ColumbusGuy

Liking this so far! Nice to see Amy coming along this time, and can't wait to see the new ship. Any idea why this is on hold?

Sigh...the spirit of Christmas truly shines in Geron's tales. This dose of warmth and joy is particularly welcome now, and I hope it can be found all the year long. It's also a great example of what the world could have been like if we had continued the practice of a belief system which showed respect for all living things rather than the Judeo-Christian view of using the world for our own purposes.... I enjoy stories which draw upon Native beliefs, especially those by Chris James at Awesome Dude. A Happy New Year to everyone, and I'll try to be patient until next Halloween; discovered Geron, that I'd only read the first two chapters of Short Prince, so now I only have thirty four or so to go.

Guess we're lucky cats don't have thumbs because one of mine knew that turning a doorknob would open the door, she just couldn't get a tight enough grip on them.... Speaking of wood--I'll skip the obvious gay references --does Horace still have his 51 Woody? Eager for new nutty surprises....

Where my mom lived in southern Columbus she would feed the squirrels that came into the yard, mostly gray, but her favorite was a white one. Most houses around her sat on half-acre lots, but hers had an acre, so they had space; some of her neighbors even kept chickens! She grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky, so she loved animals. Perhaps my most memorable holiday as a kid was when we visited my half-sisters' grandmother who lived in a log cabin way back in the hills in the 60s: she was in her early 90s and carried water from a spring and still dressed in floor length dresses with a bonnet straight out of the 1860s. Thank goodness the other relatives there had electricity lower down on the hills, and yet I had to use an outhouse at one aunt's place. Looking at a map years later of the area, many of the roads bore the names of my mother's family tree, so they'd been there a long, long time...close to a century and a half, I believe, as I think the first one in her paternal line came over in the late 1700s.

Man, I love Christmas music, but none of these modern remakes; every holiday growing up we'd listen to records and radio for our 'fix', and I still have two albums of organ and chimes music that we played in the 60s, and a Sing Along With Mitch double Christmas album. Can't forget the tv specials either, Rudolf, Charlie Brown Christmas with Linus telling the story, Frosty, and the original Grinch Boris Karloff! Favorite movie: A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sim steals the prize for me above all others...for schmalz, the original Walton's Homecoming with Patricia Neal as the mother, but the kids are all the same. Goofy prize: Santa Claus Conquers The Martians...horrible but still strangely endearing. A Merry Christmas To All, and To All A Good Night! God Bless Us, Every One--thanks to CD for that most lovable volume.

Okay, these guys are searching luggage, sneaking around, and yet aren't evil so far as we can tell...but why steal wishes? So they have a need for them that we don't know yet, or perhaps they are able to grant some of them? Nice to see some new talents at work, so I'll just sit back and enjoy some eggnog and wait for more....

Ah, it just isn't Christmas without Charlie & Co. What kind of scrooge steals wishes? Outrageous! This could be a dickens of a problem, so thank goodness the elves have called for help....

Sorry I'm late for the finale, had some things come up including a bad sore throat that's just ending.... What an elegant solution to the Popper menace--astounding in it's simplicity however hard the execution might be power-wise. Can't wait for Will and Rip to start popping up in all sorts of unexpected places--Twombley would be cracking!

As Bullwinkle once said: Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat--then pulls out a lion's head; this is the feeling I get with Geron's plots...you can try guessing, or hoping, but what you get won't be anything like you expect. I'll just sit and twiddle my thumbs and wait for the Way Back Machine to get me home again....maybe read a Fractured Fairy Tale or two.

Schlaf gut, lieber Geron. Eager for the next installment as always. On a side note, I don't speak on politics usually, but I first voted in the primaries in 1976 and have figured a few things out--primarily to keep an open mind and let reason guide me rather than hyperbole and fear-mongering. I've voted Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Independent over the years, voting for the candidate whose principles mostly coincided with mine and presented sound judgment in their policies. More often than not, my choice won....In all this, I've always been able to talk with all sides so long as their minds were not closed to sound logic. I confess the two Independents I voted for, John Anderson and Ross Perot didn't win, but it made me think that this country truly needs a third party on an equal footing with the other two. In my Jay & Miles story, one of my characters supports Jerry Brown in the Ohio primary, and I did too but in the election itself I voted for Carter, a man I admire to this day for his values and charitable works helping others; were it not for the Iran Hostage Crisis, I think he could have had a far better term as President. Can we now put aside all the divisive feelings and work together now that the tumult has ended? Like most groups, gays cannot all be of one mind, so let us rise above all the Left and Right rhetoric to put current hatreds to rest for all time.

Gotta wonder if these six guys are different from the other Poppers or just ones who were on duty where they could detect Charlie and his cohorts. Until that last move, their skwish seemed on a par with our heroes.... Charlie seems to have found some insight, but was it aided by Esmerelda or his own wonderful intuition?

