Wednesday, December 15, 2021

The story of how Silent Night came about...

 



Hello again! I’m here to tell you the neat little story about how this book came about.

I’m one of those quiet Christmas freaks that loves all things Christmas, from the brightly lit Christmas tree to gift giving and holiday cookies (not so much baking them, but eating them), and the music and movies.  But I’m not the biggest Christmas freak in the family. My daughter wins that title.

She even changed her spring wedding to a December wedding in New Hampshire of all places. But her wedding day did not have snow. It wasn’t even cold. As a matter of fact, it was warmer on her wedding day than it was on the original date in June the following year.

But I digress, this isn’t about my daughter’s wedding, however beautiful it was. Although this IS about my daughter. You see, when I started writing she was twelve. And the books were an absolute no-no for a twelve-year-old. But the girl was curious, so she took a peek at my first book and opened to a very violent scene that scarred her. Since that day, she hasn’t read anything I’ve written with the exception of a book she begged me to write about surviving a high school bully. Beyond that, she won’t open a book, even those that are more young adult and rather tame in the scheme of things.

She was here with her family at the end of October and my mother-in-law told her she needed to read my new series – Season of the Dragon – but my daughter said she wouldn’t read anything of mine. Not since that sneak peek she did when she was younger.

Well, the next day a cover came across my Facebook scroll. And I bought it knowing she loves all things Christmas. I sent the cover to her with the note “I’m writing this, so you have to read it.”

She surprised me by saying only if I can see it as you write it. Obviously, I agreed and sent her my already written but very raw first two chapters.

She sent me nearly a line by line edit with changes that she felt very strongly about. Like you don’t have confetti for Christmas. It needs to be glitter and it shouldn’t be red, green, and blue, it needs to be red, green, and gold because those are the colors of Christmas.

She called me because she was so concerned at how I would take being edited by a non-writer. She didn’t know if I would be angry at her notes or not. But being in this business for fourteen years, you recognize when someone is trying to help make your story better versus tear it apart. While I wrote 99.9 percent of this book, my twenty-six-year-old daughter had a hand in a couple scenes. The hot cocoa reference was hers, along with the color correction, and changing confetti to glitter.

Outside of the first two chapters, she didn’t have much feedback beyond that she loved the story. And I am so pleased that I got her to read an urban fantasy short story of mine. Not only does Silent Night capture the magic of Christmas, it also has monsters and a pretty damn cool sword, too.

Silent Night is available on Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and Google Play and some other lesser-known distributors. It’s also in paperback. 

You can choose wherever you are most comfortable with using this universal link: https://books2read.com/u/4jo86v

Until next time,

Ciao.

JET

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