Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 10

But no living man am I

I’ve talked about the terminology surrounding gendered roles based on grave goods. Many times. My conclusion has not changed: the rules of terminology must be applied impartially, and authors should remain alert to historical bias in their criteria.

In November I read a great paper, ‘But no living man am I’: Bioarchaeological evaluation of the first-known female burial with weapon from the 10th-century-CE Carpathian Basin. It was a very thorough report of an older woman of the people we call Magyars buried with archery equipment, specifically a bow and at least one arrow of the armour-piercing type used in war. The article, as I say, was thorough and very, very careful. But I understand the authors not wanting to have professional controversy heaped upon their heads—plus in this instance it’s not the authors’ job to make judgements, so I sighed and moved on.

But someone just sent me a link to a Live Science article about this same paper, and now I’m feeling a wee bit irritated. Because this kind of science journalism does not need to be quite so careful. In fact I might argue that this kind of reporting should offer perspective, and perhaps just a little bit of pushback. For example, I would have pointed out that male Magyars also had to defend their herds from attack, but does that mean that most of those males buried with grave goods previously used to label them ‘warrior graves’ are not, in fact, warriors? If so, why not mention it? And if not, why not? And as for there being no documentary evidence of women warriors in that time and place meaning that the burial does not fulfill all criteria necessary for labelling as a warrior grave, well, just look at who has traditionally written/translated/interpreted/distributed the documents. At worst, this is very close to circular reasoning. At best it is perhaps not very brave.

Patreon: Raising money to break down walls

Heavily edited image from Harley MS 3244 f061v (BLM)

Image description: 13th century illustration of a man desperately showing an open book to a mythical winged beast who is so uninterested it has turned away and stuck its own tail in its ear.

As any novelist will tell you: the hardest part of being an author isn’t writing the book, it’s selling it to readers who are inundated with choice. I’m guessing even Bede—the bestseller of his day—sometimes felt desperate to get the word out about a newly-available book. And I have zero doubt that then, as now—and probably since the advent of the written word, whether on clay tablets, rolls of papyrus, or heavily-illuminated vellum codices—the conversation between author and reader has gone something like this:

Author: I have a new book! Just out in paperback!Reader: Look at this interesting rock…Author: I think you’d like it. It’s—Reader: La-la-la Author: No, really, it’s just your sort of—Reader: LA-LA-LA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!

The only way to break through the noise is to have serious publicity—a whole team who work on marketing, advertising, interviews, reviews, profiles, feature articles, influencer outreach, product placement, discounts, social media, academic awareness, retail partnerships, podcasts, and too many other things to list. And that all costs not just a lot of time better spent writing, but some real money.

It used to be that if you were with a good publisher and at a certain level they would take care of all that. But there is now so much input streaming around every potential reader from a variety of sources—TV! Doomscrolling! Advertising! World of Warcraft! Podcasts! TikTok! Sports! Spotify! Instagram! Movies! Manga! Mortal Kombat! Facebook! Twitch! Bluesky! Discord! News! Substack! News! More news!—that publishers simply don’t have the resources to break through the noise.

Which brings me to Patreon.

I have books coming out in summer 20251. The peak time for cultivating media coverage is three to four months in advance—which just happens to be during the first 100 days of the new administration. And I don’t have to tell you how little room there will be in the news cycle for anything that isn’t full of political strife and/or sycophancy. Some brand-new, highly-anticipated hardcover releases from celebrities and/or veteran NYT bestsellers will, no doubt, be able to get a column inch here or a 10-minute podcast segment there, but the rest of us? No—no matter how good the books are. So I want to raise enough money to hire independent publicists on both sides of the Atlantic from late spring through autumn 2025, and to retain them through the holiday period if possible.2

But for me the need for publicists is about more than getting attention for specific books.

I’ve written nine novels and most have won awards—many more than one. Why, then, do I still need outside help? Simple: the books were published by different presses and marketed in different genres. So the Aud books are known and loved within the precinct of one walled garden (that is, some of them are—because each of those three in turn were published by different presses, so…); Slow River and Ammonite in another; Hild and Menewood in yet another (and don’t even think about how to describe and market So Lucky, not to mention all my nonfiction…). I need to break down the walls between those literary gardens, to connect the whole ecosystem—to bring readers of my contemporary suspense thrillers to my historical fiction, and readers of my historical fiction to my science fiction, and readers of my science fiction to my rant-and-rage writing, the readers of my rant-and-rage writing to my fantasy, the readers of my fantasy back to Aud—in order to create critical mass, an explosion of awareness. I believe that would please those of my readers who don’t know my other work exists. I know it would please me. And a happy writer is a productive writer—which will please my readers even more. A virtuous cycle!

