New Year’s resolutions.  I love them.  A clean slate, fresh start, brand new page to write a brand new history.  Every new year is a chance to reconsider life and make necessary changes.  There’s only one problem.  While we’re thinking about all the changes we need to make, and preparing for a new opportunity to fix what’s wrong, it’s easy to forget all the things we did right and all the things that WENT right in our lives this year.

My friend mystery author Casey Daniels introduced me to Manhattan’s Good Riddance Day in a recent post on The Little Blog of Murder.  On December 28th giant shredders are set up by the Times Square Alliance, and everybody who wants to can shred the negatives of the past year.  Letters from ex-lovers.  Rejection letters from editors (okay, I added that myself), disappointing report cards.  If the artifact can’t be shredded, then giant sledgehammers are available to pound it into submission.  How freeing to say goodbye to the negative to make way for the positive.

But what about all the good moments of 2009?  It’s so easy to concentrate on the things we didn’t accomplish.  What did we accomplish that made us happy?  What serendipities occurred that were simply gifts, deserved or undeserved, from the universe?  What good advice did we pass on?  When did we practice patience when annoyance would have been so much easier?  When did we NOT forget a loved one who needed us?  When did we NOT forget a stranger in trouble?

Here are a few of my own finer moments of 2009. 

Serendipities: 

Discovering that 20 of my older novels will be made into television movies in Germany.  This was truly a gift from the universe and completely unexpected.

After more than 10 years of open houses and regretful head shaking, finding the perfect (for us) cottage at Chautauqua Institution to enjoy in the coming years. Proof that even the craziest dreams can come true.

My husband’s six month sabbatical and a chance to spend some of it in Florida, where we both grew up, with family we rarely see.

Accomplishments:

A year of Southern Exposure and Facebook, and the discovery that both blogging and social networking are a wonderful way to make new friends and get new viewpoints.

Pushing deadlines back a bit to give myself room to breathe and enjoy life.

Introducing the world to the women of Happiness Key.

Reaching out:

A fact finding trip to Guatemala to visit social justice agencies trying to right the wrongs of decades.

Support for a number of causes including Child Fund International, Doctors Without Borders, Holdeen India Project.  

Now, what about you?  Are you concentrating on all the things you didn’t do this year, and all the things you want to change?  Why don’t you take a moment and list your 2009 accomplishments.  It’s not as easy to be happy with what you did, as it is to expound on the things you didn’t do.  Society trains us to be both modest  and negative.  So break the rules.  Take a chance and blow your own horn right here.  Trumpet those virtues.  Let us wallow in your good luck and enjoy it vicariously.

If you tell us something good about your own 2009 (click on comments at the top right to do so) I’ll enter your name in a drawing for an autographed copy of Happiness Key, whose four major characters accomplish a LOT over the time span of the novel.  Just tell us something good that happened to you or that you made happen in 2009 and do it by January 7th.  Or tell us a lot.

2009 is nearly over.  Let’s celebrate all the reasons we will hate to see it go. 

I can picture this display in Wanda’s yard on Happiness Key, can’t you?  So from Wanda, Tracy, Janya, Alice, Olivia and Emilie, a warm (hearted) and generous (in spirit) holiday to everyone. 

Until the new year, stay safe and happy, and stay away from even the friendliest alligators.  I’ll see you then.

Emilie

One of the things I love most about Sanibel Island is the diversity of wildlife.  The birds amaze me.  This morning a Great Egret performed a majestic stroll through our yard.  On the beach varieties of sandpipers, gulls, pelicans, ibis and snowy egrets entertain us each morning and evening.  Used to cardinals and sparrows in my yard this time of year, exotic birds are a new treat.  Of course nothing’s quite reached the excitement of spotting a bald eagle across the street this week, perched high in a dead tree looking for breakfast.  My first bald eagle.  A Christmas treasure to be savored.

This time of year we think so much about gifts.  With a laid back Christmas rolling out before me, I’ve had time to concentrate more on the gifts around me, and less on gifts that come from stores.  Being away from home has given me a new perspective on shopping.  Instead of buying themed food gifts for agent and editors this year, in their names I bought a bookshelf for a child development center in Sri Lanka through Child Fund International, in hopes that a new generation of children will learn to appreciate reading as much as all of us did.  For my children, simpler presents or help with airfare so they can come and visit us.  Not shopping as much, or baking in the iffy oven of our rental house, has freed up time to write cards designed by one of my sons to friends far and near, and to enjoy the experience.

I love all the Christmas trappings, but this year?  I confess it’s nice to have fewer and to concentrate more on enjoying the holiday and its message of hope.  Next year?  Who knows.  Maybe we won’t have to travel so far from home to have a simpler Christmas.  I’m not sure exactly what I’ll take away from this holiday on Sanibel.  But surely, I will always remember my bald eagle friend, posing for this photo, and be joyful.  

