It drops for thee! Grins.
So that's all to say that we are totally BORING up here in DC. (After all, there's a big party only a couple weeks away on inauguration, can't get a sitter for both nights, right?) It's been a long time since we dressed up and went out to party. I vaguely rememer it being a total blast.
the Sydney Harbour bridge.
Wiki says the Italians wear red underwear at New Years, but doesn't 
explain it. Anyone know why? (Not that I don't like red unmentionables, but I'm curious...) In Japan they clean. Okay, I don't want to spend New Years in Japan. :> Seriously it's the time to clear the temples and prepare to welcome the god of the New Year. (I still don't want to clean) In New Zealand, evidently the Black Caps cricket team play a New Years One Day game. Seems they've outlawed liquor in some places due to those rowdy Kiwis going beyond the reckless and into the vandalous.
- and get this...YELLOW undies for luck with money. (The guy to the left is the closest to yellow undies I could find, but he does look LUCKY...right?) I wonder if stripes gets you both? Oh and in Peru, there's the whole yellow-for-luck-undies, plus if you walk around the block with a suitcase, you'll get the trip of your dreams in the new year. In both countries, they eat a grape 
for every strike of the clock at midnight and make a wish for each grape. I like that one. I'm going to use it tonight! Grapes, I have.
And another time for confession....is one of your goals this year to finish the D*mn BOOK? Grins.
Queen's Speech (Denmark and the UK), countdown to some wonderful resolutions.
Or woman...
Yes, in the great tradition of launch parties in the lair, we're out to give you a really good time! You get to play with gladiators and cabana boys and inebriated romance novelists! You get to swing from chandeliers and drink champagne from Richard Armitage's slipper and have as many margaritas as you want!
What is your costume?
My favorite three answers win signed copies of the book that started all the mayhem TEMPT THE DEVIL!
My three things are:
So get dancing, people! Let's get this partay started! Cabana boys, open that tequila! And don't forget to be creative with your answers and you just might win a copy of TEMPT THE DEVIL! Good luck!
Okay, y'all were so great with the limericks, I decided to give away TWO packages of Tim Tams. So, the winners are:
One of our favorite guests is back in the Bandit Lair with us today, NYT Bestselling author, Lorraine Heath. Lorraine, pull up a barstool and let's talk about your newest release. (By the way there's Tim Tam's in the Lair today!)
Suz: There are at least three more members of Feagan's kids who have been featured in the first two books in this series. Any plans for them?Lorraine will be giving away a gift card to the one lucky winner's choice of Borders, Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com!!
Thank you to everyone who visited the Lair on Christmas Day. It was lovely to hear how you all spent your day, your travel plans, the feasts, the gifts both given and received, the quiet moments, the merriment, and of course, the Christmas stories you love best. 
Wow, we've been together for another whole year! This time last year, we'd had 4 books reach the book shelves. Now, we have sales by more than half of our Banditas with 14 books on the shelves and 5 more coming out by April of next year...and more to follow!
At the RWA National Conference in San Francisco this past July, for the first time ever, 19 of the Banditas made it to the conference at once. Believe me, the Banditas took the place by storm and created our own kind of special commotion. And even the Golden Rooster was out and about in SF!
Speaking of the GR, it was just after the first of the year that the wily bird made his first appearance in the Lair. He's been back and forth between the hemispheres and continents so much he should have enough frequent flyer miles for a trip to the space station. When he took over the blog one day we discovered he is a fowl spy who is bent on not only infiltrating the lair, but revealing many of the Banditas' secrets as well. I wonder what other antics he'll be up for in the coming year?
We've had many guest bloggers this year. NYT Bestselling authors, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Eloisa James and Lorraine Heath all drew lots of attention. We've had editors from Source Books and NAL. Michelle Buonfiglio from Lifetime.com visited, too. We were invaded by firemen, knights, dukes and ladies...we even got a masseuse named Swen!!
And the Bandits raided RomanceNovelTV for an entire fortnight, (er, two weeks for those not into British historical time periods). What great fun that was! Rumor has it another raid may be in the planning for next year. Stay tuned for details.
Another thing the Bandits have become involved with is raffle baskets. These are packed full of Bandit booty, including signed copies of the Bandit books. The proceeds from these have gone to various charities or readers/commentors. Here are some of the places you might have seen them: Dreamin In Dallas conference, Buns & Roses Tea for adult literacy, Brenda Novak's auction for Diabetes research, the Heart of Dixie Readers Luncheon, Washington Romance Writers, RWA National Conference for literacy, RT, Lori Foster's reader event, Lora Leigh's RAW, COFW's conference, the Jo Leigh Fundraiser, and of course, our Christmas one just given away by Kate!In fact, this year we not only talked about a special treat from Australia, Tim Tam's and had them at the Bandit bash, BUT the Pepperridge Farms company has sent us some Tim Tam's as a thank you for all the talk about them by us and our Bandit Buddies. In celebration of our fantastic year, the Bandits would like to give them to one of our commenters today!!
So my dad's birthday is the day after Christmas. I realize this isn't ideal timing, from a kid's perspective. The gift budget has just been blown & nobody has the appetite for another celebration. Plus all your friends are out of town visiting Grandma & Grandpa, & nobody could come to a party even if you were able to have one.