So: Would you like to help? And in return read a serialisation of a whole, finished—and actually pretty good—unpublished novel?3 Or hear me read those bits of Aud and Hild books that never made it into the final version?4 Or—given the smaller, more private nature of Patreon membership—read some things of an entirely different nature and flavour than posts publicly available here?5 Then my Patreon page is the place for you (and for this first week only, 15% off the posted rates). Do please take some time to read the About page. I’m trying to do something different with the membership tiers—I believe my readers are the kind of people who understand that fairness, real fairness, is more than the simplistic idea that those who pay the same get the same, because we all have different incomes and expenses and needs. I would love to be right.6 (And if you know someone who would love to be able to read these Patreon posts but can’t afford the lowest tier (currently $3, though that, like everything else, may change as I experiment and adjust), then you can give them it as a gift.) Either way, I’m most grateful for your support.

And another, perhaps in winter 2025/6. Patreon members will, of course, hear about it before anyone else. ︎I have, in fact, already been experimenting with publicists—which is why I’ve been getting articles and interviews and reviews lately on both sides of the Atlantic, with more on the way, even a year after the hardcover of Menewood came out. But publicists—good publicists—are expensive. I need your help to continue. ︎You can find out more about that on Patreon—on the Polls. I’m putting together a series of polls to gauge reader interest in different text-, audio-, and visually-based options. Trust me, I have a lot of stuff… ︎I have a wonderful 7,500-word chapter in which Hild goes to East Anglia and meets Fursey and Hereswith and at least two characters who will become very important in future books… ︎Almost everything I’ve ever written, published and unpublished, has sex scenes—that adds up to a lot of juicy stuff. And a lot of my poetry is… Well, let me just say I wouldn’t post it here. ︎I’m not sure sure what I’ll do if I’m wrong, if even those who can easily afford it choose not to. It might shake my faith a bit. ︎

Avian Influenza basics

Explanation and Caveats

Over the lunch the other day, a veterinarian friend pointed out that some of my readers might find a bird flu terminology primer useful. It also woldn’t hurt for me to get things clear in my own mind. So here are some basic terms and definitions—with the caveat that this is how I use them.1 Another caveat: different viruses have different qualities; sometimes they are also described with different terminology. Here I am talking specifically about Avian Influenza. Once more, though, I will remind you that I’m merely an interested amateur—it’s very possible I’m using these terms wrongly (if so, please drop a comments—I’m happy to make corrections); for official info, refer to the CDC, CIDRAP, and other sources I’ve referenced previously. And finally I’m writing this in haste so it’s less than systematic. If I’ve left anything obvious out, again, drop a comment and I’ll fix it as and when I can.

Terms and definitions

Avian influenza is caused by influenza Type A virus (influenza A). See Influenza A taxonomic tree above. All the definitions below come after all that stuff.

Avian-origin influenza viruses are broadly categorised based on a combination of two groups of proteins on the surface of the influenza A virus: hemagglutinin or “H” proteins, of which there are 16 (H1–H16), and neuraminidase or “N” proteins, of which there are 9 (N1–N9). Many different combinations of “H” and “N” proteins are possible. Each combination is considered a different subtype, and related viruses within a subtype may be referred to as a lineage. Avian influenza viruses are classified as either low pathogenic or highly pathogenic based on their genetic features and the severity of the disease they cause in poultry. (Note: Poultry only—nothing to do with how they affect cats or people or other mammals or even other birds.) Most subtypes are of low pathogenicity, meaning they cause no signs or only minor clinical signs of infection in poultry.

What I talk about here on this blog is Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), H5N1.

A virus isolate is the name for a virus isolated from an infected host and propagated in culture. An isolate comes from a single host. Very few hosts get their particular virus isolated and genotyped. (I tend to mention isolates in context of very sick human hosts.)

A virus variant is an isolate whose genome sequence differs from that of a reference virus—so, for example, when a person gets very sick with H5N1 from a wild bird, and as that original, reference virus replicates in vivo (in the patient’s body) it mutates, then the isolate from the patient is different from the reference virus in the bird, and that isolate is then a variant.

