On October 25th, I released my first Christmas novella as part of a five-author anthology. Christmas In The Cascades is a sweet romance collection with faith elements which tells the story of a single town over a one hundred and fifty year span.
The book takes the reader on a journey from the founding of the bell tower in 1874 to the near extinction of the town in 2024. The reader gets to stop along the way in 1910, 1967, and 1999.
If you are an avid reader, you have probably read various
novella collections—maybe even holiday ones. But if you’ve never been involved
in writing an anthology, I thought you might be interested to peek
behind the scenes and learn a little about how the book came to be.
A couple of years ago, author Ginny Ytrupp hosted several author
groups where she placed people in cohorts according to the genres they wrote. I
was placed into a group with other romance authors. After meeting for several
months two of the cohorts folded into one and Marissa Adams, April Kidwell,
Marline Williams, Chris Daniel, and I found ourselves thrown together in a
twice monthly meeting.
Our focus started simply as sharing our writing progress and
goals, but before long, one of the authors, Chris Daniel, expressed a desire to
write something together. We all knew of others who had done Christmas projects
and everyone agreed it would be fun to try.
One of the earliest conversations I remember having—because
this was a couple of years ago—was whether our book would have a theme. Would
each of our novellas stand alone or be connected by some thread? We all liked
the idea of a theme and some of the front runners included a family, music, or
a Christmas object such as an ornament or gift that could be passed around
through each story.
Once we made it to that point, it dawned on us that we all wrote
in different eras and in order to write a book together we would need to choose
one. It was a problematic thought because as much as possible we wanted to
write for our already established readers, bringing them to the project as
potential customers.
The solution was a
breath away. As each author shared their preferred time period, we realized
that together we could cover a large span of time. What could survive a hundred
and fifty year period, though? A family? Yes. An heirloom? Possibly. A town?
Bingo.
As a western author it was important to me to locate our
story west of the Mississippi and I sure was hoping for a ranch! Thank goodness
everyone was on board with a western-ish vibe. One of our authors hailed from
Oregon, and it seemed as likely a place as any for our setting. After poring over the map, our
small fictional town of Dane’s Creek was born.
One person wanted mountains, another wanted a train station,
there had to be a stream for gold panning, and we all thought our beloved town
should have a bell tower. We decided the bell would represent hope—just one of
the many beautiful Christmas themes we loved.
To keep track of all our ideas we started a Trello board. A
depository of sorts for inspirational photos, character names, and the
seedlings of our plots. We researched birds, filberts, the effects of the
spotted owl protections on the timber industry, and modern day ranches in Oregon.
As our town began to take shape, one author mapped it out for
us, and another took a field trip to a couple of real life bell towers to get a
better understanding of how the bells worked.
After coordinating the placement of doors, staircases, uses
of the attached building, and accounting for multiple changes to the tower over
the years, we were ready to write. Our goal was for each person to write 25,000
words and be done by the end of December 2023. We came in mostly on time, lol.
Some took longer and some exceeded their word limit (We shalt not name any
names-grimace) but the project continued to roll on steadily.
A detailed timeline was needed to allow for time to read
each other’s finished work, put the full collection through a team of beta
readers, pay for editors, make revisions, hand it over to the proofreaders, and
finally to pass it to the ARC readers and the book launch team.
Chris birthed the idea and encouraged us every step of the
way. April created the collection cover and many of the individual covers. I
formatted the book and communicated with betas and ARCs. Marline created a free cookbook download with recipes from our stories. She also booked a couple of podcasts,
and she and April created a website - christmasinthecascades.com. Marissa agreed to house the book on her Amazon
account as well as order author copies and distribute our earnings.
Overall, the experience of creating a book with a team of like-minded authors has been a rich and rewarding experience. Teamwork is not without difficulties and occasional disputes, but I don’t mind telling you we feel very proud of our accomplishment.
Several authors chose lines from Christmas carols as their
titles. I tried to stick with that theme but couldn’t find anything that fit
quite as well for me as the title I ended up choosing which was Finding Home.
Christmas In The Cascades is finally out in the world and while we’re not sure how it will be received, I hear whispers of a possible repeat. Might there be a sequel sometimes in the future? Time will tell.
Order your copy of this unique holiday romance anthology on Amazon. It is available in eBook, paperback and is on KU.
Hope you enjoy the
stories.
Merry Christmas!
Cali Black
3 comments:
It sounds like you had a good time collaborating with other authors on this project. I love anything Christmas and this will be fun to read.s like you
Yes it was fun! Hopefully knowing a little behind the scenes will make it even more enjoyable for you to read.
What an amazing experience and accomplishment. Congrats to all of you!
Post a Comment