Hello, friends — for years now, it’s been a tradition of mine to turn out a new short story every Christmas to share with everybody. This year, I’m kicking off the fun a little early with a tale for Halloween. “Correspondence” is a new epistolary short set in the world of The Curtain (home of my novels Opening Night of the Dead and The Beginner). It’s a little world-building experiment for me, but I wanted to share it with you as well. Happy Halloween!
Short Story
Ghosts of NEW YEAR’S EVE Stories Past 2014: Baby New Year
In 2014, I had a little bonus burst of holiday spirit in my writing. My Christmas story for that year, All-American Girl, was good. It’s always nice to go back to Siegel City. But that isn’t the only world I write in, and I wanted to spend some time in my other universe, The Curtain. The Siegel City tales are, of course, set in a superhero universe. The conceit of the stories behind The Curtain, however, is that this is a world where all monsters are REAL. Every kind of monster you’ve ever heard of, be they vampires as in The Release or that friendly giant that shows up in Warmth. Of course, not everyone necessarily BELIEVES that monsters are real, despite all the evidence to the contrary, but…hey, that’s what happens in a fantasy world, right? Anyway, the main characters in Baby New Year became fire-forged friends after helping to fight off a zombie attack in the novel Opening Night of the Dead. This story picks up on those guys some time later, as the dynamic between them is shifting. I do like these guys – Max, Brie, and Marissa. I may come back and tell more stories with them some day.
Ghosts of Christmas Stories Present 2023: Good Choices
I have said, over the past few years, that my writing has become somewhat focused on stories about parents and their children. It wasn’t deliberate on my part, but becoming a father seemed to make this a recurring theme in my stories. But as I’ve gone over this retrospective, I realize that’s not entirely true. Of the 23 previous Christmas stories I’ve shared, eight of them have been about parents and their kids in one way or another, four before my son was born and four after. On the other hand, the first four came about in 17 attempts, while since his birth I’ve gone four for six, so the frequency is definitely increasing.
This year is gonna make it five out of seven, because this year’s story is not only about a parent and child, but it’s perhaps the most personal Christmas story I’ve ever written. The funny thing is that when I started this retrospective back on December 1, I had no idea what this year’s story would be, but after doing this for nearly a quarter of a century I had faith that something would occur to me. Then, about a week ago, while my son climbed into bed with us and cuddled me on a Saturday morning, the idea just came in all at once. It took me the weekend to write the first draft, and I haven’t had to make many changes.
All of my stories mean something to me, but this one in particular is something special. Click the link to read.
Oh, a few quick things before I let you go. First of all, although we’ve now danced through 24 years of Christmas short stories, the fun isn’t over JUST yet. You see, in 2014, I had a little bonus holiday cheer running through my veins, so I wrote a NEW YEAR’S EVE story as well! Come back next week, and I’ll share “Baby New Year” with you!
Next, I really hope you’ve enjoyed this little retrospective. If you missed any of the stories, or if you just want to go back and read them again, I’ve created an archive page with links to all of the stories in the post where I introduced the project. You can find it right here.
And finally, if you’ve been hanging out with me all month or if you just came in today for the new stuff, I really appreciate it. If you’ve at all enjoyed what you’ve read, I’d like to ask you to help spread the word. Share the links, tell folks, and most importantly, go on over to my Amazon page and write a review for ANY of my work there that you may have read. Having reviews and ratings helps to kick certain algorithms into place, and it’s the algorithms that get to decide what content people see when they’re browsing. So if there’s any chance of spreading the word and putting my stories in front of more people, I’m going to need your help to do it. Consider it my Christmas present.
Thanks, everyone. And Merry Christmas.
Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2022: The Release
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!
Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2021: Vic Saves Christmas
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!
Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2020: Warmth
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.
Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2019: I Can Explain
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
Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2016: Daisy’s Tree
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.
Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2015: Akkis’s First Christmas
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.
Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2014: An All-American Christmas
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!
Blake M. Petit 