A clade is a group of viruses composed of an ancestor and its descendants. So, for example, clade 2.3.4.4b is a clade that contains various H5N1 genotypes.

The term genotype describes the genetic makeup of a virus. Here I’ve been talking about two different H5N1 genotypes: B3.13, circulating in bovine species (e.g. dairy herds) and some commercial poultry flocks, and D1.1, circulating in wild birds—particularly waterfowl—and some backyard flocks.2

Right now, specifically within the last year, while both genotypes seem very dangerous to cats—large and small—only D1.1 has caused severe infections in humans in North America.3 So far there have been only two of those severe cases: an otherwise-healthy teenage girl in British Columbia, who very nearly died, and an over-65-year-old man in Louisiana, who did die. So until nomenclature changes, or some other genotype evolves nastily, when I talk about bird flu here I’ll mostly be focused on HPAI H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype D1.1—which I might sometimes refer to as the wildfowl strain (think D for Duck, just as I might call the B3.13 genotype the bovine strain—B for Bovine) but I admit I’m not sure how this would fly (cough) in virology circles.

If you have questions/suggestions/corrections, please leave a comment.

But—huge caveat—I’ve seen different medical/epidemiology/researchers use different terms—no one seems to agree with everyone. So I just try to be consistent with myself. ︎I’ve seen a lot—a lot—of confusion between clade and genotype when it comes to HPAI H5N1. I’ve been confused myself (but writing this post had made it all a bit clearer, so hopefully avoid major mistakes). Even more confusingly, at some point I’d guess—emphasis on guess (not an expert, remember?)—it’s even vaguely possible that either or both B3.13 and D1.1 will form clades—but then they’ll be called something else. Clear? If not, I don’t blame you. ︎I’m being very specific, not to say parochial, here simply because I don’t have time today to go look at human illness severity/mortality rates in the rest of the world, or at historical data. ︎

Pet food and bird flu

Charlie and George’s favourite treats, ORIJEN, are freeze-dried pure animal protein (mostly chicken, some flounder) nibbles of about 1 kcal each. Nowhere on the packaging does it mention any kind of processing other than the treats being ‘freeze-dried’. As freeze-drying does not kill bacteria or viruses I wondered what kind of processes the manufacturer, Champion Petfoods, used to render the products safe. So I asked them. They gave me reams of info (fast, accurate customer service: yay!) but the peccant part (emphasis mine) is:

To ensure the safety of our freeze-dried foods and treats, we use a freeze-drying process in combination with a post-drying thermal treatment. Our freeze-dried products are heated to 90 degrees Celsius… 

As anything over 75 degrees C pasteurises—kills viruses and bacteria and renders safe for consumption—food, I am now reassured.

Several cats in the US and Canada have died of H5N1 after eating commercial raw pet food. Several products are being withdrawn from the market as we speak, but you might want to check what’s in your cupboard. Find out from the manufacturer whether it’s pasteurised with either heat or high pressure. If it’s not, throw it away. Throw it away no matter how much your cats love it, no matter how earnestly the manufacturer assures you they follow the strictest quality controls and testing. No system is perfect. Mistakes happen. A lot. Raw, unpasteurised cat food is an unacceptable risk to take with small beasts who rely on you to protect them. Throw it away. Don’t buy anymore.

H5N1 Bird Flu update

The highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 D1.1 genotype—circulating in water fowl and other wild birds—has led to two severe human cases, one in a teenage girl in British Columbia, the other an older man in Louisiana. This is the same genotype that is killing big cats in the big cat sanctuary right here in Washington state, and that has killed sea lions, and terns, and a variety of other wildlife, large and small. (It is not the B3.13 genotype currently infecting dairy herds and commercial poultry operations.) Both human patients showed mutations in the hemagglutinin part of the virus, one of which occurred in both patients—and both times mutated during the course of their illness, that is, while the virus was replicating inside their bodies, as opposed to them being infected initially with an already mutated virus. CIDRAP and the CDC are good sites to seek out more information.

So what does this mean? This mutation in both cases may possibly have been the reason for increased the severity of the illness in people but has not, yet, increased its ability to spread from person to person.

