It's The Most Saturnalian Time Of the Year 2020

Welcome back to another year of the Roman celebration of the Winter Solstice!

I need to hire someone to do a better graphic design for the Saturnalia season.

Say what you want about the failings of Roman politics,
they knew how to throw a shindig!

Happy holidays to you all, ya pagans!

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...

Io Saturnalia, 2018!

This is a Saturnalia logo I designed, messing around in a shareware program Inkscape, looking to make my own Saturnalia greeting card for the season!

...

Yeah, I know. It doesn't exactly POP out at ya.

I need to learn how to draw A) Roman wine caskets, B) the funky Saturnalia hats, and C) full-out Chariot Race laurels.

In the meantime, if YOU need Saturnalia greeting cards, check it out at my CafePress store.

All I Want This Saturnalia

Just these three things:

1) Sanity in my life
2) Focus on my writing projects
3) 50 million readers

That's not too much to ask, right?

Io Saturnalia!!!

I Know It's Early to Think of Christmas Ornaments

But I'd love to start up getting more Library of Congress ornaments for this coming season.

It's a pity the one I like is saying Sold Out.

Damn.

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.

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.