First off, I know it’s October. This is, however, the time of year where advent calendars start coming out and I love an advent calendar. Companies rebranding their overstock as little surprises leading up to Christmas to recoup their costs before they put these items on sale and putting it in custom packaging is a grift that I am 100% for. I enjoy a little surprise with fancy packaging, and it’s a fun way to check out a new business that I’m not familiar with.

Also, I just can’t do a lot of things these days and an advent calendar is a holiday experience I can handle.

Which brings me here. This is going to be a living document, updated throughout October, of advent calendars that I am considering for myself. I’ll update it as I find interesting ones, though probably won’t mention which of these I actually get until later.

The criteria

I’ve been doing this for a few years, so I have things I’m now looking for in an advent calendar.

1. 24/25 day calendars. There are a lot of 12 day calendars out there. My brain is not that good anymore. I’m not going to do that math. I will forget to start them, so for simplicity we’re going for the full month leading up to it.
2. No chocolate-a-day calendars. The most common type of chocolate advent calendar is a chocolate-a-day calendar. Either it is the same three or four types of chocolates cycled through a month like Purdy’s or Chez Christoph, or a different truffle every day like in the case of Cococo Chocolatiers or Chocolats Favoris. I’ve done these for a while and I’m looking for something a bit more. Show me what else your company/store has to offer besides truffles!
3. The more expensive, the less surprising. If I’m dropping a lot of money on a calendar, I do want some assurance that it will be worth it. I don’t need to know specifically what is in the calendar, but I do want to at least know that the items are going to be something I want.
4. Preference to Canadian small businesses. Even before the everything, I have been preferring Canadian businesses for this for a while. I will lean toward BC and Vancouver if I can find it. I will go outside of Canada if something looks interesting enough.
5. If there’s multiple options, go for the one I haven’t tried before. I have done David’s Tea many times. I did Squish and Life is Sweet and many others. While I like all of them, I also really want to try new things as much as I can each year.
6. Something I will enjoy. This is probably obvious, but I want to have a calendar that I am going to enjoy.

The categories

• Chocolate or Candy
• Pastry
• Drinkable
• Stationary
• Wildcard

Chocolate or Candy

La boîte à bonbons

Though I’m not entirely certain, this does look like a candy calendar that has more than a single bonbon in each of the drawers. I’ve seen it a few years now and this might be the year.

This company also has the bonus of offering a DIY kit, which is just last year’s candies to put into your own calendar. Which, well, I have a bunch of old calendars…

Sugar Cube

Every time I have looked at this site, I get instantly distracted by the fact that they have not only a candy truck, but a corporate candy section. It’s been a year or two since this one’s been on my radar, but it’s back now.

Squish

I’ve done these ones before, but I really liked Squish last year. The packaging was really nice, especially given the art hinted at what was behind each door and inside was a clear label to let me know exactly what the candy was. And, you know, the gummies were also really good.

Life is Sweet

This is another one that I’ve done before, but I really enjoyed it! It’s a little pricier, but on top of a few truffles, there were also other products in both sample size and full size throughout the month. These ones also have a refill pack, which is good because I still have the box ¹Which is surprisingly sturdy! The cardboard is thick and honestly the highest quality of the advent boxes I’ve gotten since I started doing this from last year!

Pastry

Hello Dolly Pastries

I have seen people very excited about these cookies, but after looking on the site I do have one main concern. Cookies tend to go stale and, while the eco-friendly packaging is great, I am not sure how fresh these cookies will be by the end of the calendar. Still, might still try these ones.

Just a Little Bit Cookie

Looking at the packaging, I have the same concerns about freshness but also I think this one might have more flavour options given the price point of the advent calendar. Might be wrong, might only find out one way!

Flapjackery

I always thought flapjacks were pancakes, but it looks like I was incorrect! Given that this is a UK company, though, I’m not actually sure if they ship to Canada, nor am I sure I want to pay that much to find out what they are for the first time.

