The Best Part of 2024 Was...

Where Fleur checks her goals and goes through the photos on her phone.

It’s almost Christmas, which means people are starting to look back at 2024. I did too, just to remember that I did do things. Sometimes a year is so long that you forget, and it feels like all you did was the laundry and the dishes…

I won’t lie. I had to go back to my post at the beginning of the year to remember what my goals were. And I did accomplish them, I was surprised to find: I wrote a rough draft of my WWII historical (it turned out not to be a middle-grade book), I wrote another middle-grade mystery that’s almost ready for submission, and I even wrote a decent draft of a non-fiction book about writing MG/YA mysteries. I also wrote a few short stories—in fact, I did more than I set out to do. One might say I deserve extra cake.

Yay me! I tell you this not to gloat, but because I’ve also had years where I didn’t write much beyond the grocery list, and I simply survived the storm. So if you’re in that boat, I get it. Do reach out if you need a life raft, okay?

The writing turned out not to be the best part of 2024, though. It also wasn’t the hiking, the traveling, the beach—not even the foster kittens or Floof (don’t tell her I said that).

If you’re struggling to figure out what your 2024 was all about, I suggest you go through the photos on your phone.

I did. And I realized that as much as I had a pretty great and productive year, the best part about 2024 was…

You.

My friends, my family, my writer people, teachers and librarians—the best part of 2024 was meeting up with you. Whether it was by email, phone, Zoom, or in person, our get-togethers made me so happy. We laughed and high-fived over our successes, hoped then cried over politics, talked writing and publishing and cats and kids and DIY and wellness and illness…

You made 2024 great. I’ll post some of the pictures (apologies for the bad photography skills) below, when I remembered to take them. You may be in these pictures, because I forgot to take pictures about 90 percent of the time...

Let’s do more of this friend thing in 2025. And if we didn’t get a chance to catch up in 2024, let’s do something about that in the new year.

Because you are the best part.