Plinky.com asked me to summarise 2011 with one sentence for each month.

January found me reshaped, with a novel and poetry collection hot off the press.

February found me en-birthdayed and worrying that I didn't have an idea for the next novel.

March found me waiting, waiting, waiting, trusting the world to deliver whatever I needed.

April found me an idea out of the blue and the story surged.

May found me writing to a structure for only the second time in eight novels.

June found me in Puerto Rico, standing 'neath a waterfall after a hike through the rain-forest.

July found me back in my musical muse, recommitted to my songs and voice.

August found me finishing the novel I'd begun just four months earlier.

September found me worried about money.

October found me still committed to my story-telling self.

November found me finalising the redraft and ready for publication.

December gave me Escalation in my hands, a novel I hadn't planned, but that brought me joy to write.

And of course, there's so much more, but I was given a sentence per month, and that's what I've written!

Gibson

Plinky.com asked me what the must-have toys were when I was a kid.

I kinda sorta answered this in a previous prompt: http://vincet.net/2011/01/27/my-childhood-idol-thats-an-evil-question/

but just so's I add something rather than linking...

[now, isn't that interesting? I'm half-way through writing my latest novel at the moment and, as a Brit living in the US, it's the first one that's a completely American cast and setting, so I'm writing characters with american phonetics and accents - and I just wrote that last sentence including one - arghh! I'm changing!]

Anyway... I was thinking about my must-haves when I was a kid, rather than those I was told were important to me by the advertising man.

A frisbee when we were on our summer holidays.
The original Star Wars figures - especially the Millennium Falcon scale model.
Stretch Armstrong.
Rubik's Cube (the original, my fastest time ever was about 48 seconds).

And many, many others of course. But the toys mentioned in the linked post are really where it was at for me.

Nowadays, it's guitars, amps and pedals, it's the experience of telling and reading stories to my girls, it's enjoying moments like last-night's water balloon fight on our trampoline after a VERY hot day.

It's nice now, knowing that my must-haves come only with the cost of willing love.

Plinky.com asked me which one crime I would commit if I knew I could get away with it.

Hmmm... That's an interesting moral question, isn't it?

I could be clever and think of a way to subvert a dictatorship - "A little free speech with dinner, methinks?"

I could be imaginative and think of a way to undermine a religion - "Actually, one shalt..."

I could be amoral and choose something like murder, just to know the experience of taking another life - "It's the rush, maaaaan..."

I could be metaphysical and say that I'd break nature's law of aging, mortality and decay in order to live forever

[except I really don't want to do that: http://vincet.net/2010/10/04/i-yearn-only-for-now/ ]

And though I'm loathe to simply pick a 'steal something' option - I don't need or want for much material stuff in this life - I'm ultimately going to choose a crime that, realistically, would provide a LOT of flexibility in this world.

The one crime I would commit if I were to be guaranteed of getting away with it would be:

Hack Bill Gates' finances on an ongoing basis to syphon his wealth to my own ends.

[after all, over the decades, Microsoft products have stolen many productive hours from me without asking]

Which leads to another potential prompt - if you had Bill Gates' BILLIONS, how would you spend it?

All joking aside, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is trying some cool stuff to help people around the world, please swing by their website: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx