As I said yesterday, “The Road Before Us” is the tenth annual Smutty Christmas Story I have written. This being me, the only thing more Writing Dog than “annual Smutty Christmas Story” would be using this as an opportunity to look at the other nine stories, which are:
2013: “Hang a Shining Star”
2014: “Swingin’ on a Star”
2015: “Home for the Holidays”
2016: “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”
2017: “To Hold Him Like a Spell”
2018: “All I Want For Christmas”
2019: “And to You Your Wassail”
2020: “If Only In My Dreams”
2021: “The Most Famous Jackal of All”
The main characters of these stories comprise: 4 sled dogs, 3 coyotes, 3 shepherds, a human, a Finnish Lapphund, a red wolf, a red panda, a mutt, a fox, and a jackal. Sam and Carlos are the only characters to star in two stories.
(The character to have appeared in the most is almost certainly Cannon Shoals police officer Dan Hayes, who had bit parts in “Home for the Holidays” and “All I Want for Christmas,” and who is a side character in “The Road Before Us”).
Nine of the stories take place where at least one character is not at home (“The Most Famous Jackal of All” largely takes place on a spaceship, but Casey and Dev don’t really have a home besides that ship).
In seven of the stories, inclement weather (in particular, snow) is a plot point. “If Only In My Dreams” takes place in the South Pacific, “Swingin’ On a Star” takes place on a starship, and Cannon Shoals had a mild winter in 2018, apparently.
In nine of the stories, a plot point is that one of the two characters is Into Christmas and one of them is not (in my spreadsheet I call this “meta: Grinch”). “The Road Before Us” does not have this theme, mostly because Sam and Carlos already explored it in “All I Want for Christmas,” and Sam is starting to come around.
(At least, she has coming around to the effect that wearing a collar with sleighbells on it has on Carlos)
Six stories take place, at least in part, on some mode of transportation. Mostly this is starships (“Hang a Shining Star” begins that way, “Swingin’ On a Star” is entirely set aboard two spaceships, and “And to You Your Wassail” involves a dropship). However, “If Only In My Dreams” opens on a PBY Catalina, and “To Hold Him Like a Spell” involves a sidewheel steamship and a weird steampunk flying contraption.
Half involve hookups or characters who meet each other in the story. None involve married couples; Joe and Shanti are engaged in “Home for the Holidays,” and Casey and Dev are engaged in “The Most Famous Jackal of All.”
A perplexing number involve an element of crisis, either a problem needing to be solved, someone needing to be rescued, or a high-priority task needing to be accomplished. Only “Hang a Shining Star” and the two Carlos/Sam stories lack this.
Five stories involve a lesson on the importance of family. Four involve acts of charity. Five involve music. All but two take their titles from Christmas songs; “Swingin’ on a Star” is from the song of that name, and “To Hold Him Like a Spell” is a line from the Robert Service poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”
Only one element that I have been able to identify recurs in every single Christmas story I’ve written. I will let you guess at what that might be, although I’ll note:
- That there are only two non-canine main characters throughout the Christmas canon, and
- Definitionally, I wrote them :P
I think my favorite Christmas story is always the one I’ve written most recently, because I enjoy writing them and because I love Christmas. I hope that you enjoy reading them :p even though they are dumb and sappy.
That said, I think “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” is probably the best of them, because it was very close to home at the time and because I really like the characters in it.
Mm, Finnish Lapphunds…
