Crayons, glue sticks, and last year’s wrapping paper

​Writing the chaotic dinner scene in An Untouchable Christmas, I channeled the Christmases from my childhood. Christmas was a big deal growing up, with my mother doing everything in her power—even when money was tight—to give everyone a “perfect” Christmas; occasionally going into debt to make everything just right. Stockings were filled with ginormous oranges, nuts, and chocolate. I remember doll clothes and Barbie dolls and my very own diary with a lock and key, because heaven knows what kind of saucy secrets a second grader has.
 
As an adult, I took after my mom, going a little crazy at Christmas. The rest of the year might be red beans and rice with a controlled budget, but Christmas, well Christmas meant pulling out all the stops and occasionally the credit cards. I had tub after plastic tub filled with Christmas decorations, lights, and music. The kids had more presents under the tree than that Dursley kid in the Harry Potter movies. And then I got divorced and my tubs of holiday cheer stayed behind while I moved back to Colorado where I grew up.
 
The first Christmas I pretended it wasn’t Christmas until the kids came home and we could celebrate together. By the second Christmas, I didn’t even want to pull out the tree I’d found on clearance. Money was tight, and unlike my mother before me, I didn’t have a magic wand to make a Christmas Spectacular out of crayons, glue sticks, and Dollar Store wrapping paper.
 
Enter our Christmas Fairy Godmother. My mother—the kids called her G—invited us to spend a week with her. I didn’t want to go. That’s the thing I remember, because I wasn’t in a holiday mood and I suppose I didn’t want the shadow of failure to follow me to my mother’s front door, but G insisted, so we went to visit her in Oklahoma. She made all our favorite foods and showered the kids with gifts. She watched the kids while she sent me off to get a pedicure. We went to kids movies and had the kind of Christmas I remember from childhood. It was literally the perfect Christmas because that’s what G excelled at providing.
 
When I wrote An Untouchable Christmas, I channeled that time in my life, because Sofia has gone from trauma and drama to normal, and she really doesn’t know how to handle normal any more than I knew how to handle Christmas on my own. Sofia is overwhelmed by Logan’s family taking over her kitchen, and the one thing that grounds her is making her grandmother’s cranberry sauce, which is really G’s recipe. Putting her recipe into my Christmas novella is like giving her a piece of immortality. She may be gone now, but every time I boil cranberries for her cranberry sauce, she is with me, helping me to make a perfect Christmas out of crayons, glue sticks, and last year’s wrapping paper.
 
In An Untouchable Christmas, Sofia’s holiday starts off marginally better than my sad-sack Christmas, until a mysterious phone call before dinner threatens her new security. One this is certain. This is one holiday she will never forget.
 
I hope you enjoy Sofia and Logan’s encore appearance as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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