Drinkable

Bush Berry

I love the idea that this is two cups! That means I get a morning and an evening cup out of this one. My only concern with this one is I’m not sure if it’s 24 pouches loose in the box, or if it’s actually formatted like an advent calendar where each day is a surprise.

Vintage Fork

That packaging is so pretty. The bonus is also very enticing, given how big it is compared to the tea bags. It is, however, a lot more expensive than most of the other tea options I’ve seen.

Stationary

Papier

Stationary advent calendars are so expensive, but also Papier is one of those ones I end up staring at every year and thinking real hard about. It’s just a matter of whether or not I will actually use all of the items inside.

Cult Pens

This is another one that I’ve looked at year over year. I’ve heard such good things, and the list does look like I’ll actually use a lot of the items inside of it.

Diamine

I’m a fountain pen girl. I have a collection of fountain pens, which makes a ton of cool inks seem like a great idea. I am also a creature of habit, so I’ve hesitated every year on this one because I just don’t know if I will leave my comfort zone to actually use new inks!

Kinda Kawaii

This looks so cool and like I could repurpose the box for something fun in the future. The problem is that at this price point I need full spoilers and there just isn’t enough to let me know if I will use everything inside to make it worth it.

Wildcard

Catcouver

A cat advent calendar for my little menace would be so much fun! The trouble is, of course, that Remy is very picky about everything so I’m concerned that this will result in a lot of days that are not used. I do, however, have several other cats in my life who are less picky, so it’s in the running.

Hingston and Olsen

I don’t actually know if they’re releasing one this year, but the idea of a short story advent calendar just sounds like so much fun. I do enjoy a short story, so getting one a day to read in the evening with a cup of tea and some snacks sounds like a lovely way to spend the evenings.

Reverie Puzzles

I have not been doing many puzzles because I don’t know what to do with them once I finish them, but this one looks so cute. The idea that each day is a puzzle that reveals another part of a story too? I am enticed.

Evoolution

I cook more than you’d think, and this one sounds like it could just be a lot of fun. I don’t do much with vinegar specifically, but the idea that this also comes with recipes tailored around all of the items so that they can actually be used makes this seem like a surprisingly good value.

Kanel

Speaking of interesting food calendars that will take me longer than one month to finish, this one is just spices! It also comes with recipes, but possibly is more designed for entertaining? That’s what I’m gathering from their description.

They say write what you know and a lot of authors out there write about characters who are writers. That part is not strange. What is strange is how these characters portray writing in books to a degree that makes me wonder: Am I the weird one? Do I just have a really strange writing journey that is outside of how most people operate?

I mean, yes, but also I don’t think it’s that far out of the ordinary.

There are some patterns I’ve noticed. This may just be in the books I read, and I need to read about more fictional writers, but this is what I’ve seen in a lot of the stories I come across.

They are in their 20s/30s and writing their very first book

This happening once in a while wouldn’t be that strange, but I keep coming across women ¹Almost always women who have always wanted to write a book and are in a place where they can start doing that because of the plot. How is it always your first book? Did none of you spend late nights writing embarrassing self-insert fanfiction in high school? Maybe a pile of books you wrote nearly to completion? The most they have is half written manuscripts that never felt right to them and I do not understand it.

It is always a book

More minor, but there’s other fiction formats than a novel. You can write short stories. Poetry. Novellas. Weird anthology series. Hell, scripts for comics, games, television, or movies. ²Male characters are more often writing television and movie scripts, I will note. Books makes sense because that’s what the author writes, but these writers rarely ever even consider another format. That’s probably because of the next point.

Their first book will be published in the end

This is your first novel ever. I can excuse the plethora of writers in these stories who are also working in literary agencies who understand what agents are looking for and know the traditional publishing process intimately. These people know what sells and, even though their journey is always framed as a passion project, those writers could know how to write for publication. The rest of these writers, though, not all of you are getting a book deal out of your first foray.

