Tis the season ...

... to be Really Busy.

I get the math. I do. We're all adding end-of-the-year deadlines, end-of-the-year festivities, and (the worthwhile subset, anyway, of) last New Year's unfulfilled resolutions to our daily routines, commitments, and aspirations. (I am still making headway on the new novel in progress. Thank you for asking.) Still, even more than usual, I can't help but wonder: where does the time go?

All of which is to fess up that I'm more pressed than usual to feed my blogging habit. Many regular visitors here, I suspect, likewise find themselves busier than their norms. Put it all together and this isn't the occasion for a long post.

Some of you will be in a reading and/or shopping mode. I'll refer you to three recent posts Spread the meme: Buy-a-Book Saturday! (it's never too late to buy a book, especially an ebook), 2015 Best Reads, and -- because I find this so amusingly quirky -- Robots and Descartes and Shakespeare, oh my! What's not to like?

"A Stranger in Paradise"

I'll end with a graphic by the mega-creative SF artist Dean Spencer. This is hardly the traditional celestial image of the season, but it's been a favorite artwork of mine since its 2007 appearance in the late, lamented e-zine Jim Baen's Universe. The image illustrates (and was based upon) my novelette "A Stranger in Paradise." The story remains available online, without charge -- click that illo -- for your enjoyment. (Assuming, of course, you somehow have the time ;-)  The link will be here, waiting.)

(The novelette headlines one side of my 2010 flip-book collection, Countdown to Armageddon / A Stranger in Paradise. There's more about that book, should you be curious, on my authorial website.)

Happy holiday(s) of your choosing!