WE COME TOGETHER AS ONE

Kat Holmes and I, Daughter and Mother respectively are both authors sharing one home...so it's time to bring out our stuff and, even though this is the hardest part of being an author for me...BOAST.

I'm going to begin by showcasing as much of our stuff side by side as I can...

To that purpose, now that I've quieted Shakespeare who sneers at those of us not to be-ing, let the boasting begin.

Kat and I share something in common with our first books...let me explain after I have presented our mutual debuts with our ever growing publisher, Muse It Up Publishing, Inc.


At this the beginning of our writing journey and as of January 2011 we were neck and neck. Where will the months of 2011 and 2012 take us and what about the years beyond?

After you read our debut posting please stay tuned...more is coming. Will we stay tied, or will one of us inch into the forefornt? Or could it be...maybe we'll join forces and double the storytelling fun?

Kat's first, THE LIGHTHOUSE, is a murder mystery, ghost story released by Muse It Up in January of 2011 to some really amazing pre-reviews that have blossomed since.

Take a look...


The Lighthouse

Author: Kat Holmes
Genre: Paranormal Mystery Romance Erotica
Release:January 2011
Editor:  Carrie RO
Line editor: Antonia Tiranth
Cover artist: Delilah K. Stephans
Word count: 46,879
Pages: 123
ISBN: 978-1-926931-18-0
Price: $5.50
Blurb:
When Rachel Westmont inherits a lighthouse from an aunt she didn’t even know she had, she’s overjoyed. The news couldn’t have come at a better time. Newly divorced from a self-serving doctor, the change of scenery is just what she needs. So she packs up and leaves California for a little island off the coast of Maine.
Rachel falls in love with both Star Island and the beautiful lighthouse and cottage she’s inherited. But, odd things begin to happen right from the first day. Cold chills permeate the cottage and books fly off the shelves. And someone seems to be playing pranks on her.
But when the ante gets upped and someone tries to kill her, Rachel must turn to hunky local sheriff Craig Lewis for protection. Now bodies are turning up, people are getting hurt, and Rachel is starting to suspect her aunt didn’t die a natural death. Can Craig stop a killer from claiming Rachel as their next victim? A little help from a ghost may be in order.
Excerpt:
Razor-sharp pain took her breath away. Her body lay broken and death raged to claim her. How cruel fate was. She’d just found peace and it vanished, been stolen from her in the blink of an eye. Why did this happen? What did she ever do to deserve this? Who would care for her beloved lighthouse?
A moment later, or perhaps an eternity, the pain stopped. She felt lighter than ever before. She felt free. No anguish, no loneliness, no misery. Everything in the world seemed perfect and filled with joy. She couldn’t help the laugh that burst from her. This is life as destiny truly meant it to be. Mortal life could never compare to this freedom. Home beckoned.
She looked down at her body as she floated upward. It lay crumpled at the bottom of the stairs leading to the tower of the lighthouse she cared for all her mortal life.  She could see the blood pooling around her head and the unnatural position of her limbs. Without a doubt they’d shattered as she’d landed. The sight would horrify her if she was still bound to her human body, but it meant nothing to her now.
Turning away, she looked upward as her form floated, heading for home. Excitement and anticipation filled her with glee. She’d get to be with her dear parents, after so many years apart. She missed them terribly. Her brother determined to break all ties with his past, both his home and what was left of his family, turned his back on her and the island home they’d gown up on. She’d been so alone for too long.
Rising, she finally reached the top of the lighthouse stairs and frowned at the hooded figure. Memory flooded back. The argument that ensued between them flashed before her. Then came the horrible moment when she’d been pushed and tumbled down the stairs. She’d been murdered.
She watched as her killer, calm as could be, walked down the treacherous steps of the lighthouse tower, checked her body for life signs, and then walked out without even a backward glance. No compassion showed on her killer’s face, only cruel satisfaction. No one would suspect her death to be anything other than a terrible accident.
The lighthouse that she’d long served, as keeper, dated back to the late 1700’s. The stairs were steep and very narrow as they wound up toward the top of the lighthouse where the light shined out. It possessed no railing either. It would be so easy for someone to slip and fall, and any fall would be deadly. Everyone would just assume that is what happened to her. No one would suspect she’d been pushed.
She could see the light now. It would be so easy to just head toward it. But she couldn’t leave, not yet. She couldn’t allow her murderer to get away with killing her. She needed to make sure her killer got caught.  The light was so beautiful and how she ached to follow it, but she turned away from its promise of peace and joy and headed back down. This lighthouse gave her haven all her life. Now she would haunt it until her murder was avenged. This she vowed.

