Now that the holidays are in the rear-view mirror, I want to publicly thank everyone who made the Hard-Boiled Christmas Stories signing at Dwelling Spaces in Tulsa such a great evening for John McMahan and me. Big thanks to my pal Mary Beth Babcock and her crackerjack Dwelling Spaces staff, and ditto to Jeff Martin of Book Smart Tulsa, who not only composed and read his own crowd-pleasing tough-guy version of “The Night Before Christmas,” but also served up shots of Old Crow to the delighted crowd, obviously made up of people after our own hearts. We sold dozens of books, talked at length with friends and writers (not to mention friendly writers and writerly friends), did a little bit of low-key lecturing on the hard-boiled genre, and just generally had a swell time. We are grateful.