This is last year’s story, and as such, I’ve actually got a fairly clear memory as far as where it comes from. The idea came to me first – what if a supernatural being of some sort went with Santa as a sort of “ride along”? Why would Santa need him? Heck, I covered a great reason for that back in Santa’s Odyssey. But why would he agree to do it? I needed a real motivation for my main character, and it took me quite some time to figure it out. The first half of this story came along in fits and starts because I didn’t have the why. But when I figured it out, when I KNEW why he would go along with it, the rest of the story just flowed like egg nog.
This, too, is a story from the world of the Curtain. Of course it is. The main character is a monster…of sorts.
And thus we come to the end of the Ghosts of Christmas Stories past! I hope you’ve enjoyed this little retrospective, and I hope you’re ready for a little more. Because tomorrow we’re gonna debut this year’s all-NEW Christmas short story, “Good Choices.” See you then!
As I’ve said before, my writing drought came to an end in 2021 when Amazon announced its Kindle Vella platform, a way for writers to serialize stories one chapter at a time. I had been contemplating a new Siegel City story for quite some time, but I knew it didn’t really fit as a novel – it was more of an episodic series of adventures that all tied together…less like a novel and more like a run of a comic book. But as I’m pretty much a one-man operation that can’t draw and working with the salary of a public school teacher, actually producing a comic book was out of the question. But as a prose installment, serialized a piece at a time…Dickens did it. Stephen King did it. Dang it, there’s no reason I couldn’t do it too. That story began to take shape, eventually becoming my series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars.
I never would have suspected how long that particular road would be, as I’m sitting here two and a half years later and just now, finally, getting to the end. (People who’ve been reading along, I love you. Please write a review on Amazon. We’re almost there.) And as so often happens, when Christmas rolled around that year I didn’t want to leave the heroes of that story. And so the three young stars of Little Stars became the heroes of that year’s Christmas story as well. If you haven’t read Little Stars…well, I can’t really be angry at you, because you’re part of a vast majority. But don’t worry, I think this story works just fine on its own. For those of you who are familiar with the exploits of Andi Vargas, Tony Gardner, and Vic Teague, I hope this little bonus glimpse into their lives during the Christmas that follows the beginning of the serial is fun for you.
And once more for the road: how ‘bout that logo? The great Jacob Bascle again! Check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio!
I don’t think I need to explain to anybody how the year 2020 sucked. If you can think of a single positive that came out of that horrid, ridiculous, divisive crapnado of a year, you’re Pollyanna compared to me. As that year reached its end, and I approached the time to once again tackle my little holiday tradition, I thought about what it was we all really needed that year.
The answer was simple but, as is so often the case, the way to convey the message was a little more complicated. This is one case where my life as a teacher really came in handy. I don’t know if teachers should admit this to their students, but there are certain lessons, certain subjects that we enjoy much more than others. I do admit to my students that the marking period when we tackle Hamlet is my absolute favorite part of the school year. But there are other stories that I teach that I really enjoy as well, and it is one of those that brought “Warmth” to life. Like all truly great stories, there are different versions of it, and in this story I did a little work trying to reconcile public perception with the original text, while at the same time telling a story of my own. I think I did okay when it comes to that, but whether I did or not, the result is one of my personal favorites of all the Christmas stories I’ve written over the years.
2019 was the year my little Christmas tradition almost ended. 2017 was the hardest year of my life – that was the year that I lost my mother AND the year my son was born. My entire life was thrown into chaos, and in all that chaos, all my creative juices sort of evaporated. I managed to squeeze out the monthly chapters of Santa’s Odysseythat brought us from Christmas of 2017 to New Year’s Day of 2019.
And then after that…nothing. Santa’s Odyssey drained what little fuel I had left in the tank, and for a long time, although I tried desperately to get a story started again, nothing I tried gained any traction. When Christmas approached that year, I resigned myself to the fact that this was the year my little tradition would finally die.