WATCH THE TRAILER

Reviews: I loved this story, the mystery hooks you from the beginning and keeps you turning the pages.ParaNormalRomance Reviews - READ THE FULL REVIEW
The Lighthouse is a good read with suspense, love, and that dash of creepiness that kept me reading. Miz Love Loves Books 5/5 - READ FULL REVIEW

Not bad...huh...but there's more it won the

2011 Preditor's and Editors Readers Poll...Not bad! AND it has a trailer that is this side of over the moon powerful.


My first book came out a month before hers in December 2010. December means Christmas and this is the first book in my Christmas Miracles Series.

Like Kat, my book's cover speaks...dontcha love the intense look in my cover heroine's eyes? It makes me shiver every time I see it. Which is a good thing for a story about a land dedicated to Christmas...and that IS what Northeringale is...a land dedicated to Christmas...and yes, miracles.


Santa is a Lady

L.J. Holmes
Genre: Sweet Romance--Seasonal
Word count: 33,070
Page count: 89

Editor: CarrieRO

Line editor: Antonia Tiranth

Cover Artist: Delilah K. Stephans
ISBN e-book: 978-1-926931-06-7
Price: $4.50
Blurb:
Angie is someone who has had to walk through the fires of hell and battle with death itself to regain the use of her nearly shattered body. It’s Christmas, the time of wonder and magic for Angie, Cam a man who has spent the past nearly two years trying to pry his precious daughter from the unscrupulous hands of his late wife’s greedy Iraqi brother’s, and Jo, the precious daughter, who is finally free and in her father’s awed hands. Three people and one Christmas with so much magic swirling at last in their direction.

 My debut won the


Preditors and Editors 2010 Readers Poll award...and I'm still scraping my jaw off in disbelief. I also got a review from International Best Selling Suspense Author, Glenn Kleier...and may I just say...OMG!

Excerpt:

He didn’t look to the left; he didn’t look to the right; he made a direct beeline for Santa’s North Pole Throne and Angie’s vulnerable lap.
It had already been an eventful day. Although Angie knew when she did it, it was probably a petty thing to do, she arrived at eight o’clock, not the earlier seven-thirty Beck had commanded the night before. It had given Angie a fleeting moment of righteous tit for tat pleasure. Of course, Beck had not been the least bit amused and had shown her annoyance in the manner she helped Angie get into her Santa disguise.
Angie turned a deaf ear to Beck’s litany of complaints, but by the time the doors actually opened, Angie’s body felt a bit tender from Beck’s “loving” ministrations and her limp seemed a bit more pronounced as she made her way to the North Pole Throne and another day locked into Santa cheer.
The doors opened onto a stream of Santa fans that had been lined up in the cold that formed a queue from Santa’s throne to the door. Many had brought digital cameras demanding Santa and their cherubs pose this way and that. Santa felt old before her time by the half hour mark.
The line worked its way down as the minutes moved on. The cash registers’ ka-chings had also gradually filtered, in Angie’s mind, blessedly into silence as the store emptied of Beck’s sainted customers.
Into that silence, though, he vaulted.
Known throughout all of Northeringale and twelve of the fourteen surrounding townships, Julian Harper arrived. Some people looked at Julian and saw an adorable though outrageously precocious scamp. Angie knew better. She’d babysat Julian once, almost a year ago, and had yet to fully recover from the experience. He was, to put it kindly, the proverbial bull-in-the-china-shop. Nothing he did was done by half measures including lurching up onto Santa’s lap where he landed with an inhuman thud.
Angie’s hip screamed out a chorale of yelps and she had to force her lips not to give voice to the silent screams within her. Biting down on waves of rippling agony Angie spouted her usual, “What can Santa bring for you, my fine boy?” spiel.
Julian Harper’s repertoire didn’t consist of sitting still either. Angie looked around frantically for the boy’s mother. And wondered why she’d allowed him to come into Sweets and Treats without her. No doubt to get her own reprieve from the little hellion, Angie thought sourly.
Julian Harper boosted himself up into a standing position so he could stretch over Santa and check out the long fall of Santa curls running down Angie’s back, catching his grubby paws in the acrylic locks. His fingers, sticky from whatever he’d had in them before coming into Sweets and Treats became ensnarled in the phony mane literally handcuffing Julian’s hands and the wig together.
Using his feet, Julian kicked out to get leverage, then jabbed, and jumped all over Angie’s lap trying to free himself from his captivity while screeching right in her ears at the top of his lungs. Angie, sensing the approaching disaster screamed for Beck to come and prevent the serious trouble about to fall upon them. Just as she screamed, though, Julian’s booted foot bulls-eyed down on Angie’s already battered hip. Another scream, this one loudly vocal and crammed with Angie’s suffering rent the air.
Beck reached the wildly out of control Julian and pulled him and Santa’s wig away from Angie in one powerful sweep.
Julian, his paws filled with the fake Santa hair, stared at Angie’s hairless Santa and began squealing, “Santa’s a fake” over and over again loud enough to wake the dead. He also began wriggling frantically in Beck’s hold, but she held onto him for dear life carting him into the back of the store where the bathroom waited to get his grubby hands free from Santa’s wig.

