Gregeration X Newsletter December 24, 2022 – The Gatherings

It’s Christmas Eve morning. The house is quiet. My wife has already left for a final session of Jazzercise before the holiday festivities begin. My kids are still fast asleep. Even my dogs are snoozing on the couch behind me, hypnotized by the clickity-clack of my typing away on the keyboard. I’m sipping a cup of steaming hot coffee, relaxed and enjoying the peace before the final hectic preparations of the holidays ensue. Tonight we will celebrate Noche Buena, the traditional Filipino Christmas Eve celebration with my wife’s family and tomorrow we’ll be having Christmas Dinner with my aunt and uncle.

I’ve been off for the last week and luckily have one more week off. Between the joint stresses of busy times at work and the illnesses I mentioned in the previous newsletter, the break from work was much needed. Since I’ve mostly recovered, my sons and I have been on a cleaning, purging, and organization kick. We’ve made a lot of progress. The house (and their rooms!) looks better than it has in a long time. There’s still more to do, namely installing some shelving in my kids’ rooms, but that can wait until the day after Christmas.

This year seems to be the year of reunions (also a recurring theme in Rally Point…). Just about everyone we know wants to get together. This isn’t surprising since we haven’t seen many of these friends since before the pandemic. We’ve already attended one party, had dinner with a high school friend, and have several more gatherings planned between now and New Year’s Day. That’s a lot of “people time” for my wife and I, who are pretty much introverts, but when surrounded by close friends we can come out of our shells and be ourselves.

Over the next week, I will spend some time recharging and refilling my creative well. I hope to watch some shows, see some movies, read and listen to a book or two, and maybe flip through some old comics. We picked up two games (Doomlings and Happy Little Dinosaurs) that we’ll play once my wife has a few days off, too.

For those who celebrate, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas! If you celebrate something else, Happy Holidays to you as well! I hope you’re all able to spend time with those who are special to you and doing the things that bring you joy!

Orson and Olivia. Which one was naughty and which one was nice?

Mechhaven Missives

Last week I ran some promotions on the Mechhaven books. Quite a few people picked up one or more of the books. Thank you! Pax Machina spent most of the week in the top ten of several free categories and even made it to #1 in the Alien Invasion Science Fiction eBooks category for about a day.

Even with all the purging and errands we ran last week, I made progress on the edits for Mechhaven Book 4: Rally Point! Currently I’m working on Chapter 13. I plan to get through another 10-12 chapters before my vacation wraps up. That will put me roughly fifty percent through my first editing pass.

Featured Authors

Last year I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Sean Willson at a Writer’s Conference in Las Vegas. He was a nice guy. Please take a look and consider downloading it if it looks interesting to you.

Dark Nebula: Contact

Sean Willson

When aliens arrive in Sol, how does humanity react in the first few hours?

After several years of unstable peace throughout Sol, mankind is confronted with the arrival of an unknown alien force. Everyone deals with the unexpected arrivals differently.