And his birthday has become the biggest celebration of the year in our family.
In years past, we've had nearly a hundred people cycle through this party. Everybody from long-long relatives to friends from three neighborhoods ago have turned up to have a slice of cake & toast my dad into another year.
Some 40 years or so ago, a group of British musicians "invaded" the American music scene. Exactly 40 years ago yesterday (I'm writing this on Christmas Day), Apollo 8 orbited the moon with guidance systems more primitive than the computer on my desk. And somehow, the news coverage this week has drawn them together for me.
The title of this post was inspired by a song one of those invading British musicians, an extremely cute young man named Peter but known as Herman, made famous. The refrain was There's a kind of hush/ All over the world tonight . . . and went on to talk about lovers in love. There's a hush in my neighborhood right now, the hush that comes on major holidays when everyone's inside, at gatherings that mark romantic and filial and friendly love.
Not all of these holidays are Christian, of course. The world's Christian population is somewhere between 20 and 33 percent, depending on which sources you consult. Which means the rest of the world follows creeds (or nonreligious ethical systems) other than ones based on Jesus's teachings. In the United States, Christianity (and thus, Christmas) is a dominant cultural force, but that's not so in other parts of the world, where Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists dominate. In those parts of the world, I assume, shops are open, streets are bustling with whatever traffic is usual, and people are going about their daily business. Yet all of the major religions and ethical systems have at least a couple of things in common--a belief in kindness or charity to the rest of humanity and a desire for peace among peoples (I except the militant religious splinter groups from this statement and hope we can avoid discussing them. For me, at least, today is a day to think of peace on Earth).
Which brings me, at last, to Apollo 8 and its crew, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders (who took the famous picture at left). They noted that there are no boundaries or divisions on the planet in that photo or in the view from space. Subsequent astronauts have said the same thing, that after a few days in space, they stopped thinking about their own parts of the world and saw it as a whole. The Earth is, of course, still fraught with war, genocide, famine, and plague. The hush in my neighborhood doesn't extend nearly far enough. I hope, though, that it will someday.
In the meantime, I'm grateful for my family and our friends and neighbors and our peaceful morning. I'm also grateful for all the Christmases past that I shared with family and friends who've moved away or passed away. A good friend of ours made our beautiful tree skirt, came over with her husband to help decorate the tree every year until they moved to Arizona, gave us ornaments and beautiful, cross-stitched art, and reveled in all things Christmas except the holiday itself. They're Jewish, you see, and she didn't feel right about putting up a tree of her own. 
One year, when I was about 7, I got the Barbie Dream House for Christmas. The adults in my life didn't realize it came with Massive Assembly Required (all the furniture--think tab A and slot B--which was then cardboard). I don't think, personally, that could possibly have been as bad as tiny decals for Gundams and Power Rangers, but I could be wrong. Anyway, the adults were so distracted by furniture assembly that they forgot to open the chimney flue. Until the smoke from burning wrapping paper poured into our living room to remind them. We had to evacuate the house until they got the situation straightened out, and then we froze with the windows open for a couple of hours. My grandfather lived with us, so our house was jammed with aunts and uncles and cousins on Christmas Day. And all us kids were in the yard together that morning, freezing. I cherish the memory of that day. All the adults are gone now, and the kids have kids of our own, and the cyle of life moves on.
I hope you've had wonderful memories of this day or other holidays your family celebrates. Will you share them? What's your favorite holiday, and what does it make you think about?
It's Christmas Day, at last. I can finally relax ... I think ...
Yesterday, when all the shopping was done, all the cards had been mailed and the last packages had been delivered, I looked around and realized I actually had an evening with nothing to do! I poured myself a glass of champagne--hey, I was celebrating!--then picked up one of my favorite old Christmas romances, curled up on the couch and read for a few hours. I haven’t done that in months!
Some of my favorite Christmas romances are short stories, like Linda Howard’s Bluebird Winter and Nora Roberts’ All I Want For Christmas. Last night I re-read Susan Mallery’s The Sheik and the Christmas Bride. Talk about a guilty pleasure, I love Susan’s sheik books! Two more favorites of mine are JD Robb’s Holiday in Death (I love that in between all the murder and mayhem, Eve is so flummoxed by the gift giving!) and Maureen Child’s Some Kind of Wonderful (she finds a real baby in the manger! It’s such a sweet, funny story, so classically Maureen Child).
* Dark and Dangerous and a bookmark from Jeanne
by KJ HoweAnd tomorrow, on Christmas Day, one lucky random commenter will win our fabulous Bandita Christmas Basket!! We hope you'll stop by and say hello!
meeting a writer for lunch later today who is in-town visiting in-laws. (She's from California and in for a wintery shock when she steps outside in our chill temps). Last weekend, it was another larger group of writers and before that - the red hats. (Have to love the Red Hat groups. Their sole purpose is to party *g*). Before that it was the Investment group and the Gourmet crowd. Obviously, the extra pounds swallowing my waist aren't all from Christmas cookies!
the lair for lunch (and drinks and Sven...) Thank you all for your friendship, not only over the holiday season, but for the whole year through. Friendship is the best gift of all.
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