But then, a few days before the deadline, an idea came to me, and I got back in the saddle. “I Can Explain” is the shortest of my short stories, and probably not the best, but it kept me going at a point where I wasn’t sure if anything would. And it drew on what was going on in my world, which gives it a certain sincerity. And although I didn’t have any real creative output for the next year and a half (it wouldn’t be until 2021, when I found my way to Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, that I actually found the will to write long-term again), if I hadn’t finished this story I may never have written the story for 2020, which turned out to be one of my favorites. So for that reason, I’m really glad that this story exists.
Can I tell you, when I went to put this little retrospective together, it was a pain in the butt to find the file with today’s story? After looking in every file and folder I could think of and doing repeated searches for “Daisy’s Tree,” I was starting to think I would have to open the eBook on Amazon and type it all over again. Then I saw a file with a curious title and it all came back to me in a rush. The file wasn’t saved as “Daisy’s Tree,” but under this short story’s working title, “Cup of Kindness.” This is as good a time as ever to confess to you guys that I’m terrible at titles. I rarely start a story with a title in mind, and I frequently change the title multiple times before I present the story to the world. And even then, nine times out of ten, I’m not happy with what I land on. Other People’s Heroes was Capes and Masks throughout the writing of the first draft, and if you can think of a blander title for a superhero novel, I’d love to hear it. Even this year’s story, the first draft of which I finished this afternoon as I write this on Dec. 17, has a working title that I don’t like at all. I hope I can come up with something better before I share it with you guys on the 23rd.
Oh yeah. “Daisy’s Tree.” Cute story. I think you’ll like it. And I forgot before I started to go over this that a friend from an earlier story makes an appearance. Look at me, being all clever like that.
So I’ve obviously written a few superhero stories, and I’ve done a lot of monster yarns as well. Oddly enough though, despite my avowed love of things like Star Trek, I haven’t done an awful lot of science fiction. I suppose it’s the homework aspect of it that intimidates me – you can get away with a lot of breaking the rules in physics in a monster movie or in a universe where people can pick up an airplane without it cracking in half, but sci-fi fans are a different breed. They like things to be accurate, and science isn’t my strong suit.
But a few years ago, I got an idea for a science fiction saga and I did something I don’t do often: I outlined. I conjured up a dozen alien races, the rules of their respective cultures, the history of their interaction with humans once we escape the cradle of Earth and get out into the galaxy, all of that building up to the story I was going to tell with them…but I haven’t. Not yet. I started working on it, but the world – as it tends to do – got into the way. Having a kid, losing loved ones…lots of things derailed my plans for writing, and although I eventually found my way back behind the keyboard I haven’t gotten back to this universe yet. But I’m stressing yet. Unlike some of the other abandoned worlds I’ve alluded to here, this is one I feel I may just make it back to some day. In the meantime, this tale of a creature from another world discovering our Christmas is the sole artifact of that currently-lost world.
This is another one where I’m not 100 percent certain where the inspiration came from. It’s another Siegel City story (although the last of those for a while, until 2021, to be precise), and once again I’ve branched out from Other People’s Heroes into new characters. I think it’s one of those stories that came to me, Jeopardy-style, in the form of a question: what if a crook found out when the superheroes in his city were having their Christmas party? How could he take advantage of that? And who would stop him? It’s shorter than a lot of my other Christmas tales, but I like it.
And hey, one more time, three cheers for the artwork of Jacob Bascle! You may remember him from such books as literally every Siegel City story, as well as his professional comic book design and lettering. Check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio!
Roast your chestnuts and deck your halls, folks! It’s time once again for Playing Favorites, the Geek Punditry recurring feature in which I ask my pals on social media for categories of some kind of storytelling and I talk about my favorites in those categories. This time around I’m Playing Favorites with Christmas stories. Last week, in part one of this feature that will go down in history with the works of Charles Dickens, Frank Capra, and Quincey Magoo, I talked about some of my favorite Christmas comedies, my favorite Christmas horror movies, my favorite Christmas stories from a preexisting IP, and my favorite songs written specifically for a Christmas movie. This week we’re cracking open the suggestions and looking at a few more different categories. So cinch up your comically-oversized black leather belt! Just like Santa Claus when you leave out an assortment of cookies on Christmas Eve, it’s time to Play Favorites!
