2025 Recap

Happy Belated New Year! Boy, do I have some stuff to share… So much has happened since my last post and, unfortunately, much of it was not pleasant. I achieved very little of what I set out to do in 2025 in regards to my book, but that’s not to say that I had no victories at all. They were just very hard fought and I had no energy left to maintain a blog. I had only a few good stretches of editing, so most of my book goals for 2026 will be copy and paste from last year. I’ll share those in my next blog post. For now, I’ll dive into my 2025 recap and share the bad, the ugly, and the good that happened.

At the time of my last post, I was actually feeling pretty optimistic about my odds of being published in 2025. I had a lot more energy, my brain was less fuzzy, and my body hurt less. If you haven’t read previous posts, I had discovered that the chronic pain and fatigue I’d been dealing with for several years was likely due to a tooth infection from a botched filling. I got the situation taken care of and spent the next few months supporting my body through the healing process. By the time of my last post, I was in much better shape.

With renewed determination, I sat down, dug deep, and reworked the outline for my book. I wanted to make sure that story was solid now that my head was clear, so I went through it with a fine-toothed comb until I believed I’d reexamined every previously filled plot hole with fresh eyes and answered any lingering questions about the world building I’d had. With that done, I immediately began applying the necessary changes and spent a solid month and a half reworking the draft. I was on a roll and feeling like things had finally turned around. Until the snow melted.

Early 2025

Early in the spring, we had multiple fires near our house due to many weeks of drought and high winds. One raced through the field behind our neighborhood and came within roughly 15 yards of us with no warning. (It was mere feet away from taking out our neighbor’s house.) A few days later, another large fire started a few streets away and the smoke blew so thick in our direction that we prepared to evacuate if it spread. Everyday, it seemed like there was a new fire threatening us and our loved ones. I couldn’t sleep due to all the notifications from the fire watch app because they came through at all hours. I was worried one would start near us and spread in the middle of the night, so I stayed awake for hours to keep watch and ended up exhausted and scatter-brained during the day. I tried to stay on top of my writing but I didn’t have the extra brain power to do anything creative.

Thankfully, our fire department and other emergency responders were incredibly skilled and handled each one that popped up quickly. They held the line until we eventually got enough rain to saturate the area and it was a relief for everyone when the drought meter finally shifted back towards green. Though the winds continued, the ground remained wet enough to hinder future fire development and I was able to sleep through the night again. I’m certain my cortisol levels were sky high from all the worrying, though, because I had flare ups of joint pain and overslept for at least a week after things calmed down.

Unfortunately, as soon as we finally got consistent rain, the weather turned perpetually severe. My reprieve was short lived and I spent the next month staying awake 3-4 nights a week to make sure the overnight threats passed us by without incident. I’ve never been able sleep through big storms, but especially not after we had a spin up tornado go right by our bedroom window without warning years ago. Most of the storm systems went by without causing any trouble but the continued lack of sleep dragged me down. By May, I was really stressing over the fact that I hadn’t uploaded anything new to my blog but it was impossible to work on any of my planned posts and still edit my book. I had to pick one and so I chose to spend my energy on editing and investigating new world-building ideas that would play into the next book’s story.

During this time frame, my cat, Toby, suddenly got sick and his health deteriorated fast. I dropped everything that could be dropped to take care of him but there was nothing I could do. He passed away within a matter of days and I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. He’d shown no signs of being in poor health until he was spiraling downhill, and then we were left with this huge emptiness in our house when he died. Some animals feel like soul mates or kindred spirits, where your energy just syncs, and that’s what he was to me. He always knew when I wasn’t feeling well, even if I wasn’t showing it, and would come to cuddle with me until I felt better. I wish that I’d had the same knowing when it might have counted…

He tried so hard to hold on at the end. I know he didn’t want to go. His breathing would slow, and I thought he was going, but then he would jerk his head up to look at me and made a few tired biscuits on my shirt. It felt like he was trying to comfort me and all I could do was hold him and cry. I just hope he knew how much I loved him… I like to think that pet reincarnation is real and he’ll come back to us one day because I was not ready for him to go. He was only 8 years old and the sweetest, most loving cat I’ve ever met. It’s been nearly 8 months and I still feel his loss like it was yesterday. I didn’t get enough time with him.

To make matters worse, we barely had 48 hours to deal with his passing before the biggest crisis happened.

The Storm

Two days later, we were preparing for another significant weather system and I was glued to the radar and alternating between the YouTube channels of Ryan Hall Y’all and Reed Timmer for updates. Our area doesn’t usually get crazy severe weather but the storms continued to grow and looked to be turning particularly violent, and I had a feeling that this system was going to be bad when it finally reached us. I watched as the Enderlin, ND tornado (which ended up breaking the EF-5 drought) touched down and prayed the system would fall apart as it crossed state lines.

A derecho formed, essentially consuming the Enderlin storm cell, and then barreled toward us. We hunkered down in our “safe” room as the winds reached us and I spent the next 20-30 minutes praying out loud for safety and protection as the winds hurled things at us and trees landed on our roof. Our cat, Finn, cried out in fear every time something hit the house and it broke my heart to hear him so terrified. To my horror, the power went out and the hissing, shrieking straight-line winds gave way to the whoom whoom rotation of a tornado. The thing sounded huge because it completely drowned out the sound of the wind. We huddled tightly together, knowing our safe room wasn’t strong enough if we got hit, and prayed even harder.

