The Time Elder Is Dead! The Time Baby is Born! (Bye, 2024, Hello, 2025)

Blah blah blah, some stuff happened in 2024, stuff’s gonna keep happening in 2025, woo hoo, we did it, there’s your recap and your look forward all rolled up in one HASTY AND MEDIOCRE BURRITO, huzzah, *kicks sad burrito under couch, sits down on couch to play more Balatro*

*waits*

*stares*

*stares harder at you*

*because you’re still here*

UGH GOD OKAY FINE

I usually take this time at the end of the year to recap the year prior and to gaze longingly ahead at what’s to come, and as noted in an earlier post, I’m feeling this year like my mind is firmly rooted in the present moment, unwilling as it is to step one foot backward or forward lest my aforementioned mind get swept away in the whole uh-oh oh no of it all.

Globally, news-wise — I mean, haha, what the fuck is there to even say? The enforced rise by rich techbros of shitty environment-killing resource-stealing content-thieving AI? The ascent of the combo-pack of oligarchy and kakistocracy (oligkakistrarchy?)? The incoming administration? The less said at this moment is probably for the best. It’s all going to be very very stupid and very very demented and we all have a front row seat. I’m not looking forward to it! The end.

Personally, you know… for me, I think things are good? Happy family, a pleasant existence, still two dogs (though one is really slowing down now, poor Loa) — and I dunno, surrounded by good people. Went to Portugal for a couple weeks and that is the most delightful, most beautiful place. The soft, gentle decay of it! The street art! The thousands of hills! The food, the people, the architecture, the natural beauty. Truly a favorite place.

Speaking of travel, I also had the fortune of getting to hang with a couple of my besties, Kevin and Delilah, this year, as we went on a short mini-tour of the Midwest, and found that fun and impactful. Which I suppose bleeds over into the professional, but note that first and foremost those tours are personal, because I like those two people a whole lot and would gladly follow them into heaven or hell just for the company. It’s simply convenient that we’re all writers and have a tax-deductible reason to hang out and meet readers and booksellers and the like.

Professionally, things are… also good, for the most part? This past year, Monster Movie! came out and, I dunno, middle grade is tough right now but I had a blast with it and hope readers do, too. I did some school visits there and found them both a) really rewarding and b) very very difficult, like, off-the-charts hard for me. Not because I don’t love hanging out with students and talking about books and horror and stuff, but boy, if you’re in any way an introvert who drains their batteries having to be “on” in front of people, ha ha holy crap, talking to kids is triple the energy drain for me. It’s a lot, a lot a lot, like, you can’t just be on, you gotta be ALL THE WAY ON, every slider set to max, every knob spun to the top and then broken off. (I think this is a controversial opinion as, having talked to a lot of kids’ authors, they don’t seem to suffer this effect, so this is very likely just me!)

(You can order Monster Movie! here.)

Paperback for Black River Orchard landed, and I will say it’s gaining its second — or even its true — life in that format. I’m sure a cheaper buy makes it easier, but also the new cover is slick, and also maybe it just needed time to find its readership. But I think it has! Big jump in readership on that one in just the last few months. (Weirdly, or maybe not weirdly, actual apple-picking season seemed to be the biggest juice-up for sales?) I’m glad people are finding it and ohh hey it won the Dragon Award for best horror?!

(You can grab Black River Orchard in paperback here.)

I guess there were new editions of my Star Wars Aftermath books out — these in trade paperback. And if that makes you happy, then I am happy for you. I understand those books are controversial to some people, and not much I can do about that, but I had a lot of fun writing them and playing in that sandbox, and I try not to succumb to abject bitterness at how I was treated by those in charge of that storyworld, but mostly I fail, and bitterness continues to be the primary taste in my mouth after having worked in that universe. But if you enjoy them, I am truly glad. And if you don’t like them? Then hey, sorry, can’t be helped, go write your own.

Ummm. What else?

I post APPLE REVIEW REELS now at Instagram. Why? I dunno! I like doing them though. Maybe I should start a TikTok account, perhaps mere hours before it is made illegal and ejected from the app stores!

(Don’t worry, I won’t pollute anybody’s TikTok with my presence.)

I’m on Threads now, obviously, though I still far prefer Bluesky. A lot of user control there, and zero algorithm. That said, social media is a slow poison! But it tastes like candy, so there I go, like a squirrel slurping up antifreeze.

What does 2025 hold?

I’ll probably get to soon announce the two-book-deal I can’t yet really talk about (just know it’s about demons demons demons baby woooo demons).

I might get to talk about some of the new Wanderers TV developments.

I might get to talk more about my next middle grade, too, which is less horror and more “weird Wendigian meta-take on portal fantasy.”

In April, I get to release a book I am truly proud of, The Staircase in the Woods — it’s still very much a Chuck Wendig book, but at the same time, I feel like it’s something different for me, too, in a variety of ways. It already has a lot of early reviews over at Netgalley, and I’m really happy to see people responding well to it. The book means a lot to me and maybe it’ll mean a lot to other folks, as well. I almost think of Book of Accidents, Black River Orchard, and now Staircase in a kind of thematic trilogy. Maybe you’ll see what I’m talking about. You can preorder from Doylestown Bookshop, to remind you, if you want an early jump at the book and also some additional book-related goodies. I also might have something neat to announce about Staircase soon enough.

I will almost certainly be doing some bookstore-a-go-go visits for that book, so keep your apples peeled for that. Trying to figure out with my publisher what the shape of that tour can and should look like!

Where else will I be? Updated schedule so far —

Jan 10th, at Doylestown Bookshop in support of Clay Chapman’s wild new horror, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes. (Details here.)

Jan 30th, I get to chat with Eric LaRocca at the NYPL in NYC, in support of his darkly wonderful At Dark I Become Loathsome. (Deets.)

I’ll be at Emerald City Comic Con in March, I think.

More stuff as I have it!

EDIT: oh fuck obviously too there’s THE STAND anthology, holy crap. I’ll be doing a signing for that, too, more as I know it. You can preorder it here.

I’ll be traveling, only semi-professionally, to Scandinavia over the summer — kinda doing a Denmark -> Norway -> Sweden thing. For kicks, and also for some researchy things.

(So if you have advice on traveling in that region, GIVE ME IT NOW.)

(Please and thank you.)

As to what else 2025 brings? Man, I do not know. I really feel like we traveled off the edge of the map, into that hazy, unwritten “here there be dragons” part. At least from a professional standpoint I’m… growing concerned that publishing is really starting to build for itself a certain genre bubble (I say that without any issues regarding any genres or the writers of said genres) and I worry what happens when that bubble pops, as it inevitably will. (And if TikTok really does go the way of the dodo, what happens to BookTok? Which is, as with many things, both an excellent and problematic influence on books, authors and publishing?) I dunno. I think it’s gonna get weird. All of it. Everything. Gonna get weird. So I’m gonna get weird in response, and maybe you can do the same and we will overwhelm the Bad Weird with the Good Weird and return balance to the Force.

Whatever the case, thanks for being here, thanks for reading. I’ll see you tomorrow with a fresh tasty WRITERS RESOLUTION 2025.

And away we go.