@mkcanuck.bsky.social Yes I splurged on this & last year’s special editions, and I’m gifting the regular #SSAC2023 to a fellow writer for Xmas.
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A plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies with two books: “Eastmouth and Other Stories” by Alison Moore and “Will and Testament” by Vigdis Hjorth
Day 25 #ssac2023 So Much Heart by Drew Buxton
Mystery of DB Cooper “solved,”but I’m wishing everyone a much better holiday than the boy in this story had.💔
Books in photo from @cathrineis.bsky.social ❤️🎁❤️ who truly has “so much heart.”
@barbaramcveigh.bsky.social
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A bunch of wrapped presents ready for delivery by Mr and Mrs Claus. Also a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a bottle of wine.
Day 24 #ssac2023
The Burglar’s Christmas by Willa Cather
Don’t most families have a reprobate member who might be reformed despite themselves. Whether it lasts, remains to be seen.
Merry Christmas Eve, y’all.
@barbaramcveigh.bsky.social
@mrmuleman.bsky.social
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Day 24 #ssac2023
“Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.”
The Prodigal Son Meets the Little Match Girl.
There’s nothing like a mother’s love. Connects me back to the Chekhov story. And set on Christmas Eve!
@ttbrader.bsky.social @mrmuleman.bsky.social
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Lighthouse display with a sailor figurine
Day 23 #ssac2023
Holiday by David Ryan
A different song plays in the story, but this is the one that ran through my head starting from page 7: youtu.be/n6P0SitRwy8?fe…
Happy Christmas Eve Eve, y’all.
@barbaramcveigh.bsky.social the tea today has “organic stevia leaf”-I’m gonna brave it. 😬
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Day 23 #ssac2023
A story set on the exact date it’s being read!
“Her parents told it better. They left out what you had to leave out…They put in enough detail to cover the things they left out.”
Enjoyed unravelling the mystery of this story to find the 🖤 underneath.
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Day #ssac2023
“Time flies, my boy. Before you have time to cry out, old age is upon you.”
So much to talk about in this story: the imagery, the contrasts, and when/how do boys become men.
@ttbrader.bsky.social @mrmuleman.bsky.social
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@ttbrader.bsky.social @mrmuleman.bsky.social
Is it about the giving or the receiving? #ssac2023
This story had me in stitches!
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Day 21 #ssac2023
A zinger of a story!
As a child “my parents would take me to…[see Santa] to whisper my wish list, every last thing I had to have or else I might die…Later, to make certain that he wouldn’t forget, I’d write him a letter reiterating, toy by toy, my greed.”
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Today’s Advent calendar items in a waiting room
Three wise “men” (children) figurines carrying gifts. Atop a mantel.
Day 21 #ssac2023 The Gift of the Magi Revisited by Binnie Kirshenbaum
youtu.be/w8HWHd0EYJA?fe… (aspirational?) or youtu.be/j9jbdgZidu8?fe (reality)
@barbaramcveigh.bsky.social
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A photograph of two bottles of Mortlach 16-year-old whisky, one a large bottle of the Flora and Fauna bottling, the other a small nip bottle of the distillery bottling from the Drinks by the Dram advent calendar. A Glencairn glass of the whisky is in front of and to the right of the bottles.
Nostalgia lay behind door 20 of the #whiskyadvent calendar today, while #SSAC2023 was s brief read called "The Skull", by Leopoldine Core.
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#whiskyadvent2023 #drinksbythedram #day20 #whisky #weedram #ShortStoryAdventCalendar #HingstonAndOlsen
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Globe Theatre display with Twelfth Night mummers in a procession. Atop a bookcase.
Day 20 #ssac2023
The Skull by Leopoldine Core
“to be in an oddities store and treated as odd”
Great interview with the author at www.hingstonandolsen.com/2023/20-leop...
“The short story…is…peculiarly alive due to being partial…something supernatural about the experience of reading them.”
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Day 20 #ssac2023
A Memento Mori story.
I was fascinated by the fact that this skull had doors (maybe it was Being John Malkovich’s skull!)
❤️ the transcendent imagery of the “pigeon on the fire escape staring into another dimension.”
@ttbrader.bsky.social @mrmuleman.bsky.social
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Day 19 #ssac2023
“Private Hands” by Michael LaPointe
Sixties idealism for a price:
“Provenance was everything. A purchase had to be like a royal marriage, the lineage assured.”
How far do we have to fall before things change? What’s the bottom?
@ttbrader.bsky.social @mrmuleman.bsky.social
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A scowling Scrooge decorative mug
Day 19 #ssac2023
Private Hands by Michael LaPointe
“The bottom is deeper than the song.”
Great story circling around the guitar of a fictional lesser-known Woody Guthrie-type musician.
@barbaramcveigh.bsky.social @mrmuleman.bsky.social
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Day 18 #ssac2023
A Survivor-style-reality-tv story of a haunted marriage.
“I’m winning”
(Do you think the wife is in on it?)
@ttbrader.bsky.social
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Trafalgar Square display, including St Martin-in-the-Fields church
Blue bowl with a black cookie and a beige cookie in it, and the words “Naughty or nice?” on a baggie underneath it
Day 17 #ssac2023 Swanee by Sara Lippmann
Story’s meaning for me: I don’t miss the days of kids’ parties at play-places! The narrator’s child is only 7, so a lot of (parental) drama to go.
