I thought I’d end this year on a hight note by sharing with you some of my favorites from 2024. Here is my list, in no particular order.

Books read

Thanks to the public library’s collection of audio books, I was able to read more books than I expected this year! Here’s a picture of my book log, on which I recorded all of the novels I read this year:

That’s 23 books! A mix of short and long (and really long), first reads and re-reads. Most of the books I re-read this year are those I wanted to share with my hubby, so I read them aloud to him. Those books are: Very Rich by Polly Horvath, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson, and The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand. I also re-read Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson to prepare for the release of Wind and Truth, and Pearl Verses the World by Sally Murphy, a short and sweet novel in verse. My favorite of the re-reads? Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. That book may be my favorite book ever. A close second is Very Rich because my husband got such a kick out of it.

The rest of the books on the list were firsts. I enjoyed all of them to various degrees, and it’s hard to pick one favorite, so I’ll pick two. First is The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers. My hubby and I read this one together and we both enjoyed it so much that I decided to get the whole Wilderking Trilogy for us as a Christmas gift.

The second favorite is The Other Side of Tomorrow, a lyrical graphic novel by Tina Cho, illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. This book beautifully combines the verse and graphic novel formats into a brilliantly told story about two children’s escape from North Korea.

Author accomplishments

2024 was a big year for me as an author. I wrote A LOT of poetry, revised and submitted a verse novel manuscript, finished the draft of my most recent verse novel manuscript and sent it to my first readers, submitted several poems (a few of which have been published or will be soon), sent out my newsletter every single week, and, of course, my first novel, Mari in the Margins, an illustrated middle grade novel in verse was published by Bandersnatch Books!

You can probably guess which of those is my favorite.

Artist accomplishments

I would say that the publication of my first illustrated book was my favorite artistic accomplishment of the year, but since I claimed that as an author accomplishment, I’m picking something else. There are a few to choose from, as 2024 was a pretty big year for me as an artist and illustrator. I’ve been working on building my portfolio, primarily focusing on handmade block prints that are colored digitally. I shared my illustration of The Witch’s Treat Truck back in July, and there are more that I’ve been working on behind the scenes. You may also remember my advent art project. But my favorite has to be my Inktober 2024 project, during which I created a series of mini block prints/stamps that tell a story about an explorer.

Each of these is smaller than 2x2 inches.

Road trips

In the spring my husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary with a short trip to Tulsa to view the solar eclipse, which just happened to be on our actual anniversary. Later in the summer, my husband, son, and I took a short trip to north central Nebraska, where we went kayaking down the Niobrara River. Both were great trips, but my favorite was the anniversary trip because it was the first real trip my husband and I had taken together—just the two of us—since our first child was born.

Favorite family day

We’ve had a lot of great days this year. Birthdays, holidays, regular days getting together at the park or the zoo. Any day that I get to spend with my grandkids is a favorite day. But there are two days that stand out to me the most from 2024. The first is the day that we spent at the lake, playing in the sand and swimming and splashing with the grandkids.

And the second is Christmas Day, maybe the most perfect day of the year, when all of our kids and grandkids came over, and we enjoyed opening gifts, a tasty Christmas brunch, and a day of playing together and enjoying the joy of Christmas, all with very minimal stress!

A few more miscellaneous favorites

Favorite personal project: The busy book I made for my youngest grandson.

Favorite big change: The birth of my second granddaughter (grandbaby number five!).

Favorite weather event: Big January snow storm, mainly because of how it got all the neighbors out to help each other.

Favorite new bake: Flan de queso (cream cheese flan).

Favorite serendipitous moment: Finding a hardcover copy of Flutterby at Goodwill. I loved this book (and the rest in the series) as a kid, but only had the paperbacks. It’s funny that these books happen to be “Serendipity Books.” Perhaps that’s why serendipity became my favorite word?

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I hope that your 2024 has been full of moments you can add to your own favorites list, and that the new year brings with it more blessings than challenges!

Happy New Year!