Happy New Year! It’s safe to say that 2025 was a Hot Mess™ but I’ve always loved the “fresh start” feel of a new year and I have my fingers crossed that 2026 doesn’t betray us.
The bar is on the ground…
But you’re not reading this for 2025 woes (I hope), you’re here because hey, you were interested enough in my writing and other thoughts to stick around and for that I can’t thank you enough 💜
This will be more of a quick post to kick things off but I’ll be back with Thoughts™ in the future!
You may have noticed that there’s a new name attached to this email (but same content!). After a lot of internal debate, I decided to finally set aside the pen name I picked out over 10 years ago and shift to something that speaks to who I am today. I clung to the old one for so long that I didn’t see a path forward, but I wasn’t happy with how it represented me for a few personal reasons and I’m eager to start fresh with the change. It wasn’t an easy decision but I’m really happy with where things landed and moving forward.
*best Bond impression* They call me McCrae... A.J. McCrae
Sometimes you have to shed the old even if it wants to cling on like a pair of tight leather pants.
And not only did I embrace a new author name, last year also led to:
forming a new writing
covengroup (we’re just a wee bit witchy)submitting a short story for the first time to a magazine (it was rejected… but progress!)
hitting 600 newsletter subscribers (thank you!!)
spending my first year living in my house (finally!)
and surviving 2025 (which I think we should all add to our accomplishment list)
Which leaves us with today, the start of the new year and another 365 days of adventure. I can’t wait to share more about my stories with all of you. I recently did a little round-up post about them on instagram if you’re curious now 😉
I don’t know about y’all but I’m also a sucker for setting new goals at the start of the year (and then usually forgetting about them within a week). But this year I’d really like to stick to at least some of them so I created a bingo to turn it into a little game!
And part of those 2026 goals include unhauling books and yet… and yet I found myself still pre-ordering new ones because books! New books! I haven’t tallied how many I have on my list to snag for this year but looking at just the first quarter of the year, these are six I have on my radar:
King of Ravens by Clare Sager (Jan. 27), The Wolf and the Crown of Blood by Elizabeth May (Jan. 27), and The Fox Hunt by Caitlin Breeze (Feb. 24)
The Trident and the Pearl by Sarah K.L. Wilson (Feb. 24), Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons (Mar. 3), and Ruinous Creatures by Jessi Cole Jackson (Mar. 10)
I’ve rounded them all up on a Bookshop.org list that I’ll be adding to as I hear about more books!
And with that, I will leave you to enjoy the rest of your new year celebrations and will be back in your inbox in a bit with some reading recommendations and (hopefully) my first writing update of 2026! In the meantime, catch me over on instagram and enjoy some adorable photos of the furballs from this year.
💜 A.J.
