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 Odyssey that 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.

Christmas 2019: I Can Explain