Description: #Audio. #FlashFic. A mermaid finds the perfect gift for her lover. Excerpt: Studying her work, Harmony moved a shell one level higher and replaced it with a piece of blue sea glass. Blue and red were her favorites, and they were also the rarest colors. She’d heard the humans on the beach make similar […]

Description: #Audio. #Blog. A brief look at stockings. Excerpt: But this year is different. This year I bought new stockings. This year, I’m trying to retain our most important family traditions, but alter them enough that the absence of my stepfather isn’t felt so keenly. The penguin stocking was always his when he visited. I […]

Description: #Audio. #Flashfic Elizabeth asks for a story on Christmas Eve. Excerpt: They could have gone to mass at the local church, as they always did. St. Agnes had been the family’s parish of choice for decades. It was an old building, formidable gray stone on the outside, but once you were inside the vestibule […]

Description: #Audio. #Flashfic Jane is alone for Christmas this year… isn’t she? Excerpt: Barely five feet tall, the tree stood in the center of the bay window that gave Jane’s living room much of its charm. She’d meant to hire someone to hang outside lights on the window, but had never gotten around to […]

Description: #Audio. #Essay Christmases in La Paz  ***Apologies*** My voice still isn’t 100%. Excerpt: We spend Christmas Eve decorating cheap felt stockings with puffy paints, while we listen to the Lessons and Carols service from England streaming over the speakers of an ancient HP laptop, too kludgy to be used as anything but a music […]

Description: #Audio. #Flashfic An introspective walk in the snow… Excerpt: A mournful howl cut through the wind. It wasn’t one of her kind, but she answered anyway, her return song one of reassurance. “You will be alright,” she sang. “Winter won’t last forever.” Links and References Read the text of Pelt at MissMeliss.com. Check out […]

Description: #Audio. #OpenLetter My annual letter to the man with the bag. Excerpt: So many of my friends this year are making posts and comments about how they wish the holidays didn’t have to be so stressful and commercial, or how things were more fun when they had money. And I get it, I do, […]

Description: #Audio. #Flashfic A futuristic Christmas romance. Excerpt: “I will endeavor to remind you, in the future,” he says, and again, there’s no judgement. Just a new subroutine to be added to the many already in play. I can almost imagine his internal process. ‘Subheading: weather, cross-reference: Zoe. If weather is inclement, remind Zoe to […]

Description: #Audio. #Flashfiction. The second and third Noels aren’t what you think. Excerpt: But at the same time, we’ve commercialized that chronicle. Merchandised it. This second noel – really the two-thousand-and-somethingth noel – finds us juxtaposing stuffed stockings and decorations on sale since Halloween (a different old story, that) with the pressure to buy the […]

Description: #Audio. #Essay My mother’s button box was a tin full of treasures and memories. Excerpt: My mother’s sewing desk, when I was young, was a lovely wooden piece, with a central opening that hid her black, metal, Singer sewing machine from view when not in use. It was often in a window, sun-warmed, it’s […]