Holiday Update

I hope all my visitors have been having a good holiday weekend. It’s been (mostly) relaxing here.

First though, here are two links you might find of interest. Andrea over at Little Red Reviewer was kind enough to interview me about my upcoming books, and you can find the link right here. And if you’re unfamiliar with her site, you ought to look around because it’s loaded with interesting, entertaining content.

Second, here’s a link to The Skull’s holiday card.

Here in our tower by The Sea of Monsters all of our minions returned in time for holidays, and they were celebrated with great abandon. First this required a great deal of cleaning, and then my enchantress concocted some delicious food.

For ourselves, our biggest present this year was the basement. As I think I mentioned, with the basement finished, I can now leave my games set up for long stretches. So while I did receive two new boardgames, with the basement what I really received was an entire cabinet full of games, for I can finally play all those that I own. I must have played seven games of Falling Sky in the last week, and I’ve finally got a handle on the rules. It’s much more fun to conquer Gaul this way than I’m sure it was in real life.

I’ve finally gotten around to watching Deadwood and have started on the second season now. I find it riveting, clever, and exceedingly well acted, although the constant cursing gets on my nerves. Perhaps that sounds stodgy, but I tend to be old fashioned about some things. I’ve also begun watching The Haunting of Hill House with my daughter, and she in turn has begun watching Justified with me. Both shows are out of our respective wheelhouses, but so far each is happy with the other’s favorite. (And my God, Justified is holding up very well to a second viewing. What a well written, well acted show. It would have to be, because I have so little interest in the subject material.)

One of the gifts I got for my wife LAST Christmas was a little videogame titled World to the West, for Xb0x, which sees you wandering about exploring a world with four cartoony steampunk(ish) characters fighting enemies and collecting treasure. She and my son have finally been playing that every night while my daughter and I watch videos. They’re big Zelda fans, and this is close in flavor to some of the older Zelda games, and doesn’t require an investment in a new game platform.

I’ve also been doing some reading for fun, and very little writing. I have been, as Robert E. Howard used to say, filling the well — doing other things before coming back to writing, so that I’m fresh and energized upon my return. I’ve noticed that I’m already beginning to miss it. I’ve set up another boardgame to learn but my mind is beginning to wander as I study the rules, as I think about plotlines and characters and things.

We had such weirdly pleasant weather on Christmas that after we had a family sing along (our son and daughter are both accomplished musicians) I went outside to repair the horse fence and only had to wear a light jacket. As regular visitors know, our biggest horse likes to lean against the top fence rail to eat the grass on the other side, which is apparently more delicious than ANY of the grass in all three fenced acres of the property. Oddly enough, I didn’t mind the job, because I couldn’t help thinking that it would be terrible to have to fix the rail in the dead of winter in the freezing cold.