Rankin and Bass
Duane Hower asked me for my favorite Rankin and Bass Christmas special. This is a toughie, guys. Rankin and Bass is the studio that I think is most associated with Christmas, the people that gave us Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and that weird Smokey the Bear movie that nobody ever remembers. They branched out to other holidays as well, with Here Comes Peter Cottontail and the Halloween epic Mad Monster Party. They even lent Rudolph to other holidays with Rudolph’s Shiny New Year and Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July. They made their own version of The Hobbit, and in the 80s they gave us afterschool masterpieces such as Thundercats and Silverhawks. What I’m getting at here is…well…I really like the works of Rankin and Bass. So picking a singular favorite would be nearly impossible.
This is what Christmas looked like when we were kids.
The good news is, it’s my dang column and I don’t need to limit myself to just one choice if I don’t want to. I think we can all agree that the best-known and most-beloved of the Rankin and Bass catalog are the best-known and most-beloved for a reason: Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Each of these took a legendary song and extrapolated an entire world based on it. Rudolph’s special created whole new characters that have become a welcome addition to any Christmas village such as Yukon Cornelius, Bumble the Abominable Snowman, and Hermey the Elf (who wants to be a dentist). From Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town we have the Burgermeister Meisterburger – the most fun Yuletide villain since King Herod – and a worthy origin story for the character at the center of the Rankin and Bass universe. And while I don’t know if anyone would argue that Frosty’s arch-enemy Professor Hinkle is as iconic as those others, everybody loves that cartoon and will gladly watch it every year.
Having said all that, let me talk a little bit about some of the other Rankin and Bass specials that may not be as iconic, but that I still enjoy. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, an adaptation of the novel by L. Frank Baum that gives Santa a more fantastic origin than most, and which I am an avowed fan of due to its (tenuous but real) connection to the universe of Baum’s Oz novels, which I’ve mentioned before I really enjoy. And just as last week I marked “The Snow Miser Song/The Heat Miser Song” from The Year Without a Santa Claus as one of the best pieces of music composed for a Christmas film, I also love the special as a whole. Like many a superhero franchise, with Santa’s origin out of the way Rankin and Bass were free to just tell a charming story with the character, expand his world, and keep the magic alive.
“Ten bucks if you eat the yellow snowball, Young Santa.”
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is another one I deeply enjoy. A VERY loose adaptation of the poem by Clement Clarke Moore, in this half-hour an entire city is in danger of being put on Santa’s naughty list because of one anonymous citizen who wrote a letter to the newspaper claiming that Santa is a fraud. You’ve got to wonder why the editor actually chose to run that letter in the first place, or at the very least why he failed to include the disclaimer that the letter only represents the opinion of its writer and not necessarily the opinions of the newspaper, the town, or the National Football League, but at that point the damage was done and it’s up to a clockmaker and his mouse buddy to fix it. If you haven’t watched this one in a while give it a spin this year – I promise when the special’s featured song begins you’ll recognize it.
Rankin and Bass also did a few religious specials in addition to all the secular ones. Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey isn’t really anything to write home about (it’s really Rudolph plus Bambi times Jesus, and Don Bluth did a much better job telling essentially the same story for Disney in Small One), but I have a fondness for their version of The Little Drummer Boy, and it’s certainly worth putting into your Christmas rotation.
Claymation
Amber Foret wanted to know my favorite Claymation Christmas films. I’m not sure if she, too, was thinking of Rankin and Bass, but I’m going to treat it as a separate category, because they’re two different things. While both are examples of stop motion animation, Rankin and Bass used puppets made of wood or metal with real fabric clothing and the like, whereas “Claymation” specifically refers to stop motion created using malleable substances like plasticine. Aardman Animation, creators of the Wallace and Gromit cartoons and Chicken Run films, use the clay technique. I know that a lot of people don’t really care about the difference, but I’m going to differentiate them for two very important reasons.
1: I’m a pedantic son of a bitch that way.
2: It gives me another category.
