Smale Christmas 2017

Greetings to one and all, and welcome to the Smale Christmas Letter for the Year Two Thousand and Seventeen.

We're just now completing our second full year of vegan cooking, and keeping active with Pilates, yoga, walking, and dancing-while-singing. We figure that as long as we can still do that, we're doing okay.

This year, Alan's long "Clash of Eagles" journey drew to a close. The final book in the series, Eagle and Empire, was released in hardback in May and in paperback in October. This grand finale kept him busy for much of the year, from finalizing the galley proofs, continuity, and map in January-February, to feeding the publicity machine March through June and into October. He wrote a number of guest blogs, including Scalzi's "The Big Idea" and Mary Robinette Kowal's "My Favorite Bit," and Eagle and Empire earned a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, an Editor's Choice from the Historical Novel Society, and many other strong reviews. Also, sales are good! Meanwhile, the second book in the series, Eagle and Exile, was a finalist for the Darrell Award for Best MidSouth Novel. Alan drove to MidSouthCon in Memphis, TN in March for the ceremony; no trophy, but he was very happy for the recognition and made a lot of new friends. On the con circuit Alan also guested at Phoenix Comicon in May, Awesome Con in June, Capclave in October, and the World Fantasy Convention in November.

In other writing news, Alan's alternate history story Kitty Hawk, about the Wright Brothers (and Sister) and the dawn of aviation, appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction in the March/April 2017 issue. A substantial novella written in collaboration with Rick Wilber (a fellow Sidewise Award-winner) entitled The Wandering Warriors will appear in Asimov's in spring 2018. At a pro writers workshop in Taos, NM he and Alan were challenged to write a story about our two passions, Romans and baseball. They said "Haha, how could we ever...?" And then, of course, they went for a few long hikes and figured out how to do it.

Alan continues to be gainfully employed at NASA, in the same job as before: Director of the HEASARC, NASA's High Energy Astrophysics archive, with a side order of science research. This year he attended the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, TX, and also worked on research projects with students Trevor Torpin and Becka Phillipson, leading to their first papers in refereed journals. Karen is also still employed at the 80% level (the proper work/life balance!) and continues to lead a web development team for the Sciences & Exploration Directorate at NASA/Goddard, and - for you geeks - has learned some Bootstrap and SQL this past year.

Karen continues to take lots of photographs, and she participated in the Goddard Photo Club's Showcase again this year, displaying 8 photos and making her first sale! She's also doing the 365 project (photo a day) again this year, though she's recently been concentrating more on creating a portfolio in preparation for getting her work seen in public more next year. Stay tuned!

We also managed to fit some other trips into this rather crowded year. In March we visited Karen's mother in Tucson. In August we had a great view of the total solar eclipse in Sun Valley, Idaho, after which we went to Yellowstone with friends. September saw us in England with Alan's parents, where we enjoyed excursions to Fountains Abbey and Brimham Rocks. And in October we visited New York with Karen's mom. More locally, we went on the March for Science in April, visited Philadelphia's Magic Garden and the 90th birthday of a good friend's mother in July, and took a long weekend in Frederick to celebrate Alan's birthday in September.

Extended family: This year we said goodbye to Alan's Uncle Roy, a mainstay of Alan's early life in England. We also enjoyed a visit from Alan's awesome cousin Susanna, who works for the HALO Trust removing landmines in Laos.

The Chromatics? Yes. Still rocking. We spent the first half of the year doing the final recording, mixing, and mastering for our ninth (!) CD, Fragments. In the meantime, we headlined an a cappella showcase for the Deer Creek Chorale, and performed at Columbia Mall and the Greenbelt Artful Afternoon. We debuted Fragments at Shore Leave, a local science fiction convention, and performed at the National Air & Space Museum at Udvar-Hazy. This festive season we're back in the groove with performances at the Brookside Festival of Lights, the Greenbelt Arts Center, and a joint concert with a cappella shining stars Bonus Track at Harford Community College.

So, still thriving, and still keeping busy! Happy Holidays!

Alan alansmale@gmail.com
Karen karen.smale@gmail.com

Alan's writing life
The Chromatics
AstroCappella: our astronomy-related singing
Alan's Facebook
Karen's Facebook (including lots of photo albums of the above events)
Karen's Flickr albums
The Chromatics Facebook
AstroCappella Facebook