Tales from the Raven

I shipped out Shard’s of Honor this afternoon.  It probably won’t be postmarked ’til the 31st, due to our PO’s pickup times, but it’s out of my hands and off my mind.  Can you tell I’m not thinking about it?
It’s almost certainly my best entry yet, and also the one I’ve put the most drafts and [...]

My loving family knows just what I like–books and more books.  Some highlights were the book about China which is stuffed full of photographs and the collection of Traditional Chinese Stories.  The giant book of world maps from throughout history will be a long-time favorite.  Then there were a couple of fantasy novels, a historical book [...]

Five Worst Things to Hear/Read at the Holidays: 
“First, promise you won’t be mad…”
“Some Assembly Required”
“Do we have jumper cables?”
“…the oven was never turned on.”
“Attention passengers, due to inclement weather…”
 
Five Best Breakfast Foods for Christmas Morning:
Hot chocolate with crushed candy cane
Left-over pizza, minus the anchovies
Sliced bannana with melted chocolate and soft caramel
Donuts with red and white sprinkles, washed [...]

This is a version you can actually enjoy, and though it may seem a little…unusual, I’ll bet you couldn’t keep the original version straight, either!
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/2Fe11OlMiz8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Tonight I was running on a low battery, and not on the look-out for any warm fuzzies.  In fact, I was biting my tongue to keep from snapping at the kids, and even Christmas was looking like one big chore looming at me from the to-do list.
Then my daughter (the five-year-old) asked if she could read [...]

A couple of the neighbors have dogs which we say hi to whenever they’re out.  Occassionally as I watch their enthusiasitc exploration of the neighborhood I remember fondly all the long walks under the trees, games in the yard, and doggy love which I enjoyed with our Brittany, many years ago.  Once in a while I [...]

As a kid I hated the term ‘green Christmas’.  Growing up in Utah, our Christmas was never green (heck, our summers worked pretty hard to pull off green!), instead Christmas without fresh snow would be a brown, mucky mush of left-over October snow and biting winds.  The years when it snowed on Christmas Eve, or thereabouts, were my favorite [...]

I mentioned before that I would be making an announcement about a new venture, but our guidelines didn’t satisfy and I felt I should plead the fifth rather than stumble through an apologetic attempt at posting the guidelines here.  However, after sending the entire editorial board off to wrestle Syrian spiders (rather like Bengalese tigers, but with more [...]