And there are two Claymation projects that rise to the top. The first, from 1987, is Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas Celebration. Vinton – who actually trademarked the term “Claymation” for his own studio – became prominent in the 80s for his work in animation, particularly the California Raisins commercials. In this half-hour special a pair of dinosaurs, Rex and Herb, host a presentation of classic Christmas carols, all while the gluttonous Herb tries to discover the true meaning of the word “wassail.” It’s a great special, with several segments having a bizarre, surreal quality to them. Many, such as the “Carol of the Bells” number, are really funny. Others, like “Joy to the World,” use different techniques to do animation that looks very different than you’d expect. And their rendition of “Oh Christmas Tree” is simply lovely. The special also includes the California Raisins with their legendary rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and a jazzy version of “We Three Kings” that still springs immediately to my mind whenever I hear the song.
Christmas: Bringing together carnivores and herbivores since 65,000,000 B.C.
The other Claymation special I want to talk about is a British production from 1999: Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire. Robbie is the son of a very, very famous reindeer (some may even call him the most famous reindeer of all) who, trapped in his dad’s shadow, is trying to make a name for himself. His goal is to become Santa’s navigator, thanks to a nose that has a built-in GPS function, but the only way he’s going to pull it off is by conquering some rather malevolent rivals in the Reindeer Games. Although not an Aardman production, this special is full of the weird, dry British humor that makes me love Aardman, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and the like. There were also two sequels to the special, Legend of the Lost Tribe and Close Encounters of the Herd Kind. The first one is the best, but all three are worth watching. Do your best to find the original British versions, though, rather than the American versions where the voices were all re-dubbed by the likes of Ben Stiller and Brittney Spears. Nothing against them, but come on – if you’ve got Jane Horrocks, Mark Gatiss, and Rhys Ifans doing the voices, why the hell would you replace them?
You know it’s brilliant because they don’t even need to specify which award it won.
A Christmas Without a Lesson
Rene Gauthreaux decided to make things hard on me by asking the biggest stumper of the bunch: my favorite Christmas movie where no one learns a lesson.
Project ALF.
Because y’see, by now he had ALREADY learned that you shouldn’t eat cats.
This one is tough, guys, because the essence of Christmas is redemption. If you think back to the religious meaning of the holiday, it’s baked right into the story. Even if you ignore that, the vast majority of truly great Christmas stories involve somebody finding a way to make peace with their past and embrace their future – A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, Violent Night, and so forth. So picking a Christmas movie where no lesson is learned, let alone a really GOOD such film, is a rather gargantuan task. I thought hard about this one. I wracked my brain. I even went to Letterboxd and scoured over my list of every Christmas movie I’ve ever watched. (What, you mean you don’t have one?)
Finally, I came to the conclusion that the best lesson-free Christmas movie ever made is the wonderfully bizarre Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. This 2010 film from Finland is about a research team and a family that get embroiled in a task to capture the most dangerous game there is, a unique species that is prized by hunters for its strange properties and remarkable abilities, and which are terribly dangerous, but utterly indispensable at the holidays. I don’t want to say too much more, because if you haven’t seen it I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but the movie is really funny, totally messed-up, and absolutely not to show the kids if you’re just trying to get them to stop watching Santa Buddies for the 900th time. But if you like weird, you don’t mind little gore, and you can handle a movie with tongue planted firmly in its cheek, Rare Exports is worth checking out.
If there IS a lesson to learn here, it’s probably about that hat.
Christmas Fantasy
Kylie Wells hit me with another toughie: my favorite Christmas fantasy. You wouldn’t think this one would be too difficult, as by rights almost any Christmas story that recognizes the reality behind Santa or Rudolph would inherently count as fantasy, but Kylie specified that she was talking about the sort of “high fantasy” that inhabits the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, and once you apply that filter the list gets much shorter. People have tried to tackle this very specific subgenre several times, and to be honest, most of the efforts have kind of fallen flat. The best one that comes to mind is the Rankin and Bass adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, but I’ve written about that a lot this month, so I don’t want to go back to that well again.
