Jon F. Merz

I hope you all had a truly wonderful holiday – mine was very nice indeed. It was an official “white” Christmas around here with several inches of the flaky stuff sitting on the ground to add to the festive mood. With the lights on at night, things looked quite nice. Christmas Eve was spent in Lowell at my sister’s house for the traditional Italian feast. This year it was gnocchi and homemade meatballs with the family’s secret sauce recipe. Great stuff. The smell of homemade pasta and sauce is one I never get tired of, since growing up it was omnipresent at my grandmother’s house whenever we would visit. Christmas Day, the family and I flew to Zurich and then drove to our chalet in the Swiss Alps where we overindulged in goose and lots of other goodies. You can see the pictures over on my Facebook Page.

Actually we weren’t in Switzerland; we were in Marshfield, but my sister-in-law’s house looks like a chalet and the backdrop really added to the vibe, lol…

We did have a very nice time, however, and I got to spent more time with my god-daughter Kiley, who is pretty much the most preciously adorable bundle of joy on the planet.

2009 is winding down now, and in its wake the remnants of an up-and-down year disappear slowly under the waves. I don’t ever spend much time looking back and wishing that certain things were different. To me, that’s a bit of a waste of time. I prefer to focus ahead at the prow cutting through the waves, figure out what it is that I want to accomplish in the new year and then steer the ship so that I meet the challenges head-on. I don’t usually indulge in any “best of” lists or spend time thinking of the “top ten things I wish my genitalia had done in 2009″ because I’m too busy looking toward the future I want to create and figuring out how to implement steps necessary NOW to make it happen. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t digress and waste your time with yet another list.

So what IS on the horizon for 2010? Lots, baby. Lots.

January kicks off with a bang. The Madagascar Matter, a new serialized Lawson Vampire adventure, debuts in the first week of the new year and delivers a chapter each week over the course of 2010. It’s by subscription only, however, which means you’ll have to sign up in order to travel back in time with Lawson and his former mentor Zero to the early 1980s in Africa. You can do so by clicking the order form below:

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Otherwise, there will be much more Lawson Vampire news. THE FIXER is coming, of course, and with it, a lot of other Lawson goodness. HELLstalkers is also finally getting ready to launch, so Joe Nassise and I will have mucho news on that front as well. As usual, I’m extremely optimistic about the coming twelve months. Life is exciting, unpredictable, and glorious. I hope you all take the time to revel in the fact that we’re all hurtling through the universe together and that each of us has the power to make our own lives an example of goodness, generosity, compassion, and bold action. The world has too many lazy, cheap, selfish, negative “people” only out for themselves, forsaking family and stranger alike as they trundle through life never truly experiencing joy, only the illusion of supposed personal gain acquired at the expense of those who used to love them.

Don’t be like that.

Take this time to reflect and imagine how you can turn 2010 into a year of adventure, action, and unbridled enthusiasm for everything that life has to offer. Banish complacency and laziness from your world.

Who Dares Wins.