Reviews:

My heart went out to Angie and Cam as they struggled to heal the wounds that don’t show—the ones that hurt the worst. I highly recommend this book. Have tissues ready, and be sure you’re in a chair you can’t roll out of when you’re laughing. Oh, and if you still text while you drive, read this book; and then think again. READ FULL REVIEW...ROCHELLE WEBER, AUTHOR & EDITOR

Christmas stories are hit or miss for me. They are either sappy or forced much of the time, and then there are the ones that capture the spirit of the holidays just right and become a keeper story to read each Christmas. Santa is a Lady is one of those "keeper" stories that caught me by surprise. READ FULL REVIEW - Wayfaring Writer

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES
by
L.J. Holmes
1/14/2012

Staring out the huge picture window, her nose pressed against the cool glass, she felt one hot tear forming in the corner of her eye.

Snow!

Never would she have believed she'd miss snow. Moving South meant a new beginning, a new life, and new possibilities. Up above the Mason-Dixon line, her old life and all its memories...those her mind did not from time-to-time regurgitate...meant nothing to her now...mere shadows of what once was.

All the people holding grip upon her heart, from the old days, moved down here right along with her...and yet, with Christmas coming, the longing for snow attacked her heart strings making her first Christmas here, melancholy.

What did she actually miss?

Driving before, during, and after a snowstorm gave new meaning to the word "horror."

Before, everyone races like mad ants to the grocery and hardware stores determined to stock up on staples and purchase the newest high powered snowblower before the first back-breaking flake falls. (No one wants to shovel any more.)

During the storm, many drivers dare to treat the slickening roads as nothing more than dry roads with spots of moisture their four-wheel-drive vehicles can laugh at. (The rise in business at body shops during and after snowstorms prove the error of these ass-umptions.)

After the storm, snow mountains pile along the gutters and sides of roads, dirty crusting towers sculpted by plows and their non-stop efforts to stay ahead of road dangers, create eerie tunnels for cars to whiz through.

Sounds somewhat safe for the whizzing through part, right?

Assuming those mountains don't come tumbling down from the vibrations cars driving past create, no amount of plowing, salting, and sanding can eliminate the trickiest problems that come after the snow.

Black Ice...patches of seemingly dry pavement coated with a thin but deadly layer of invisible ice.

No one, no matter how skilled a driver he or she may be, is up to beating black ice...and yet, the panorama blanket of newly fallen snow, sparkling like diamonds beneath the winter sun takes your breath away.

The crisp clean smell after a snowstorm is unlike any other perfume mankind or science has created in a laboratory or anywhere else.

