Happy Holidays and Hiatus!

Hi all, sorry it's been so silent over here of late! Things have been busy and crazy. To give you all an update on what's going on, I am wrapping up a 15-year tenure at my office job (an exhausting and mind-boggling process). From here, I'll be moving on to working on my illustration and artwork in my studio plus working part-time at the Portland Public Library. It's official!

My last day at my old job is January 1st. After that, I'm a free (possibly starving a little) bird. This should give me a lot more time to pursue the Strange Maine ideal, which for me includes being able to take field trips (with lots of photos, of course), interview Strange Maine personages, and have time to devote to research and investigation in general, which up to this point has been rather fly-by-night at best.

This is a big leap. Hopefully you will eventually start seeing an upswing in the quality and an increase in the quantity of original articles here on the site and in the Gazette, and a more frequent occurrence of original artwork to accompany it.

One of the things I've asked family and friends for as a Christmas wish item is gift certificates to Sanctuary Tattoo so that my guy Wil Scherer can apply his talents to my shoulders in the form of a Strange Maine tattoo which I will be sitting down at the drawing board to flesh out shortly. Updates here as work progresses. Yow! Or should that be "Ow!"? At any rate, this will be an interesting new dimension to the embodiment of Strange Maine in my life.

In case I am still behind on posting 'til the New Year, I would like to take this moment to say a huge THANK YOU! to all of my readers, and to my fellow contributors, Chris Dunham and Chris Wallace, plus all those folks who e-mail and/or give me story tips in person. I couldn't be doing this without all you guys chiming in here. This whole thing is for YOU!!!

Happy Holidays, everyone, and Happy New Year!
Here's to 2007!!!

Photo: Michelle Souliere & Chris Wallace at the old Geno's, a Strange Maine hotspot if there ever was one!