December is a weird liminal space month, especially as a professor. It begins with finals chaos and ends with the strange nothing week between Christmas and New Year. I purposely tried to take it easy this month, despite the goals listed below, and it was just what I needed to reinvigorate my creativity and brain. Here are the goals I made in November:
- Finish grading finals ASAP
- Finish Christmas shopping
- Wrap everything without hurting my back
- Write all of “An Unexpected Evening”
- Start brainstorming my next writing project
- Read 8 books
- Blog weekly
- Send out my newsletter
- Play more video games to unwind/refill the well
- Get my yearly goals for 2025 and my Q1 goals in order
Books
My goal was to read 8 books, and I read 12 books. The links to the books below are affiliate links, so I get a small kickback if you grab one.
- Crabs by Peter J. F. Davie- 4 stars, a nonfiction book about crab species. It’s very interesting and has a ton of pictures. If you like sea creatures, I highly recommend it.
- One Night in Boukos by A. J. Demas- 4 stars, this is a mystery, romance mash-up with a soldier and a secretary losing their wayward boss in Boukos. This story cracked me up, and I love the people the characters match up with and that we get to see them in later books.
- A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher- 4 stars, if you watched Shrek 2, did you love Big Mongo and Gingy? If so, grab this book. We get a girl trying to save a kingdom one giant gingerbread man at a time.
- Black Water Sister by Zen Cho- 4 stars, a story of generational trauma, breaking the cycle, the ghosts of the past (literal and figurative), and figuring out how to not repeat those mistakes.
- Something Human by A. J. Demas- 5 stars, this is probably my favorite A. J. Demas book. We get two soldiers on opposite sides of the war who save each other’s lives, fall for each other, and realize that they must work together to save their people. It was just so tender and lovely.
- Honey and Pepper by A. J. Demas- 4 stars, a lawyer(?) and a man who works in a snack stall team up to take down a mob boss and save their city from his power trip and evil ways.
- Flawless Girls by Anna-Marie McLemore- 4 stars, two girls go to a finishing school, one runs off and the other comes home not herself only to disappear. The story is rich in texture and explores the way we crush girls beneath expectations.
- Illuminations by T. Kingfisher- 4 stars, a girl and her friend accidentally unleash a creature akin to the evil creature from Super Mario Sunshine that wants to destroy magical images and steal the magic for itself.
- Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher- 4 stars, a young boy is sent off alone to bring rain to the town despite not being more than a child and only knowing a few spells. It’s an incredibly clever story that makes you hate all the adults.
- The Moon on a Rainy Night (#6) by Kuzushiro- 4 stars, another fantastic addition to the series, and I love that we get to see the other MC start to realize she may have feelings too.
- Venom and Vow by Anna-Marie McLemore- 4 stars, two warring kingdoms realize they have been set up to fight each other when all along they are under the same spell.
- The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher- 4 stars, a queer retelling the Ice Queen that has some adorable otters and some gore.
Admin/Behind-the-Scenes Stuff
- Finished my grading and survived to tell the tale
- Wrote several letters of recommendations for my students
- Continued weight-lifting and upgraded to 7lb weights (woo! progress!)
- Outlined “An Unexpected Evening”
- Wrote part of “An Unexpected Evening” (which I later rewrote… oops)
- Finished all of my Christmas shopping
- Wrapped all the presents
- Set up my bullet journal for 2025
- Finished playing the game I had started (Botany Manor– highly recommend, it was a lot of fun)
- The Reanimator’s Remains made it into the Indie Ink Awards (more on that soon)
- Set up my goals for Q1 of 2025
- Appeared on the Right Here, Write Queer podcast talking about queer, historical romance
Blogs
- November 2024 Wrap-Up Post
- Gender on my Terms
- The Reanimator’s Remains is in the Indie Ink Awards!
- 2025 Releases to Add to your TBR
- My End of 2024 Reflection
- December newsletter
Writing
Truthfully, I didn’t write much this month because I needed to rest my brain a bit. It was worth it. Instead, I devoted myself to planning the story, getting my stuff together in regards to my writing plan for the year, and figuring out where I want to go with book 4 of The Reanimator Mysteries series. I planned out most of “An Unexpected Evening” this month, and now, that I’m writing it, I think you all will enjoy it. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy a masquerade party that goes wrong? Unlike other parties that I’ve written, there is no murder *gasp* for once. I was struggling very hard with what to write next after “An Unexpected Evening,” and I’m displeased to announce that actually sitting down and writing out what you have to do worked to sort it out in like… five minutes. It’s very annoying how your brain will do donuts for days, but when you put it on paper, it takes minutes to sort out.
Hopes for January
- Finish writing “AUE”
- Edit and format “AUE”
- Pay Q4 2024 taxes (bleck)
- Set up my syllabi and Blackboards for my courses
- Send out my newsletter (with “An Unexpected Evening”)
- Start planning out TRM #4
- Blog weekly
- Read 8 books
Kara Jorgensen 
One thought on “December 2024 Wrap-Up Post”