Sighing, her mind travelling back to her country childhood, she saw the girl she'd been, seated, much as she is now, with her nose pressed against the much colder picture window's glass. The overhead lights in the eaves outside cast wide arcs of glittering luminescence, making the careening flakes racing towards the ground, appear like individual grains of twinkling diamond dust.

Hours she spent watching Nature perform before her awe-filled eyes, oblivious to the red spreading up her happily placed nose, imagining a world as pristine as this newly wafting snow.

And come the morning, that white sparkly blanket, untouched, unsullied, stretching as far as the eye could see made her gasp. Snow crystals laced here and there, dangling majestically from the naked branches of towering oaks, and flocking the spindly needles of pines were so much more dazzling than any artist's rendering, and they filled her heart with reverent appreciation.

Here in the South, she loved her new life, her new friends, many now closer than family, but deep in that pocket where the memories of her childhood in the country with Christmas a breathtaking card just beyond that picture window lived, a part of her ached for...

...the memories.

Somewhere in the background, of her mind, or her new home, she heard the strains of the one song guaranteed to bring her melancholy home...



...Bob Hope singing "Thanks For the Memories."

THE LEGEND OF SANTA DOG

I was born thirteen days before Christmas.

December babies frequently get gyped. Being so close to Santa's excursion,

our birthday's pale in the gift giving scheme of things...So I thought I'd make my last story a gift to all of you.

Happy Holidays to one and all. You have given me more than mere words can begin to express.

THE LEGEND OF SANTA DOG

by

L.J. Holmes

Once upon a time in a land far to the North, Santa busily prepared for his most hectic day of the year. All the elves scurried and hurried filling this sack, painting the eyes on that doll, and making sure ladders attached to each bright red engines went up and down without a hitch.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Claus bustled from stove to table making sure Santa's girth would expand to fill out his Once-A-Year Suit...

But deep in the stable yards, where the reindeer grazed, there was anarchy afoot..."Why should we sail off into the night sky yet again and freeze our antlers off for a world filled with disbelievers?" grumbled Donner.

"Yes, yes, yes," chimed in Blitzen. "My lumbago has been more irritating this year. I see no reason to expose it to this whirlwind trip. It is time Santa realizes Christmas has lost its soul and let us grow old gracefully."

All the reindeer added their words of discontent, forming a unanimous front against Christmas.

Soon word spread throughout Santa Town the reindeer were not going to fly come Christmas Eve. Santa hightailed it away from Mrs. Claus' table to the stable-yards and tried every argument in his extensive book...a man as old as Santa has many to draw on you can be sure...but the reindeer were adamant!

What was he to do?

He called a meeting in the town hall and all the citizens of Santa Town arrived. Many ideas were offered, but none proved possible...time was running out.

Unbeknownst to Santa and the people living in Santa Town, deep in the hills surrounding Santa Town, lived a beautiful German Shepherd Dog...abandoned as a pup, the dog traveled long and hard, ending up in these very hills. From his vantage point, he watched the comings and goings in Santa Town as he grew from puppy-hood to full grown dogdom.

Secretly he longed to be a part of Santa's team, but if his owners had abandoned him, he reasoned, surely Santa would see how unworthy he was...yet, he continued to watch and learn.

He watched the reindeer; saw what they ate and how they they trained their young...He duplicated their acts, eating the same berries and brush from the Santa Town forests and practicing the same exercises...

Lo and behold, miracle on miracles one evening he found he could fly!

Still, he was sad. He could fly, yes, but he was nothing more than a lowly dog. Santa would never let him be one of the team.

In his sad aloneness, he slipped into the moonlit darkness the very night of the town meeting, closed his eyes and lifted into the air to soar.

Inside the meeting hall, heartsick that Christmas would not happen this year, Santa turned his eyes to the window to beseech the Moonlight for widsom.

There, refelcted in the glow of the moon was a flying dog! A smile as big as the world spread across Santa's broad face, and a twinkle merrier than any he'd ever twinkled before glittered in his eyes. Eureka!!!

Out through the night, Santa ran...well ran as fast as a man who can fit in the Once-A-Year-Santa-Suit could run, keeping his eye on the flying dog.