Miraculously, the tornado was only on the ground for about 10 seconds (it felt like forever) before it lifted and went over our house. I heard it come back down in the field behind us and fade into the distance. A few minutes later, the winds had passed completely. We crawled out from our hiding place to find water pouring in through the roof in the hallway and the ceiling in the master bedroom caved in. Our dogs, who had stayed quiet through the whole ordeal, lit up the night with their loud bays as if rousing from the shock and realizing they needed to sound the alarm. We stumbled to the front door to assess the damage.

The entire neighborhood had been flattened. Hundreds of trees lay across the road, through yards, and on roofs. Some went through walls. People were turning on their car’s headlights so we could see in the dark and everything was covered in tree branches. It was a sea of green needles everywhere you looked. Our neighbors gathered outside to check on each other and, another miracle, found that no one had been seriously injured. Trees and homes had been brutalized, and the road was impassable, but every person walked away safe from the storm.

We did an assessment of our house with flashlights when the rain stopped and found that 3/4 of it seemed intact. We mopped up what we could in the hallway and then took a small nap in the living room, waiting for the sun to come up. In the light of day, we found 4 trees on our roof. Amazingly, not a single window was broken. Most of the trees in the neighborhood had broken off about 15-20 feet up, which means that the worst of the winds didn’t make it all the way down to ground level. Another miracle considering they were clocked at 120+ mph… I can only assume that there was so much energy roiling around up there after the derecho ate the Enderlin cell that it couldn’t get organized enough to reach all the way down. One group of trees looked like they’d gone through a blender, which seems to be where the tornado touched down. Thankfully, it didn’t travel very far.

The following days and weeks were busy, at times chaotic, and stressful. Though we were utterly grateful to still be alive, and reveling in how normal things suddenly seemed more enjoyable and beautiful, we were faced with a massive repair job and lingering anxiety for the rest of the storm season. Our dog, Apollo, became terrified of the wind and refused to go outside. The landscape looked so different that neither dog wanted to spend any real time out there. We quickly came to the conclusion that we needed to move. Start over in a new house that didn’t hold any stressful memories and, hopefully, had a basement.

A clip of the storm footage from our security camera, right before the power went out. You can hear the beginning of the tornado at the very end.

Latter 2025

While we house hunted, I managed to scrounge a little bit of time for editing and even adapted some of my world building into a D&D campaign with friends to test its viability as a story. It seemed to play well overall, and confirmed some of my plans for Book 2. I know I have a lot of work still ahead of me to finish Book 1, but I’m really excited to be able to dive into the wider conflict in the next book. When I started this series, I always knew I wanted to have the second book started before I published so I could ensure the story line flowed seamlessly from one to the other and I’m really glad I did it that way. Each thread that I connect between the books is making the story stronger.

I do wish I’d had more time to write last year, but I’m happy with what I was able to accomplish overall. Our main focus had to be fixing our living situation, so anything extra was a nice bonus. The world building was the most significant achievement since I’d been debating about one course of action that would change what happened later in the series, and I really like the way the story flows now that I’ve committed to it. I still have a few more revisions to make in the current draft and then I can polish it up for beta readers.

As for the house hunting, it took us a few months to find something in our price range but, once we did, things moved pretty swiftly. I spent my days boxing up our belongings, leaving my office space for last so I could sneak in a little bit of editing here and there, and tried to figure out how to balance the holidays with our move. We weren’t able to put up any Christmas decorations since we expected to be moving mid-December, but I planned to put the tree up as soon as we got to the new place and leave it up through January for a belated Christmas season.

And here’s where we get the cherry on top… In the middle of all of this, my health took another dive and I ended up in the emergency room. They ran a bunch of tests, found one issue that might be contributing, but couldn’t give me a definitive answer as to what was causing all the pain. I left, wondering if I would ever get a clear, actionable answer one day. At least when I thought it was the tooth, there was a clear course of action to take. Waiting to see if the new treatment would help was stressful because the pain wasn’t going away. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long.

We moved out of our old house shortly after this ER visit and all of my issues vanished within days. It turns out that there was black mold in our old walls. If you research the effects of black mold, it can cause a host of health issues that don’t always show up in tests. You look fine on paper but you feel like you’re dying inside. And, if you don’t eradicate it, it can absolutely kill you. It’s entirely possible that the derecho ultimately saved my life, and potentially the rest of my family too, by forcing us to move. (They showed no sign of illness but also weren’t in the house as much as I was.) I hate to think about what could have happened if we hadn’t gotten out of there. As it is, I’m so thankful that we survived the storm and are now in a much better living situation.

We still have to finish unpacking and add some extra shelving in a few rooms, so I expect that I won’t be able to devote my full attention to writing for a little while, but I’m already getting hyped to finish my book. I feel a thousand times better (leagues beyond how I felt the last few times I’ve “gotten better”) and I’m ready to get back to work. I know it takes time to recover from mold exposure, so I’m not setting any deadlines just yet because I may still experience some flare ups as my body heals. If I can get the book to beta readers by a certain time, though, I will push to publish this year. As long as I stay focused, and any flare ups remain small, I think my odds of following through this year are very high.

I’ve poured so much of myself into this story and I can’t wait to get it out there. It’s taken years (far too many) and lots of restructuring to get this close, but I’m almost to the finish line and I’m trying my hardest to stay the course despite all the setbacks. Book 2 is already mostly drafted and in much better shape for editing than Book 1 was after the first few drafts, so I’ll be able to get a running start on it once I’m finished with the first book. I actually have a dedicated office now, so it’ll be a lot easier to close the door and block out the noise when it is time to write, which will definitely help.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed and praying for smooth sailing this year!

How did your 2025 go? Do you have any big plans for 2026? If so, share them in the comments!

*Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash