Snow Globe: a holiday ficlet.

As alert hearth/myth readers who have glanced at the calendar recently know, it's time for my annual holiday gift to you: a ficlet that has something to do with the season.

It looks to me like I wrote the first holiday ficlet in 2017, making this the eighth year of the tradition. I haven't written a lick of fiction since last year's ficlet, but I've resisted the urge to make this into a regular essay-type post.

I'm also not going to do what I usually do and make this a promo for one of my existing series (mainly because I'd have to spend way too much time re-reading to get the voices back in my head. Wait, that didn't come out right. Oh, you know what I mean). 

Anyway, here goes. Hope you like it. 

🌟

NewAfrica | Deposit Photos

Cynthia wandered the town square like a lost soul. Here she was, on a tour of European Christmas markets -- a trip that had been on her bucket list forever -- and she couldn't focus enough to buy a single gift for anyone on her list.

She had been feeling so discombobulated lately, and she couldn't figure out why. She was in her late fifties, with the blessings of good health, good skin, and a job that allowed her to afford European vacations. Her kids were grown. She'd kicked their sperm donor to the curb years before. The kids hadn't given her any grandchildren yet, but to be honest, she was okay with that. She had friends, hobbies, the works. And yet sometimes she wondered what she was doing with her life.

She was pretty sure she wouldn't find the answer to that question at an English Christmas market, but here she was anyway.

A booth full of shiny baubles caught her eye. She looked closer: jewelry? Christmas ornaments? No -- snow globes. She couldn't remember ever giving anyone a snow globe for Christmas.

She ambled over. There were lots of designs to choose from: churches, thatched cottages, snowmen, single snowflakes, Christmas trees, nativity scenes, and even a Nakamura tower. She picked up an old-style London telephone booth filled with a Christmas tree in the requisite sparkly goo and asked the attendant, "How much?"

"Thirty pounds, mum," the woman said brightly. "It lights up, you see, and even plays a little tune."

Cynthia mentally toted up the gift list for her office staff, did a quick pounds-to-dollars conversion in her head, and nodded. "I'll take a dozen."

The clerk's eyes widened. Then she smiled broadly. "Excellent choice, mum! I will box them up and send them to your hotel straightaway."

Cynthia laughed as she handed over her credit card. "I guess it's obvious that I'm a tourist."

"We do get a lot of you at this time of year," the woman said. Then she gave Cynthia a long, almost calculating look. "If you would be interested, we have a special offer just now: buy a dozen, get one free." In a confiding tone, she went on, "You could keep the extra for yourself."

For the first time, Cynthia took a good look at the clerk. She was short and plump, white-haired, with round cheeks and a grandmotherly smile -- but something in her gaze seemed to shoot straight through to Cynthia's soul. She heard herself say, "Which one would you recommend?"

"This one," the woman immediately said, holding out a traditionally-shaped globe. "It's very special."

Cynthia took it in her hands and examined it. "It's empty," she said. It held usual glittery snow and liquid, but nothing else.

"You fill it yourself," the woman said. "The directions are in the box."

Cynthia was by no means an artsy-craftsy person, but she took the globe anyway. She gave the clerk the delivery information for the box of phone booth globes; the "special" one went into her tote bag.

That evening, back in her hotel room after a convivial dinner with new friends she had met on the tour, she remembered the odd globe. She pulled its box out of the tote bag and opened it. The directions for filling it were odder than the globe itself.

Second Saturn Return Globe

Hold the snow globe in your hands and visualize your life ten years from now. 

"Ten years from now," Cynthia murmured. She would be nearly seventy then, and hopefully retired. Although her job was lucrative, and satisfying in its way, she didn't mean to do it until she dropped dead. What would she do instead? Where would she live? 

Holding the globe, she closed her eyes. A door clicked open in her mind. She could see herself on the deck of a beach house, gazing across a calm body of water as the sun rose. She knew instantly that her day would be full: teaching part-time at the local community college, swimming in the college pool, having dinner later with good friends. Life was perfect. She felt at peace.