For some reason, the magic of Christmas and the magic of high fantasy just don’t mix very well. In fact, a lot of the efforts are laughable – the 2014 film The Christmas Dragon was actually spoofed in the most recent season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Then a few years ago, while looking for a Christmas movie with my wife, my father, my sister, and her kids, we stumbled upon the 2018 Italian film Legend of the Christmas Witch. When I say this movie is bad…guys, I think it may be safe to call this the Troll 2 of Christmas movies. In fact, although it is not my pick to answer Kylie’s question, I’m gonna recommend you all go and watch this movie just to see for yourself how amazingly, wonderfully bad it is. Every so often Erin, Heather and I talk about seeing if it’s still streaming anywhere (I just checked – as of this writing it’s on FreeVee, Tubi TV, and the Roku Channel) and watching it again with someone else who has not yet had the pleasure. In fact, I’m just going to quote my own review of the film I wrote at the time to give you a taste of what you’re in for:
“At one point in this movie the witch’s boyfriend has to take off his dinosaur mask so he can tell her students to steal a bunch of toy bicycles to ride into the mountains while he distracts the dragonfly drones, and if that doesn’t make you want to watch it I don’t even know what to tell you.”
You have been warned.
Seriously, this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Watch it twice.
But for an actual good movie that embraces the elements of fantasy, the best example I can think of is Hogfather, the 2006 miniseries that adapts the late, great Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel of the same name. If you’ve never read a Discworld book you’re missing out – it’s a fantasy series that brilliantly satirizes not only the tropes of fantasy, but also modern culture, with different aspects targeted by the different books. Hogfather isn’t TECHNICALLY a Christmas movie, as Christmas doesn’t exist on the Disc, but it’s about their equivalent: Hogswatch, a holiday in which the good children of the Disc are visited by the Hogfather…except this year, the Hogfather is missing, the entire fabric of belief on the Disc is in jeopardy, and the only person who can possibly save Hogswatch (and the world) is Death. No, like literally, Death. The Grim Reaper. Guy with the scythe. The big “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” He’s the guy who’s gotta save the world.
Him and his granddaughter.
Anyway, it’s a great book and a great miniseries, and damned if I can think of a better fantasy movie for the Christmas season.
I AM HERE TO SAVE THE HOLIDAYS AND DRINK EGG NOG. AND I AM ALL OUT OF EGG NOG.
Atypical Christmas
We’re going to wrap things up by talking about the category I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for. Jon McCarthy wanted to know my favorite “atypical” Christmas movie (Jon, by the way, is an awesome comic book writer and creator of the comics Endangered and Comic Book Trivia. His newest comic, a New Orleans-based horror one-shot called Loup Garou, was released just this past Wednesday, and you should all run out to your local comic shop and buy a copy, or demand they order one for you if they foolishly failed to have one in stock.) Liese Aucoin, similarly, asked about my favorite “Non-Christmas Christmas Stories, other than Die Hard.” (Liese, to the best of my knowledge, has not written any comic books about werewolves in New Orleans.)
Since I think Jon and Liese are basically asking the same thing, I’m going to combine my answer, especially since it gives me a chance to tackle the greatest Christmas controversy since “Who spiked the egg nog?” Namely: what exactly constitutes a Christmas movie? Die Hard, of course, is the originator of this particular meme, when it became popular among a certain part of the population to call it their “favorite Christmas movie” ironically, as it’s an action movie SET at Christmas, but doesn’t really have the usual trappings of Yuletide cheer. Since then, people have stacked up dozens of movies that fit the same criteria: a Christmas setting, but not really a Christmasy story: films in this category include (but are not limited to) Lethal Weapon, Batman Returns, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Rambo.
This has become a surprisingly delicate subject, with some people who get violently angry when you suggest one of these films counts as a Christmas movie. (Ironically, in this instance they are behaving more like Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon than Bob Crachit.) On the other hand, sometimes the people who are in favor of such movies are so obnoxiously smug about it that it can be embarrassing to admit you agree with them lest you be considered a douche by association.
So let me settle this once and for all. First of all: watch whatever you want, whenever you want, and who the hell cares if somebody else agrees with you if something is a Christmas movie or not? Gatekeeping is stupid, life is too short, so enjoy yourself.
Second: I’m going to explain what I PERSONALLY think makes for a Christmas movie, something I outlined in more detail a few years ago, but I have to stress that this is MY criteria. Go ahead and create your own. Doesn’t upset me in the slightest.
For me to count something as a Christmas movie it needs to fit any TWO of the following THREE criteria:
It must take place PRIMARILY during the Christmas season. (Movies with only one scene set at Christmas, like Toy Story or Star Trek: Generations don’t count.)