When the dog landed, Santa was waiting...

Seeing Santa, the dog, embarrassed and afraid, tried to run into the woods, but Santa called out.

"Please, oh wonderful dog, do not leave. You are the answer to all my prayers."

Hearing the conviction in Santa's voice, the dog stopped, turned and saw...was it?...admiration?...for him?...a lowly dog?

Yes, Santa admired the dog and praised him most soundly pouring out his need of him. The dog bowed, nodded twice and reverently trotted after the head of all Santa Town.

The reindeer quickly learned the tale of the wondrous dog, and realized not all of the magic of Christmas died...for deep in the heart of a wondrous dog was the spark of pure simple love...and that is what Christmas is all about.

The team returned, and for the first time ever, at the front of the team was the newly named Santa Dog...So this year, if you hear a happy barking well into the night...listen carefully...It may just be Santa Dog leading Santa right to you.

FORGIVENESS

It's the ELEVENTH of December already and

I's still here...

One more day to go and I have met my personal

Nudge dare...Will I make it? There's no rhymn or reason to what I have come up with so far.

Nudge takes over me and you get what you get. So will Nudge stand up under the final hours and minutes?

We'll see.

 

FORGIVENESS

by

L.J. Holmes

Forgiveness is such a simple English word...even though it is a lot more than four letters long. Actually it's eleven...hmmm today is the eleventh of December and this word has eleven letters. Prophetic?

Eleven little letters, lined in a row, blended to form an idea destined for emotions now stirred, that make it so very hard to let the pain go.

Who came up with the concept of it? Do you think they knew the monumental tasks this word requires a person wade through before coming out the other end, bloodied from the battle?

Memories consumed me.

Tears rush to fill these throbbing eyes, while blood thunders through my veins. Normally I do not feel my circulatory system, but "normal" flew out the window the moment you arrived and asked for forgiveness.

Shaking my head, not in negation, but conufsion and something else, I try to wade through it. I gave you my trust...I gave you my all. You took what I had, then tore me apart, through a betryal so deep, I'm not sure if I exist any more. Did I die, or does it just feel like I did?

You stand here, all these years later and ask forgiveness from my vanquished soul, and that trust be returned as if all shiny and new. How can I do that? Every time I see me in your eyes, I see the reflection of the fool who gave all her love and innocence to you.

I see your contrition, and the creases of your anguish, but tell me, how do I find the rainbows again? How do I open myself to the world with trust when every breath I take reminds me of this razor sharp pain? You reduced me and my love to nothing more than a mere moment of lust.

Forgiveness. The word rolls so easily from your lips I wonder if you fully understand how deep the word must travel to find the center of the hurt you inflicted? How else was I to survive?

Love truly is a a double bladed thing, honed upon the leather of the strop,  and truth a rule that is filled with the essence of gold. You gave me the blade but not the truth, so I doubt you really cared.

Here is my truth, the only truth I can find...Forgiving you would be the easist part of all of this, or at least I'd like to think it would, if, that is, I could find it within my heart, to first forgive the fool, that's me.

Thank you again for your visit, and I wish you all the best Christmas and New Year.

A SEARCH WITHIN

December 10th...the month is in double digits already?

Wow!

Today's offering makes my fourteenth new posting. Guess the brain is still chugging right along.


Christmas has always been a special time for me...even though I was a bit deprived of birthday cheer, being a

December baby...I still adored the magic of the twinking lights, gay wrappings, sparkling bows, and special meals.

My Grandma, my most important role model, taught me about the love of family, and how important family is...I dedicate this to you,

Nonnie. I miss you so much.

A SEARCH WITHIN

by

L.J. Holmes

My father came to visit me recently. He's a frail man now, a mere shadow of who I've always known him to be. The booming voice that used to make me quiver in my Keds, little more than a squeak now. Gone is the girth, the overpowering strength, replaced by this fragile skeleton before me.

I looked at him, remembering the fear I lived with in the face of his often unreasoning anger, but for the first time I saw just a man...a man with simple human flaws. I wondered had he sometimes lain in his bed, long in the endless night, scared about the repsonsibilities that come with being a parent...a dad...the bread-winner?

