Twas a month before Christmas when Characters had an idea
Twas a month before Christmas when Characters had an idea
And their Scribe shook from fear... (Just kidding! No Scribes were scared by this email.)
Hey,
Your friendly fictional character is back with an idea that’s a little crazy but holiday appropriate. Could I run my idea by you real quick?
I don’t know if you knew this, but way back in November 2015, my Scribe, Melinda, wrote a holiday adventure where we team up with a certain jolly fellow to save Christmas. (By ‘we’ I mean Sarn (my papa) and me, his son, sidekick, and your narrator for this email, Ran. No one else was invited.)
Why am I just mentioning this now?
Because Melinda’s mad at us for something to do with that, but I’ll get to her gripe at the end of this email. I promise.
Wait! Don’t pull up your favorite bookstore because you won’t find this adventure on there. Why not?
Let me explain! You’re jumping ahead of my story.
Okay, so let’s go back in time to 2015. Melinda’s sister passed away in late Feb. 2014, and that broke her a lot. She even stopped writing for a while.
But we, characters, couldn’t let that continue. I’ve said this before in here, and I’ll probably say it another thousand times in the future. We only exist when you read us, and we only grow and change when Melinda writes new books for us. So her taking a break was a big problem.
With the second Christmas without her sister right around the corner, we had to act fast. Christmas is Melinda’s favorite time of the year except for the snow and the cold weather and the whole sun setting at 4 pm thing. She doesn’t like that at all. But I digress as I often do.
How did we get her back to writing and get a wild Christmas adventure out of our dear Scribe?
I’m so glad you asked that because I’ve been bursting to talk about this. I was going to wait until after Thanksgiving to say anything about it, but an opportunity came up. I’ll get to that in a minute too because it’s part of my question.
Now back to 2015. Melinda was sad and not writing and as the days in November dwindled away, she was dreading celebrating another Christmas with a hole her heart and her family.
So I said casually like you do when your desperate for your Scribe to write something, anything, even if it’s bad because you’re tired of repeating the last scene she wrote. “How about you write a little something for the holiday? You could build a new tradition.”
In my head, I’m just screaming at her to write anything at this point. But you have to handle Scribes with care. They’re fragile and may break.
Melinda didn’t say no, but she didn’t say yes either. In fact, I don’t think she said anything at all. She might have just stared at the computer screen and kept her fingers off the keyboard.
Since that’s not what I wanted to happen, I tried again and again. I might have become a broken record until I got a sad nod and a thoughtful look crossed her face.
That might not look like progress to you, but at that point, any reaction was a good one.
“I could do that,” Melinda said, and I knew I’d won because she can’t stop writing until the whole story is out. That’s why she’s written and published 20+ books. She’s got even more stories that aren’t finished or published, but I have to pick my battles, and I really wanted a holiday adventure now.
Back in 2015, Melinda had never published anything herself. In college, some of her writing was published in her University’s literary journal, but I’m not counting that because I wasn’t in any of it.
Before you get mad about that on my behalf, I couldn’t star in those stories because I wasn’t born yet as a character. But thank you for defending me!
Back in 2015, Melinda just had a blog, which we still have today. So I suggested she publish these scenes there.
I knew all about the promise she made to her late sister to publish her stories, and I wanted to star in books. But Melinda needed to start somewhere.
Since she worked in IT, I figured she’d be more comfortable publishing her work on the web, and we could use that as a stepping stone to book publishing. I was right too as you’ll see in a moment.
But I was also wrong about one thing. With her family shattered and her recent move away from them making her feel unmoored, my Scribe craved the structure and stability she lost. So she wrote that scene in verse. Grief makes people do strange things.
I’m not saying poetry is strange or that poets are strange. I’m just pointing out that was an odd choice. But somehow, writing each scene in verse released the kraken! I mean her imagination. I’ve just always wanted to say that. Anyway, back to my story.
Melinda wrote like crazy and published each part on our blog. They’re all still there. They start on Nov. 28, 2015 and run through Jan. 5, 2016.
When the last one published, readers who followed along requested a copy of the adventure in an easier to read format than clicking links to move between posts. This was what I’d been waiting for. So I urged Melinda to gather the parts of this epic Christmas fantasy adventure poem into a book and publish it!
She did that, and a few months later, she published Curse Breaker Enchanted the original version which is not available anymore.
That Christmas story only stayed on Amazon for a few months until everyone who asked for it got a copy. Then Melinda unpublished it, and it’s been sitting in her archive since then.
But I want to resurrect it and bring it to you in a new form. So if you’ve ever thought the Night Before Christmas poem could use some magic and a sleigh ride with Santa, then this is for you.
What’s this new form?
Well, we’d obviously have this available as an ebook and paperback, but we want to license some instrumental holiday music and put that with Melinda narrating (and singing) this epic poetic adventure. (Yes, there are songs!) And we’d like to release an audio version of it, maybe with some commentary at the end.
Yes! If poetry isn’t for you, don’t worry! Melinda plans to do a version of this adventure that’s not a poem but a regular door-stopper of a book like all our others.
Papa just needs to turn 21 first, and he might be avoiding that and driving Melinda crazy. But she’s trying to box him in so he can’t keep wriggling out of that story. More on that developing situation as details become available.
Now we come it, the big question.
I’m gauging interest because music is kind of expensive, and the licensing term are confusing. This is a new venture for us.
But if you want this and will buy a copy, then we’re willing to make this happen. Please register your interest in the poll above.
Melinda has some time off over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I need to know what she should work on.
Yes, she works for me. Yes, she knows this.
No, she might not admit that if asked, but I encourage you to ask her who her boss really is if you meet her someday.
And that’s it for this week. Thank you for being a part of everything we do. Have a magical week!
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