However, it seems perfectly clear to me that the threat level continues to increase. This D1.1 genotype is everywhere in the wild—and with seasonal flu about to reach its peak, reassortment is looking more and more possible. At which point human to human spread becomes frighteningly likely. As one emergency physician recently phrased it, we are now at Defcon 3 for H5N1. (Actually, I’ve been at Defcon 3 for a couple of weeks. I just wish public health could catch up—if they had been more on the ball a year ago we might never have got to this stage.) We need more stringent testing (of people, herds, and flocks), restriction of movement of livestock, enforcement of personal protective gear for dairy and poultry workers, ramp up of vaccination1, and increased production and dissemination of antivirals, test kits, and PPE.

Edit to add: Thanks to a reader on Bluesky I’ve learnt that the UK is taking a much more proactive approach. Worth reading.

This is a dangerous virus. I’m just going to keep repeating what I’ve been saying for a while:

Get your flu shot if you haven’t had one yetIf you have a friendly physician, get a just-in-case prescription of flu antiviralsBuy some all-in-one test kits that will test for Influenzas A and B and CovidWear a maskWash your handsDo not feed your pets raw food or raw food productsKeep your pets indoors if at all possible and, if not, watch them very carefully and do not let them kill birds—this virus seems to have a two-thirds mortality rate for catsIf they do kill birds, or if you find a dead or dying songbird, wear a mask and gloves before disposing of it safely, and take very great care of then disposing of those gloves and washing thoroughly afterwardsIf that dead of dying bird is wild waterfowl, do not touch it. Do report it. If possible stick around and make sure no one else—or their dogs—touches it.If you become ill inform all your contacts and your healthcare providersIf you become ill try to isolate from your cats If your cat becomes ill call your vet and warn them before taking the cat in

There’s still no reason to panic. There is every reason to be alert. Let’s not have 2025 be a repeat of 2020.

See comment below: there’s an mRNA vaccine specific to H5 in the early test stage—and it worked well when tested against a 2024 human isolate of H5N1 (though I don’t know what clade). ︎

Sweet, alert, and curious

Here’s Charlie looking sweet, alert, and curious about a brand new year.

Outside, miraculously, we still have the occasional summer flower blithely blooming in the front garden, on the back deck, and kitchen deck. I won’t tell them that what they’re doing is a miracle if you don’t—let’s let them assume it’s perfectly normal to do the impossible, beautiful thing

In order: Magenta salvia, yellow snapdragon, fuchsia, salmon-rose snapdragon, unknown red flower, yellow snapdragon, Hot Lips salvia, still hot…

2025: Same and different

So. 2025: one quarter of the way through the 21st century. For someone born in the second half of the 20th century that is… Well, it’s hard to wrap my head around.

What will 2025 hold? I have no idea! Lots of bad things, of course: climate crisis and chaos, political crisis and chaos, environmental crisis and chaos. But none of that is new. Perhaps some unknown unknown: a brand new pandemic; a paroxysmal convulsion from the Cascadia Subduction Zone sending Western Washington into the sea; asteroids from another dimension. Who knows. Some incredible story of human heroism? Undoubtedly—that happens every day, somewhere. Some stunning biomedical breakthrough that will change lives for the better? Absolutely—that, too, is happening every day. (Really, 2024 was a banner year.)

Where I’m going with this is that no one knows what new things will arise but we all know many of the same-old, same-olds that will be with us, good and bad. It’s just a question of how we handle it all.

For me, personally, I’m pretty sure my 2025 will be at least easier to handle than my 2024, and very possibly objectively better. At the end of 2023 I wrote a post, Refilling the Aquifer, explaining how terrible that year had been for me and why I thought 2024 would be hard. And, in fact, yes, 2024 was a very hard year. I won’t bore you with the details because honestly I’m tired just thinking about it. But peering into my crystal ball I genuinely believe 2025 will, in many ways—for me and Kelley and our cats, for some of our friends, for some of our family—be better than 2024.

Is my aquifer refilled? No. That’s an ongoing process—one much delayed, in fact, by the further depletions that occurred this last year, including a lot of health crap. But it has begun to fill. I do feel flickers of random energy—the kind of energy that sparks curiosity and the urge to embark on new projects (see below). Compare that to this time last year when all I wanted to do was soundproof every room, unplug the internet. raise the drawbridge, bring down the portcullis, and refuse all invitations, just to survive.

There were a handful of unexpected and amazing moments—two friends gave me a gift that turned so many things around; the Queer Medieval Town Hall was thrilling, far more thrilling than it had any right to be, on paper; being inducted into the SFF Hall of Fame was both a shock and a delight; and then there’s that publishing thing that happened, the thing I’ve been waiting for for over 25 years, the thing I still can’t talk about (ad m ight not mean much to anyone else when I do), but will, soon—but mostly 2024 was the hard slog I’d predicted.

