I can’t believe this year is almost over! I have been thinking back on everything I’ve done so far this year, and gosh, it’s a lot.

Other things I have done this year:

• read almost 60 books!

• went dancing at some early evening goth dance parties!

• marched in several protests, and attended ICIRR rapid response training!

• made my first tiramisu, completely from scratch!

• underwent minor surgery!

• introduced my sisters and niblings to Kinokuniya!

• canned a surplus of tomatoes from my community garden plot!

• made a new friend who makes gorgeous ceramics, and who let me paint a bowl that she then fired for me!

I’ve also drawn almost fifty(!) new comics for this newsletter. If you’ve made it this far with me, thank you so much for reading! Thank you so much for subscribing! Thank you for being my excuse to draw something new every week. I wanted a good place to share my art for free, and between predatory algorithms, clickbait, and companies scraping posts to train their LLMs, social media is just not that place anymore. I hope you’ve been enjoying my doodles and updates (and of course, pictures of Toki). And I hope you’ll stick with me in the new year for more of all of it.

Shameless Self-Promotion:

So. Yes. As stated above, I am losing my day job at the end of the year. My partner is still employed, and we are lucky enough to have a healthy cushion of savings. Things are not dire, but it’s still a blow. If you have any design or illustration needs, hit me up. You can also preorder my new book, which will be out in April. I’m thinking of offering commissions in the new year, too!

Also, now wouldn’t be the worst time to order something from my shop, if you want:

What I’m into lately:

Currently reading A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher, and absolutely loving it. The characters are engaging, the atmosphere is suspenseful and eerie, and there are some genuinely laugh-out-loud comedic moments to break the tension. My younger self finds Cordelia immensely relatable; my current self finds Hester immensely relatable. (It occurs to me that I’ve read a lot of books this year about bad moms! Not entirely intentionally!)

What Toki’s into lately:

Toki is renewing his commitment to being an infuriatingly adorable little sweet potato in the new year.