It must feature a traditional Christmas character in a prominent role. (Santa Claus, Rudolph, the Grinch, Ernest P. Worrell, Jesus…y’know, the usual.)
It must include a traditional Christmas theme such as family, love, fear (that “ghost stories” thing I mentioned last week) or, of course, redemption.
So by my criteria, of COURSE Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie, as it meets criteria #1 and #3. (It’s about the redemption of John McClain and the real hero of the film, Sgt. Al Powell.)
Each of these films meet two out of the three criteria, and are therefore equally Christmasy. It’s just science, people.
All right, all that out of the way, what am I picking as my FAVORITE atypical Christmas movies? With Die Hard removed from the equation and taken as a given? Well, there are still several others to choose from. Sure, I like Lethal Weapon and Batman Returns and Iron Man 3 (I honestly think it’s underrated in the Marvel Cinematic Universe pantheon), but I don’t often work those into my Christmas rotation. One movie I DO like watching this time of year? Well obviously it’s the one about that cheerful guy in the red suit with the power to fly all around the world. I’m talkin’ 2019’s Shazam!
The bubble gum even kinda makes it look like he has a very shiny nose.
Based on the DC Comic, we’re treated to the story of young Billy Batson (played by Asher Angel), a foster kid who has been bouncing from one home to another for years in a quest to find his birth mother, whom he was separated from as a small child. He’s recently been placed in a new home when an encounter with an ancient wizard gives him the power to transform into the world’s mightest mortal, Shazam (with his adult form played to perfection by Zachary Levi). The movie is set at Christmastime – the final battle, in fact, takes place at a Christmas festival – so it meets criteria #1. And family is one of the major themes of great Christmas stories, so this film lands criteria #3, telling a truly touching story about “found families,” and how the bonds that forge a true family are based not on blood, but on love. It’s a sweet, exciting movie that I sincerely enjoy. Hell, may be the only person out there who liked the sequel – although admittedly, not as much as the first one.
Wow, guys, I have gone on for a WHILE on this one, but hopefully I’ve given you all some movies to check out in the last ten days until Christmas. I know I’m going to be diving into at least some of these films before Santa drops by on Christmas Eve. Thanks to everyone who gave me a suggestion – once again, it was a lot of fun. And I’ll see you again next time I decide to Play Favorites!
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. You know what else you should watch this December? The Rocketeer. It’s not a Christmas movie, Blake just doesn’t think it gets enough love.
Yeah, I know what I said with “Lucky Penny” – I was branching out and writing Siegel City stories that weren’t part of the main cast of Other People’s Heroes, but I hadn’t left them behind ENTIRELY. This story stars Josh Corwood, alias Copycat, the main character of OPH, and it was written while I was working on what would turn out to be my last attempt at a direct sequel to Other People’s Heroes. Even now, though, I was linking to other stories. There are elements of this story that tie in directly to The Pyrite War, my novel of Siegel City’s Golden Age (which doesn’t feature Josh at all), and other things that would come back years later when I began working on the serial story Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars(in which Josh is a significant character, but in a supporting role). That’s why this ends with a little bit of a sequel hook – it was in reference to a story that I was planning, but never quite told. It still happened, though, in that long gap between OPH and Little Stars. Maybe I’ll tell it some day.
By now you should know that I love a good ghost story. I hope you agree that this is one.
Oh – and another shout out to Jacob Bascle, once again nailing it with the cover art for this story. Check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio!
This one will take a teeny bit of explanation. In 2011, after I finished writing “Lucky Penny,” I apparently had another burst of creativity. An idea came to me that I liked so much that, even if I had already written the story for that year, I simply had to put to (digital) paper before I lost it. Oh sure, I could have put it aside and waited to debut it the next Christmas, but that isn’t really in the spirit of my little project.
“Stowaway” is a different kind of story for me. I don’t often write period pieces, and I certainly don’t attempt to write in period style, but I did the best I could here. This is one of those stories where, if I did what I wanted, the reader will actually have a better handle on what’s going on than our narrator. I like stories like that.
Blake M. Petit 