Category: Holidays

Posted on by Fern Brady - 2 Comments on A Hallmark-esque Christmas Tale

A Hallmark-esque Christmas Tale

I have a subscription to Freedom With Writing, which sends out a newsletter every week. In it the team that hosts this service compiles contests, calls for submissions, editorial pitch requests, potential work in a vast array of writing related jobs, conferences, and other cool information aspiring writers can use.

One of the latest editions contained a call for submissions entitled “The 12 Knights of Christmas.” The publisher, Button Hall, is relatively new on the market. They are looking to produce an anthology of romance stories set at Christmas time that have the making for the next great Hallmark movie. It would release Christmas 2025.

What caught my attention was the title of the submission: Knights. Well, I happen to have a knight or two in my world. And there is one in United Vidden who already has a bit of a romance thread laid out for him — Sir Andross. So, naturally, I decided to make this the focus of my Galveston Winter retreat writing with the full intention of submitting it.

Now, I had to do some research to make sure I understood the qualities that make a Hallmark holiday movie great. I spent an evening watching a couple films with my dear friend, Violet Shelton. We also read summaries of the top 25 films in the genre. Here’s what we gleaned:

Successful lady living in the big city has to make a trip to quaint picturesque small town. There she rekindles her romance with an early love or meets a local man and falls in love. She learns the importance of simple life and the meaning of Christmas.

There’s also the version where successful male professional is having to drive through quaint picturesque small town. Something happens and he is stranded there for the holidays. He meets jovial successful local lady and falls in love. He learns the meaning of Christmas.

Another version is where successful attorney lady is fired from her high stress law firm after some backstabbing by others. She meets a successful doctor who has come up from Florida (by the way Florida is mentioned a lot in these films — not sure why) to convince his elderly grandfather to retire there. They meet at a pub and she takes a temp job as bar tender, but it turns out that the bar owner is the grandfather. In the end, both forgo successful careers as doctor and lawyer to marry and run the pub. They learn the meaning of Hannukah. (yes, they have jewish versions of this as well).

After that exhaustive and somewhat mind numbing research, I decided to go with the following for my story:

Continent of Vidden
Planet Jorn by Araceli Casas

Lord High Marshal of the realm is notified of sheep farmer dad’s death. Returning to small town to deal with the estate he reconnects with the only woman he ever loved. In the past, she refused to marry him because she is a medicine woman and wants to serve a small town community. She is now living in his old hometown. After they uncover the horrible way a large corporation is taking over farms, the two rekindle their love. He is offered a chance to run a prestigious military academy in the community and so they both get to have the careers they want and still be together.

Oh… and they learn the meaning of the Festival of Lights, basically planet Jorn’s version of Christmas.

No mention of Florida though. Hope the omission doesn’t ruin my chances.

I’ll let y’all know what happens with the submission. Wish me luck!

Posted on by Fern Brady - No Comments on On Thanksgiving Holidays

On Thanksgiving Holidays

Thanksgiving Day is a uniquely American holiday. It is a celebration of the success of a colony in the new world. The interesting thing about it is that the colony’s survival was due to the relationships they built with the natives of the land they were taking over. The colonists invited the natives to join them in a meal to celebrate that with the joint effort, they had all benefited from working together.

Today, we use this day to gather around a table and eat a ton of delicious food with our family members. In modern times, Friendsgiving has become popular. With so much division in families and the empowerment of people to remove toxic individuals from their lives — whether they are blood related or otherwise — many have come to use Thanksgiving Day as a chance to gather round and eat with friends instead.

However you choose to celebrate it, this time of year, and this holiday in particular, asks us to take a moment and look at our lives with gratitude. It seeks to shift our perspective from what we lack or haven’t yet accomplished, to what we have and what we have already done. It is a wonderful opportunity to take stock in your life and see all the things that are going well, count your blessings, and perhaps bring to the forefront of your mind the things that are good. Putting aside for at least a day all the things that are wrong in the world, your relationships, in your life, this day asks us to search for that which is good, that which is working, and to be grateful for it.

In many ways, Thanksgiving is a moment for us to pause and breath. We gather together with those who are our ‘family’. Some may be blood related, and others maybe the people who have joined us on our life’s trajectory. Whatever the case, we have at least one day to stop and be happy in the midst of the mad rush of go, go, go, our society imposes on us.

As we move past this day and into the hectic time of the winter holiday season, don’t forget to take those things you noted were good about your life with you. Don’t leave the gratitude behind. Let’s keep looking at what is working well, examine and fix what isn’t, but always be mindful of the blessings we have. Oh, and don’t forget to build relationships. Blood or otherwise, we are social animals and now more than ever we must find our tribe and support each other.

Posted on by Fern Brady - No Comments on Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween

Usually, the Halloween post would be done by Ellen. She is the queen of Halloween. In her home, she has skeletons that remain in place all year long. She has figurines and all manner of cool ghostly decorations. But, she’s been doing all the posting lately, so it’s my turn.

Halloween is one of my favorite evenings. I love the idea of dressing up and going door to door. In times when communities were safer and tighter knit, this tradition was a wonderful way to touch base with neighbors and build closeness.

