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Category: Xmas

Stolen by Xmas

On Monday I didn’t write. (We had the boy with us at work all day, since his school was closed, and though he was very good, it was still way more exhausting than usual, and I could not drag myself to my laptop in the evening.)

And while I did write on Tuesday, I didn’t work on the novel, so the word count hasn’t increased. My wife and I have a holiday story due for a certain podcast magazine, and we’d been trying various approaches to our central idea (which my wife created, and which is insanely clever), coming up with amusing scenes but never quite nailing it. Then, yesterday, while I was taking yet another stab at writing an opening, I found the perfect way in, and the story opened up and revealed itself to me in its entirety — in such a way that we can even use some of the material we’d written previously, which is nice. So: productive, but not novel-productive. That’s okay. I’ll take it.

In other literary news, I caught up on reading the most recent collections of Locke and Key by Hill & Rodriguez last night, since the final arc of the series launches today. It’s such a great series. And I’m enjoying Red Country by Joe Abercrombie, which finally appeared in my “hold” pile at the library. (He’s popular enough among reviewers at work that there wasn’t a spare copy for me to read pre-publication, and we’re trying to be frugal in preparation for the holidays so I didn’t run out and buy it when it came out. Waiting to read things is BRUTAL.)

Hark! Christmas Stories!

I have two holiday stories for your holiday listenings! In audio even! The first, “The Ghost of Christmas Possible,” is co-written with my lovely wife Heather Shaw, and is online at PodCastle. This is our “A Christmas Carol”/Ghost-finder mash-up, in which Ebenezer Scrooge seeks the assistance of a young occultist to save him from the Three Spirits.

The second is “A Fairy Tale of Oakland,” written solo, and online now at The Drabblecast. Technically, it is not a Xmas story. It’s actually a Krampusnacht story.

Go, listen, may your hearts be merry and bright!