He is a man, who never knew how to speak of love. Was he speaking of love when he blasted me for racing outside, across the stoned driveway he'd just had the nearby quarry deliver to, my Keds tucked beneath my bed, my bare feet happily callused against the uneveness of the land?

"Where are your shoes," he bellowed, the vein popping in the side of his neck as he glared at my naked toes. "You're not some poor street urchin."

Did he not speak words of clear love because, perhaps, no one had ever spoken them to him?

He's just a man who, good or bad, was still the father that raised me, the only dad I'd ever know, but smaller now, rickety, shorter even, some how...a man who I realized, is dying...perhaps not today, but soon.

The thought of him dying has since been on my mind. How do I, the daughter who carries the layers of his cruelty, both intended and not, on my inner spirit, feel about him dying?

My mind swirled with the enormity of lost chances. My mother died long ago, before I'd learned the beauty of forgiveness. With Dad I still had the chance to let the past truly be behind us. 

Just as I was ready to speak the words, one of his digs, spoken shakily, escaped those shriveled lips.

I felt my heart and soul react, but in truth, it was up to me whether he hit his target or not.

It didn't.

I will in, all probablility, never be close to my father...some things are beyond us both this time around. I regret that deeply. Perhaps in a lifetime to come, or in heaven with God there to guide us, we will find the bridge to undo the disconnect that exists so staunchly between us.

For now it's enough that I could step close to this shriveled man and hug him, forgive him within my heart, tell him I loved him, not wince when his next words cut once more, and turn him over to a power higher than anything I held inside me.

I watched him leave, this fragile little man, climbing into his shiny boat of a car, but as he pulled away, I asked God to enfold him in His vast well of love, and guide my dad, now, and when he is taken away.

Bless you, Dad. I love you.

Again I wish you all a very Happy Holiday Season and Thank you for your ongoing support and your deeply appreciated comments.

The Miracle Unveils

December 9th. Three more days to go. I can't believe how fast this month is

flying by, especially with me doing this.

I want to thank one and all for your ongoing support. My doctor called me on Monday evening with the results of the Brain MRI...actually I called the office during the day and the nurse told me I was on my doc's call list to discuss the results.

That's never a good sign. It's true I had a mini-stroke...a much milder one than the one I had in 2008, but there's also evidence I am in the early stages of MS...so keeping my brain active is vitally important, but I want Y'all

(thank you Gail) to promise me if my words become mishmashed too badly to please let me know. I need you to help me know when it is time for me to let

Nudge, my inner voice, take a long...permanent...vacation.

And on that note...let's begin:

THE MIRACLE UNVEILS

by

L.J. Holmes

Celestial angels, a choir conducted by God.

On the twilight before the advent, the world seems still, but from this distance, the truth is revealed; only to those with eyes that see beyond all veils.

Glittering stars twinkle here, above the atmosphere. Moonbeams shimmer and dance around the lone body of the child. His soft, sweet body, propped on the billowy cloud, he leans over, just a little, so he can peer down, at the lush earthy topography below.

Opening his eyes, like the lens on a rapid speed camera's shutter, he giggled with his exhilaration, eager to see what awaits below. 'Soon,' he claps, his body vibrating with excited glee while narrowing his gaze to zoom in on just one home.

'That one,' he  quivered happily. 'The one with the blue-black shutters!'

One day, one day very soon, his human feet would pitter-patter inside that suburban house, and oh what a cherished little boy he'd be.

'Soon,' he thought yet again, his finger-tips tingling as he clapped in merry abandon. 'Oh my,' his little mind gasped. 'There he is! The man who will be my very own.'

With avid attention, the cherub watched the tall man unfold himself from the narrow confines of the land-craft; they call them cars, and stand up. 'Oh My!' Would he one day look like this man so tall?

The ethereal child gnawed on that question a second or two, arching his small head this way and that, taking intricate note of the tall man's finest details.

'Blue eyes,' the cherub nodded. 'Yes,' he reflected quite honestly, 'I would very much like having blue eyes too.' He liked blue...it was the color of the sky supporting the cloud he bounced on.