As I say, though, 2025 is looking up. For one, the political shoe has now dropped and so no longer must be dreaded. For another, I have three projects already underway. The first—only tangentially writing-related—you’ll hear about very soon. Then there are the Aud books being reissued in summer, along with some original Aud fiction. Then there’s a book I just signed a contract for that might be out at the end of 2025 but more likely to be early 2026. And on top of that there’s another, unexpected project that I’m pretty excited about but that has no publisher attached as yet—because I want to get it done (want to see if it can be done) before I sell it. And, yes, I’m in the planning stages of both more Hild and more Peretur.

So, my year ahead? Unclear but definitely promising. May yours be fabulous! See you on the other side.

2024 Blog Stats

OverviewLike last year, the number of people who came to read something on this site increased—in fact, as I write this, with just a few days to go until the end of the year—the numbers for 2024 are the highest for nine years and within touching distance of the numbers I achieved the very first year of this iteration of my website. (They are, of course, nowhere near close to the numbers I used to get at Ask Nicola in the heyday of blogging, but given the advent and then rise of social media, these numbers feel pretty good.)I posted slightly more often—93 posts, including tomorrow’s—though a number were brief and informational: notices of appearances, links to interviews, and so on.As I did last year, I enjoyed doing a handful of Snippets posts and this year added updates on things like H5N1I did more opinion and thinking-aloud posts than last year, such as The Paradox of Tolerance and Identity, Social Location, and DEI, plus the usual personal-moments entries, such as 35 Years in the US.Where you came from2024

Image description: Map of the world showing density of visitors by country. The USA is coloured brown, the UK a lighter brown, and the rest of the world pale tan—with some countries (mainly in central Africa and the far north) showing blank.

As you can see, people come from a lot of countries. The Top 3 countries from where my readers log on haven’t changed at all from last year, but the rest played musical chair with Spain and Italy dropping off the Top 10 list and being replaced by South Korea and Ireland:

USUKCanadaIrelandAustraliaGermanySouth KoreaIndiaFranceNetherlandsHow you got hereReferrers

As usual the vast majority of you got here via web search. I was delighted to see how much impact Bluesky is having—it’s currently my favourite social media hangout (I’ve been gone from Xitter for a while—I doubt it will even make the list next year)—and also interested in the fact that Wikipedia seems to be a useful source. At some point I need to get my Wikipedia pages cleaned up—all of them are riddled with errors and omissions.

search enginesFacebookBlueskyXWikipediaBrowsers

Again, Chrome was the most popular but Safari wasn’t far behind this time

ChromeSafariOtherFirefoxEdgeSearch terms and devices

The search terms themselves were very boring: my name and its variants, mainly, with some book titles or characters, with a few disability-related terms and one or two Old English words. Overall though, there were disappointingly few amusements to be found, unlike, say, 2010 on Ask Nicola.

The machines you used to get here were:

Mobile—57%Desktop—40%Tablet—4%

iPhone outdid Android, by a fair margin, Windows topped Mac—but only just—and the iPad beat Linux and Android tablet combined.

What you liked when you got here

This year once again I didn’t talk much about the cats (except George’s unequal match with a tribe of raccoons)—there was too much other stuff going on. I did post photos of them a fair bit on social media. I also returned to writing Snippets posts—bulleted paragraphs of miscellaneous items I find interesting. This is something I used to do a decade or two ago when I blogged at least once a day. I don’t see myself returning to that kind of frequency but I’d forgotten how much I enjoy doing this kind of not-about-me-just-randomly-interesting posts.

Top 10 New Posts

Of the Top 10 New Posts in 2024, only one (Aud is Back!) was purely book-related. The others were a mix of thinky, newsy, and personal:

The Paradox of ToleranceThe Cost of Bathing While DisabledA Miracle Built on a MomentAuthor Bios—saying the quiet part aloudSnippets—Sex chromsome syndromes in historyAud is Back! Cover reveal and pre-orderBird Flu: It’s time to talkThe Queer MedievalCelebrating Hild’s Feast DayIdentity, Social Location, and DEITop 10 Posts Overall

