Coming in December: The Ghosts of Christmas Short Stories Past!

blakemp Writing Life, ,

I am a nerd for Christmas.

Ask anybody, I’ve been a huge fan of the entire Christmas season for as long as I can remember. I love the music, I love the movies, I love the TV specials, and lord knows I love the food. I love the stories, too – tales of redemption and hope, ghosts and angels…there’s something that makes any story a little more precious when it’s part of the Christmas season.

Way back in 2000, a year that was before any of the students in my current 12th grade class were even born, I learned an interesting bit of information about my favorite Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. The tale of George Bailey and Clarence the Angel, the beautiful story of a man who is given the gift of seeing a world where he never existed, did not actually begin life as a movie. The movie was a loose adaptation of the short story “The Greatest Gift,” a story that was written by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1943 and given to friends as a Christmas card after being unable to find a publisher for it. The story was passed around and eventually made its way to Hollywood, where Frank Capra and James Stewart transformed it into one of the most iconic films of the season. The thing that stuck with me, though? The notion of a short story as a Christmas card.

The idea lodged in my brain, inescapable, and it took root. I decided to do something similar that year, writing a short story that included characters from the novel I was working on, a weird little thing about superheroes that was, at the time, called Capes and Masks before I finally settled on the marginally-superior title Other People’s Heroes. The story featured two side characters from that novel and was set on the Christmas immediately before the events of the book. I was pleased with the story, I sent it out, and when I published the revised version of the novel several years later I included the story, “Lonely Miracle,” as a sort of special feature in the back.

The thing is, that first story wouldn’t sit still, and in 2001 I sat down and wrote a second story, this one directly inspired by Capra’s film. In 2002 I did it again. Then again. And here we are, 23 years later, and I have never failed to put a new story into the world every Christmas.

This year, I’ve decided it would be nice to dig back into the archives and once again share all these ghosts of Christmas stories past. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be re-presenting most of those stories to you, every day except Wednesday (because on Wednesdays the only thing you need to worry about reading will be the newest installment of Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars). I’ll once again share every short story with you, free of charge. That will make 20 of the 24 Christmases – the other four Christmases are accounted for with the three short Christmas novels I’ve written. I’ll give you those links now, since two of them are on Amazon.

First was A Long November, from Christmas 2005 (which also happened to be my first year attempting National Novel Writing Month). Duncan Marks is just like you: sick and tired of Christmas getting earlier and earlier every year. And just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Duncan finds himself targeted by a strange pixie intent on rescuing his Christmas spirit – on the DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN. A Long November is available as an eBook collection from Amazon, which also happens to include several other of my earliest Christmas stories, the ones I’ll be sharing here for the next few weeks. 

The second short novel was from 2013, a tale called Making Santa: Advent. Nicholas Grace is one of 200 men abducted by a bizarre alien race called the Yool, aliens who are testing their captives…training them for a very important task: to become the most famous figure in history. One of these men will become the new Santa Claus. Like A Long November, Making Santa: Advent is available as an Amazon eBook. This story, you may notice, has a few sequel hooks…I had thoughts at the time of doing a series with these characters. It hasn’t materialized yet, but never say never.

The third longer work is Santa’s Odyssey, an experiment that began on Christmas 2017 and lasted until Christmas 2018, counting as the story for both of those two Christmases. In this story, as Santa returns to the North Pole on Christmas Eve he is attacked by a coalition of angry holiday icons who feel his holiday has gotten out of control. Over the next year, Santa is forced to see the task of each of the other major holidays. This was a challenging story to write, turning out a chapter every month as the year progressed and covering two Christmases. It’s never been put out for sale, but you can download the PDF of it for free right here.

And with those three stories up front, the stage is set. Come back tomorrow for the first of these Ghosts of Blake’s Christmas Stories past, one every day (except Wednesdays) until we reach Dec. 23, when this year’s all-new story will make its debut! Hope you enjoy this trip through my development as a writer, guys. Merry Christmas! 

And in case you missed any of the stories, they’ll be indexed right here!

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