'Dark, expertly cut hair,' the child continued. 'Perhaps a bit too expertly cut, but all-in-all, not bad. Not on the whole, anyway. The hair? That would be a minor thing, just a snip of a thing.'

He giggled at his joke then sobered. He felt certain, knowing himself, given time, and careful direction, from close exposure to one such as he, the man would find the looser, happier little boy still living within.

Actually, that would be his task; his assignment so to speak, reintroducing the man to his little boy, still lurking around, buried by time, beneath the mantle of the big man shell. A daunting task, but one he eagerly anticipated creating.

"Yes, him! He is your job!" the Big Boss had lovingly commanded back at Home Base...how long ago?

Above the child, another shimmering white-gold cloud descended. Joseph, the child's mentor, stood on the larger cloud.

The child adored his mentor and was deleriously happy to see him heading his way.

Once even with the child's cloud, Joseph stepped from his billowy conveyance onto the child's. Looking past the child, with knowing eyes, Joseph cracked an almost grin. "Busy observing your future father, Zachary?"

Zachary blushed...well as much as a cherub could. "He's a busy man," Zachary responded shyly.

"Too busy," Joseph agreed, wisely. "Sometimes we have noted, once in the flesh the spirit forgets. The flesh changes them. We do not fully know why, but suspsect the denisty of form, or the lowering of spiritual rites cause this. All we really know for sure, is the struggle our children face in flesh, pushes all of this," Joseph said, waving his white robed arm expansively to include everything surrounding them, "out of mind. In their daily grind, sadly, they forget."

Joseph turned back to look deeply into the cherub's eyes, locking the young one with his power from the ages. "It is our job to intervene when we sense they are ready to learn again."

"Will he hear us?" Zachary frowned.

"Not without a major wrestling," Joseph responded, sorrowfully. He shook his flowing white mane. "We have been trying to reach him for quite some time, but hurts from long ago, have built determind defenses around his heart and his soul.

"The choices he has made have bent his spirit low. He thinks he is unworthy. We've tried to guide him, but he shakes off our whispers; calls us his imagination, if you can but guess. So the veil grows thicker between us with each passing year."

Joseph turned his saddened eyes back beyond the clouds down to the house with the blue-black shutters. "He chooses to ignore us; refuses to slow down long enough to hear our tender voices. You, Zachary, My Wee Young Cherub, will open his heart, so our songs can sing, and remind him of us and what a miracle he really is."

It was an important assignment. Zachary hoped he was up to the task. The last thing he wanted to do, was disappoint the Big Man upstairs.

"Will I be allowed to remember?"

Joseph's radiating gold eyes, gentled upon the face of the wee cherub. "You will always hold the memory of us inside you, but you will have to pass through the Veils of Gossamer at birth."

The Veils of Gossamer, as any entry level cherub knew, was the portal between spirit and flesh. Once Zachary's spirit moved through its fine netting into the density of flesh, being created this night for him, his spirit memories would begin to dim.

'How would he help the man if he did not remember?'

Joseph heard the cherub's silent musings. "Look around Little One. All clouds carry messengers from us. Angels every single one of them in God's Mighty Batallion. You may not remember we are here, Little Zachary; you may not hear our voices; you may even believe, like many do, that what you hear is only your own imagination at work.

"But, you will still hear us, and a seed will take root and spread." Joseph stressed pointing towards the man below. "To help him find his inner light, though, you need do no more than just be Zachary. He will find his miracle just from that."

Zachary smiled, a beatific child's smile. He looked upon the many angels riding the puffy clouds, and then back at the man disappearing into the house. "I will like being his little boy," he softly decreed.

Joseph's smile this time grew so brilliant, a stream of multi-colored sparklers shot out and lit up the Earth-bound sky.

Down below, just as the man turned to close the door behind him, a rainbow, more beautiful than any he'd seen before, stretched as far across the sky as he could see, igniting a happy spark, deep inside him.

He may not be aware of it yet, this man down below, but on the hovering cloud Zachary and Joseph both knew, the miracle had just begun.

To all my readers, I wish you a glorious, miracle filled Holiday Season and all the days to follow.

