#730: Christmas presents

Good Ghod -- my newspaper-career memoir, THE CONFESSOR, is almost done at 63,000 words/about 200 pages, just a little longer than my last book. I've written 25,000 words in the last week. I don't know why all this stuff is coming out so fast but I'm not going to question it.
All I have to do now is proofread the thing, which I started doing tonight. I think the first section -- about my experiences at journalism school -- is vivid and funny. I'm hoping I can keep it up.
Might take a few days to proofread, add a little, drop a little, dot the T's and cross the I's, etc. But at this rate, the book might be out for y'all to look over at Amazon.com's Kindle Store by Christmas. I'm hoping so.

Also: From Dec. 21 through Christmas Day, my first e-book, GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!, will be available FREE at Amazon's Kindle Store. You can already download the first 20 pages for FREE there right now and see what you think.
Right now, I'd be happy if a few more people read the book and let me know what they thought.
Speaking of which, my hat's off to Tim Breshears, who posted his review of GGM at Amazon.com. Four stars! I'm grateful -- I owe you a dinner, Tim.
Help your friendly local aging hack writer plan for his imminent Retirement -- buy a copy of GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! for Kindle for Christmas. And if THE CONFESSOR just happens to be there too by then, what the hey...?
I'm going to continue to give this stuff away for $2.99. Except for the freebies, of course.

Hey, BTW -- Rastro is BACK, doing his thoughtful music-reviewing thing at La Historia de la Musica Rock. He's posted a couple reviews in the past week, some of his picks for best albums of the year, and he says there's more coming. Check him out, rejoice and enjoy. We've missed you, buddy....

We all know the most overplayed Christmas songs -- we hear them to death every year at this time. But the folks at the syndicated music-news-and-reviews radio show SOUND OPINIONS played some great obscure Christmas songs during last Sunday night's show, hope you caught them.
Practically everything they played was great -- especially Cheap Trick's "Come On, Christmas," Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody," and The Ramones' "Christmas Night (I Don't Want to Fight)."
But their expert's pick for greatest Christmas song ever was The Kinks' 1977 classic "Father Christmas" -- which really is freakin' awesome -- you'll be singing along with the choruses by the end, and there's some great guitar from Dave Davies. It sounded just slightly familiar, like I may have heard it once years ago....
SOUND OPINIONS has been doing some great stuff the past few months. See if you can track them down in your area. Here, they air every Sunday night at 10 p.m. on KUOW, 90.7 FM, the University of Washington's radio station. Or you can check them out at soundopinions.org/.
Happy holidays....