Christmas On The Brain

I declared myself to be on a brief hiatus from writing.  I was supposed to be letting my plot marinate while I destressed and knocked out some of the major things on my To Do list.  My brain was supposed to rest and watch fun movies, catch up on favorite shows, read good books.

The Christmas season has started–commercially at least.  Everywhere I go, Christmas music is being piped in over the speakers, decorations abound, and messages are constantly being sent to remind me that I am still not done with my Christmas shopping.  “It’s Christmas at ground zero.  The button has been pressed.  The radio just let us know that this is not a test…”  I don’t want to think about that…  But it reminded me, as it always does, of the Christmas novella I always wanted to write.

So I mention it to Pot this morning.  “I’ve always wanted to write a Christmas novella about a woman with the last name Applewhite, who owns a Christmas tree farm.”

And she says “Well, why don’t you? At least you’d be working on something.”

Too true.   “I’m a total sucker for those cable Christmas specials.  It’d just be another feel good story with no real plot I guess.  I don’t know anything about the hero.”

“So Ms. Applewhite owns a tree farm.  And there’s a guy.  One of them has a problem, and the other will help with the solution.  They both have some hangup, but essentially they’re perfect for each other.  They just have to figure that out.  Since it’s a feel good novella, it doesn’t have to be super complicated.”

“It probably says something about me and my reading/writing preferences that I wonder if the hero is  somehow a thief or an escaped somebody or other hiding out on her tree farm…”

As it turns out he’s in the Witness Protection Program and his boss at his new life job gets murdered by the folks that he’s supposed to testify against and he runs again and winds up at this tree farm…Did I mention I don’t do not complicated?  I’m making it a spinoff of the book I was working on–utilizing the same made up Mississippi town and one of the peripheral characters from that one.  He’s a cop and cousin to the heroine who owns the tree farm.  He doesn’t trust this guy who shows up looking for work.  And of course the bad guys track him down and there’s a stand off and he has to save the heroine…well anyway, I’m developing a plot and ready to get down into it.  It’s probably just that blush of first love (we writers totally get that for new stories, or didn’t you know?), but I’ll go with it.  I’d rather be writing something!

Anybody got suggestions for a title?

2 thoughts on “Christmas On The Brain

  1. That sounds like a great plot. For NaNo this year I promised myself a simple love story. So not happening. *sigh* Oh well, the complications keep me interested anyway. *grin*

    I’m not good with titles, especially anything thematic. Is there a twist on a classic Christmas story or a Christmas song you could use?

  2. Wouldn’t work for this one, but I wrote a short story in high school that was a Christmas horror story It Came Upon A Midnight Clear…SOOOOOOO cheesy. I’ll have to keep thinking. I tend to suck at titles.

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