Then somewhere along the line, people started doing nasty things to candy. Children started getting hurt by the nasty people. Instead of simply opting out and not giving any treats, people gave out poisoned goodies or some with needles in them. It became dangerous to go out and ring doorbells dressed up as your favorite character or ghoul.

Today, you don’t have as many kids out trick or treating. Communities have shifted to having private Halloween parties. Churches, those that don’t take it as an evil holiday, host some as well. It is sad to see this moment of community building leaving our world.

I remember having the opportunity to dress up at school when it fell on a school day. When I first started teaching, I dressed up as an evil witch and read ghost stories. Then they started trying to control even that part of our lives. First, it was decreed you could only dress up as a character from a book. Happily, there are tons of witch characters to choose from.

Me in my favorite pirate costume.

In my new school, dressing up can only be done if your costume represents a science vocabulary word from the school provided word bank. Some kids came dressed up like a cloud, or prey, or a predator (not my favorite predator though). I considered being a black hole. You know, wearing a black skirt with a round puff ball representing the star I was slowly eating. But that word was not in the approved word bank.

So, today, I just wore a lovely black skirt with some skull decorations on the sides and a red top. I still read them some Halloween inspired stories. We enjoyed the poem “The Spider and the Fly” as well as the picture book “Bats in the Library.” We read the humorous “Velcome” and I shared my Witchy Christmas story. We also used “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick” to inspire our spooky quick writes.

By the way, I will be reading my Witchy Christmas story at this year’s Haunted Holidays readings on November 9th. Come out and join me and Ellen as well as the other amazing authors who will be there at Brazos Bookstore this year.

It’s purple… had to use it!

Would love to hear how you see the situation with Halloween celebrations and some of your outfits this year, so please take a moment to comment. Oh, and, Happy Halloween everyone.

Posted on by Fern Brady - No Comments on Valentine’s Day Week

Valentine’s Day Week

Of course you knew I would find some heart picture with dragons in it, right?

Well this is the week we celebrate Valentine’s Day. It is a lovely holiday mostly geared towards those in romantic relationships. Though there are many stories of where the holiday came from, most agree that it was the catholic church’s attempt to replace a roman goddess of fertility celebration with something a bit more chaste.

Whatever the origins, it can be a hard time for those who are without a significant other. There are many people who spend this evening alone, and just as many reasons. Some are widowed, some divorced. Some single still looking. Seeing all the fuss about romance can be difficult when you do not have a romantic partner.

However, that doesn’t have to be the case. This is a holiday for celebrating love and love comes in many different ways. Familial love, Friendship love, love for your fellow humans, as well as self-love. I’v often thought that it would be good for us to focus more broadly (see how I worked part of the name for our blog into this;) on love in general rather than romance in particular in this month. It could be great time to promote doing acts of kindness and spending time with those you love.

Family love is just as important to celebrate on V’Day!

One way to celebrate Valentine’s Day is to go and hang out with friends who are as equally unattached as you. It could be great time to have singles events where you get to meet people, or to just go have dinner with friends. If you are part of a professional community, you could host an event where those who don’t have other plans could come out and enjoy the camaraderie of the community.

You could also hang out with your family and celebrate the love you share with them. Sure, there are other holidays specifically geared towards the celebration of family (Thanksgiving for example), but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t spend V’Day with loved ones too. And don’t forget your pets are loved and they are really the ones that return that love most unconditionally of all.

But beyond all this, if you don’t have a special someone, remember that YOU are a special someone. You can celebrate yourself. Don’t wait for someone else to send you flowers; buy your own. Want candy? Shop. Sure it is nice to get these from a partner, but you can celebrate yourself. Plus it is not a bad time to reflect on the qualities you hope to find in a good partner and assess your journey of self development, though be careful here that you don’t get into a depression.

If you do have a someone to celebrate with, enjoy and be happy. But don’t forget to send some notes of love to friends you know may be alone. When we were in school, we bought Valentine cards for everyone in our class — remember? Might be good to return to this idea of sending friends a little something when we know they are alone.

Posted on by Fern Brady - No Comments on Holiday Time!

Holiday Time!

Well, we finally are on holiday. I rather like the school calendar CyFair has more than the one we used in Alief. We let out for the winter break on Thursday but we don’t return to work until Monday, January 8th. It’s nice having those days post New Year’s to get things done rather than extra days during the hectic pre-Christmas time.

I have to say I was very proud of my students this past week. Many classes were acting up and being squirely but not my kids. They were focused on finalizing work and finishing our sports book club. We had a lovely day on Thursday as we completed an art project and did some writing while listening to music and enjoying snacks.

The one bad thing about the calendar is that we don’t get a day of work before the kids arrive. January 8 is the first day back for everyone. So there’s no time to be in our rooms and prepare. The school will be open on Friday January 5th and I will go early and do a morning of cleaning out the old and being ready for the new.

For now, it is time to clear the mind of that part of my life and focus on other things. During the holidays, I will need to reorganize my work study at home. We had the carpets cleaned and so everything is just topsy-turvy in there. It will be good to go through my files and purge and organize again.

