The subs were always the worst on holidays. Unlike boomers (which have a rotating set of two crews), fast attack subs are just gone...300 days out of 365 one calendar year I can name. Our guys did three northern runs (4 month runs+) in less than two years, plus all the incidental runs and 24-hour duty days, and fast cruising... They missed Christmas two years out of three, on average.
That was never a big problem, until there were kids to consider. I decided that we'd have "Santa Christmas" for the kids while he was underway and "big Christmas" when he was home in Feb, and I let Tamer know when he hit a port. Note that there was no mail on submarines...no e-mail back then, either. We had only six 40-word "familygrams" (telegrams)...one way from home to boat. No really good news. No bad. All pablum. It was a rough life with a 95%+ divorce rate.
The minute Tamer told the guys about my plan, they went into high gear. It was something to look forward to, after all. They told me to plan it for the first weekend home. They bought an 8-foot potted pine that they later planted in the front yard of the house. They decorated the house as if it was really Christmas. I made a huge dinner, like I always did for Thanksgiving and Christmas. (We usually served 8 or more guys dinner on the holidays.) It was magical.
WOW...we've got them all, from heartwarming to heartbreaking. My heart goes out to all of you who've lost people, especially children, around the holidays. Both of my husband's parents died around the holidays, and it was so difficult those years.
My SIL had three late miscarriages before she managed to carry my niece to 30 weeks. One was a set of twins (both girls) that she lost at 24 weeks. Even in 1996, that wasn't late enough. She finally delivered my niece and four years later...my nephew (on Dec 23rd). They released her early Christmas morning, so she'd be home when T woke up for the day.
By the time it was inflated, we were in a fairly good mood. As if someone knew we needed just a little more pick-me-up, the doorbell rang...at 8 pm. It was UPS with presents from Tamer's parents. We opened them too.
That remains the single best holiday memory I have, and I don't think I will ever beat it.
In late September of 1991, the Navy moved us to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on the Maine/NH border. Then they made the mistake that would haunt us for a long time. They screwed up our pay and had trouble fixing it.
By mid-December, we were on our third straight month of half pay. Our savings were depleted, and we weren't going to make it through December without help. We did something I'd hoped never to do...asked Navy Relief to cover half the December shortfall. They told me to ask for more, but Tamer and I were proud and young and asked for only what we needed to survive not what we needed to get a real pay check. They claimed no one could survive on what I was asking for, but they gave it to us.
Once I was done with paying all the bills and shopping for food, we had enough left to buy inexpensive gifts for close family members...nothing like we'd usually give them and at the expense of the few comforts we usually enjoyed in the budget.
In the end, we had $20 left and made the decision that we would have Christmas, no matter how meager. So, we each took $10 and went shopping for the other. Tamer bought me a new pair of tennis shoes, because mine had holes and I owned no winter boots. I bought him an inflatable sled.
We went home and wrapped our gifts in the comics section. We didn't have anything else. We had dinner that night and decided we were going to have an early Christmas, just because we needed it. It was the 16th or 17th.
That afternoon, I'd finished making the cross-stitch star that we top the tree with to this day. We placed it on a shelf by the wood-burner and opened our gifts.
I probably didn't mention that we were both sick...me with pneumonia and Tamer with the flu. Neither of us could breathe worth crap, but we sat there, passing the sled back and forth to put a few wheezing breaths into it.
By the time it was inflated, we were in a fairly good mood. As if someone knew we needed just a little more pick-me-up, the doorbel
It depends on what's being said. Your average sour grapes review is easily shrugged off. But, I encountered a nutcase who accused I'd plagiarized from two NY Times bestsellers. I hadn't, and the punch line is that they are both friends of mine from way back and have seen my work. The only comparison you can make is that we all write vampires.
A case like that takes extra steps.
I contacted the other two authors, who both laughed it off.
I had his reviews removed from several sites, and he kept reposting them, so the sites locked down the reviews for a while and deleted his accounts. Mind you, according to them, there's no proof he's ever read one of my books at all, since he hadn't purchased them where he was logging the reviews. Just one of those.
Then he tried taking the accusations to the Yahoo lists and was publicly trounced and had his accounts there deleted.
It was a long hard road, but it's one I'd only take in a case like that...where I'm being libeled and accused of a crime I didn't commit.
The only thing I'd correct about your entire post is that you can browse online and find other books to buy. But it's not the same as browsing in a bookstore.
NY has been heading for major changes for a long time. Perhaps one of those changes will be Espresso machines in brick and mortar stores instead of large print runs, but beyond that...
KUDOS! Your post covers a lot of the pertinent points. I have also found 800 entries for my books on a single pirate site, and I'm not nearly as well-known as you are.
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