My fabulous Secret Santa set out to find out exactly what I was interested in, made me feel fantastic by being attentive and engaging, and then delivered far more than I could ever have hoped to expect. All of this was done without ever revealing his/her identity. If it were up to me, my Secret Santa would get a big prize for being wonderful, kind, and above all, inspiring.

Anyway, this is what happened: My Secret Santa sent me an email almost straight away, identifying himself/herself as a “fellow “frustrated” writer”, promising great things, and asking me a couple of questions about myself. This was followed up by more specific and interesting questions such as "You have 5 minutes to leave your home due to an emergency. Your family and pets are already safe. What three things do you take with you and why?" and "If you had two hours completely to your self and could only do one of the following activities, which would you chose? (1) Sleep, (2) Read, (3) Write, (4) Drink a few stubbies"

With my answers under his/her belt, I received the first of three sets of gifts: 2x kindle books. The first was The Emotion Thesaurus, which is an excellent creative-writing tool. I could not download the second because Amazon doesn’t like Australians. My Secret Santa was not discouraged, and sent me a big list of books and gifts and asked me what I thought of them. These were all spot on.

Then my Secret Santa sent me two more Kindle books. Once again, an outstanding creative-writing tool: Outlining Your Novel; and the novel The Moviegoer. But my Secret Santa and promised me more to come.

For the last week I have been excitedly checking the UPS site to see the progress of a package. Today it arrived. The contents: "Flawless", and incredibly interesting true crime novel, and "The Killing", the novel that the fantastic Stanley Kubrick movie was based on.

I was hoping that my Secret Santa would give me a clue to his/her identity so that I could give them a credit if any of my novels ever gets published. (Shameless self-promotion: check your book stands and Kindle Store for "Firedragon" or "A Short History of Coober Pedy and its Vampires" or "The Club" sometime in 2013, if all goes to plan. :-))

Thank you so much, Secret Santa. You have made an aspiring author and new redditor extremely happy.