Smale Christmas 2025

2025 was a year of milestones, marking Karen's first full calendar year of retirement, Alan's 65th birthday, and our 35th wedding anniversary. Wow. Time just keeps marching on. And so do we, still trying to make the most of it.

As befits the retirement lifestyle (of at least the reasonably funded variety), we took lots of trips this year. Because January is clearly the absolute best time of year to visit Yorkshire, England, we spent two weeks in Leeds with Alan's mother, including a trip to the Lake District to see Jean, his mother's cousin (and so Alan's cousin once removed). And, yes, there may have been some snow-shoveling involved. We spent a week in Cape Charles, VA in April, visited Nevada and Utah in June (see below), and took trips to Colorado to visit friends in July and Charlottesville for our anniversary in August-September. We took a three-week European grand tour in September-October, splitting our time between England, Slovenia, and northern Italy, which was all fabulous. Karen also took trips to visit her mother in Tucson in May and September, and Alan went along too for the third trip in November.

Alan may have retired from the day job, but he's still all-in with his new fulltime writer life. This year's major event was the release of Burning Night, the third installment and grand finale in his Apollo Rising series of Cold War alternate history space action-adventure-intrigue novels. It always feels odd and bittersweet to come to the end of a long project, but Alan is really proud of this one. Burning Night came out on November 11th, meaning that he'll be spending a good fraction of December and January doing promo work for it — podcast interviews, Web features, that sort of thing.

Other highlights of his writing year included: the appearance of his story Red-Eye and Thunderbird in the Shapers of Worlds V anthology from Shadowpaw Press in March; a nonfiction article about the National Cryptological Museum for award-winning zine, Journey Planet, in May; the reprint of his "Roman baseball" short novel with Rick Wilber, The Wandering Warriors, in the Baen anthology All Roads Lead to Rome in June; the publication of short story Darwin's Rocket in Sunday Morning Transport in October; and the release of the Skull X Bones pirate anthology from ZNB Press in December, including his anchor story Caesar at Sea.

Alan also participated in the week-long pro-level Rio Hondo Writers Workshop in New Mexico in May, gave a keynote presentation entitled Points of Divergence: Writing Alternate History at the Historical Novel Society Summer Conference in Las Vegas, NV, in June (after which we traveled in NV/UT), and schmoozed at various science fiction conventions: Ravencon, Balticon, the Baltimore Book Festival, and Philcon...

And the beat rolls on. May 2026 will see the publication of his "alternate zoology" novella, Mad Dogs & Englishmen, as part of the Systema Paradoxa series of standalone cryptid stories, and he's had another story accepted for Asimov's Science Fiction and Fantasy that should appear in a summer issue. And... he has other projects in the pipeline.

"Moving on..." as John Oliver would say:

Karen is enjoying her first full year of retirement. As to be expected, she's never satisfied with the number of things that get crossed off the to-do list, but she did manage a few highlights in juried art exhibits: two photos accepted for display at BWI airport in separate exhibits (and so, her art was displayed at BWI for nearly 8 months of 2025), and a photo at one of the Bowie City Hall's exhibits. She had a few photos on display (and made a sale) at the New Deal Cafe exhibit in Greenbelt, MD, and another photo up for a month at Gallery 564 in Severna Park, MD. In new photo skills, Karen learned the RIGHT way to make timelapses. Having obtained the right software and skills, she presented an invited talk on this topic to the Silver Spring Camera Club. (Alan accompanied her to Baltimore while she made a "holy grail" timelapse of the sunset for the presentation.) But perhaps the highlight of her photography year was winning the Bowie-Crofton Camera Club's Photographer of the Year award for the 2024-25 season. That one will go on the "photo resume" for sure!

In family news, Karen visited her mom in Tucson in May, then went again in September while her brother, Jim, was also there. It was decided that—at 91 years old—it was time for Mom to move into assisted living, where someone checks on her every day, makes sure she gets good meals, and where there is more opportunity for socializing. Mom isn't all that happy about giving up the independence of driving (though we're relieved), but she likes the social and amenity-rich opportunities of being right there with her peers. Free shuttles to the symphony help her to keep doing the same things she's always loved. Karen and Alan both visited her again in November and Karen's two brothers have been there since the move as well.

And somehow, despite all these absences, we still have a thriving vocal band. The Chromatics had power performances at the National Air and Space Museum in July, a New Deal Cafe (Greenbelt) gig in September, and left it all on the stage at our Washington Folk Festival appearance in October. In December we have a performance at the Maryland Meadworks (wait: singing -and- drinking?) and our usual two-night festive headliner at the Greenbelt Arts Center. How long will we keep rocking? Honestly, we don't know, but ... it's fun. So far, so good.

In other news: well, we appear to have survived a year with no major house improvement projects to speak of! Astonishing. Maybe next year!

Living near Washington, DC, means that sometimes people come to visit us! Karen's brother Karl was in town for a conference in August and her cousin Sharon visited in September. We encourage our far-flung friends and relatives to let us know when you're in the area. We are retired and may just have the day available and would love to share a meal with you!

We wish everyone a great holiday season, and a Happy New Year!

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