Dang, Geron, unlike the principles of this tale, I don't have enough time to read your Short Short Prince...but I'll find it somewhere when this tale is finished. I know I started it, but don't recall how far I got.... Much to ponder in this chapter, but I'll have to put my brain in neutral for a bit because I had an early eye appointment and didn't get enough sleep before-hand,so when I get back perhaps the next installment will be posted?

Well, I didn't expect the Madracorn, but then, nobody expects.... Only one question remains for me: when will Pach'ka and Mike show up? Can't forget Kontus either....

I sense a Ripley's Believe Or Not event coming up...:P Time Rangers assumes an organization which I'd have thought other worlds had heard of, yet this is our first hint? Are they all power users since Ripley seems able to do it without machines, and why would he have retired if he still has his powers? Not even gonna try guessing at future events right now, just sitting by with bated breath for Chapter Four.

Haha, Ivor! I'm loath to say I want more, and I want it now lest I wind up in the skweezing room like Violet did in Wonka's factory. Ah--those old paperback doubles--I have several from Ace Books even now packed away, usually one was pretty good and the other was like a B-movie....My collection goes back only into the late 50s-2010s, but I know Geron's go back to his father's early days. Wish I could still see well enough to go through my thousands again!

Okay, didn't get here until now, but I'm all in on this new travelogue! I like Will already, and wonder what other powers he might have....

I just found this story earlier in the day, and read it straight through! I was glad to see it had some relation to the Larkspur tales...and it reminded me once again of the marvelous skill you have in bringing authentic dialogue to this period. Reread Morningstar yesterday, and will have to see what other new stories are in store.... xoxoxoxo

I'm glad to hear from you drsawzall! Tech helps a lot so long as sites don't screw with their end like Hotmail decided to do--I can listen to things in my Inbox, but other than deleting them, can't do anything else since the icons don't narrate, and I can't see them enough to figure out what they do. I had my sighted friend over who has tons of computer knowledge, and he said there's no way to go back to the old style, and even he had trouble figuring the icons out.... I'm not sure, but is Gary referring to the extra spaces between paragraphs in my chapter, other than the goof with the note? I really wish I could get someone here to post chapters for me, but I guess they'd object to that? More chapters coming, never fear, and I added another 1k words to the JM62 earlier today, and will get back to it after I do my meds.

Hey G-Man! As hard as this is to post chapters, pming is much harder; I could only open one of yours, and it seemed like it only appeared in a column on the far right of the window, and I'm fairly sure you got it, but I haven't gotten any emails from you, so I don't know for sure. I'd give it here, but I'll just say it's my gmail account, and if you ask Ivor or Geron, they can give it to you. I only have an old hotmail address for you, and with that site's new format using icons instead of text which will narrate, I can't use it to send things anymore. I think I sent a message to your island, but never heard back, so you must not use it these days. I miss interacting with you and hope you might still want to look at my scribbles sometime. Is the formatting thing the half note at the start? I didn't use indents in the chapter doc in Word, so not sure what went wrong. I just cut and pasted the text in the box.... xoxoxoxo my friend

Ta, Ivor! I saw after I posted that what should have been an end note partially showed up in the chapter text...from now on, I'll just skip any comments at all and leave things for replies to y'all. By the way, for newcomers, with my vision now, it's much easier for me to just hit 'Like' for comments rather than trying to get the right one--I'm grateful and love to hear anything from my readers!

Gotta say, Rainbow, that if a story intrigues me I'll read it more than once. I recently did that with several by James Savik, and an old book called Alas Babylon by Pat Frank I read as a teen, but just found as an ebook. I spent part of Tuesday reading several chapters of my JM story to check something for the chapter I'm writing now--at least I was only two off from where I thought the info was....

Thanks Geron!It'll come back to you--just be glad this story is only a tenth of Jay.

I really don't know if this worked because it says to publish, but it shows up in the Contents, but with 0 words.... Any clues?

Fragment 16: Exploration `“What took you so long?” Harman and Silver Eagle paused just inside the door to Matthias Joossens’ office a short time after their guide Ivan Svoboda had introduced them, then left. Their meal had been good and the company informative, but the man seemed reluctant to answer more than a few of their questions, saying that they’d be better off asking their host, Doktor Joossens himself. Now, with the apparent curtness of those words, the

I just love this Yuletide tale, my friend! You've managed to evoke all the right feelings for the season, even while tossing in some intrigue and mystery too. I felt warm all over during most of this story, particularly at the party, and it brought back similar feelings from my own Christmases past when my family were still here to celebrate it. The first presents I really remember getting besides my German Shepherd puppy when I was three, are a train set with a plastic tunnel when I was six (I forget the scale HO or N, it was the larger one and not the one with the 1 inch wide tracks)...I set it up in the hallway Christmas morning and sat in my underwear playing with it until I had to get dressed. The other present was my first two wheel bike which is pictured in my Gallery from when I was eight, red with chrome fenders and white wall tires. Not sure, but I think it came either from Sears or Western Auto...I rode that bike over a mile to elementary school quite a few times with my books strapped to the rack over the back fender. 1966 was a good year! Thanks for the memories my friend...hugs.