The biggest Christmas boat parade in Southern California is in Newport Beach. There you can see over 50 yachts and boats decorated and cruising around the harbor for four nights running. The houses facing the harbor are also decorated to the nines.
Much further up the coast in Venice the boat/float parade is more modest, in part because only canoes, kayaks and other small non-motorized boats are allowed in the canals. The canals are actually more like long, narrow, shallow pools of water, unlike the canals on Naples Island in Long Beach where the water from Alamitos Bay flows through and tides rise and fall.. Like the Long Beach canals, however, the homes lining them have been transformed from rustic beach cottages to mini-mansions.
It was a couple of days after Christmas when I took this photo. The woman in the kayak told me that the parade was so much fun that she decided to continue using her kayak float for a while.
What my vampires no doubt passed by on their way to the wide bike path in Venice where exciting things take place was this huge mural on the side of a commercial building.
Okay, here is the shameless self-promotion: These books are no longer available. In mid-January I published the second novel in my New Vampire series. It’s entitled New Vampire Online.
In it Cate, a slightly ditsy new vampire, sets up an online business with the help of her new boyfriend, Conrad. And that old and gorgeous surfer vampire, Jack, is back and causing problems again.
If you need a humorous vampire fix you can get New Vampire in Town on Kindle right now.
There are other images from the New Vampire series on Pinterest.
