Advent Ghosts 2025
This week I’m participating in Advent Ghosts, an annual flash fiction event run by writer Loren Eaton. You'll find links to all the stories participating in this event at his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall. Every single one of these stories is exactly 100 words.
Loren will be adding links to more stories as we get closer to Christmas, and as writers submit them.
So be sure to check back. Here’s my story:
AND TO THINK IT COMES ALIVE AT MIDNIGHT
Phil awoke on a hard ceramic bed. The front door—also ceramic—was stuck in the open position, or he never would have squeezed out of the teensy house.
In the town square, Cratchit boosted Tiny Tim on his back while Buddy the Elf yukked it up with Ralphie, whose cold, vitreous eyes gazed at the rifle in Higbee’s window.
Shit—I know this place.
Phil’s wife loomed overhead, guzzling eggnog. “Know what happens to puny men at Christmas? They shrink.”
Small enough for Belinda’s Christmas village.
“Hag! Witch!”
She nudged a minuscule Ghost of Christmas Future beside him. Checkmate.
Copyright 2025 Joseph D’Agnese
My previous contributions to the Advent Ghosts events are here: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2023, 2024.
Last year, because of a natural disaster that hit our region, we skipped doing our little village. (It’s a lot of work.) But we’re back in force this year.
Have you seen the video of my Christmas trolley?
Yes, I know it is 2026, and the holidays are technically behind us. But our house and front yard are still festooned with decorations, and I don’t think I’ve taken enough photos of the Christmas Village that took so much effort to put up this year. So when it came time to write a post for SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, this week, my head was still stuck on Christmas. In one of my first posts of the new year, I always try to share some sort of inspirational message for writers. Today I am sharing an anecdote of how I came to write my first published story, and the strange thing that happened immediately afterward.
You can read my article at this link. It is called…
I promised to share some videos of our Christmas Village when we finally tricked the whole thing out, with some attention to the larger train set that snakes through the village. I have a number of videos for you in this post. The first two show two different M&M-themed cars. There are few others showing scenes from the village, and there’s a rerun of our mantelpiece trolley.
One of my rituals of the Christmas season is taking the time to read O. Henry’s charming, heartfelt story, “The Gift of the Magi.” It is only 2,000 words long, and a great snapshot of life in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. My particular favorite is the last paragraph, which at first glance seems a little redundant, until you realize that it needs to be. That said, I have an article at SleuthSayers today that focuses primarily on the “mystery” inherent in the story’s very first paragraph.
Every year, we try to get our Christmas tree and decorations up as soon as possible after the American Thanksgiving holiday. It just makes sense to do so, since in the USA this holiday is our only four-day weekend. And because Thanksgiving falls so late in November this year, if we dawdle on decorations, Christmas will be here before we are ready for it.
In our house, decorating for Christmas means at least two, possibly three, train sets…
As long as it’s July, seems a great time to remind devoted readers that they now have three—count ‘em—three Christmas books from me to read. They are…
I can’t believe it has taken me this long to write a short Christmas story. I already have two Christmas-themed novels available, but they are not exactly short. Sorceress Kringle, my gender-swapped Santa fantasy, and its prequel, The Icemaster of New-York, clock in at 600-plus pages. Whereas Christmas time is the perfect time to indulge in something short. I wrote Preston the Provider a while back, but it has taken me this long to design the cover and interior, and have the book copy-edited. It is finally out in the world as of today. You can click on the above image to see the links where to buy it. Rest assured, you can get the ebook or paperback versions, whichever you prefer…
The Sherlock Holmes mysteries consist of 56 short stories and four novels. And only one of those stories takes place at Christmas time in Victorian England. It’s the famous story, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” which finds Holmes and Watson chasing a jewel thief in London who has stuffed his prize down the throat of a live Christmas goose. Yes, you heard me. A goose. First the goose is alive, then it’s not, then it’s well and truly cooked. And zaniness ensues. It’s fun story but there’s a huge gaping plot hole in the middle of it all…
This month I’m participating in the 100-word #adventghosts2024 flash fiction event run by writer Loren Eaton. You'll find links to all the stories participating in this event at his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall. Here’s my piece. Loren will be adding links to more stories as we get closer to Christmas, and as writers submit them. So be sure to check back. Here’s my story…
Well, the folks over at SleuthSayers, the mystery blog I write for, have me contributing a post on this, the deadest reading day of the year, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when all good Americans are out spending themselves blind. Not to be outdone, I have managed to blame the entire Black Friday concept on short story writers, the very same folks who operate the SleuthSayers blog. I know, it’s wacky clickbait premise, but you can’t blame a guy for trying. My argument is based on one of the oldest American Christmas traditions…
Back in 2013, when the book that was to become my wife’s first bestseller was months away from publication, I found myself with time on my hands. It had taken her seven years to write and research that book, and we were constantly driving up and down the east coast so she could interview people and investigate archives.
But now her book was done, and something I had wanted to write finally had the breathing room to come to life. I envisioned a multi-book series about the life of Kris Kringle. I was inspired by the Mary Stewart books I’d read as a kid, on the life of King Arthur. The first book in that series focused not on Arthur but on Merlin as a boy. Because it had seemed logical to Stewart that we should understand the mentor before the mentee.
I wanted to do something similar…
As of today I’m participating in the 100-word #adventghosts2023 flash fiction event run by writer Loren Eaton. You'll find links to all the stories participating in this event at his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall. Here’s my piece. Loren will be adding links to more stories as we get closer to Christmas, and as writers submit them. So be sure to check back. Here’s my story…
This week I’m participating in Advent Ghosts, an annual flash fiction event run by writer Loren Eaton. You'll find links to all the stories participating in this event at his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall. Every single one of these stories is exactly 100 words.
Loren will be adding links to more stories as we get closer to Christmas, and as writers submit them.
So be sure to check back. Here’s my story…