Update, and 33 Years Ago Today

I may be coming down with a cold.  (A friend of mine has a bad cold right now.)

Or it may be just too freaking cold outside.

Or it may be the effects of biological change on women of a certain age.

But that short story I was hoping to have uploaded by now really hasn't even been edited yet. And the cover I did... I need to revise that too.  I think you'll enjoy it when I get all formatted and ready to read.  If that happens to be too late to get Amazon to treat it as a freebie for the holiday, I will have free versions on Smashwords and maybe a file on my website. (It's too long for a blog story -- about 5k.)

I'm thinking I'd kind of like to have a new holiday story every year.  I didn't get Six-Gun Santa sorted out in time, and I realize that I'd like to submit that to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine first, anyway.  If EQ doesn't take it, that will be next year's holiday story.


Thirty-Three Years Ago Today

It was a Monday night.  Everybody else in the house was asleep.  I was watching Johnny Carson, when a news crawl started across the bottom of the screen.  I didn't quite catch it.  Or maybe I just didn't quite believe what it said.  Somebody had been shot.   The name had scrolled out of sight, but ... did that say John Lennon?

This was in the days before cable and the 24-hour breaking news cycle.  Long before Twitter.

I flipped on the radio.

They were playing The Ballad of John and Yoko.

If I remember right, every station was playing it.  Twist the dial, and there it was again on the next station up.

And that said it all. It confirmed what happened, and also commented on it. The life (and likely/inevitable death) of a superstar in the modern world.

"Last night the wife said 'oh, boy when you're dead, you don't take nothing with you but your soul. Think!'"

So I am torn at the moment. I was going to embed a video of Imagine, a great atheist's message in the spirit of the holiday season.

But I think there is also a seasonally appropriate message underneath the anger in Ballad.  I mean, what is The Ballad of John and Yoko about? It's about the media circus surrounding their marriage and their decision to turn it into a message for Peace.  How, no matter how high your celebrity takes you, you still don't leave life with anything but your soul, so live with that in mind.

Since I can't make up my mind, I guess I'll give you both, and you can choose what you want to listen to.

The Ballad of John and Yoko (looks like fan edited video from the news events behind the song):



And a very nice version of Imagine (an HD version of the official music video):



See you in the funny papers.