She raised the mug of tea in her hands to her lips -- and kissed the snow globe. "Oh!" she exclaimed, pulling it away hurriedly. 

The globe was still empty, but she thought she could see inside it the palest outline of a beach cottage on a sandy shore.

"It's a start," she said, and smiled.

🌟

These moments of imaginative blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy holidays!

Some holiday flash fiction for you.

I'm back home tonight after nearly a week on the East Coast, visiting my daughters for Yule. We had a great time together, as always -- but as always, it's great to be home again.

Today was one of those surreal travel days. I had breakfast in Alexandria, VA, just outside DC; barbecue for lunch in Kansas City (as one does); and leftover homemade chicken soup here at home this evening. That layover in Kansas City was so long that I had time to draft this year's ficlet on my phone and email it to myself. Ain't technology grand?

Actually, I kind of hope nobody reads this tonight. It's Christmas Eve, after all, and most folks ought to have better things to do. Regardless, I promised last week that I'd have a ficlet for you tonight. So here you go. This one springs from me watching way too many Hallmark Christmas movies this year. If you've read The Atherton Vampire, you'll recognize the main character; if not, why not head to Amazon and pick up a copy of the trilogy for your Kindle? The books are short and kind of fun.

That's it for the self-promo. Here's the ficlet. 

***

bigredlink | Deposit Photos

Callie Dailey’s head was whirling. Here it was, two days before Christmas, and she still had so much to do. But work had been crazy, what with her new job as morning anchor for Channel 10 Action News. She had adopted her producer's super-early-to-bed schedule because it allowed her to get up at ten p.m. and spend her evenings with Jerry before she went to work, but it had messed with her body clock something fierce. It was all worth it, she kept telling herself, to keep Jerome Atherton -- the city's celebrity vampire and her main squeeze -- in her life. 

But it wasn't easy. She was tired all the time. She had never had the energy to finish her shopping, let alone make the cookies she had promised to bring for the crew on Christmas Day. True, she could have been more productive in the afternoons, after work and while Jerry was taking his daily rest. But it seemed like all she had energy for was falling on the couch and watching dumb Christmas movies on Freevee. Now here she was, doing it again. 

She counted the tropes of the genre as they manifested on her screen. There was the old red pickup truck that showed up in every movie; there was the perky woman from the big city; there was the precocious little girl who just knew Mr. Perfect and Ms. Perky had fallen in love at first sight and just had to spend the rest of their lives together, after they saved Christmas or the town or something. The only things missing were the tree shopping and decorating and the obligatory kiss under the mistletoe…

…and there they were: the sales lot full of real trees, the little girl selling hot chocolate out front, and that damned red truck parked at the curb. Mr. Perfect got out of the truck and dropped a thousand-watt smile on her. “Here for a tree?” he asked.

“I… don’t think so,” Callie responded. He was adorable -- she had to admit that.

“But it’s Christmas!” the little girl said. “You have to have a tree or Christmas will be ruined!” She smiled winsomely. “Hot chocolate?”

“No thanks,” said Callie. “I’m just waiting for… for…” She frowned. “Wait a minute. What's going on here?" She took in the scene around her more fully. "I’m dreaming, aren’t I? I’m not waiting for anyone. My brain just conjured this up out of thin air…” She started to move away from the man and the girl. “I have to go. I have things to do…" 

“But you have to stay!” the girl pleaded, tears in her eyes.”You have to save our town! You have to save Christmas!”

“Besides,” the man said, “what have you got to go back to?”

The answer came instantly. “Everything,” she said. “My job. My friends. Jerry.”

She awoke to the credits scrolling up the screen of her TV. She'd slept through the movie.

Somebody had once told her that dreams were the brain's way of processing stuff -- that everybody in you see in a dream is actually you, or a facet of you. She rubbed her eyes as she thought about that. Apparently she’d been harboring some doubts about her life. Or she had a savior complex.

Or she’d been watching too many dumb holiday movies. Yeah, that was it.

She still had just two days to get everything done -- but there was no time like the present to start. “Those cookies aren’t going to make themselves,” she said, levering herself up off the couch.

***

These moments of bloggy holiday tropes has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe and have a great holiday, whichever you celebrate!

My holiday gift to you.

I'm having some trouble finding stuff to watch on TV right now. All the limited-run shows seem to have paused over the holidays, which I guess makes sense because everyone is busy getting ready for their celebrations. But I've binged everything I'm interested in, and it seems like all that's left is Christmas rom-coms. 

I don't mind a good rom-com, to be clear, but most of these aren't. Even star power guarantees nothing. I watched one last night that starred Julie Andrews and James Garner. I was embarrassed for them -- the script was terrible. Of all the places the writers could have gone with the secondary plot, they went for cliches. And yet the movie has a 7.2 on IMDb, which I guess shows you that people don't care about the plot of a Christmas rom-com as long as they get their happily-ever-after at the end. 

Anyway. I haven't written any new books this year, but I do owe you a holiday ficlet. This one isn't exactly a Christmas rom-com -- a thousand words doesn't give you enough room for the usual complications -- but it's got a holiday tree and presents, and it has "Christmas" in the title. Also, the characters aren't from any of my books. But I hope you like it anyway.

By the way: Even though this ficlet says it's for Christmas, like all of my holiday ficlets, it covers the waterfront. So happy Hanukkah, happy Yule, happy Kwanzaa, and happy whatever else you celebrate in this sacred season in which the light returns.

***

wacomka | Deposit Photos

Christmas Gifts 

Kelly grabbed another tissue and wiped her eyes. Christmas rom-coms always made her puddle up, but this year it was worse than usual. She and Rob had moved cross-country to Washington, DC, after his graduation from Stanford Law School. He had a great job with a big law firm, and everybody said he was on track to make partner in record time – but he was stuck at the office every night and most weekends. She told herself she was reconciled to being alone so much, but her blubbering this year over terrible plots and happily-ever-afters belied that.

Even now, on Christmas Eve, Rob was late getting home. Something about a regulator dumping a big document request on his team. “The feds always do that,” his secretary, Sasha, had told her. “They clear their desks by sending out these requests just before Christmas, so they don’t have to work over the holidays.”

Ten more years of this ‘til he makes partner? Kelly thought. I don’t know if I can take it. 

She had hoped they could get back to California for Christmas. But when it became clear they were staying put, she had reluctantly pulled out their decorations. She gazed now at the twinkling tree as the credits rolled. The ornaments reminded her of happier times: the wine bottle from Napa, the little bear on skis from Palisades Tahoe back when it was Squaw Valley. They’d been so much in love – so there for each other. Kelly wasn’t sure that was true anymore.

The key turned in the front door lock. She flipped the TV off. Hastily, she wiped her eyes, smoothed her hair, and put on her brightest smile. “Merry Christmas, honey,” she called.

Rob came into the living room of their apartment, stamping his feet and shedding his coat. “Sorry I’m so late.” His greeting had become habitual. He crossed to the couch and kissed her, then went to hang up his coat. “Merry Christmas. It’s brutal out there.”

“It is?” She turned. Sleet was pinging against the window. Wrapped up in her own unhappiness, she hadn’t even noticed.

He plopped down on the couch next to her and took her chin in his hand. “You’ve been crying again,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, laughing a little. “Dumb movie.”

He sighed and pulled her head onto his shoulder. “Dumb job. I’m sorry. I know it’s been rough on you.”

“But in just a few years…” she said, trying to rally for him. 

“Yeah.” He sighed again. They sat that way for a few moments, their arms about each other. Then he said, “Hey. Let’s not wait for tomorrow to open our gifts. Let’s do it now.”

