Merryvale Songs

By Robin Weaver

This month's theme is Holiday Read Recommendations; while I love Christmas, I'm not a fan of celebrating too early. Too much of a good thing, and all that...  

Anyway, I haven't yet ready anything holiday and have no recommendations. Instead, I'm going to blog about how much fun I had writing the Merryvale novellas.  Thanks for your indulgence. 😊

The Gingerbread Skirmish Writing Experience

“They” say writers should avoid being clever. At all cost. But while writing my Merryvale holiday novellas, I didn’t listen.

Cleverness was attempted. Sort of.  

I did restricted my attempts to the chapter subtitles. For each of the three stories in the series, I tried to modify the title of a Christmas song to create a one-line summary of my chapters.  Thinking this would be fun for the readers, and definitely fun for me, I also hoped those kind of subtitles would help get the reader into the spirit.

For example, in CHRISTMAS TREE WARS, the first chapter is called O’ Little Town of Bets—a play on O' Little Town of Bethlehem. Obviously, there’s a wager (to goad our heroine into entering the Christmas Tree Contest). Chapter Two of the second book (Full Contact Decorating) chapter two is subtitled, Deck the Halls…with Shiny Red Balls.  It’s not what you think—or maybe it is. :)

What was the reaction? Mixed.  One reviewer loved it, another considered it kitschy.  Even my own critique partners had opposite opinions; one said I should cut the subtitles, another said the carol-word-play was the best part of the book. Since I’d kitsch’d my titles in the first two novellas, I felt I had to continue the trend in book three, THE GINGERBREAD SKIRMISH.

My personal favorites include:

·       Do I Have to Be Home for Christmas

·       What Childishness Is This

·       Chestnuts Roasted

·       Do You Hear What I Heard Wrong

·       I Saw Mommy Hugging Santa Claus…Cost Him Five Percent

 

Perhaps it’s just as well that The Gingerbread Skirmish is the last story in the series—I’ve run out of Christmas songs. :)  I hope readers can at least tolerate the subtitles, because I had so much fun with them. At the end of the day, don’t we writers deserve a little fun with words?

Have the best holidays ever!

Robin