Happy New Year

Just a quick message before the ball drops and I go to bed. Or maybe the other way around. Happy New Year to you and yours and may you leave the year 2013 in the same or hopefully better shape than which you entered it and most of all, with the blessings of the Lord in abundance.

Christmas Traditions

As I was growing up in the Panhandle of Texas, I always looked forward to the gag gifts that my great uncle would give at Christmas.  It was always junk...like rusty nails, a dried out cigar or even a few peanuts.  After uncle Frank died, my parents, but mainly my mother, took the concept to another level as it became “sacks”...brown grocery sacks with odds and ends that she collected over the course of the year.  Each member of the family would receive a sack with things like candy canes, trinkets and even a out-dated calendar and, of course some junk.  Over the course of years, mother began to search all the catalogs she received and send off for small unusual items that she would include in the sacks...sometimes they were interesting and even useful! 

Mother died in 2000 and I inherited the “duty” of the sack tradition.  Like mother, I spend the year accumulating and storing things in my closet.  However, I have changed the concept to include fun and unusual things.  Since my two children ,now 37 and 38, elected to leave all their growing-up “stuff” in the garage and attic, I can go through it and select things from their past that they haven’t seen for years...bringing about “wow, I haven’t thought about that for years...where did you find that dad?”  With three grandkids, I also have taken to buying neat toys and such for their sacks.  This year’s sacks will include a custom pool cue stick for my son...it was my dad’s, socks, used ties that I know longer wear, candy, cosmetics (for the granddaughter), Texas Ranger baseball memorabilia, some old (and maybe valuable) cookbooks for my son-in-law and many other trinkets and neat items.  I allow trading of sack items if both parties want what the other has received! 

My brother (who lives in Weatherford) and I also have a separate “sack occasion”.  We both have equal amounts of our mother’s “stuff” stored in our garages, and we have a lot of fun passing it back and forth each year.  I am sorry to say that since plain old brown grocery sacks are hard to come by (what ever happened to the grocery clerk asking if you wanted paper or plastic?), I have converted to large Christmas bags!  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Real Life Characters–Kris Howe

As I’ve said before, a few of my characters from THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON are based on real people. One character in the book, Chris, is based after my friend Kris Howe. Kris is an amateur paleontologist or fossil hunter. Kris is also kind of famous. Searching over around Lake Grapevine he found the remains of the oldest known bird in North America, almost 95 million years old. And, it was a new species at that, Flexomornis howei. With that kind of notoriety, it was a given that it should go into the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science. The announcement even made it to one of the giant TVs at Times Square!

 

KERA – Fossil Hunter, And His 95-Million-Year-Old Bird, Land At New Perot Museum

Texas Fossils - The Oldest Bird in North America

Perot Museum of Nature and Science

Five Copies of THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON Sent to Winners

I’d like to thank all the entrants into the GoodReads book giveaway that we ran a few weeks back. Over six hundred entries is not a large number compared to other contests on the site, but to me, well, I was a little humbled.

Books were sent out about two weeks ago, so hopefully everyone has them by now and are enjoying the story. After the first of the year, we will attempt a giveaway here and on Facebook to see if we can give some more away!

The winners received, in addition to the book, the first chapter of the sequel, TIME AWRY. Hopefully, they will find it just as entertaining.

In the meantime, congratulations to the winners! ~Ron

• Mary H. of North Carolina
• Kim V. of North Carolina
• Mara B. of Oklahoma
• Candace B. of Missouri
• Janet Q. of California