“But we’re supposed to do a Zoom with the family at ten,” she reminded him. Ten a.m. Eastern, seven a.m. Pacific. She was getting good at calculating time zones.

“I know, but we can open our gifts to each other separately, right? They don’t have to be in on that,” he wheedled. “Let’s do it now.”

“Okay, I guess.”

He was up off the couch before she stopped speaking. “Great!” He dug under the tree, sorting through the packages – their families had sent them a lot of presents. “Here’s the one from you to me...” It was a large box, wrapped in red paper. He shook it briefly with one ear to it, which made her laugh. He grinned. Then from way in the back, he pulled out a small black-and-teal bag and handed it to her. “Here.”

“Thank you,” she said, as he resumed his seat on the couch next to her. “You go first.”

He ripped the paper off. Inside was a tiny toaster oven. “Oh,” he said.

“You always say you’re eating dinner out of Sasha’s candy dish,” she said. “This way you can have a decent meal. I got you a subscription to a meal service, too – they’ll deliver to your office every day. See the envelope on top?”

“Yeah, I see it,” he said in an odd tone. He set the appliance box aside.

“I thought you’d love it,” she said, baffled.

“I do,” he said. “I do. But open yours.”

Still bemused, she pulled the tissue paper out of the bag. Inside were two envelopes. She looked up at him, more confused than ever.

“Open them,” he urged.

The first contained lift tickets to Palisades Tahoe for New Year’s weekend. “Wait,” she said. “We’re going to Tahoe?”

Now he was smiling. “Open the other one.”

Inside the second envelope was a letter on the stationery of one of the biggest startups in Silicon Valley. It began, “We are pleased to offer you a position in our corporate legal department…”

“We’re going home?” she squealed. She threw her arms around him, laughing.

“Yep! The pay is slightly better. And I’ll be home every night for dinner.”

“Home,” she said. She liked the sound of that. A lot. “But why didn’t you tell me you were applying?”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” he said. “You’ve been so unhappy here. I didn’t want to make it worse.”

She put a hand to his stubbly cheek. “I love you, Rob.”

“I love you, too, Kel.” They kissed for quite a while.

She pulled back and looked at the toaster oven. “This kinda makes my gift useless, doesn’t it?”

“Kinda,” he said with a laugh. “Do you have the receipt?” 

“I do. And maybe we can switch the meal service to our new address.” She picked up the lift tickets and sighed happily. “Is it so terrible that I want to start packing right now?”

“I thought you might say that,” he said. “I have boxes in the car.”

“You really do think of everything,” she said, and kissed him again.

***

These moments of happy holiday blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! 

A little autumn flash.

It's been entirely too long since I've had time to be a regular at JD Mader's blog for his #2minutesgo feature on Fridays. I hate that. The writing challenge is fun, yes, but it's also fun and awe-inspiring -- and a little daunting -- to read the great pieces everyone else in the group turns out.

I had to go this week, though, because Leland Dirks used a photo I'd shared on Facebook last week as a prompt for a poem that he posted on JD's blog on Friday. Not to be outdone, I wrote a little flash fiction piece of my own. Here's the photo (if anyone knows who the photographer is, please let me know -- thanks!) and my story. For Leland's poem (and everybody else's work), you'll have to click here and head over to the blog.

Happy autumn (the equinox -- the holiday known as Mabon in some circles -- was this past Wednesday), happy last weekend of September, and I hope you get a glimpse of the supermoon eclipse tonight. Stay warm...

***

At first, all I saw was a leaf on the warm, late summer sidewalk. But then the leaf spoke.

"Chilly enough for you?" it said in a rich contralto, parting along the spine to form lips.

To say I was taken aback would be an understatement. "I..." I could manage nothing more. But as I stared at the apparition, a sharp breeze blew across my knees, revealing black eyes slanted in merriment, a hint of a nose, curls the color of aspens in the fall.

