Christmas is a Season! 2008

Christmas is a Season! 2008 combines 11 short holiday stories and 17 personal essays from over 25 writers (covering 11 states) with several of them being from Nashville and writing about Middle Tennessee. These local Nashville authors include; R.L.Burkhead, Judy Lee Green, and Suzanne Craig Robertson.

Christmas-Themed Anthology will warm your heart and soul. One can expect to experience the true emotion of Christmas and the holiday season brought to you just in the nick of time.

You can pick up a copy of Christmas is a Season! 2008! online at amazon.com, your local bookstore, or directly from Excalibur Press.
But you had better hurry if you want a copy this year because a little elf has already told us that this book is literally flying off the shelves!

What the writers of Christmas is a Season! 2008 are saying:
"The activities of any holiday can be looked upon as events that bring families together and give us occasion to be thankful for what we have," said contributor Christopher Mitchell. "But family rituals can also remind us of what we stand to lose."

"In every collection of Christmas themes, the shared emotions depict birth and rebirth, a time of hope and thanks, giving and receiving. It's the end of the year, when we reflect, gather thoughts, and build a reserve for winter's fallow period," said anthology contributor Mary Popham.

Normally when you hear someone mention "Nashville Writers" it usually starts off with the word "Song" but if truth be told Nashvile is filled with a just ton of Literary writers. Here's an insight into the three that contributed to Christmas is a Season! 2008.

Christmas is a Season! 2008: Insights on the Local Nashville Writers

R.L.Burkhead
Roy is a Kentucky native, but he’s been a longtime Nashvillian ever since a Greyhound bus he was riding drove out of town empty during a national bus strike. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Print Journalism from Western Kentucky University and an MFA from Spalding University, he founded The Writer’s Loft, a creative writing program at Middle Tennessee State University. He also created, edited, and published the program’s literary journal, the Trunk. His work has appeared widely both in print and online. Roy may be found at: www.royburkhead.com

I grew up driving much too fast on dead-end gravel roads and narrow, blacktop curves, once leaving an uncle in a ditch after an unintentional game of chicken. While working on my undergraduate degree, I took a carload of friends and my hotrod Chevy Nova to an abandoned parking lot after a monster snowstorm, hitting the lot doing sixty mph, slamming on the brakes, yanking up the parking brake, and spinning and sliding forever into the white darkness. Even with these driving credentials, navigating home a few years ago during a heavy snowfall demanded every driving skill I had ever learned. That experience inspired the short story, Jingle Bell Topography.

Judy Lee Green
Judy is an award-winning writer and speaker whose roots reach deep into the Appalachian Mountains. Tennessee-bred, she developed a passion for the written word as a child when inspired to carry a notebook by Daily Planet, girl-reporter Lois Lane. Her work has appeared in anthologies and publications including Now and Then: The Appalachian Magazine, The Rambler, Birmingham Arts Journal, The Anthology of New England Writers, Relief, Capital Book Fest Family Pictures, and Southern Arts Journal. She lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

I discovered the power of narrative as a child while listening to the lyrical stories family members told on the long front porch of my granddaddy’s tenant house. Both Newlywed Christmas and The Store-Bought Christmas Doll are part of my history. Today I write to remember. I write to discover what I really know about myself and my family. I write so that my grandchildren will know my people. I write to keep alive the family ghosts. My stories are like family reunions that bring us all, dead and alive, together. I write to hold on to my memories because the pain of forgetting is too great.

Suzanne Craig Robertson
Suzanne lives in Nashville and is editor of the Tennessee Bar Journal, a monthly legal magazine. She holds a B.S. in Communications from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is a graduate of The Writer’s Loft, a creative writing certificate program at Middle Tennessee State University.

Capturing life in a time capsule like Reruns In My Head, reminds all of us of what we have lost or gained and where we have been. This story is more significant to me now than it was when I wrote its first draft about eleven years ago. My mother-in-law has since been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

My daughters, now eighteen and eleven, are still prone to clump ornaments at eye-level. My older daughter, who knew her granddaddy so briefly, now spends many mealtimes with her grandmother, helping her spoon pureed food to her mouth. I did not mention my husband at all in the story, although he—and the tender care he gives his mother—is the reason for telling this story.