Home For the Holidays

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Title: Home For the Holidays
Series:
Release Date: November 25, 2012
Pages: 62
ISBN13: 978-1480210356

 Overview

Short stories and poetry to chill the soul and get you thinking twice about what's behind the ornaments on your neighbor's lawn.

Praise

"Chilling!"

"Teach me this magic!"

"This slender volume contains six short stories and eight poems. The stories range from crime (the title story), through slice-of-life ("The view of my brother's profile in the rear-view mirror") and comedy-of-manners ("The Folly of Miss Arthbunot"), to paranormal ("Trap Doors"), and all could easily appear in a publication such as Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Some are funny, some are touching, and they are all well-written. The poems are lyrical and often thought-provoking. I enjoyed it. Recommended." – Michael Ciaraldi, author

"Well this was a surprise pass-milk-through-your-nose giggle. While billed as grisly tales, I'd more appropriately call these Dark Christmas Humor. The first story was, of course, my favorite because my husband works for Dell and Ms. Dawn absolutely nailed the corporate culture and competitiveness. I enjoyed the other stories just as much. All were relatively short, just perfect to stick into your purse and nibble at during down times (like waiting for the kids). Anyways, if you've got a Dell employee in your life, stick this little book in their stocking. Recommend." – Anna Erishkigal, author

 

Hear the story's opening, read by the author, from this Galactic Terrors reading in 2022.

Excerpt

Yeah, it might seem a little candy-assed, but when you got kids, you get into the whole cornball of everything. You sing with "The Lion King," and you act like Dora's a fuckin' genius and in a way you actually believe it all because they do. So starting when the kids were about two and three, I got into the holidays all over again.

Started with Halloween. Spook day meant I could wire the house for sound and movement and make lights flash and witches fly, send up plumes of dry-ice smoke and put the doorbell on to make it go "whooooo." Every year there was more shit at the store to test out – the skeleton I put in the front hallway which lurched out at you when the door opened scared off so many trick-or-treaters I had to retire it – but turning the garage into a haunted house brought them back. I reigned unquestioned supreme as Halloween House on Tempest Cove.

Partly that was 'cause all of the Jesus freaks around here got Halloween seen as anti-Christian. These evangelical nuts got all worked up over the fact that their favorite holidays might actually have — saints preserve us, where are my smelling salts — pagan histories. So the competition I might have isn't participating. Oh, sure, their kids go candy-grubbing. Some of 'em even have the little ones show up with pamphlets. But they don't dress up and they don't decorate the house and they give you the hairy eyeball in the H&B when you start checking out the bowl with the mechanical hand that grabs back.

So it didn't surprise me 'tall that Giles Sanderson's house was dark that first Halloween. I thought about egging it, but between the haunted house and taking Dave and Asty around the territory I didn't have time. And then we all crashed out after too many Reeses Peanut Butter Cups so I shrugged my shoulders and let it go.

Then came Christmas.

Christmas, now, that's a different animal. The neighborhood goes certifiable. I shit you not. Every year, we go for a post-meal Thanksgiving constitutional – I need a walk before all that pie – and catch parents with their kids climbing trees and scaling ladders, already putting up the gaudy red and green lights, or staking out those blow-up Santas and snowmen to flap in the breeze for the next whole month. Every house – and I do mean every house, except the ones not occupied – has some kind of decoration up, from Santa in his sleigh on the roof to multiple trees in the window.

Just who needs more than one tree?