2024 in Review and What’s to Come

At the end of each year, I like to pause and reflect on what I’ve done over the course of the previous twelve months. This year, it feels like I’m looking back across an entire universe. At the start of 2024, I was totally unmoored. My life had been turned inside-out, and I was staring down the barrel of an enormous amount of rebuilding. I was incredibly well-supported by a community of friends who carried me through that impossible time and got me to the other side of catastrophe in one piece. (In my office, I have a collage of their baby photos. Every time I look at it, I am reminded of how kind, caring, and deeply funny my people are.)

At the beginning of the year when I felt so lost, I had a conversation with my therapist that ended with her saying – and this is a direct quote – “Bitch, live a little!!” I took that advice to heart and have in fact been living a lot.

I went to Frankfurt, Köln, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Seoul. I flew to Ohio and Virginia. I drove up and down the California coast about nine billion times. I hiked through snow and took a ferry to a remote island to spend a week swimming naked in rivers and confronting my burnout. I cooked a feast of six salads and a feast of six cakes for two different birthdays on opposite ends of the country. I broke into a house through a second-story window in spite of my paralyzing fear of heights. (Don’t worry, officer, I had the resident’s permission.) I got so sick that the hospital had to report me to the CDC. I ate remarkable food, and I remarked on it, both to my friends (who are surely sick of hearing about what I’m eating) and in my culinary journal, which I’ve miraculously kept up throughout the year. I set a goal at the start of the year to eat ten things I've never eaten and cook ten dishes that are new to me, and I fulfilled that brief (and then some). I moved, twice – the first time into a home with my best friend where we’ve hosted my favorite dinner parties ever, and the second time into a home with someone who I never could have seen coming. 

I decided to live this year, and because of that, I wound up falling in love.

As I wrote that sentence just now, I realized that it’s true in so many different ways. Yes, I fell in love with a person – devastatingly, life-changingly, upside-downingly in love. And at the same time, I fell in love with life. I don’t think I’ve ever quite felt this way before: I am, in spite of every hard impossible painful thing, happy to be alive. I am happy to fly on airplanes and drive in cars and wander down sidewalks. I am happy to eat incredible and adequate and truly terrible meals. I am happy to have a back that aches and feet that are tired at the end of a long day of cooking for loved ones. Arguing and making up little inside jokes and crying and sleeping and showering and doing laundry and changing tires and being yelled at by the cat and putting the kettle on and opening the window to let a little fresh air into the room. It’s all worth it. 

Existing is so wonderful. I can’t believe how lucky I am to get to be in this world.

I also did some work in 2024. I published the Stories About Stories series, which turned out to be a massive – and massively rewarding – undertaking. This series collected interviews with the people who make books happen. I interviewed editors, publishers, publicists, marketing directors, art directors, copyeditors, cover artists, tattoo artists, authors, beta readers, freelancers, and everyone else I could get in touch with across the publishing process. We talked about how a book goes from an idea to a sellable object. You can find all the interviews from that series here. I could not possibly be more proud of it.

In addition to that series, I also ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for next year’s publication, Love Letters: Reasons to Be Alive. I wrote 6 editorials for the series, and I solicited some of the greatest writers and artists working today. I edited their contributions. Holy hell, you all are in for some emotions with this series. Brace yourselves.

While a lot of my creative energy this year went into editorial work for Stone Soup, I did also do my “actual job” or whatever. I wrote about 240,000 words in 2024. That includes 12 comic scripts, including the script for my Hello Darkness collaboration with Liana Kangas, and the scripts for my current Avengers United story, which you can read on the Marvel app. It also includes edits and rewrites on Have You Eaten, my serialized novella for Reactor. On top of that, I rewrote a novel and a novella, and I wrote about half of another brand-new novella. That word count doesn’t include the editorial work I did on Stone Soup, which ran a total of 66 features this year, including the weekly digest, guest features, Supper Club posts, and the Stories About Stories feature. 

In 2025, I am taking a six-month sabbatical in which I intend to do zero writing. We’ll see if I manage it.

I read very little this year and didn’t keep track of almost any of my reading, but here’s what stood out:

My Fave Reads of 2024

The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy

Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a witch: learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one problem: all witches are women, and she was born a boy.

