seawasp | My Thanksgiving post...

First and foremost I'm thankful for my wonderful wife, Kathleen, who has stayed with me despite my very difficult-to-live-with aspects for more than 15 years now. I love you, Kathy.

Second, for the rest of my family -- two boys and two girls now. It's an amazing thing to watch them growing up, one of them now almost my height and in high school, the youngest still having trouble with words beyond "Mama" and "Dada" and still learning how to walk fast. I hope I can take care of them all. With them, my other family, who while they drive us crazy sometimes have also helped us when we needed it: my wife's family, her mother, father, and two sisters.

I'm also thankful for my closest friends, most especially Eric and Claudia, and Dana and Joe. They've supported us

I'm thankful for having a good job in the current economy, a job which has taught me a lot of things and has overall been a lot more fun than most jobs ever are. And for having a boss who, while he has his quirks, isn't a certifiable loon like certain prior bosses.

I'm tremendously thankful to Baen and all their people -- Toni, Eric, Laura, Marla, Arnold, and of course the spirit of Jim Baen himself. They not only gave me the chance, they have taken my stories and told me how to make them better.

I'm thankful to my Beta Readers, who have supported my writing by both telling me how good it is... and telling me when I'm not doing so well at all. I can't SEE most of the flaws in my writing, and without them I would be producing stories that just weren't nearly as good as they could be.

And I'm thankful to all the readers out there who've actually purchased my books. I hope there are enough of you to keep me writing for a long time. (well, I'll be WRITING anyway, but PUBLISHED writing is a different thing).

I'm also thankful I live in the USA. I am NOT happy about some of the directions we've been going, but dammit, if I don't CARE about the country, if WE don't care, if we don't stay here and BELIEVE, who's going to FIX it? If I were a superhero, I'd want to be Captain America. I still believe in the America I grew up with, and in the America we created in our fiction. And that's something that I will ALWAYS believe in.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.