my mantras for 2025

yes, I still have a newsletter!

Hello, friends!

How are you? How were your holidays? What about NYE—was it a letdown or stellar or somewhere in between? This year mine was stellar. I spent it watching the fireworks in Sydney Harbour.

I took a longer-than-intended break from this newsletter. I have excuses. First there was the book tour for The Hitchcock Hotel, which is now a USA Today bestseller, thanks to all of your lovely support. By the time the tour and promo finished in the end of October, I was sick of talking about myself, so I paused writing here. I had also moved cross country from NYC to LA in the middle of the book tour because I’m a masochist. Then, in mid-November, my husband and I bought a house—our first! I love it so much. We closed escrow in less than three weeks¹, so it was a HECTIC TIME. Three weeks after moving into our new home, we took off for a monthlong trip to Australia with my parents—a dream trip that had been postponed year after year, but we finally made happen. I arrived back in LA on January 2nd, ready for calm after the chaos of the previous four months. And then… the Palisades fire broke out. Plus half a dozen others. While keeping one eye on the fires, my other eye has been staring at my laptop screen as I write the last third of the first draft of my fourth book. You still with me? As of today, I only have the epilogue left to write. I will do that tomorrow!

Which is why it’s taken me four months to write to you.

There is much I want to chat about—1) my favorite books/movies/TV shows of 2024, 2) my new old house, 3) the fires in Los Angeles—but we’re going to have to save all of that for another time. Today let’s discuss 2025 mantras and goals.

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

For better or worse, I naturally gravitate toward future-oriented thinking. I spend little time reflecting on the past and less time than I should remaining in the present. The future, though? The future is my jam. I relish a fresh list of goals come New Year’s Day. The blank slate, fresh start. It feels like the first day of school, and I LOVE(D) school. If professional student were a paid career, I’d absolutely be one.

I’ve never been much of a resolution setter because, I don’t know, I find them de-motivating and restrictive. Since my teenage years, though, I’ve been a goal setter, a habit engrained in me by my dad. In more recent years, I’ve added a mantra to encapsulate the year’s goals. These mantras are generally 1-2 memorable words or phrases that serve as my guideposts.

One year (2023), my mantra was: head down. I had gotten so caught up the year before in what my book launch was or wasn’t receiving compared to other authors’ books. I sickened myself with worry over whether the sales would meet my publishers’ expectations. (They didn’t! Life went on!) So stressed and green-eyed was I that I lost sight of the achievement altogether. I didn’t enjoy that launch at all. The following year I wanted to course correct. Thus: head down. Alternately put: eyes on your own paper. This meant I would focus on the part of my career I COULD control (the writing) and not on the part I couldn’t (the publishing). It also meant spending less time on social media where I could see every other author’s accomplishments all day long. The thing about writers and social media? We only share the good news. We’re not going to share the crappy reviews or disappointing sales or the lists we didn’t make (that’s most of the lists!). Plus, when you follow 50 (75? 100?) authors on one platform, all of their achievements sort of meld together, so that it feels like *everyone* has made the NYT list or been a Reese pick or gone TikTok viral. Whenever the jealousy monster reared its ugly head, I reminded myself: Head down. It usually worked! I spent that year writing the book that would become The Hitchcock Hotel.

I’ve digressed. Let’s talk about this year’s mantras, both professional and personal. I wish I had pretty vision boards to represent them, but then this post wouldn’t have published until March.

Professional mantra: “new frontiers”

(Could also be summarized as ‘“new genres,” but that doesn’t sound as exciting.)

This year I want to expand my creative footprint. Last spring I wrote a pilot for a speculative TV show idea. I’m going to (finally!) revise it as soon as I turn in book #4. A few years ago I also wrote a feature-length biopic about a real woman who lived the most jaw-dropping life in the early 1900s, but then I did nothing with that screenplay. Why?! I want to take another crack at it, then potentially submit it to some screenwriting contests. All of this is in service to the goal of getting a TV/film manager and/or agent this year. I’m always going to write novels, but writing for the screen has been a major goal for almost as long as writing for the page.