The Top 10 most-visited posts this year were a bit different—a much greater proportion (40%) were new,* and of the perennial favourites, many bangers of the past—Lame is So Gay, Books About Women Don’t Win Big Awards, Huge New: MS is a Metabolic Disorder—almost disappearing for the first time since they were published in 2011, 2015, and 2012 respectively:

Men Are Afraid Women Will Laugh At ThemThe Paradox of Tolerance*The Cost of Bathing While Disabled*A Miracle Built on a Moment*Song of Ice and Fire Speculative MapAuthor Bios: Saying the quiet part aloud*Hild: A historical noteHild and Her GemæcceFiction that passes the Fries Test3 Maps of Early Medieval Britain to DownloadLooking ahead

Headline: the same as last year—this blog is not going anywhere; I’m here to stay.

For several years, traffic to my post dropped steadily—and, for a few years, precipitously. Most obviously, though: readers stopped leaving comments. If I was not also on various social media platforms I might have felt as though I were shouting into the void. But what was happening was that people were talking about the posts, just not here. They left brief notes on Twitter, and Facebook, and—to a much lesser extent—Instagram. But four years ago, early in the pandemic, the number of visitors to this site stabilised and then 2 years ago started going up. This year the numbers are up again—the best since 2015 (the first year this WordPress site went up). The number of comments has also stabilised and are in fact creeping up, though—like the visitor numbers—are just a fraction of what they were ten years ago.

(FYI, this is also true of my research website, Gemæcce. I posted there only seven times this year, yet 2024 had the highest number of visitors since the WordPress site began.)

My guess is that this is a reflection of what’s been happening with social media: a continuing fragmentation and loss of centre, plus the ever-increasing thicket of trolls and bot-based lifeforms, not to mention the barbed bramble of adverts blocking the path to conversation. Blogs like this, with no advertising, can be a haven of calm.

I’m relatively content with the new equilibrium. I enjoy writing the posts and people seem to enjoy reading them. So I’m not going anywhere. This blog is here to stay. Xitter’s implosion has made no discernible difference to my traffic—I deleted my profile there with no regrets—but is, rather, another demonstration of why we all, and creators in particular, need to own our own platforms. Even if I thought all those other social platforms really were being run as public utilities for the greater good (ha ha ha), I like being able to say things too long for Bluesky (currently my favourite) or Threads and not pretty enough for Instagram. This is the best place to do that.

Will I start a newsletter (or post on Medium or Substack)? No. For the simple reason that this blog functions as a newsletter. All you have to do is subscribe (in desktop view, just look at the top of the right hand sidebar; in mobile platforms, scroll right to the end of an individual post), and every new post will be delivered directly to your mailbox the minute it’s published. No muss, no fuss—just like any other newsletter, except that a) you don’t have to pay, you will never have to pay, b) I’ll never share your data with anyone for anything, c) there will be no adverts. Plus, on a blog you can talk back if you like, safe in the knowledge that I’m in full control of the comments.

Right now I have no particular plans for big changes here. I like this blog; I’ve been doing this or something like this for nearly 30 years. But I am planning to work on an additional platform with a different audience andn to a different purpose. So stay tuned.

Peace, goodwill, and blow shit up!

Every winter solstice we lovingly choose a six or seven-foot Christmas tree—usually a noble fire—and Kelley spends hours decorating it. Many of the decorations are gifts from friends, handmade mementos of joyful moments and connections.

Here’s what it looks like this year.

Then every Christmas Eve I destroy the whole thing as violently as possible. It gives me enormous pleasure.

This year, the weapon of choice was the laser mounted on an orbital platform.

Oh, and the cat (George) survives, despite pausing at a critical moment to sit and clean his whiskers while admiring the tree…

And, eh, just because I love blowing shit up so much, I dragged out one of my all-time favourites, the hellfire missile. Enjoy!

Peace, good will, and blow shit up!

Every winter solstice we lovingly choose a six or seven-foot Christmas tree—usually a noble fire—and Kelley spends hours decorating it. Many of the decorations are gifts from friends, handmade mementos of joyful moments and connections.

Here’s what it looks like this year.

Then every Christmas Eve I destroy the whole thing as violently as possible. It gives me enormous pleasure.

This year, the weapon of choice was the laser mounted on an orbital platform.

Oh, and the cat (George) survives, despite pausing at a critical moment to sit and clean his whiskers while admiring the tree…

And, eh, just because I love blowing shit up so much, I dragged out one of my all-time favourites, the hellfire missile. Enjoy!