When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind. She soon discovers the dark powers threatening the kingdom: a magical blight scars the land, and the power-mad Duchess Helte is crushing everything between her and the crown. In spite of these dangers, Lorel makes friends and begins learning magic from the powerful witches in her coven. However, she fears that her new friends and mentors will find out her secret and kick her out of the coven, or worse.

Confrontational, layered, earnest

Anaïs Nin: A Sea of Lies  by Léonie Bischoff

Anaïs Nin, the author of works such as Delta of Venus and House of Incest, is the patron saint of taboo-breaking pop culture sexual iconoclasts. Not only is she an inspiration for contemporary figures such as Madonna, but her oeuvre, which encompasses erotica, autobiography, essays, short fiction, novels, and much more, has been adapted into film (Henry and June), television (Little Birds), and other media.

The cartoonist Léonie Bischoff traces the life of the prolific writer in this lushly colored graphic novel. It begins with Nin struggling to reconcile the man she married (who had artistic aspirations) with the banker she finds herself living with in the Parisian suburbs. Soon, her obsession with June Miller leads to inspiration. Nin's life and art, the truth and fiction, are further intertwined as she recounts her many sexual liaisons including those with Henry Miller (whom she and her husband subsidize so he can write the controversial Tropic of Cancer), her psychoanalysts, and even her father. Although Bischoff’s drawing is largely representational, she occasionally depicts Nin’s sexual experiences in scenes as surreal as Nin’s own written portrayal of them.

Open, difficult, inviting

Metal From Heaven by August Clarke

He who controls ichorite controls the world.

A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth.

One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire.

Only Marney survives.

A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger – or save her from it. 

Breakneck, saturated, furious

A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll

After many lonely years, Abby's just gotten married. She met her new husband--a recently widowed dentist--when he arrived in town with his young daughter, seeking a new start. Although it's strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband's first wife, the more things don't add up. And Abby starts to wonder . . . was Sheila's death really by natural causes? As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila's memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life.

Emily's masterful balance of black and white, surreal colors, rich textures, and dramatic lettering is assured to bring this story to life and give readers a chill up their spine as they read. 

Harrowing, gorgeous, startling

Pearl by Josh Malerman

There’s something strange about Walter Kopple’s farm. At first it seems to be his grandson, who cruelly murders one of Walter’s pigs in an act of seemingly senseless violence. But then people in town begin to whisper that Walter’s grandson heard a voice commanding him to kill.

And that the voice belongs to a most peculiar creature: the pig named Pearl.

Walter is not sure what to believe. He knows he’s always been afraid of the strangely malevolent Pearl. But as madness and paranoia grip the town and the townspeople descend on Walter’s farm with violent wrath, they begin to discover that true evil wears a human face.

I read this book in one sitting, on an airplane, and haven’t really stopped thinking about it since. This one has a premise that borders on sounding goofy, but in execution, the story is brutal and deeply frightening. It features a villain that unfolds into shockingly nuanced layers that never undermine his malevolence. 

Surprising, propulsive, expansive.

Oh, one more thing about 2025. I have a book coming out.

Pre-Order: Spread Me

Spread Me is a darkly seductive tale of survival from Sarah Gailey, after a routine probe at a research station turns deadly when the team discovers a strange specimen in search of a warm place to stay.

Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the solitude, and the way the desert keeps her far away from the temptations teeming out in the civilian world.

When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it into the hab. But the longer it's inside, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can't be ignored any longer.

One by one, Kinsey's team realizes the thing they're studying is in search of a new host—and one of them is the perfect candidate....

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

That’s all for now.

Thank you for helping me get through a hard year, friends. I couldn’t do any of it without you. 2025 is going to be a wild ride. I think my life is going to change a lot, mostly for the better. We also all have a lot of work to do together in this coming year to build a future that is centered around justice, care, and community. 

I believe in us. 

If you’re not already subscribed to the newsletter, I hope you’ll consider it. If you sign up for a free subscription to Stone Soup, you’ll get:

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I’ll see you in 2025. In the meantime, do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up.

Cheers, Gailey