Merry Christmas! (And some merry trouble too!)

Will your favorite fictional kid end up on the naughty list?

Dec 25, 2023

Merry Christmas!

And welcome to our annual Christmas edition of our newsletter!

Before I get into the holiday madness, and you know there is some because we wouldn’t be the characters you know and love if we could just chill out on the holidays and stay out of trouble. So first off, let me send extend a warm holiday greeting from us to you!

Now I need to admit something. I think you know what I'm going to say because I say it a lot lately. But here goes. (And yes, I waited until Christmas day on purpose so I wouldn’t end up on the naughty list!)

This is Ran by the way, the star of Stars & Angels Sing, our holiday collection of stories and poems. (←See what I did there? I have no regrets.)

And once again, dear reader, I'm in trouble. But I'm not on the naughty list yet and maybe by the end of this email I'll rise to the top of the nice list. It could happen.

What did I do this time?

I might not have pointed out something to our scribe, Melinda, while she worked on Stars & Angels Sing.

You know my goal and my methods. In my defense, I didn't tell her because I wanted more page time. And look at that! I'm getting more page time right now even though I have to confess the little thing I let slip through.

No, it wasn't a typo. We hope we caught them all. So what was it?

First let me set the scene. Then I promise I'll tell you.

In Stars & Angels Sing, there are three fairies. They notice that Papa (Sarn from the Curse Breaker series) doesn't know what Christmas is.

There's an explanation in the book about why he doesn't know about Christmas but I’ll sum that up for you:

He lives in a fantasy world (no surprise there since our books are racked in the epic fantasy section) and Papa never encountered someone who celebrated Christmas before.

Before you shout that’s sacrilege, let me explain.

Christmas is not a holiday celebrated by the shamanic/nature worship religion that he's familiar with. But there's a new religion sweeping across the country and more and more people are adopting it, including his master, Nolo, and that's how we’re introduced to it.

Of course I have no idea what Christmas is either, but that doesn’t bother me. It does bother Papa though, but he’s not what you’d call talkative. So he doesn’t ask about it. I’m glad he didn’t because that would be boring.

Since he didn’t ask, we needed to go on a magical adventure to find the answer. And that’s where the three fairies enter the story. They notice that Papa doesn’t understand, and they make it their mission to fix that.

But they don’t realize that they don’t understand what Christmas is either, and there’s a really good reason for that. Melinda didn’t realize she left that reason out of the commentary that’s in all formats of Stars & Angels Sing (paperback, ebook, and audiobook). And I didn’t tell her until she asked what we’re doing in this email.

Then I told her, and she might have gotten so mad that smoke poured out of her ears. I apologized of course and reminded her that Papa would be sad if something happened to me.

I waited for her to cool down before suggesting that we talk about the reason in this email. Since it goes out on Christmas day, there’s no better time to talk about some fairies, right?

(I hope your Christmas day includes some fairies too!)

So why do the fairies get involved at all?

I think they decided to help since they saw all the decorations and heard the carols and they wanted to participate. That’s how it started. As their plans went awry and we were no closer to finding out what Christmas is, they were too invested in the mystery to stop even if they weren’t really helping matters.

But they get points for trying everything they could think of. Some of their schemes resulted in some fun times and happy memories for me and Papa too. So I’m glad they got involved.

Why don’t they know what Christmas is?

The fairies are a race of the Magic Kind, and the Magic Kind are the original inhabitants of the country where we live. So they’re familiar with the old religion, not the new one. But they’re curious about it, so they chose to dive in and check it out.

And that’s the reason. Why haven’t we seen the fairies before in the Curse Breaker books?

Because the fairies hide from humans as do all the races of the Magic Kind. Why do they do that? Because there’s a law on the books that forbids magic use and sentences all magic users to death without trial.

The law wasn’t passed to legalize the killing of the Magic Kind because they left during the first years that humans settled the country. Why did they do that?

Since we talk about that in Stars & Angels Sing, I won’t go into it here.

So that’s what I did and why. Only you can decide if I should stay on the Nice List or move back to the Naughty List. Before you make that all-important decision, can I bribe you with a 10% off coupon for our store?

Wait! Don’t click away. How about 20% off?

That’s still not enough?Boy, you drive a hard bargain. Let me ask Papa if I can give you 30% off. I’ll be right back.

Okay, I’m back. He said okay, so here you go.

At checkout, use code CBS30 for 30% off ebooks and audiobooks that are 2.99 and up, excluding Stars & Angels Sing.

And don’t forget to check out our first annual Christmas podcast, Merry Christmas & Stars and Angels Rant for Melinda’s reaction to this email.

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Merry Christmas & Stars and Angels Rant ← Melinda reads this email and reacts to it!

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Merry Christmas! (And some merry trouble too!)

Will your favorite fictional kid end up on the naughty list?

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