Thank you to everyone who subscribed to my newsletter! I hope you find my posts interesting, informative and inspiring. I thought I would start with a sneak peek at the beginning of my novella, A New Year’s Carol, that is being released November 3rd! I am excited to share my work with you. My novella is, of course, based on Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol. In all my efforts, I tried emulate his work and continue the story he started. Below you can see the first page of my novella and beyond it are the explanations of the bullet points from the first page:
STAVE ONE [#1]
EBENEZER AND BOB [#2]
December 26, 1843 [#3]
Ebenezer Scrooge was alive [#4], of this there is no doubt, and the story that follows will bear faithful witness to it. I was the morning after the Christmas that the ghosts had visited him. Scrooge felt more awake and alive than ever he could recall. He looked in the mirror and wondered at the change wrought in the face of the man looking back at him. That morning his bed clothes were the same and his bed chamber was the same. The cold wind of a London winter morning whistling around his house and forming ice crystals on the windows was the same. He was not the same [#5]. He was getting ready to go to his office, as he had done a thousand times before. Today though, he had a purpose and that purpose filled him with an energy he had never known [#6]. Although at this time he could…
#1- What is a Stave? As my story took shape, I continued to go back to Dickens’ original work and I found that there were no chapters in his novella. Instead, he called them staves, which is just another word for stanza. It makes sense, his story is a carol and so is mine. I hope you find it to be a joyous carol as it was meant to be.
#2- Ebenezer and Bob– This is my title for the first stave. As you will find out, he is no longer the miser commonly known as Scrooge. He is Ebenezer and Robert Cratchit is no longer his slave driven underling but they are destined to be fast friends.
#3- December 26, 1843– A Christmas Carol essentially ends on Christmas Day, although there is certainly a hint of what happens as a result of the beginning of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge. My story starts right after that memorable Christmas and unfolds for eight days and then some.
#4- Ebenezer Scrooge was alive- The very first line of A Christmas Carol reads “Marley was dead, to begin with.” That line sets the stage for frightening encounter Ebenezer would have with not just one, but a total of four ghosts. My story begins with life. In fact, this very first line is one of the major themes running through the whole story. Ebenezer finds he is alive and throughout the story that follows he is learning how to live.
#5- He was not the same- A New Year’s Carol is all about redemption. Every January 1st, a new year begins and we have a chance at a fresh start. That is one of the gifts Ebenezer received that Christmas, a chance to change and not be the same as he was.
#6- He had a purpose- Ebenezer is grateful for the chance to change but throughout the story, he realizes it is not all about him. There was a reason he was restored and forgiven. There was something he had to do. As you will find out, it was not always going to be easy.
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