Yuletide Greetings 2025 - Larry Edwards - Author, Editor, Publisher

Yuletide Greetings

We wish you a Merry Holidaze . . .

. . . and a Joyful, Super Happy New Year.

Larry and Janis

2025 Highlights

My highlight of the year is the release of the second Rent Beacham novel: Operation Masquerade, scheduled for December 15.

A cold-case homicide leads investigative journalist Rent Beacham into the murky depths of AI avatars and deepfakes as he closes in on the ruthless perpetrators.

Currently available as a pre-order for the ebook (Kindle & epub) at online retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Apple Books,
et al. The print edition will be available Dec. 15.

• More Books

As an editor, I also got involved in a few other book projects, including these four titles, which I think you will enjoy:

Blood in the Water by Donald E. McInnis, his fifth book in the A.J. Hawke Legal Thriller series — Booklife Reviews: "Editor's Pick. Sharply plotted thriller exploring the gray zone between justice and vengeance."
Nunc Coepi: Now I Begin - A Memoir, by John T Williams. As a young black man growing up in Chicago, he had two choices: He could run the streets and probably wind up behind bars, or he could get an education. Join JT on his journey to, if not quite the promised land, a place of productivity and prosperity.
In Nunc Coepi, John “JT” Williams has written a powerful treatise. This is a story the world not only deserves to hear, but also needs to hear.
—Roger Kay, author of A Life Well Lived
My Kaleidoscope Brimming With Light: A Memoir by Hannah Snyder. Heartwarming story about a 3-year-old girl adopted from South Korea by a family in the American Midwest, her struggles to adjust, and her effort to track down her birth parents.
The Last Saboteur: A WWII Spy Thriller by Martin Roy Hill. The Nazi empire is nearly finished. Only one agent stands in the way of the Allies building their powerful new weapon. Hill characteristically combines little-known historical facts with an action-packed behind-the-scenes glimpse of the suspenseful intrigue that ultimately led to the development of the atomic bomb and the end of WWII.

• Travel

Bon Voyage: Janis continued her globetrotting ways, traveling by cruise ship on the east and west coasts of Africa with her pool pal, Leilei. One cruise set off from Qatar and included stops in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, the Seychelles, Kenya, Madagascar, and Mauritius. Madagasgar marked the 100th country she has visited.

The second excursion went from Cape Town, South Africa, to Barcelona, Spain, with a number of stops along the way, including a few days at the Canary Islands. She singled out Ivory Coast as her favorite stop on this trip.

While these weren't birding trips per se, of course she managed to work some birding into them and at Madagascar scored several lifers as well as lemurs.

¿Hablas Español?: While Janis visited other continents, my international travel consisted of multiple trips to Tijuana, Mexico — to visit my new dentist, Dr. Estela. She's not only an excellent and painless molar mechanic, she sings while she works, in English as well as Spanish, and when she's done, she massages my jaw. The only challenge to this is that she doesn't actually speak much English (her singing notwithstanding) and most of my eighth-grade Spanish has evaporated.

I experienced a taste of trepidation on my first visit, even while chaperoned by Arie Meurs, the husband of my long-time friend and fellow writer M.L. Meurs, author of the novel Camp Salvador. They have been going to Dr. Estela for the past decade and Arie speaks Spanish fluently.

As I sat in the chair waiting for the novocaine to kick in, the song Knock, Knock, Knocking on Heaven's Door began playing. I wondered if I would be knock, knock, knocking on Heaven's door. But it turned out just swell, and it cost one fourth of what it would have cost north of the border.

I have since teamed up with a taxi driver who speaks excellent English and charges a below-market rate: He greets me at the border and is now on speed dial. And because I have a Global Entry card, crossing back into the USA as a pedestrian only takes a few minutes.

Mind you, the first time I went on my own, Janis made me take one of her Air Tags so she could monitor my whereabouts. You know, in case I landed in the Tijuana jail and I ain't got no friend to go my bail. (Some of you may be old enough to remember that 1959 hit song by the Kingston Trio.)