I’m also going to revisit the short story form. Around Halloween I was invited to contribute a story to an intriguing literary magazine. I’ve been waffling on this one. I wrote a lot of stories in my MFA program (read: at least twelve) and was only able to get one of those published. I don’t have the comfort or familiarity with short stories that I do with novels. Novels feel straightforward (she says at the END of her first draft), like home. Short stories feel like… I’m trying to be an artist. I was/am not eager to add to the 221 rejections I accrued during my short-lived career as a short-story writer. And yet. The magazine said they’re looking for stories that are “sordid, salacious, and taboo” and provoke “shock, disgust, and awe.” Reader, those are ALL OF MY FAVORITE THINGS. The more I thought about the challenge, the more I wanted to accept. I realized I could use this opportunity to resurrect an old novel pitch that my publishers thought mainstream readers wouldn’t stomach. Hoping to write that story end of winter/early spring.

Lastly, and maybe most excitingly of all, I’m going to write a novel that isn’t a thriller. I’ve had one idea in particular since—checks Google Doc—June 2023, and it has been an irrepressible bee in my bonnet for the past eighteen months. During the second half of this year, I will commit to researching, outlining, and drafting (some of) it. Per usual, I’m sure I will find the work disappointing once I commit fingers to keyboard, but for now it is a perfect jewel that exists only in my head.

Personal mantra: “California homebody”

Let’s break down each word, because the mantra is perhaps more accurately described as “California/Homebody.” I overdid it on travel in 2024. Between the move, book tour, visiting family, and the big international trip, I felt more rootless (not to mention exhausted) than usual by the end of the year. In my entire adult life, I’ve never lived in an apartment longer than two years. London is the only city I’ve been a resident of for more than twenty-four months. I want 2025 to be the opposite of my twenties and most of my thirties.

I have been dreaming of living in California since I was sixteen years old. Back then I visited five universities in the state and had every intention of applying to those colleges. I chickened out at the last minute because they seemed too far from my hometown in the Chicago suburbs. Ohio, where I wound up, was much more accessible.

It took me twenty years, but I finally made it here. Though I’m still new, I love this state with my whole heart. (Not going to apologize for the earnestness. We need more earnestness!) I love that I live thirty minutes from a hundred hiking trails and forty minutes from the Pacific Freaking Ocean. I love that Angelenos pursue the arts with zeal, straight faces, no shame. (They share this trait with New Yorkers.) God, the Mexican food here! The sun shines every day! My whole life, having a January birthday has sucked! This year it won’t!

(Are you still reading?) All of this is to say I have a tendency to overbook myself. This year I want to stay home more often. I want to get rooted. I want to learn LA’s neighborhoods and visit the California towns I’ve long been curious about—Ojai, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Big Sur, and so on.

That’s the California part. The “homebody” part is twofold. I’ll spend much of this year renovating my townhouse. She was built in the 1980s, and most of her hasn’t been updated. Ever. I’d like to make this home a place I want to settle for years and years to come—a fantasy concept for a lifelong renter.

Homebody is also a reminder that I want to spend more of this year reading and watching. I don’t set reading goals (that’d be like setting ice-cream-eating goals), but I do track what I read each year to outsource my memory. Last year was my worst reading year since 2015! I don’t feel bad for that—low reading years happen when life gets busy. Usually it means big, exciting things are happening. But I do feel a vague disquiet when I pass a few weeks without opening a book. (You know when you’re on vacation, and you eat too much rich food or drink alcohol too many nights in a row, and you start to feel meh?) I’m the most me when I read before bed every night. This year will be another busy one—see the 1,600 words above that I’ve spewed at you—but reading is in my bones. The time will come from somewhere. It always does.

What’s on your docket for 2025? Which scary pursuits are you after?

I promise not to let another four months pass without writing my next post,

Psst, did you notice the addition of my third book to the header at the top of this post? Shout out to Taylor for the gorgeous illustration. She’s as good of a designer as she is a sister-in-law. You can find more of her work here.

1. We had been living in an Airbnb for a month, but our rental period was quickly coming to an end.