It’s romance or literary

Let someone write hard scifi! Let them buy a sword for research into their fantasy world fight scenes! It’s because that is what the genre of the book they exist in is, ³I know, I really need to pay more attention to the genre tags on books before I pick them up but genre is never a consideration. Maybe there’s a thriller author in a thriller book, but that seems to be as close as things get. I finally read one book where the writer is writing a romance with a fantasy element, but that part is so quickly glossed over with none of the nonsense of spending days trying to build a magic system that makes sense before deciding this is a soft magic system so you can get back to writing already.

They are writing by hand

By. Hand. My hands hurt just reading about it. I remember several people over the years writing their Nano novels by hand and the cramping and hand pains they endured, plus the pens giving out at key moments of their stories. It’s not a bad exercise to try, and maybe as their first book it’s actually a good thing to make them have to type up their book after hand writing it as their first editing pass, but how are all of these characters getting these books done without a single hand cramp?

They don’t have other writing friends

This absolutely happens with some writers, but every time? I think in one book the love interest was also a writer, but they acted more as a rival, which is a shame. Long conversations about how to make different parts of a book work between writer characters could be such a fun way to explore character dynamics or even to include some foreshadowing. I mean, if you have a romance author trying to make the romance work, it could be an easy way to drop in some hints around how the third act break up is resolved in an opening scene, you know?

I write writers too

All of this to say I am not exempt from doing some of these things as well, but reading about it so often is making me think a lot harder about the writer characters I have. They are getting writer friends, diversifying their genres and formats, and some won’t be published at all. And I will be sure to make myself a bingo card for the next book I read with a writer in it.

After months of writing for just ten minutes a day, I have finally managed to write a book for the first time in four years! The last draft I finished was back in 2021 when I write the Cloned Evil trilogy. It’s been so good to finally feel somewhat normal again.

It has been an adjustment to writing like this. I used to churn out a first draft in a week, letting myself get completely lost in the story and working off of a plot outline. I tried a lot harder with that first draft, hoping that it was structurally sound and actually including all of the bits that I don’t really enjoy writing. It was easier to do because I was writing for hours at a time, which meant that I would get back to the fun stuff soon enough.

But with only ten minutes a day, a lot of this went out the window and I went back to how I used to write. No plot, no time spent on the boring stuff, a lot of skimming over the bits that I didn’t have fully figured out. I forgot how much fun pantsing is. Plus, it’s not like I only spent ten minutes on the story a day, just ten minutes writing. I would write at the very end of the day, and then go to sleep with story ideas spinning through my head.

Which, incidentally, means I slept a lot better when I wrote.

There has been nothing that’s made me feel more like myself in the last several years of being chronically ill than finishing a book. It will be a long time before it’s ready for anyone else to read, but I’m so excited to be able to get back to working on the things I love again.

It’s been a while! Health took a bit of a dip and I had to unfortunately take a break from books and reading, but what better way to pick things back up again with a not-meme book from an author that I know almost entirely from the memes, Chuck Tingle! Although I think his erotica might have been a bit easier on the brain… (Not an insult, my brain is just part of the health struggles)

We follow Misha, a horror writer whose television series is going to culminate in a finale where the two female leads are going to make their relationship explicit at last, and for them to be happy. Unfortunately, the studio demands that ending change to either a tragedy or make them straight. When Misha refuses, the monsters he created in the past begin appearing and coming for him.

As an author, the first chapter hit especially hard for me. Woven into the themes of limited queer representation in media is also this element of algorithm-based media and replacing humans with AIs that will be able to make the perfect media based on what will be the most profitable. I believe this was written before OpenAI and Deepseek, but their existence certainly made that part of the narrative resonate with me a hell of a lot more.

I did admittedly spend a lot of the story thinking that some elements could have been collapsed together or various elements could be tightened up right up until the end. A lot of things came together and, well, asexuality as a plot point is a favourite underutilized thing I love to see.

Overall it was just a really fun book. My expectations were probably too low going into it, and I think I would have loved it just as much if I were expecting a lot more. I don’t think the heavy-handedness of the narrative takes away from the story, and I just really enjoyed it. If it sounds remotely interesting to you, check it out!