• No Good Deed . . .

Our wildful yard attracts a lot of wildife. Birds, of course, as well as raccoons, opossums, skunks, coyotes, rabbits, scorpions, and squirrels. Lots of squirrels, to the point that they become a nuisance. They are prolific breeders, after all. So, methinks, I will thin the ranks.

Banjo picker Charlie VanTassel loaned me one of his live traps for the job. The trap works great. In an effort to do the humane thing, I hauled the first squirrel to a lovely wooded area, where I would release it — and pat myself on the back for being such a good guy.

What I didn't realize at the time is that in order for this to go according to plan, one must think like a squirrel, not a human. I opened the tailgate of the truck and pulled the trap out onto the tailgate, confident that as soon as the squirrel saw the lovely expanse of grass, shrubs, and trees, it would race away and climb high into the nearest pine tree.

I opened the hatch in the trap and the squirrel poked its head out, looked at me, looked at the beautiful squirrel habitat awaiting it . . . and ran back into the truck, where it dove head-first into a tiny hole in the bedliner. There it became trapped (or so I thought) between the bedliner and the fender. I could hear it deperately clawing at the steel in a futile effort to dig its way out.

I'm thinking, You ungrateful little bastard!

I walked away from the truck to consider the situation, hoping the squirrel would make an escape. No such luck. When I returned to the truck, I could still hear it scratching away. I figured that it had fallen so far into that dungeon that it couldn't get out. And, as a practical matter, I could not remove the camper shell and bedliner to set it free.

I said, "Mr Squirrel, you just dug your own grave." And I drove home, figuring the heat in the tiny compartment on this hot sunny day would surely mummify him in short order.

The next morning, I went out to check on Mr. Squirrel. I opened the liftgate and muttered, "What the . . .?"

That squirrel had trashed my truck. It had torn down the headliner, which hung like limp linen on a clothes line, and ripped out the "boot" that provided the watertight seal between the camper shell and the cab of the truck. It had also ripped to shreds a blanket and much of the carpet padding as well as some newspapers. And I could hear it again scratching the fender in the "dungeon" in which I thought it had been trapped.

After uttering a lengthy string of profanity, I returned to the house. I would give the little hijo de puta (yes, I can swear in Spanish) a chance to clear out. I left the liftgate open all day before venturing back for an inspection. I banged on the side of the truck with my fist but heard nothing. The squirrel had escaped, finally. And most likely had returned to that ash tree opposite my office window where it and its mates would have a good laugh.

I kept reminding myself, think like a squirrel, not a human: set the trap on the ground, well away from the truck, and shutter every possible point of entry into the truck until the damned critter has gone on its merry way.

• Music

Not fiddling as much as I would like, thanks to tendonitis in my aging metacarpals. I do get it out occasionally and have been playing some with 13-year-old Arie Isaac Samaniego, the Meurs's grandson, who fiddles a mean Angeline the Baker.

• Hiking

My pal Ian Law and I have challenged ourselves with climbing all of the highest peaks in San Diego County, including Hot Springs Mountain, the highest of the high at 6,533 feet. We generally are the slowest, if not also the oldest, climbers, so it's not unusual for us to be passed by an under-30 on the way to the top, and again as this person descends before we have reached the pinacle. O the joy.
Photo: Atop Stonewall Peak, 5200 feet; Lake Cuyamaca lying far below in the background.

• Birds

Some of my favorite bird photos from this year:

White Pelicans in a feeding frenzy

Snowy Egret (Golden Slippers)) / Tricolored Heron

Ridgeway's Rail / Black-crowned Night Heron

Western Gull dueling with American Crow

Bushtit / House Wren

California Scrub Jay / California Thrasher

California Quail / Phainopepla

Cooper's Hawk / Lewis's Woodpecker
Photos copyright 2025 Larry M. Edwards
Predator on the prowl / (headless) Red-tailed Hawk