This is my last newsletter of 2023 so I thought I’d cover some of my favorite things and highlights from the past year. I’d love to read yours too.
🎥 The Barbie movie was obviously a gloriously pink highlight. Everyone in the family enjoyed it, even if I had to explain the last line to the kids.
📺 I feel like we watched a lot of great shows. The Last of Us, House of the Dragon, Succession, the return of David Tennant on Doctor Who, Daisy Jones and the Six, Ted Lasso. I know I’m forgetting some.
🎶 Taylor Swift. I loved listening to her music of course but also just following along with the fans online and seeing all the joy from the Eras tour and beyond. Also loved taking the kids to their first ever concert, Ed Sheeran.
📖 Tom Lake* is probably my favorite book of the year but I tore through Fourth Wing. I also enjoyed This Is How You Lose the Time War*.
I’m not going to pick favorite kidlit books as there are too many to name and I don’t want to leave anyone out!
✈️ It was a good travel year with the Grand Canyon being an epic highlight. Next year we have Whistler, Canada booked for skiing and quite possibly a trip home to 🇬🇧.
📚 Career-wise I launched two books, wrote a lot, was an award finalist, and I’ll hopefully have some news to share in early 2024 about what’s next. A major highlight has been connecting with my local author community as well as the online community. I want to do a lot more of that next year. And of course starting a substack with Vicky has been great fun: don’t forget to sign up for Kidlit Survival Guide! This week we covered work-life balance.
And the number of you reading this newsletter doubled this year. Thank YOU for being here!
Happy holidays and I’ll see you back here in 2024!
Christine
P.S. links marked with a * are affiliate and may earn me a small percentage of the sale at no cost to you.