The Bells Chime

The Bells Chime

by

L.J. Holmes

Family tradition, it was all I had left of the one who nurtured me when I so desperately needed nurturing. Through the years, I passed those traditions down to my own beloved child.

December arrived this year with a spectacular blizzard. As a child I used to sit with my nose pressed against the picture window, watching with awe the swirling elegance and grace of the snow flakes making their way to join the sparkling blanket their brethren already made.

Now, in my twilight years, I content myself with watching the new flakes swirl wearing a shawl and a blanket to keep out the bite from the cracks I am too old to caulk any more, but delighted with this proof that Christmas is just around the corner.

Yes, cold, I feel it more these days. I guess what they said when I was young is true...the older you get the more your body's immunity to life's harsher realities fades into distant memory.

Earlier today, I managed to creak my way into the attic. Christmas is coming, and nothing, not even bones riddled with arthritis could keep me from following through on the traditions I still cling to.

Rumaging through boxes I'd forgotten to label, had been enlightening. Snippets from my life long ago, and some from a yesterday mere heartbeats away reminded me of so much.

My tired eyes filled with soft tears when I opened the box that held the Christening Gown my baby girl wore less than one month after her birth.

Touching the lace and velvet I'd hand made from the gown I'd married in, with my tired, wrinkled hand, made me travel back in time, to the young mother, beaming down at the baby girl nestled so securely in my loving embrace. I loved being a mom.

And the sound of bell chimes filled the attic. I smiled...both a sad smile and a smile of quiet peace.

I miss her. Especially now with Christmas coming. Parents are not supposed to outlive their children, but a drunk, a selfish drunk, chose to drive after a liquid lunch...

I remember the sound of the car's brakes squealing as it shot over the embankment onto our property. I made it to that same picture window I watched the snowflakes fall from just in time to see my little girl roll beneath the jeep truck the drunk operated, and could still hear my screams as I shot from my house...too late...too late...too late.

They tell me I was a zombie in the days, weeks and yes, months that followed. I think I died that day, but my body was too stupid to realize it....until that first Christmas Eve.

Certain I imagined them, I ignored the bell chimes at first, but they refused to be ignored. Everywhere I went I heard them...but no one else did. Grief can make you do and think crazy things. I dismissed them at first, but the chimes surrounded me the closer Christmas came.

Turning my rheumy eyes from the snow storm I gazed at the tree, twinkling across the room...the only illumination actually in the house other than the crackling and popping in the fireplace.

My daughter loved the magic of Christmas, but I wanted nothing to do with it after...well...after...

Until the chimes.

The night before Christmas, that first year, I steadfastly refused to celebrate the season. All I wanted was to curl up and follow my beloved child.

The fireplace crackled that night too, but my heart was filled with dark pain. And then the bells chimed again, the ones that had been following me everywhere for weeks.

I wanted to scream at them and tell them to shut up. I even opened my mouth to spew my fury, when a golden bell drifted down before me; it's ring the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. Still I did not want to find anything beautiful. My life was empty...my child gone.

The bell hovered in the air between me and the fire, and began playing my child's favorite Christmas hymn. Golden motes of sparkling essence shot out from the bell with each note, and as I watched those motes coalesced into an angel...my angel...my angel-girl.

Her radiance reached into my broken heart and filled it with love, unconditional. All around me bells joined in, a choir of angels. Like a miracle, my daughter, my angel-girl rose to the top of the tree and became my Christmas Angel while the Choir bells chimed most beautifully. The room, lit only by the fireplace, grew brighter with the sparkling glow from halos and wings filling my heart until it had no darkness left within it.

Into my heart and my mind, my Angel-Girl spoke, giving me comfort and assuring me she had not left me, even though I could not always see her. She promised every Christmas Eve, the bells will chime and my Angel-Girl will come and share our tradition once more.

The snow outside swirled, and the sounds of bells chiming grew louder. The Christmas tree blazed with celestial beauty when one gold bell sent off motes that became my Christmas Angel, atop my tree...My Angel-Girl, come once more to share with me our love of Christmas, each other, and a tradition not even death could destroy.

To all I wish you all the miracles of the Holidays and may you know the wonder of your

Angel-Girl.