Happy Holidays!

This year’s Christmas poem is a repeat from 2012 because I thought we could all use a laugh:

I’m trying to write a Christmas song,

God, why is this so tough?

I have no musical talent and my rhyming’s kinda rough.

But it shouldn’t be so hard to string some words together,

Say something about Santa and stars or maybe sing about the weather.

(Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow)

 

I could try to be serious this year, sing about some modern woe

Songs by Bing and Bowie and the Alarm cover that pretty well though.

I could sing about missing Christmas with the someone that I love

But I’m pretty sure another sad song would make you all give me a shove.

(I’ll Be Home for Christmas…)

 

Maybe I should sing of sleighs! Of reindeer or snowmen or drummer boys!

Or maybe I should scrap this thing and go buy the kids their toys.

I could sing of New Year’s Eve instead, of hopes for where next year will go,

Or of how it’s just another night. Oh wait, that’s been done by Barry Manilow.

(It’s just another New Year’s Eve…)

 

Where’s the romance of holidays, the falling in love on a sleigh?

Maybe that’s what I should sing about: being merry and gay!

That’s it! I’ll sit up all night long, wait for a cute Santa to come by

Or maybe an Elf (of Legolas’s kind), I’m a geeky kinda guy!

(I’mma be under the Mistletoe with you…)

 

May you have a rock-and-roll Christmas, or one that’s White or Green or Blue.

May you have Nights Holy and Silent, be it Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice or Yule.

 

May the Love and Light of the season

Warm you and keep you safe.

 

Merry Christmas, 

Happy Hannukah,

Joyous New Year!

Sunday Shorts: If Dragon's Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

Dragons Mass Eve cover.jpg

 

It’s been a few years since I’ve reread Ken Scholes’ “If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear.” It was first published on Tor.com as their holiday story for 2011. It’s been newly released this year in a nice slim paperback edition from Fairwood Press, and as it is holiday-related, I thought it might be an appropriate final 2019 entry for Sunday Shorts.

This is the story of Melody Sheffleton-Farrelly (call her “Mel”), coping with the first Dragon’s Mass Eve without her father – which just so happens to also be the day of his death. Mel and her father lived on the outskirts of town, operating a dormant Hope mine. Neither were really believers anymore (Mel possibly never was) in the Santaman or the promise of Dragon’s Mass Eve. But they kept the traditions, minus going to church, going through Mel’s entire life.

The thing that struck me when I first read the story online and which still strikes me reading this print edition, is how well Scholes captures the effect a parent’s death has on the holidays. I lost my mother in 2005 (after spending her final Christmas with her, as Mel does with her father Drumm) and my father two years later, so the first time I read this story I had a few years’ remove from the loss. But I still recognized how Mel acts on that first Dragon’s Mass Eve without Drumm: at first, going through the motions, almost flying on autopilot reciting the Santaman Cycle (as she buries her father), then throwing traditions out as the emotional (and physical) exhaustion hits. A year later, she’s able to observe some of the traditions with fond memories of her father – and she’s also able to do things they never did on the holiday (I won’t spoil what those are here.) Healing from the loss of a parent happens at different speeds for all of us, and Scholes expertly shows that process over the course of the story.

Does it matter that Dragon’s Mass Eve is a holiday the author made up, with only winking nods to recognizable figures and stories? Not at all, because the effect is the same as if he were writing about Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or Yule (or any non-Winter holiday that has adherent family traditions, for that matter). In fact, the effect may be stronger because the story doesn’t become bound up in one’s own experiences of any particular current holiday. We get a strong enough sense of the reason for the holiday and the historical/legendary underpinnings thanks to the sections of the Santaman Cycle interspersed throughout the story. The Cycle itself raises questions about the world Mel, her father, and their neighbors exist in: there’s enough we recognize (“Santaman,” and aspects of various Creation myths) to think this is possibly Earth long after some climate change cataclysm, but enough fantastical (Hope comes from mines; Love is a feral creature) to think it might be a completely fictional, or at the least alternate-Earth, world. Scholes has never weighed in conclusively on which it is, and ultimately it’s not as important a piece of knowledge as it might feel.

Mel has a really strong character arc, starting in grief/death and ending in hope/life. I don’t want to spoil any of the events that lead from the one to the other, so I won’t say much more. Just that the conclusion is satisfying and feels very true to the character we meet in the early pages and the child we meet through her own memories.

This story gives me so much to think about that I’m not sure why I haven’t long since made it a part of my Christmas reading tradition (which includes annual rereads of A Christmas Carol and others). I’ll rectify that going forward. I highly recommend seeking this one out. (I also hadn’t realized that Fairwood Press had started a Novelette Series, of which this is the latest volume. I’ve gone to their site and ordered all of the earlier entries and pre-ordered the next one, coming in 2020. I’ll do my best to do Sunday Shorts entries about all of them.)