(Cookies baked by my daughter—definitely nice. Bowl from an art market yesterday.) @barbaramcveigh.bsky.social
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A dark green box with a red and green title: "Short Story Advent Calendar" With a bunch of red and green booklets spilling out of it on to my reclining pyjama-clad legs on my couch. The topmost booklet is green with a light and dark hatched design, through which a red, vertically stacked "0 4" are displayed to indicate it's the 4th of 25 short stories in the calendar.
A sideways view of the short story advent calendar box with a collection of the story booklets spilling out. They alternate red, green, red, green, red, green cover design though otherwise follow the same hatching (and numbering) pattern.
A view of the back side of the Short Story Advent Calendar box with a red booklet sticking out, showing the stacked green numbers for "0 5" in the same hatched pattern of pale red and darker red lines as the green booklets used in pale and darker green. The back of the box reads (in red and green text - very unfriendly for colourblindness this year): "25 stories, 25 authors, 25 days No sense risking frostbite this December - snuggle up inside with an assortment of the best writers in North America. Once you're done each day's story, head over to shortstoryadventcalendar.com to read an exclusive interview with the authors. Now close the door, would you? You're letting all the heat out. 'Tis the season for sharing." Twitter handle @HingstonOlsen #SSAC2023
Today is for napping and catching up on my very delayed pick-up of this year's Short Story Advent Calendar from HingstonandOlsen.com #SSAC2023
Lots of reading to go!
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Day 17 #ssac2023
After reading the interview & re-reading the story, I realized I should’ve included a picture of a nesting doll in this photo: a story inside a story.
“The mommies closed in as if they smelled blood.”
And other animals.
@ttbrader.bsky.social
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Day 16 #ssac2023 The Kit-Bag by Algernon Blackwood
“It is difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins, when the causes of that fear are not plainly before the eyes.”
That’s some humongous bag, more like a trunk. @barbaramcveigh.bsky.social
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Day 16 #ssac2023
I’m a big fan of Algernon Blackwood.
This story took me down a rabbit hole that only @royalhistorian could have gotten me out of!
I started thinking about the publication date: Was it the Victorian era? No, the Edwardian era! Think Downton Abbey. @ttbrader.bsky.social
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Day 15 “My Friend Goo” by Deb Olin Unferth #ssac2023
Ah! A pandemic story & so much more!
“Early on in the pandemic I heard a man on the internet say that one day the pandemic would be over & we would all resume our former lives, but that we would miss something about this time”@ttbrader.bsky.social
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Plush candy cane hanging from a lamp
Mother Goose display
Day 15 #ssac2023 My Friend Goo by Deb Olin Unferth “I didn’t feel at home in that house or that neighborhood, & I’m not sure where I’ve ever felt at home, other than…where I’d grown up awkward and nervous.” Love & relate to this layered story of pandemic & earlier loss. @barbaramcveigh.bsky.social
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Day 14 #ssac2023
“In sports, ritual and superstition reigned. A gaffe, a gesture, a glance - any of these might sway the hockey gods against us.”
What creates & sustains friendships?
Man, I had to go searching for that hockey stick!
@ttbrader.bsky.social
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Heat Miser and Snow Miser figurines in a holiday basket
Day 14 #ssac2023 Old Friends by Paul Cresey
“Who can know the reasons why we lose touch with some friends and not others?”
I think some reasons, even if regretted, are knowable.
@barbaramcveigh.bsky.social
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Day 13 #ssac2023 Hamburger Baby by Melissa Broder
To answer
@barbaramcveigh.bsky.social ‘s question below, I believe the story is (at least partly) a send-up of all the things/stuff around a baby being more important than the baby itself.
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Day 13 #ssac2023
“I no longer regret giving birth to a hamburger.”
Like @mrmuleman.bsky.social I found the story - at the beginning - to be funny. Then I wondered: Who are we supposed to be laughing at?
@ttbrader.bsky.social - Your take?
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Day 12 #ssac2023
“This was the best time of the day. We couldn’t afford real analysis, so we did one another instead,”
Did the characters dig up too much of the past?
@ttbrader.bsky.social
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A photograph of the Day 10 entry in the Hingston and Olsen Short Story Advent calendar, next to a Glencairn glass of copper-colored whisky and a small whisky bottle on the right. The bottle is labeled "Drinks by the Dram Gulliver's 47 Pedro Ximenez Sherry Casks". Everything sits atop a round wooden table showing the grain of log it was cut from. The backdrop is out-of-focus white Christmas lights.
Door 11 of the #whiskyadvent calendar opened on a tasty PX cask English whisky, and #SSAC2023 day 11 is a short story-not-story by Alexander Weinstein.
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#whiskyadvent2023 #drinksbythedram #day9 #whisky #weedram #ShortStoryAdventCalendar #HingstonAndOlsen
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A print of pelicans forming a Christmas tree
Day 11 #ssac2023 Understanding Great Art … by Alexander Weinstein
My favorite of the “biographical statements” was the one of the grieving woman’s tiny paper pyramids.
(Print on my wall by Walter Inglis Anderson, a favorite artist of mine, who believed he *realized* nature with his art.)
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