Hello! Welcome to the eleventh exciting installment of Son of Thunder!

Well, it's kind of a nice calm winter here - actually, it's more like May, but I do hear it threatens to get cold by March or something. I actually miss the snow - I like it. I like big piles of it and snowdrifts and skiing and tubing and all the rest that goes with it. I even like the shoveling, what little there is of it. Sigh.

Okay, since I wrote the first paragraph we actually have some snow. About a half an inch. Sure got cold, though - it was down to fourteen degrees this morning. Ahh, that's more like it.

Next weekend the Bears play in the Super Bowl. The whole city's football crazy already, and I'm mildly excited. Sure, it would be nice if they won, after coming all this way, but I'm a Buffalo Bills fan myself... and I remember what it's like to lose the Super Bowl. Four times.

I stayed put for Christmas this year, visiting Maggie's family and having her family visit me. We did head out to the small mining town of Galena for New Year's Eve. It's almost to the Iowa border and has turned around it's economy by catering to tourists. Its other claim to fame is that it's home to nine Civil War generals, including U.S. Grant, which from a tiny city like that is a fairly big deal. And since the lead miners who founded the town came from all over the States, and the world, the city itself is an architectural smorgasbord. Rather cool, actually.

I just got back this weekend, the last one in January, from Las Vegas, where we had a two-day convention for keratoconus doctors. It was a very tight schedule (fly in one morning, fly out the next night on a red-eye) but it was very productive! Best meeting I've been to in years, so far as doctor visits are concerned. One thing, though - is it me, or is that city adding another hotel each time I go there? Geez, the place is frickin' huge!

On to the Times!

Americana's finally taking off for a little R and R - but soon finds herself trying to determine what are "The Phantom Bones"!

Next, our heroine learns how knowing her is in itself dangerous, "When Strikes the Skeleton Krewe"!

Americana hasn't read Kipling, but she is the mongoose "In the Cobra's Den".

All things good and bad must pass, as Americana learns in "Changing of the Guard".

And things get quite colorful when Americana mmets a group of villains who have her "Dead to Rites".

And after all that's been happening to Americana over the past few weeks, an old friend drops by to share a falafel. Really. It's "Jammer Time"!

Well, since I had a little extra time, I thought I'd polish off and post two stories I had for next time, this time. Which, since I had actually posted two of this time's, last time, brings me right on schedule. Sort of. Whatever.

Windjammer and Americana take "A Whirlwind Tour" of Washington DC, and Americana gets to showboat a bit. Yeah, that's about all that happens in that one. But Jammer winds up getting in a big fight before leaving Washington, so that's okay, It's "The Path of Destruction!

Oh, and there's even more artwork scanned for Americana's Art Gallery #11 and Americana's Art Gallery #12!

And a very happy St. Valentine's Day to all!

K.C.