Holiday Etymology It's a tradition every December to dig into our ten-year archive and share posts from previous team members and our most popular posts. It's always interesting to ponder how much of the writing and publishing world has changed, as well as how much it has remained the same. We hope you enjoy the revisits!  Wishing you all happy holy days if you celebrate - may your days still be merry and bright if not. ~ Dani Greer/Chief Red Pencil

November and December are often hectic months for writers and their creative output because of three culprits: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve, and all of the preparations needed to make each culprit better than the previous year. Although many writers, come December, suffer from PND, Post-NaNoWriMo Disorder, and decide to take a break from writing, the rest of us often struggle to stay creative while in the midst of a busy holiday season. Below are five tips to keep your creative mojo thrumming while you deck the halls and ring in the new year! Thanksgiving , Christmas , New Year , and Writing images from FreeDigitalPhotos.net. REVAMP WRITING SPACE FOR THE NEW YEAR Being creative doesn't necessarily mean writing until your hands hurt--though we always love new words for a story. This tip could be extremely helpful for those of you who participated in NaNoWriMo and need a break from writing but not a break from creativity. Take the month of December an...

by Earl53 in MorgueFile When I was a child, each holiday occupied a place distinctly its own. Gorgeous autumn colors led up to rows of corn shocks in fields depleted by the harvest of luscious ears of the succulent grain, bright orange pumpkins dotted the brown earth, and root vegetables found their way into storage for winter’s hearty meals. On the heels of this seasonal change came Halloween with trick-or-treaters knocking on neighbors’ doors in hopes of finding candied apples and other sweets to add to their burgeoning goody bags. After the treats were consumed and blustery November winds rearranged piles of dead leaves (hopefully into the neighbors’ yards), thoughts turned to Thanksgiving menus and plans for family gatherings. Black Friday didn’t exist, at least by its dark name, and Native Americans, Pilgrims, turkeys, and cornucopias graced school artwork and home decorations. by Earl53 in MorgueFile Following Thanksgiving, merchants and families eased into what is...

I’m a nut for Christmas books. Every year, I get my hands on at least a half dozen from authors like Ann Perry who writes a special holiday novella. This year, I quite accidentally ended up with about a dozen Christmas books on my Kindle, from authors I never would have discovered without their free promotions through online newsletters like Pixel of Ink . Here are a few I can’t wait to dig into starting December 1 st when my holiday cheer begins in earnest:   Forever Christmas   Merry’s Christmas: A Love Story One Imperfect Christmas The Secret Christmas Ciphers  A Simple Amish Christmas   Catch That Santa I’ll probably also buy this Nora Roberts holiday book coming out on December 11th. It's a bit pricey for a Kindle book at $6.99, and more than I might ordinarily pay, but this author writes a fine tale. How about you, readers? Do you do any kind of special theme reading for the holidays? Cook...

Are you feeling a chill in the air lately? For the first time in a long time, I'm actually looking forward to snow. See, I've been looking at this festive cover for months, and it's finally time to share it with the world. Friends, I want to introduce you to the latest from Red Tash Books, Let It Snow! Season's Readings for a Super-Cool Yule . I'd love to tell you more about how this collection came about, too.   See, it's kind of Dani Greer's fault.   Over the summer I threw in a story with several of the BRP bloggers and a few other regulars of the BBT Cafe.   The result, The Corner Cafe , continues to garner great reviews and was a really fun experiment for me as a writer, as I decided to set my contribution in the world of my first novel, the best-selling dark fantasy, This Brilliant Darkness .   The Corner Cafe was the first of what would become seven anthologies I would contribute to in 2012.   I quickly realized the value of these ...

This post originally ran here at The Blood-Red Pencil on December 29, 2010.  It first ran as a column in the Plano Star-Courier when I was known as the Erma Bombeck of Plano, then I incorporated it into my humorous memoir, A Dead Tomato Plant & A Paycheck. Enjoy... The day after Christmas was usually one of the best and one of the worst days of the year for our family. If that doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, I'm not sure it does to me either. But let me try to explain. It was the best because: There were now 364 more shopping days until Christmas. It was the one day of the year when perhaps the kids were just as tired as we were, and they’d sleep off and on all day. All the build up for the Big Day was finally over, and the noise level in the house had dropped about 20 decibels. I didn’t have to cook since we had all those leftovers from Christmas dinner. (If we didn't have a big Christmas dinner, I was in trouble on that score.) The kids would dec...

In the spirit of this holiday season, I thought I would share a memory of a special gift my husband got for me one year.  He has always supported my writing habit, and this year was no exception. They say - whoever "they" are - that when it comes to gift-giving, it's the thought that counts. While I don't always agree with everything "they" have to say, I have to give them this one. My husband puts a great deal of thought into not only the present but the presentation. It isn't enough to merely hand over a package for some occasion, he has to somehow turn it into an event and over the years we've been together he's devised numerous, and often complicated, ways of surprising me. Once he initiated his Christmas charade the week after Thanksgiving. It began with the announcement that this year he was going to be practical about my gift. Perhaps he'd build the bench in the kitchen I'd been wanting. Since I really liked the bench when he...