Getting To the End of a Year 2019 Edition

This is also in some respects the end of a Decade (2010-19) and time to not only review a year but review an era.

I started off 2010 unemployed as a librarian, struggling to find even part-time work, not getting back into the profession until 2013 where I've been thankfully for the last six years.

Writing-wise, I've been keeping up with NaNo here, a few short story submissions there, two self-published books (one an anthology, the other a set of political essays) but still nowhere close to a full-scale novel to call my own.

There's been a lot of personal changes along the way. Sad ones, like the loss of my kittehs Page (died 2011) and Tehya (died 2013)... but good ones, like the arrival of Ocean (literally on my doorstep Halloween night 2013) and Mal (literally as a litter during the Fourth Quarter of the Denver vs. Seattle Super Bowl 2014).

Still coping with depression, with anxiety, with a meager social life, heading into 2020 coping with major surgery that still needs to get scheduled so I can know exactly when to go into full panic mode before the doctors hit me over the head with a hamma to knock me unconscious.

There's more to say before the end of the year - still have to type up a Year End's Book Reviews - and we'll see about me taking care of a writing project soon, very soon.

In the meantime, I've barely done any Christmas shopping for Saturnalia. Shame, Witty... shame...

Star Wars The Force Awakens Has All The Toys I Want

...so help a Jedi out.

For starters, there's a LEGO Millennium Falcon (WITH NEW RADAR DISH!)

There's a real-working desk-sized BB-8 toy that can be remote-controlled by your tablet/smartphone.

There's a chance to buy your very own Harlan Ellison uh Lawrence Kasdan no no your very own Simon Pegg!  Whadda you mean, he's not for sale...?

(takes his 50 p) (gets out, crying)

These are kind of the things I missed asking for Christmas back when I was eight years old (did get the action figures and the fluffy Chewie doll SHUT UP).  It'll be a little embarrassing asking Santa for them at the age of 45 (okay so I haven't grown up THAT much...).  And I hate to admit it, but the Saturnalia holidays is not up on toy-gifting (damn the harvest festive bacchanal nature of the Romans!).

So I would very much like... ahem, NEED... to buy these toys for meself.  Thing is, I'm a little strapped for cash at the moment.  And the Falcon set alone is around $140.

That's where you, the faithful seven readers of this blog, come in.

Can you all ask about 50,000 of your closest friends and co-workers and deep-pocket rich people around you to, you know, buy my ebooks?!?!?!  The extra cash-flow from the sales should cover the purchase price of a life-size Jabba the Hutt sofa...

I don't think I can boot up a Kickstarter crowd-funding thing for this sort of project.

Sigh.

Update: Actually I *can* add a Donate button to a blog, but it would be a little too tacky.  ...Except I'm begging for book sales in the first place!  Well, as I argue to myself, selling the books is a fair form of exchange, me providing a service (book) and the buyer getting something of value.  So that seems morally acceptable. ;)

That said, the Lego Millennium Falcon is now MINE.  Yes, I indulged for myself this Saturnalia season.  Getting it now means I won't miss out getting it when we get closer to the movie release in December, when all the stores are bound to run low on supplies of the cool toys.

I won't open it now.  1) I need to find a place to shelve it when finished and 2) It's 1300+ pieces!  This thing is gonna take a WEEK to put together...

My inner 8-year-old is geeking.

New Story: Welcome to Christmas In Florida

I got the cover art worked out: a co-worker at the library is good at drawing and so helped me out of this jam.  Remind me to pay her commission when she gets back from her Christmas vacation.

It's a follow-up to my earlier estory "Welcome to Florida."  It happened for two reasons: 1) I wanted to do a Christmas short story about how we cope in Florida with a snow-less holiday that's supposed to have snow, and 2) a local writers' group Writers 4 All Seasons had a writing challenge of having characters react to a surprise guest visitor from their lives.  When that challenge was offered, I realized I had a conflict in that second idea I could use to tell the first idea.

So I made the surprise guest visitor a Santa Claus with a dark agenda.  Hopefully, hilarity ensues (I am pimping the story as humor - short story).

I also wanted Trans-Siberian Orchestra to show up as a caroling group so I could riff off the old holiday special tropes of having musical guest stars.  I changed the band name within the story (trying to avoid the lawsuit, eh), but you can kinda tell it's them when they show up.

Amazon.com already has it up for sale as a Kindle book for the ereaders.

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) has it up for sale as a Nook book too.  Both stores have it selling at $.99 (the lowest price an author can set: as a short story, I shouldn't be charging any higher).

If you have the inclination, own an ereader Kindle or Nook (or have a tablet/laptop with the ereader app), and like humorous stories that are wildly implausible and contain at least three grammatical errors, please do me a favor and consider downloading my tale.  If you do, please also leave a review.

Danke, and IO SATURNALIA!

One Problem With Being a Librarian During The Winter Festivities

...is that when I offer people a wonderful "Io Saturnalia!" almost none of them get what it is I'm saying.

Sigh.

Okay, here's the Wiki entry on Saturnalia:

...A number of scholars view this festival as the origin of later Christmas celebrations, or at least as contributing to them. Others point out that the Christian feast of Christmas on December 25 does not coincide with the date range of the Saturnalia, and that Christmas in any regard has not always been celebrated on December 25. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that church's view on the matter by saying that while midwinter pagan feasts such as Saturnalia may have helped influence the eventual choice to fix the date of Christmas, this does not mean that Christian Christmas traditions find their origin or inspiration there: "though the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too."

Just remember these three things:
1) Say "Io Saturnalia" a lot;
2) Find out which Roman Pagans are still around to answer back;
3) Celebrate.