There are a lot of good 2006 memories as well as a few bad ones. First and foremost is family: Noel, Jessica, Pat, Charles, Mike and all the others, whether I see them often or not. There are friends, too. Lots of new ones if not all the old. Fun parties, great get-togethers, lots of games. There's been work; it's been a really good year. It's been wonderful working on Nightwing, Titans and other comics I can't talk about yet. "The Judas Contract" direct-to-DVD. The "Superman Returns" novelization and video game. "Homeland, The Illustrated History of Israel" and, oh, all the educational comics I put together. We've won two major publishing awards on those already. Also, one of my comics, "Heil And Fear Well," which I wrote for the Dark Horse Escapist anthology, was included in the Best Comics of 2006 book. There's TV, of course. The Daily Show, Colbert Report, 24, The Shield, Battlestar Galactica, Scrubs, Earl, and many, many others, too. There's been some great fun movies, most recently Casino Royale, Happy Feet and Dreamgirls. Looking forward to Children of Man and Pan's Labyrinth.

Politically there is less to be happy about; I'm as thrilled by the election results as I am repulsed by the utter joy there seems to be over Saddam's hanging. I feel too many people take a Madame Defarge-like enjoyment over the death of others.

Still, the things that matter on a day to day basis are family and friends and the enjoyment one gets from the work we do. I get so many emails thanking me for stories I've written in the past, and even present and I relish each one of them. When somebody goes out of their way to tell you how a story you wrote 20 years ago still affects them today, or helped them get past a rough spot in their lives, you feel really special and in all honesty, it makes your day and sometimes your week.

I hope all of you have some good memories of 2006, and even if not I wish you many of them for 2007.

Well, mobile blogging is working which means I'm free to write to here from wherever. I hope that means more frequent blogging. Maybe even more substantial blogs.
In the meantime, my 4th NIGHTWING is coming out in a few days. Let me know what you think of it and while you're at it my previous issues.
Speaking of which, manners count here. No cursing (your comment will be removed) and no negatives on other pros or fans please. You don't have to like something I or others do but focus on the work and not the people. And if you don't like one of my books please tell me why. "This book sucks" isn't criticism. But shy of that please have fun with the comments.

Somehow, probably deleting every line until I got what I wanted, I somehow removed the Blogger title. Wish I knew exactly what I took out, but it appears to have worked. Next is removing the link info from the blue box at the bottom of the page. But as of now, the page is pretty complete, and I'm happy. I can take time with the rest. For me the next thing i really have to do is master posting here from my Treo, the thing that started this whole changeover in the first place. But it looks like I'm 90% there.

Tomorrow I'll get back to posting about something other than posting.

I'm obviously getting closer to what I want to do with this blog, and honestly it hasn't been easy. But I've got the form down and the design, now I just have to clean up some of the headings, etc. Somehow I have to figure out how to get rid of the title. Blogger insists on a title, but it's useless here as I have my own logo. Also want to get rid of the profile, etc. which aren't needed. Anyway, there's a few more things to figure out and then I hope the new Today's View will be up and running by New Years. in the meantime, please feel free to comment. I want to see how that works as well.

Well, my in-laws left the morning of the 28th for the long trek back to Texas. It was a good stay as usual, and the 3 dogs got along fine, considering they ignored each other. Much better than them being at each other's necks, which we were all dreading. The house looked great. Noel does up Christmas, as one would expect from someone named... Noel. I'm back on the last scenes of the first draft of the Titans movie script and had a really great phone call with Jamal Igle, the artist on Nightwing, on what we're going to be doing for the next number of issues. We also started talking about the next arc and I'm really excited about that. We were both pretty excited as we talked about exploring Dick's past how what happened then is impacting on him today. This has been a good way of ending this year.

Christmas day has been wonderful. Noel's parents arrived with their Chows, and the one big worry we had was that the Chows, who are older, would not get along with LD who is still an insane puppy. But the dogs seem to be ignoring each other, which is perfect. Noel's brother, Mike, is also here.

We had our traditional breakfast. I don't eat eggs but they do, so I made pancakes. There was, of course, more food than any country needs, let along a family of five. The day was spent giving our presents, sleeping, giving out more presents, sleeping, then the big turkey. We had Thanksgiving at a friend's home who told us a great new brining secret and we tried it on our turkey and it was incredible. I made my famous cheese-mashed potatoes (without garlic this time), and there was yams, and a zillion other dishes, including enough pies to make Marie Callendar's jealous. Then we handed out our stocking stuffer gifts. We're now half dead from tiredness and I took this opportunity to write this. Hope everyone else has had a great Christmas as well.

Labels: Christmas 2006