Plus, now that I have a better handle on the time I need for school work, I can plan the time allotments for Inklings, Houston Writers Guild, and my own writing time much more realistically. It has been hit or miss with that this semester and it has added stress as I toggle from one thing to another in a disjointed manner. I hope to start 2024 with a more streamlined agenda — you guys remember my post about how I do my time allotments, right?

Right now, as I write this I am enjoying some quiet holiday rest. The house is set for Christmas and it is Christmas Eve. We are hosting at our home. And, starting yesterday, we are on a Terminator Saga binge watch. Seems appropriate to choose that series this year…

This will be our final blog post for the year. Ellen, Rachel and I will be back the first week in January. Hope everyone’s holidays are full of love and laughter. See you in 2024!

Posted on by Fern Brady - No Comments on Holiday Decoration Time

Holiday Decoration Time

Added lights to our outdoor front door area this year.

Christmas is coming around again. Seems like only yesterday we were taking down the decor from the last one. Now, it’s time to deck the halls once more. In my family, we take turns hosting the celebrations. This year, everyone is coming to our house.

In previous years, I set up the tree in the entry vestibule. It’s a cathedral ceiling and open to the living room as well as visible from the double front doors. The perfect spot to showcase the lights from the street as well as enjoy them from within. And it looks super cool with our seven foot tree all decorated and the bannister behind it hosting a nice garland.

Last year’s tree in blue and silver. Went with red this year.

Yet it is not a very comfortable set up for the actual gift giving moment. The area has no seating, so we have to bring over the dinning room chairs. It’s not horrible, but it’s not as comfy. Still, it has worked up to now.

This year, I had an idea. Instead of setting up the big tree in the entry area, I set up a smaller tree in the living room. The big fellow could fit but it would looked very cramped. Instead, this little white tree makes the space look pretty and has plenty of area around it for the presents. Since the living room seating is around it, the passing out of gifts is going to be a comfortable affair.

Our spindly white tree and chimney decor.

I also added a garland and lights to the chimney to make the space extra festive this year. All in all, though not as speldorous, the new set up looks lovely in our cozy home.

As I was commencing the decoration day, I looked for my white spindly tree. I could not find it. It was not in any of the storage boxes we had in the one closet that houses all our Christmas stuff. The only small tree I could find was a solid silver statue tree. There was no way to hang any ornaments on him, but he would have to do.

This year’s staircase garland.

I set about decorating it and soon had it looking pretty nice. Then my mom woke up. I asked her what happened to the white pre-lit spindly tree we had bought way back when. She didn’t remember ever having one. At last, my dad came down and he told us it was stored in the garage. I had never considered looking there because as far as I knew only our out door reindeer were in there. Everything else, or so I thought, was in that one closet.

Upon searching the garage, I found the white tree. So, this year, I decorated two trees. The silver statue tree ended up in my father’s office and is in front of a window so there you go. Now, we have a tree that can be seen from outside like we normally did with the entry area one.

Dad’s office got a tree this year… by accident.

So, that’s the saga of this year’s Christmas decorations. By the time it was all set up, it had taken all day and my body was sore. I’m not as young as I used to be. This kind of thing didn’t cause achy muscles before. Nevertheless, it is a worthwhile endeavor to have the home decked out for the holidays.

Posted on by Fern Brady - No Comments on Haunted Holidays is Coming

Haunted Holidays is Coming

Saturday, November 18, starting at 6pm, writers from Houston Writers Guild and Women in the Visual and Literary Arts will be at Brazos Bookstore for the annual Haunted Holidays Short Story Reading. This event began as the brainchild of the amazing ELLEN SEATON.

This year’s flyer, which you can enjoy here, was designed by Melody Locke. Her hauntingly beautiful artwork has given the event a whole new look. The partnership with Brazos Bookstore was originally for Haunted Winter Stories but last year the event was expanded to include any holiday tale with a haunted twist.

If you are a writer and would like to read a story that evening, there are still some spots available. You can register on the information page on the WIVLA website: https://www.wivla.org/calendar-from-mw#!event/2023/11/18/haunted-holiday-readings

The truth is that this year I will be reading a slightly revised version of the first story I ever read aloud for this event. Last year, I made up a whole new holiday for Thyrein’s Galactic Wall because… well I do love world building. But with my new full time job and my second novel waiting for me to finalize the edits from my editors I just didn’t have the time to do a fresh tale.

Original artwork from previous years.

The first year I participated in this event, it was held via zoom because we were mid-pandemic. So it will be nice to see how this winter witchy tale does to a live in person audience. Since I first read it, the characters have, as they often do, taken on a new life of their own. There’s a backstory now of the lady that leaves the cottage to the protagonist of the tale I will read next Saturday at Brazos Bookstore. I am certain that if I’m not careful this could become a whole new series of novellas. Not that I could keep them from blossoming if I sat down in earnest and wrote on it. They might well end up epic novels.

Just because I won’t write again until after the coming Thanksgiving break.

But, I must keep them where they are now — short tales. I have to get the two connected series I already have books published on out before I go off into yet another story line.