For a recent freelance assignment, I did some research on why the new year falls when it does (at least, for those of us who mostly use the Gregorian calendar). The answer is complicated and, as with the answer to most questions, boils down to, “There are several compelling theories, but nobody really knows, not for sure.”

Regardless, here we are, with another arbitrarily marked solar cycle drawing to a close and a new one about to begin. And let’s not mince words: 2025 has been fucking rough. Honestly, it feels like every year has been pretty rough since at least 2016 or so. It’s almost like something happened in 2016…

Notwithstanding all the bullshit that has been going on in the world, this has been a hard year in the Grey household. We still love the house we bought a couple of years back, but various shenanigans with property appraisals mean that we’re paying more than we bargained for, for a house that has countless hidden costs that have drained many of our reserves, both fiscal and where morale is concerned.

To make matters worse, I have been sick seemingly continuously since September. Every time I think I’m kicking it, either it comes back, or I get sick again, we’re still not entirely sure which. Consultations with the doctor have thus far proven inconclusive – it’s nothing we can pin down, so I think at this point we’re assuming that I unknowingly defiled the tomb of an evil wizard.

None of these are really the biggest problem, though. The biggest problem is two fucking letters: “AI.” I have written before, at some length, about the many reasons I despise “generative AI,” and I won’t get back into them here, except to say that the prevalence of this snake oil bullshit has been wreaking havoc in the writing industry – an industry that, let’s face it, was never that healthy to begin with.

Of course, it’s not alone. Private equity has been buying up venues and publications and driving them out of business. Contracts are becoming more predatory. Publishers have been doing less and less, offloading more and more of the expectations onto writers. If you want to have a career these days, you pretty much also  have to be a YouTube star or social media influencer. The list goes on and on. It’s a grim time to be doing what I do but, for now at least, I’m still doing it, and I’ll keep doing it for as long as we can keep the lights on.

To that end, I had a new book come out this year. Notes from Underground is something different from any of the other short story collections I have published, a “story cycle” of linked short pieces that, when taken together, form something that is, at least I hope, more than the sum of its parts.

Nor do you have to take my word for it. Trevor Henderson called it, “A wonderful collection quite unlike any I’ve read before,” while an insightful review at The Blog Without a Face called it “Grey’s most unified book, a capstone to his museum-of-monsters vibe that threads his obsessions into a single, durable rope.” They also named it one of the Best Horror Books of 2025.

I would, of course, love it if you picked up a copy, of Notes from Underground or any of my other recent books. My latest nonfiction collection, Glowing in the Dark, came out just last year, for example, and I’d still like to sell more copies of How to See Ghosts & Other Figments, which led one reviewer to exclaim, “On the level of Matheson, Grey is one of the best living short fiction writers of our time.” High praise indeed!

As has been the norm in recent years, I didn’t publish a lot of new short stories in 2025, though I’m happy with all the ones that did see print. Most of those were contained in a special zine that I put together with artist Patric Bates and released in limited quantities around Halloween. The first printing sold out immediately, so we made a few more and, at the time of this writing, you can still pick one up, while supplies last.

It was a really special experience, and one I hope I get to repeat sooner rather than later. I think these sorts of zines and collaborations might ultimately be at least one antidote to the “AI” bullshit being shoved down all our throats.

Aside from the two stories (and one framing story) in the Starlight Theater Halloween Double-feature zine and a new novella original to Notes from Underground, my only other new story published in 2025 was “The Phantom of the Wax Museum” in Steve Berman’s Final Curtain, an anthology of stories celebrating the centennial of The Phantom of the Opera. Happily, Publishers Weekly called my story a “standout.”

Not that I haven’t been busy. Besides my usual freelance work and recurring columns, I’ve written a number of nonfiction pieces, including writing about Godzilla and Frankenstein and how “AI” couldn’t have made Lilo & Stitch for Unwinnable, and about a trip I made to visit a monster museum for The Pitch.

I’ve also been writing monthly installments of licensed fiction for the Warmachine app. And speaking of columns, this year kicked off a new one, as I launched The Dark Séance at Signal Horizon, where I’ve been discussing the intersections between midnight spook shows, stage magicians, and gimmick films – particularly those of William Castle. The latest was about Mr. Sardonicus, and there’s still plenty more to come.

I also launched a Patreon around this time last year where I write about classic monster movies. So far it hasn’t exactly taken off, so we’ll see how it goes, but I love writing about old-timey horror movies, so any excuse…

And speaking of monster movies, it’s time to embark upon our usual year in review. There are still a few more days left before we fully kick 2025 in the ass on its way out the door, but I doubt very much that anything is going to happen in those days to change this lineup.

We’ll start with movies that actually came out in 2025. As is customary, I didn’t actually see that many of them (the count currently sits at around twenty). More unusual, however, a lot of the ones I did see were really good, and I had no trouble assembling a top five that I’m quite happy with out of that relatively modest number – and honestly, almost any one of those top five could easily be my number one movie of the year and I wouldn’t feel bad about it.

The extremely diverse list is: Kinki, Trick or Treat with Reed Richmond, Wake Up Dead Man, Harvest Brood, and Sinners. On a related note, until very late in the year, I thought I was going to have trouble picking a Favorite Creature from this year’s media, but fortunately a couple of really stellar options dropped in the last few months.

The “Cincide Children” from Joe Meredith’s amazing low-fi release Harvest Brood came awfully close to being my Creature(s) of the Year, but then I got to see Kinki, and Masaru-sama snatched up that spot away from them. I’m going to refrain from including any actual creature shots here, because most people won’t have a chance to see Kinki anytime soon, but rest assured that the reveals are quite special.

I read around 45 books this year, several of which were actually released in 2025. My favorite of those was always going to be Mike Mignola’s Bowling with Corpses, which was one of the most important releases of the year for me, even if it came out all the way back in January.

Other notable 2025 reads include Koga Shinichi’s Mansect, Renzo Adler’s Demon Zine Shinjuku, Trevor Henderson’s new Scarewaves book, Michael Wehunt’s The October Film Haunt, John Langan’s latest collection, Strange Houses by Uketsu, and Moan, the most recent series of Junji Ito reprints from Viz.

This might honestly have been a record year for me, as far as how many books I read in 2025 that actually came out in 2025.

While I read a lot of books in 2025 and saw a lot of movies that came out this year, as always, I watched way more old movies than anything else. At the time of this writing, I’ve watched more than 250 movies in 2025, and of those, around 150 were first-time watches, keeping me within the bounds of my goal of watching more new-to-me movies each year than I do movies I’ve already seen.

As usual, I kept a list of 25 (in this case) of my favorite new discoveries of the year that didn’t come out this year. The top spot almost certainly goes to Near Death from 2004, which I described on Letterboxd as “by far the worst movie I have ever rated five stars.” When it comes to trash cinema, Near Death is top tier garbage.

Other standout first-time viewings include Drive (1997), Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), The Bat Whispers (1930), I Saw What You Did (1965), Glen or Glenda (1953), the extremely unlikely anime adaptation of Tomb of Dracula (1980), In Cold Blood (1967), Ura Horror (2008), Really! Cursed Video: The Movie (1 and 2, both 2003), and Body Double (1984).

I contain multitudes.