Sunday Shorts: Faux Ho Ho

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

faux-ho-ho cover.jpeg



TITLE: Faux Ho Ho
AUTHOR: ‘Nathan Burgoine
152 pages, Bold Strokes Books, ISBN 9781635557596 (ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Silas Waite doesn’t want his big-C Conservative Alberta family to know he’s barely making rent. They’d see it as yet another sign that he’s not living up to the Waite family potential and muscle in on his life. When Silas unexpectedly needs a new roommate, he ends up with the gregarious (and gorgeous) personal trainer Constantino “Dino” Papadimitriou. Silas’s parents try to brow-beat him into visiting for Thanksgiving, where they’ll put him on display as an example of how they’re so “tolerant,” for Silas’s brother’s political campaign, but Dino pretends to be his boyfriend to get him out of it, citing a prior commitment. The ruse works—until they receive an invitation to Silas’s sister’s last-minute wedding. Silas loves his sister, Dino wouldn’t mind a chalet Christmas, and together, they could turn a family obligation into something fun. But after nine months of being roommates, then friends, and now “boyfriends,” Silas finds being with Dino way too easy, and being the son that his parents barely tolerate too hard. Something has to give, but luckily, it’s the season for giving—and maybe what Silas has to give is worth the biggest risk of all.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: As with most things written by ‘Nathan Burgoine, I was sucked into Faux Ho Ho from the start. The story has real romantic and dramatic stakes, and main characters you want to see overcome them. And all told in a tidy 150-ish pages, so there’s not a wasted word or superfluous scene.


I found Silas and Dino both endearing, the kinds of guys I’d love to hang around with – although like Silas I would be initially intimidated by Dino’s size and athletic ability – and I would certainly love to read more about both of them. Their interplay, as friends and more, is just downright adorable. (And I admit, I might have developed just a little bit of a fictional crush on Silas.) Despite the character descriptions, this is not just another “insecure nerd / cocky jock” romance with stock types; each man has his own insecurities and distinct personality traits and, perhaps more importantly, commonalities that play against the nerd/jock stereotypes.


The development of their relationship, from awkward roommate interview to friends to more, felt natural and real. I’m a fan of books that alternate past and present chapter-by-chapter, and here the alternating chapters heighten the tension of Silas and Dino’s pretense while providing deep insight into the relationship’s background. I think the book would have suffered with a more linear presentation of events; the “twin openings” (for lack of a better term) give us a sense of the dramatic stakes (the drama of Silas rushing to find Dino and make amends for something we’re not yet aware of) and the comedy we can expect (half-naked Dino “meeting” Silas’ parents for the first time via Skype and setting the whole story into motion) in a way a linear progression wouldn’t have been able to.


The author also does a great job of juxtaposing the characters’ very different familial experiences: Dino’s family has clearly always been completely accepting and loving, while Silas’s (with the exception of his sister) has grudgingly accepted their gay son/sibling provided he doesn’t embarrass them and provided he remains politically useful as a ‘good gay’. It’s nice to see more than one part of the spectrum of familial acceptance represented, and also great that through Silas’s sister and her fiancée, Burgoine explores the idea that not every family member reacts/feels the same way about a family member’s sexuality. (Reading Burgoine’s previous Christmas romance novella Handmade Holidays along with Faux Ho Ho really expands this exploration, as the family of the main character of HH completely abandoned him upon coming out.) Like Handmade Holidays, Faux Ho Ho also explores the idea of “found family,” the people who are like siblings and parents to us without any genetic or legal connection.


Unlike Handmade Holidays, in Faux Ho Ho Christmas itself is not much more than a plot point, a reason for delayed travel to keep our main characters out of touch with the wider world for a stretch of hours. (I actually to find this to be true of many Christmas romances (gay, straight, or Hallmark variety) that don’t hinge on actual Christmas Magic as opposed to the ”magical” feel of the season, but that’s a digression worthy of its own blog post). In fact, Halloween gets a bit more “pride of place” in terms of the holiday’s effect on the growing relationship between Silas and Dino, as does Thanksgiving. The family visit / wedding that triggers most of the drama could take place at any time of year. This is not a negative, as it makes the story all the more universal in tone, but readers going in expecting scenes of caroling and gift exchanges might be slightly disappointed.


This story is also a part of the wider world of Burgoine’s fiction, interconnecting not only with Handmade Holidays (with references to characters and specifically to the “Misfits Christmas” tradition at the center of that book) but also with other denizens and locations of Burgoine’s gay Village as seen in his short story collection Of Echoes Born.


For slow-build awkward romance, tweaking family expectations, and adorable characters, check out Faux Ho Ho.

2018 Holiday Poem

‘Tis The Season…

 

 

To set the table and lay the feast

However plentiful or meager –

The intent matters more than the amount

 

To welcome those who bless us with their presence

However long or short the stay –

The quality matters more than the span

 

To celebrate the good and acknowledge the bad

As they affect us in equal measure –

What matters is how we grow from them

 

 

So lay out the cookies and milk for Santa with cheer,

And fruit and nuts for Dasher and the reindeer;

Lay out bread and water for the holy husband, mother and child,

And wine and cheese for the roaming revelers wild;

Lay out fishes and meat for the loved ones living,

Leave equal amounts for the dear departed, midnight-visiting.

 

Light a candle in the window,

Leave a seat at hearth or table,

For the homeless wanderer or

Neighbor in need, as far as you’re able.

 

“For whatever you do for the least of these,

You do for me.”

May the light and love of the season bring you

Love, Hope, Peace and Prosperity.

 

 

 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS,

 

HAPPY HANUKKAH,

 

JOYOUS SOLSTICE,

 

AND A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!