Short Story

Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2003: JLZX622

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I am extremely proud of this story, for which the International Federation of Holiday Weirdness gave me the trophy for “Most Unusual Title Ever Given to a Christmas Story.”  It is an honor I take very seriously, and a legacy I hope to pass down to my son some day. 

This is another story that links to something else I was working on at the time, although unlike the story referenced in “Pencil Sketches,” this one was actually finished. Some of the characters in this story also appear in my young adult novel Lost in Silver. If you’re saying to yourself, “Wait, Blake, I thought I’d read all of your stuff, and I’ve never HEARD of Lost in Silver…” well, I said the story was FINISHED, not PUBLISHED. I serialized that story on the old Evertime Realms website many years ago, but it’s kind of lost on the internet now. It’s odd that I have something completed just sitting on a hard drive that I haven’t done anything with, and every so often I think about dusting it off and putting it on Amazon, but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. YA has changed SO much in the time since I wrote it that I don’t know that there would be a place for it anymore. But if you’re one of the few people who remember the story and would like to see it again – or if you’re someone who’s NEVER seen it and you’re wondering what it’s all about, drop me a line and let me know. Never say never, right?

By the way, this is the second story to mention “Timberton Parish, Louisiana,” the first being “Clarence Missed.” There is no such place. It’s a fictional place I conjured up for a story and then used for several other stories, then I stopped. If Stephen King can fill up half the state of Maine with fictional locations, dang it, I should get one parish. 

Christmas 2003: JLZ6X22

Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2002: Pencil Sketches

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This is another story that came about as a result of a bigger story I was working on. I’d kicked around a novel about a pair of best friends, two young men who each desperately needed a brother and found them in each other, one of whom was carrying around a major chip on his shoulder over feeling cheated out of his grandfather’s legacy, but I realized at some point that this wasn’t a story that had an ending. In fact – this being the early 2000s – I thought it would work much better as a webcomic. I never found a partner to work on with it (I cannot draw), but this short story – the origin of Matt and Bixby’s friendship – remains as a reminder to me of what might have been. 

This story also canonically links to two of my novels, The Beginner and Opening Night of the Dead, through the existence of Climax Pictures. Those two books are part of my world of  “The Curtain,” so I suppose this story technically is as well, although none of the supernatural trappings of those books appear here. 

Kids, ask your parents what “Waldenbooks” was. 

Christmas 2002: Pencil Sketches

Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2001: Clarence Missed

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Like I said, the idea of writing a Christmas short story came from my love of It’s a Wonderful Life, and this is the story that draws on that most directly. I wanted to preface each of these stories with a little tidbit about what inspired it or where it came from, but the truth is it’s been a long time and I honestly don’t remember how I came up with it. I DO know that I dropped in a few links to stories I’d been working on that never quite materialized, although one of them will be turning up again in a few days. In the meantime, I do think this stands by itself. Enjoy and share…

Clarence Missed

Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2000: Lonely Miracle

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As I mentioned yesterday in the introduction to this little project, I got the inspiration to write a Christmas short story as a gift to my friends back in 2000. I was fresh out of college, working at a newspaper, and scribbling away at a story that had grabbed me about a reporter who discovers he has super powers, and thus wants to become a superhero himself. Originally intended to be a short story, when “Capes and Masks” reached 25,000 words and I realized I wasn’t even halfway through, I understood that I was actually working on my first novel. The book was eventually finished and given a slightly catchier title, Other People’s Heroes, and it’s kind of been the hub of my writing ever since. 

As I was working on the book when the idea to do a Christmas story came to me, I wound up incorporating that universe I was building into the story in question, a habit that would become more and more pronounced for me over time. You will find, over the next few weeks of this time capsule project, that a great number of these Christmas stories are linked either to Siegel City, to my other fictional world which I refer to as “The Curtain,” or to various other projects that were in the works at the time and may or may not have ever been completed. (Mostly have not.)

But for now, my friends, please enjoy — and feel free to share — the first story in my annual tradition, the Siegel City tale called…

Lonely Miracle

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

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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!

A Christmas Gift: Daisy’s Tree

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daisys-tree-1As people who have been with me for a long time know, each year I write a new Christmas short story as a little gift for those who’ve stayed with me this long. This year’s tale came to me as I was on my way to a little Christmas Tree farm in Mississippi with my wife and my sister’s family. It’s about a little girl and  different kind of tree. And as of right now (Christmas Eve) it’s totally free for five days! Roll over to Amazon.com and get this year’s story for your Kindle or Kindle app.

Daisy’s Tree on Amazon.com

Merry Christmas!