On December 27, I flew to Mexico City with my dad and brother Adam for a six-day vacation, and we fit a lot of great experiences in! Here are a few photos:

<– Adam on Pyramid of the Sun (MUCH bigger than I expected! Awesome!!) with the Pyramid of the Moon in the background at Teotihuacan.

–> walking up the steep stairs up the Pyramid of the Sun.

<– Adam and I at a taco stand in Amecameca. We LOVE the atmosphere in Mexico and enjoyed walking around downtown at night.

–> Inside the Amecameca cathedral. With two 17,000′+ volcanoes towering over the city, think of Amecameca as Mecca for alpine pilgrims.

<– We left the trailhead at 5:22 a.m. and 13,000′ feet above sea level. An hour or two later, the sun rose and showed Popo behind us as we made our way up the steep, rocky trail up Iztaccihuatl. The Popo half of this national park is closed since it’s an active volcano. It had a major eruption a month earlier. I was kinda wishing we’d get to witness that again!

<– Dad’s school. Looks fantastic.

We went to mass next to a 600 year old cathedral and welcomed in 2012 with the family of the pension owner where we stayed. Great people! All very nice. ^ note the Mayan calendar t-shirt.

I caught the bus back up to the DF and flew home the next day.

December book sales doubled November’s record and I finally earned more as an author than as a university writing teacher (yay!). I expected sales to drop off after the Christmas season (14% of all 2010 book sales came in December, for example), but so far that’s not the case and January looks much better than last month so far. I’m hoping this trend continues! I would love to write full time and crank out three or four titles per year!

Last month I set up a system for readers of the Courage, Love and the Meaning of Christmas series to be notified as soon as book 3 (A Fall from Heaven) is ready – just send an email to heaven @ shaunroundy .com).

Ever since, as readers have signed up, they’ve also been sharing a lot of nice things about their experience with the series so far. Knowing how eagerly (and sometimes impatiently) they’re waiting for the rest of the story greatly increases the priority of getting that last book finished – though I’m still working out a few key revelations that will ensure that it’s the best of the three.

Since people rarely post to public places like Amazon reviews, I’ll share a few of the comments here (anonymously – I hope they won’t mind!).

This Christmas my favorite reads were by far your series with Spencer and Ski. I would definitely like to be notified when A Fall From Heaven is released in Kindle version. Please add me to list of people waiting patiently (or should I say impatiently) for the sequel!
“Fabulous writing…”

“PS I love your other books. You are an amazing writer!” Continue Reading »