Decorations at Bill and Judy’s house.

Welcome to a peek at a corner of our holiday living room. As you can see from the photo, our halls are decked and we’re ready to celebrate. Well, maybe not completely ready.  At this precise moment the Christmas cards are NOT in the mail. That situation should be remedied in the next day or two. The Christmas letter is written, but we had to find more printer ink. Going to Costco for printer ink the week before Christmas is not for the faint of heart.

This year our traditional Liljulaften (Little Christmas Eve) family gathering will be a combo celebration. For those of you who may be new to this blog, our family’s Liljulaften is a slightly modified Scandinavian custom that allows us to celebrate Christmas the weekend before, thus enabling everyone—kids, grandkids, in-laws, and out-laws—to be wherever else they need to be on Christmas Day itself.

That means that this weekend there will be feasting and laughing and, of course gifts and plenty discarded wrapping paper. (I wonder if our trash collectors notice that our holiday wrapping always shows up before anybody else’s?)

This year, however, thanks to my readers, we’ll be celebrating not one but two top ten NYTimes bestseller appearances—one for Remains of Innocence, the Joanna Brady book that came out in July, and another for A Last Goodbye, the Ali Reynolds e-book novella that came out last month.

In other words, we have plenty of reason to make merry.

We also have something to look forward to. Moving Target, Ali Reynolds #9, goes on sale in paperback on December 30. For those of you who only read print on paper, (DTRs), this will include A Last Goodbye which was previously available only in e-book or audio formats.

On Saturday at the party, we’ll be toasting all of you, my readers.

And then, on Sunday evening, assuming Bill and I survive the weekend of frenetic activity, we’ll be raising a toast to one another and celebrating our 29th wedding anniversary.  Yes, I met and married Bill AFTER J.P. Beaumont and I were already an item.

And yes, we’re aware that by marrying on the shortest day of the year we were honeymooning on the longest night.

That was a good decision at the time, and twenty-nine years later it still is.

After that, Bill and I will have a quiet, peaceful Christmas with the fireplace roaring and the Christmas carols playing in the background. That will be the time to step back and remember the reason for the season.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A JOYOUS NEW YEAR TO ALL!!