January always feels like a pause between breaths — a moment when the old year hasn’t quite let go and the new one is only beginning to blink awake. It’s a good time to look back, gently, and consider what the past twelve months have taught me about the strange, beautiful, unpredictable process of making art.

Last year was big for me in ways I didn’t fully anticipate.

In June, I released The Second Coming of Grace — a book that lived with me for so long it sometimes felt like a second spine. Seeing it out in the world, finding readers, receiving heartfelt notes and thoughtful reviews… it meant more than I can articulate. Creative work is so often solitary, and publication is the moment you discover whether the story you carried privately can stretch its legs and connect with someone else’s inner world. I’m grateful every day for the readers who found Grace and welcomed her into their lives.

And then July brought Threads of Light. That little constellation of stories arrived with its own quiet magic. Writing and illustrating a collection feels different from writing a novel — almost like curating a gallery of emotional snapshots — and sending it into the world felt both intimate and expansive at once.

One of the unexpected highlights of the year was the shortlisting of my play The Shell for the Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival. They ultimately went another direction, but that shortlisting was a genuine spark for me — a reminder that the different creative paths I’m exploring (fiction, screenwriting, theatre) are all part of the same unfolding arc. Sometimes a “not this time” still feels like a doorway opening.

And perhaps the biggest lesson 2025 offered was this: creative seasons don’t always look the way we expect them to. Some seasons are loud and generative; others ask for patience, flexibility, and a willingness to write in the margins of a complicated life. I experienced a bit of all of that last year.

As for 2026, I can feel the creative landscape shifting again. New ideas circling. Old projects stretching awake. And somewhere in the mix, the distant possibility of a new place to write from — a coastal neighbourhood with a slightly bohemian pulse, something like the 2000s Toronto Annex but with the ocean just down the street. It’s still only a dream, but it’s a lovely one.

Whatever this year brings, I’m carrying forward the reminder that creativity is not a straight line. It bends, slows, surprises, retreats, and returns — and somehow, through all of it, the work finds its way.

Here’s to a year of open windows, new stories, and the unexpected turns that make the creative life what it is.