Dear Santa–and I mean the real deal, not somebody like me, a Santa wannabe who punches a time clock and takes off his beard to scratch his chin when nobody’s looking,

Here’s the thing, Santa.  Christmas is confusing.  Part religious holiday, part commercial extravaganza, with ancient pagan customs like Christmas trees and mistletoe thrown in to complicate the issue.  Sometimes I can’t remember who I’m supposed to represent.  The guy who chose Rudolph to guide his sleigh?  The early Christian saint, Nicholas of Myra?  Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa? 

But it’s getting more confusing all the time.  Everybody’s a comedian.  Do you know that last week a little boy sat on my lap and pointed out I would have to visit 822 houses per second to even hope to get everywhere I need to go on Christmas Eve.  He wasn’t at all sure I could manage that or that my reindeer could pull a sleigh weighing in the neighborhood of 675,000 tons, even with Rudolph’s nose lighting the way.  Smart aleck kids.  What happened to requests for Mickey Mouse ears and popguns?

So now, on top of identity crises and physics lectures, we’ve been dealt the lowest of blows.  In the midst of an epidemic, we Santas are not among the groups marked for priority for the swine flu vaccine.  We hold these little squirming petri dishes on our laps, one right after the other, all day long, and at best we’re offered hand sanitizer.  I have to wash my beard every night when I go home. Insult to injury.

So here’s my request.  A swine flu shot for every Santa’s helper.  Oh, and if there’s room in your sleigh for something more?  How about the suspension of disbelief, the embrace of the impossible, the whispered confidences of radiantly hopeful children to a silly looking man in an itchy beard. 

Okay, all those things still happen, I guess.  There was the little girl in this photograph some time ago.  She told me she wanted books and lots of them.  She said she wanted to write books some day.  Every kid’s a dreamer, I guess, then and now.  I promised her I would do what I could.  It was only one of about a million promises I’ve made.  But you know, all those kids?  Well, they were thrilled.  Come to think of it, most of the time even the comedians get that certain look in their eye.  You know the look I mean, the one that says that maybe a friend or even a parent told them I’m not real, but inside, they know better.  They sit on my lap and despite everything else, for a moment, at least, they believe in Christmas miracles. 

So okay, forget everything but the vaccine.  Maybe I already have the best job in the world. 

And who knows, could be some of the promises I’ve made over the years will come true after all. 

In my last blog I shared my silly Christmas carols for the unpublished author, the romance author and the frustrated editor.  But how could I end without carols for booksigning authors and publicists? 

Just a word here.  I actually love my blog and my Facebook page, or I wouldn’t do either.  But since authors are being asked to do more and more of their own publicity, that’s what “Deck the Web” is about. 

So, if you can stand a few more?  Here they are, the never before published (because who would want them?) and most recent of my Christmas carols for booklovers collection.  And a happy booklover Christmas to everyone. 

Poster Paper-the booksigning carol (tune Silver Bells)  

Poster Paper

I have a silly side.  Aggie Sloan-Wilcox, my mystery series sleuth evolved from that part of me.  Undoubtedly, that’s why I love writing the Ministry is Murder novels so much.  Solving mysteries AND being just a little bit silly?  What a way to spend my afternoons.

I discovered my silly Christmas carol side several years ago when I began to mentally rewrite Christmas carols for booklovers.  Now, I can’t remember why or how it started.  Who cares?  That’s what being silly is all about.  But over the years, this unfortunate trend has continued.

This year I decided it was time to share my carols with you.  There’s something for everybody on the booklover spectrum.  So consider these my Christmas presents to my faithful blog readers.  “Mary Reader” my “Good King Wenceslas” tribute to readers everywhere who wish there was more diversity at the bookstore, is featured at reading group guides this week.  

Meantime stay tuned for a second installment of carols on my next blog.  When I’m silly, I’m really silly!

Oh Manuscript-the unpublished writer’s carol

I’m sometimes asked about the many romances I wrote before I began writing longer women’s fiction and mysteries.  I’m still proud of them.  I often stretched genre limits and always wrote about things that mattered to me. 

Recently I received my very own Christmas present, news that German film producers plan to make twenty of those older novels into television movies there.  Two  have already been made and shown, and I’m delighted with the result.  It’s nice to have my old friends so well appreciated.

As one of my holiday presents to you, I wanted to share a passage from Fugitive, which came out in 1990.  Tate, the heroine, has moved to a cabin on land in rural Arkansas left to her by a father she never knew.  This is an entry from his journal. I hope you enjoy it. 

“When one brilliant star hangs in the midnight sky like God’s own night-light, folks hereabouts call it a wise-man star. I can’t think of a reason to call it anything else, can you? Even the wisest of us needs help finding his way sometimes.