Happy Holidays + Where I've Been

Hi, everyone.

Is Christmas really almost here? Above is our 2025 holiday card. Leo is the orange tabby, Simon is the fluffy tuxedo cat with the mustache, and Lotus is the gray and white guy looking really sweet.

Yep, it’s been way too long. Sorry about that. 2025 has been an awful year from start to finish, and I just didn’t really feel like writing anything. Being on social media for more than a few minutes gives me the screaming horrors, so I haven’t been around much there either. I drop a cat photo or two and run off.

2025 saved the worst for last: My mother died on December 9. She had been quite ill for most of the year and her death was not a shock, but it’s a huge loss I haven’t even begun to come to terms with. I wrote about her on my blog here: http://nicolewillson.com/blog/rip-mom/

WHAT I’M WORKING ON: So I have been trying to get a new draft of my vampire soap opera finished. It’s been tough going because of this hellish year. I’ve also come to realize that I might have made the wrong person the main character, and oof. That’s going to take a long time to fix.

I am also working on my first children’s picture book, a retelling of my grandmother’s Halloween prank on me. I really wanted to get this sold and published while my mother was still alive to see it happen, because this story involved her mother and it really tickled her whenever I’d post about it. But it wasn’t meant to be. Writing children’s picture books is hard. Really hard. In less than 1000 words, you have to capture a young child’s attention and hold it, and there’s an art to that I have yet to master.

I do have a little bit of News I Can’t Talk About Yet, so there will be some actual publishing updates coming from me, probably early next year.

WHAT I’M WATCHING: I have not been a fan of most of the Stephen King Extended Universe TV series that have come and gone, but I made an exception for It: Welcome to Derry, which was produced by the same people behind the 2019 film version of It and is a prequel to that movie. Was it perfect? No. The first episode was fantastic, and then it took a little while to find its footing again. But it had enough inventive twists, turns, and chills to keep me tuning in for its eight-episode run. Making Dick Hallorann, who’s mentioned in a flashback in the novel It (and who has a major supporting role in The Shining), one of the main characters was a stroke of genius. And I know Tim Curry is still the definitive Pennywise for a lot of Gen Xers, and fair enough, but Bill Skarsgård has done a lot to put his own spin on the role.

Thanks so much for reading, and if you know anyone who might be interested in my work, please feel free to pass this along to them.

See you next year,
Nicole