Christmas Recap

I don't know what the official snowfall was around here, but we had five or six inches in our front yard, making this the whitest White Christmas in my memory. Most of it melted off the roads during the day, but there's still quite a bit in the pastures. Some of the drifts were several feet deep, something we don't get around here very often.

It was a quiet, peaceful day. We opened presents, ate some good food, watched TV (the Mythbusters Christmas Special on DVD, as well as some made-for-TV Christmas movies), ate some more, napped, just generally took it easy and enjoyed the day.

I like calendars and usually get at least a couple for Christmas. This year I got a wall calendar with cover reproductions from assorted science fiction pulps (PLANET STORIES, THRILLING WONDER STORIES, etc.), a GET FUZZY desk calendar for upstairs in my writing room, and a PEARLS BEFORE SWINE desk calendar for downstairs. There were some CDs, a DVD history of the Dallas Cowboys (apologies to all of you who dislike the Cowboys, but they've been my team for more than forty years and it's too late for me to stop rooting for them now), and an excellent stack of books: Robert Lesser's PULP ART, the coffee table book from a few years back that I've never owned until now; a couple of Spider reprint volumes by Norvell Page, CITY OF DOOM, the mass-market paperback from Baen, and THE SPIDER VS. THE EMPIRE STATE from Age of Aces Books, each of which reprints three novels; THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF THE SECRET 6, from Altus Press, which reprints all four novels from the short-lived pulp series by Robert J. Hogan; THE ADVENTURES OF SMOKE WADE, VOL. 1, pulp aviation stories also by Robert J. Hogan, published by Age of Aces; SWORDS FROM THE WEST, the latest Bison Books collection of Harold Lamb stories from the pulp ADVENTURE; and finally HONEY IN HIS MOUTH, the Hard Case Crime novel by the great Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage. If you're counting, that's more than 2500 pages of pure pulp goodness! It may take me a while to work my way through all those books, but I know I'll enjoy them tremendously.

Christmas Day is always a time of reflection for me, rather than New Year's. I always look back on what's happened since last Christmas and wonder what will happen between now and next Christmas. It's also a reminder of how truly blessed I am to have a wonderful family and great friends and the opportunity to do work that I enjoy and that brings pleasure to other people. I hope it was a wonderful holiday for each and every one of you.