Her mouth parted again. "Just wait," the leaf said. "It will get colder." And indeed, the crimson lips were now tinged with black. Frost rimed her golden curls.

"Who are you?" I managed at last.

But she didn't reply. Instead, she laughed and said, "Stay warm." And as I crossed my arms against a sudden chill, a gust blew the leaf away.

***
These moments of fairytale blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Flashy stuff.

At Indies Unlimited this week, I talked about ways to work reading into your day. One of the things that makes me crazy about our current culture is that the marketers have plunked a TV screen in every possible place where they can catch our attention for even a few minutes: in restaurants, at the dentist's office, in line at the store. (My dentist even has TVs in each examination room. Every time I go in for a cleaning, I get a dose of some talk show along with my fluoride treatment.) And if there's no monitor convenient to where we're sitting (or standing) and waiting, we can always pull out our phones and check some app to pass the time.

All those screens are there not only to entertain us, of course, but to sell us stuff. Why give in to the marketers? Why not bring a book or an e-reader with you (on your phone, if you must) and read instead of watch?

Anyway, I got to thinking after I posted that piece that people who profess to be writers spend as much time complaining about not having time to write as they do about not having time to read.

I have a solution for that, too. It's called flash fiction.

Flash fiction usually has a word limit, and it's usually understood that the writer is to tell a complete story within that word limit. That's how we do it on Saturdays at Indies Unlimited. Every Saturday morning, our admins post a prompt written by our Evil Mastermind, Stephen Hise, and illustrated with a photograph by his able co-administrator, K.S. Brooks. (Here's this week's flash fiction prompt.) The limit is 250 words, and players have until Tuesday afternoon to post their work. Then on Wednesdays, we open it up to a popular vote. On Fridays, the winner for the week is announced, and on Saturday mornings, it all starts again.

Winners get more than just a congrats post at IU, though. All of the winning pieces are collected into an anthology and published at the end of the year. But even if you don't win, you can take all of the pieces you've written from IU's prompts and publish your own flash fiction anthology. If you play every week, you would have 52 mini-stories at 250 words each -- or 13,000 words. It's a fairly painless way to add another title to your bibliography.

I've been indulging in writing flash fiction more often lately, and I'm blaming fellow indie author J.D. (Dan) Mader. He has instituted a Friday afternoon feature on his blog called "2 Minutes. Go!" It's flash fiction with a little twist: instead of a word limit, there's a two-minute time limit.

Dan has attracted a bunch of talented writers to the Friday festivities (well, and me). Nobody's watching the clock except you, and nobody cares if you've clearly gone over the time limit. It's all very laid back and generates a lot of entertaining little stories to read.

To give you an idea of how it works, here's my story from this week. I did go over the time limit, but only by a minute or two.

***

"We're done here."

"Wait. What?"

"You're not paying attention. There's nothing more I can do."

She shifted in her chair. "No, really, I'm listening. You wanted me to...."

He threw up his hands, eyes rolled to the ceiling. "Just go home, Cindy. You're not concentrating. You're not even here right now. Just get out of here. Take the rest of the day off and come back in the morning."

Biting her lip, she headed for his office door. If only he knew why her head was in the clouds today.... But she couldn't tell him what was going on. If he knew she was protecting someone who was stealing him blind, he'd probably fire her. And if he knew that person was his own son, they'd both be out on the street.

 ***
It ain't deathless prose, but hey, it's a story. Right?

The point is, everybody can find two minutes -- or five, or ten -- somewhere in their day.  If you want to be a writer, think about using that downtime to read -- or to write. It all adds up.

***
Speaking of adding up, I've begun working on my new novel. The current title, which may change, is Seasons of the Fool. It's a stand-alone novel, not in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe. I'm still feeling my way along a little bit -- but as of tonight, I'm about 18,000 words in, and it's starting to come together. I'll post more about it next week.

Have a great week, everyone. And don't forget to bring a book with you!

***
These moments of deathless bloggy prose have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.