Thank you for taking the time to read my book of short holiday stories inspired by Lady A’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” I’ve been wanting to write this story for two years now, but life happened, and it took me longer than I had planned. I thoroughly enjoyed writing all about the children from the original My Life as an Album series, and while you do not need to have read those stories to read these, I hope you eventually decide to check them out. These holiday short stories do not have to be read in order, but it was the way I planned it. The timeline in the book starts with the very first page and continues until the last, so if you decide to read them out of order, you might have missed events that happened and impact that short.
Writing realistic characters and their path to their happily ever after is what writing is all about for me. And each of these characters is no exception. Their secrets, their hidden wounds, and the way they choose to live their lives resiliently and adventurously make my heart happy, and I hope they make yours feel the same way.
I’m supposed to bombard you with my social media sites, places to leave reviews, and a laundry list of my other books at this point, but the truth is, I don’t want to give you those things…not yet.
I’d rather you get to reading. I’d rather you fall in love with my characters, their world, and the love, laughter, and family that is held within these pages.
I’ll touch base with you again AFTER you’ve read the story…
Happy Reading!
LJ EVANS
♫ where music & stories collide ♫
Sigh…okay. Some of you want all that information now, so if you do, please feel free to click here for the Second Message from the Author.
To my parents who are a role model of love and sacrifice in a world that needs it.
To my readers who begged me for a Holiday Album story… may it be everything you were hoping for.
To Jenn Lockwood who came along, swooped up my stories, and made them presentable to the world with her generosity of spirit and time.
And, as always, to the man who gives me everything so I can live in a world of make believe. XO
Y’all might remember, a while back, when there was this quick-as-lightning country girl who fell in love with the boy next door before she was even born. You might remember that she lost that boy to the heavens but found a new love who brought healing and laughter and joy back to her world. Her journey was the catalyst for bringing people together in a series of love stories that spoke of family, home, and resilience.
That girl, her friends, and her family went on to have children of their own. Beautiful children who then had the audacity to grow up, make their way into the world, and try to find their own happily ever afters. To live their own adventures.
This is the story of how, one holiday, all of those children’s hearts and lives were momentarily caught in a series of secrets they were afraid to share and how love saw them through.
Still confused? Check out the “My Life as an Album Series Who’s Who.”
Cover Images: © Deposit Photos | SolominViktor and iStock | Antonel
Edie Brennan and Garrett Drummond
Lonnie and Wynn’s story of new beginnings in My Life as a Mixtape may have been the last of the Album series, but the two characters showed just how resilient the entire crew could be. Lonnie survived the loss of his twin sister and inherited his niece, Edie, absorbing her into his life with a fierce protectiveness that was breathtaking. Wynn may have had her entire world collapse around her with the loss of babies, marriage, and a job, but when she saw Lonnie struggling to pick up the mantle left for him, she stepped right in to help. The friendship they built while doing so was everything! It is only appropriate, then, to start this little series of stories with Edie, who was the very first child to come the family’s way. But as you’ll see, her story needs time to finish…and so, it bookends the novel. Here’s the beginning...while the end will have to wait till the very end.
Still confused? Check out the “My Life as an Album Series Who’s Who.”
Edie
BLUE CHRISTMAS
“I'll have a blue Christmas without you
I'll be so blue just thinking about you.”
Performed by Elvis Presley w/ Martina McBride
Written by Hayes / Johnson
My eyes flicked to my phone as it vibrated against the table again. I grabbed it quickly, hoping Mom hadn’t heard it. It was probably the hundredth time that day it had gone off. But I wasn’t answering it. Not for him. Not today. Maybe never again.
My world had shifted off its axis and would never be the same.
It made my heart hurt so badly I wanted to reach in, rip it out, and hand it to someone else. To not have a heart. Which only caused Miranda Lambert’s “Tin Man” to rattle through my brain, making me wish the lyrics could be true. It would be easier to not have a heart.
But I was going to need my heart, and the reason for keeping it pressed a foot into my rib cage so hard that I could almost feel the shape of it through my layers of fabric and skin. I pushed gently, easing the pressure away from my bones, and wondered what it would be like to rub our baby’s foot for real in a few weeks. January 5th was merely days away, but I wasn’t anywhere near ready for the birth. I wasn’t even home.
Home. That was the question that had caused Garrett to run and me to stay behind, wasn’t it? The argument, which I’d thought we resolved before we’d ever said, “I do,” had come back with a new ferocity, proving just how much we hadn’t resolved it.
Now, I was at the kitchen table in the home I’d grown up in instead of our townhouse in Knoxville. But this home, my childhood home, had always been full of love and acceptance—something Garrett didn’t always understand because his life had always been full of demands to do better, be better, crush the competition.
Mom looked up from a cake she was attempting to frost, her eagle eyes and ears noticing the incessant buzzing against the wood. I should have just turned it off.
“Who’s bugging you?” she asked.
I didn’t meet her eyes, because Mom always knew when I was lying, and I hadn’t told anyone about Garrett’s and my self-destruction. “Stephen. He’s going on about Khiley’s present.”
Which was partially true. Some of the vibrating had been from my brother. He was doubting if Christmas Day was really the right time to give Khiley her gift. I’d helped him pick it out weeks ago, getting off early from the library and meeting him in downtown Knoxville. Stephen had swept into the store with his UTK sweatshirt and his heart-melting smile, and the two females behind the counter had been putty in his hands. Stephen was oblivious to it, as he’d been his entire life. There’d only been one woman he’d ever had eyes for.
“I thought Stephen already had her present? Didn’t he ask me for wrapping paper the other day?” Mom asked, turning her eyes back to her lopsided cake.