Christmas Firsts #amwriting #scifi #romance

Hello, there, and a merry Christmas! I'm Pippa Jay, author of scifi and supernatural stories to engage your emotions. Every year since I've become a published author, I've struggled to write holiday stories. With my main genre of preference being scifi romance, I've just had this weird issue with the whole Christmas in Space idea that stops me from working on something. Will we still be celebrating Christmas hundreds of years in the future? Will we share something more international from our combined cultures, or will we have abandoned anything remotely like it? Will we celebrate new holidays to fit our lives in space or on another planet? I've certainly invented enough celebration days for my characters in their far future or alien settings, yet my only holiday themed success to date is a paranormal romance short set around Halloween and the traditions of All Hallows Eve rather than our more modern version.

A Paranormal Romance Short

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But this year I was due to take part in a holiday themed scifi romance event, and I needed to include a giveaway. The time had come. I needed to write a Christmas themed holiday for my main SFR couple however much muse was squirming at the idea! But where to start? Maybe with my own particular Christmas traditions? I thought really hard about what Christmas actually means to me.

My parents weren't religious and neither am I, so that was never a part of the holiday for us. Instead, it usually meant visiting at least one if not more members of the extended family with only Christmas Day itself spent at home. My sister and I were allowed to decorate the tree once we were old enough to handle the fragile, real glass ornaments, most of which were decades old. Unpacking them each year was almost like revisiting old friends. Of course I had my favourites that got pride of place at the front of the tree, while others were consigned out of sight at the back. That didn't last forever. My parents divorced, and my sister and I moved on and had families of our own.

So part of my inspiration for the story came from my own good memories of Christmas, but especially our current one. Since I've had children of my own, I've continued the tradition of letting the kids decorate the tree. This year they did everything except the lights. We also started a tradition of each year allowing them to buy one new decoration, thus creating a cycle of replacements. This year is the first where I've known that it's had an impact on my children as they commented on the ones they had bought or made before. The fact that they remembered when they'd got them or how old they were when they made them and at what school was a huge inspiration when creating Christmas for my characters, and meant a great deal to me personally. I'm helping build happy memories of Christmas together as a family, something I lost when my parents separated.

And I finally have a Christmas story of my own! It's a free download as part of the SFR Brigade Holiday Showcase that's happening right now. You can find my post HERE with my recipe for Christmas Cookies included. If you want more you can visit the other authors taking part by going HERE (they have holiday themed posts and giveaways too). Do you like the cover? The setting is a tropical island but I wanted to give it an old fashioned Christmas card look.

So, as I come up to my extended social media break in order to spend time making more memories with my family, I wish you...