Saturday, December 14, 2019

Year of an Indie Writer: Week 50

The NaNoWriMo novel continues apace. My goal is to complete it this year and start 2020 fresh with new tales to tell.

Not sure about your Christmas/holiday time, but I enjoy reading specific Christmas stories in this time and listening almost exclusively to my Christmas CDs. Ever since 13 November--when I broke the seal on the newest album from Chicago, a Christmas one--that album has been spun numerous times. It's a wonderful collection of songs from a veteran music group using the vocabulary and trappings of Christmas to craft what is likely my favorite album of the year.

Spinning my own tunes has album kept me out of Whamageddon (so far.) Whamageddon, if you don't know, is a fun game where you are in the game as long as you don't hear "Last Christmas," the  really good Wham song.

Anyway, back to reading, I have a box of books that I break out every year. Most are Christmas-themed anthologies and I read a few stories each year. Granted, when one of those books is The Big Book of Christmas Stories, it'll take more than a few years to get through it.

Well, this year, there is something better.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch and WMG Publishing has done something wonderful this year. They have created what is essentially an Advent calendar with short stories. You know what Advent calendars are: Starting on 1 December, they are calendars where you get a prize each day leading up to Christmas Day.  Sometimes it's chocolate. Sometimes it is Legos.

Well, via a Patreon subscription, they are releasing a short story per day from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day. And it's been so fun! She curates all the stories, giving introductions via email where you get the link to the stories. If it's a particular day--like 6 December, St. Nicholas's Day--she selects a story about that day. Ditto for Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

I'm having a blast getting a new story each day. You can still sign up. Give yourself the gift of stories.

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