Xmas Cheer and next New Year ;)

So that was Christmas and a Happy New Year....

Nothing quite like a good family Xmas so it was good to gather the family around and to enjoy each other's company. The house feels so much warmer and like there is something waiting to happen around each corner.  Now everyone has gone and even the nearby family won't be around for dinner until January, the house has fallen silent, losing that soft buzz of voices and thoughts. 

It's still the peaceful house even when it is full of folk. This Xmas, it was so good to be able to sit down and talk about writing styles and content. With my daughter editing a novella and working on a novel, it has been even more of a family subject than normal.

Good, too, to mix a few old favourites amongst our many board and other competition games with some newer ones over the last few weeks.  This year, we all learned to play the Japanese card game, Titchu, which was good fun, had a go at the Star Trek deck builder (we thought some of the criticism levelled at the game was unfair), got to grips with the Pandemic card game, Contagion as well as playing La Cittia, Seven Wonders and Dominion.

One of the gang gave us Thunderstone - The Elementals so we have three sets of the game, now, to torture people with. Such a beautiful game to look at, I have always felt it just falls short of being one of the greats, even with the amended rules that we have introduced.

Something else I wanted to mention. It's always a huge pleasure when an old friend gets in touch. I was thrilled to see an email from one of the finest on-line role players I have ever had the privilege to play alongside and the creator of Ared. Look forward to hearing from you again, my old friend. We have much catching up to do.

I hope to hear from more of you. I long ago lost ,most of the Sigil email addresses when my old lap top went suddenly and I found the backup had been corrupted, also. We saved some of the files using hard disk extraction tools but some data was hopelessly distorted.

Happy New Year to you all.  I hope 2015 brings you things that you wish for.