💛 Merry Christmas! 🎄👵🏼🐺🐻🎁

You start reading, fully expecting to get teleported into a fictional world. I appear next to you instead.

You yelp in surprise. “Mia! What are you doing here? And why are you dressed like that?”

I’m rocking a giant gift-wrapped box with arms and legs sticking out. Don’t worry, I’ve got clothes on underneath—it’s not that kind of present.

“Merry Christmas and happy holidays!” I say, spreading my arms out wide. “Surprise!”

“I’m definitely surprised,” you say.

I grin. “Then my work here is done.”

“That’s it?” you demand. “You’re leaving?”

“Nah, I just meant this costume. I can’t even bend down.” I try to, fail, and fall flat on my ass. I don’t even blame you for laughing. I just snap my fingers and change my outfit to a sparkly yellow dress. It reminds you of Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

“I love yellow,” I say.

“I know,” you tell me. It’s hard to miss. The first thing you see whenever you start reading is a yellow heart—and there’s something yellow in practically every adventure we’ve had together. You consider re-visiting some of our past adventures, which have all been immortalized on my Miaverse Substack, before continuing.

“My favorite color is…” You snap your fingers, too, so as not to be outdone, and your outfit changes accordingly.

“Nice one,” I tell you. You can learn so much about a person by their fictional outfit. In real life? Not so much. Well… unless you want to learn that I find most fabrics itchy, and most clothes uncomfortable—so when I finally discover something I can wear, I buy five pairs, and usually they’re sweat pants, sleeveless shirts, and zip-up hoodies. Worst of all, they’re never yellow. Why aren’t things comfy and yellow, world? Why?!?!

“So what brings you by?” you ask, snapping me out of my pity party for one.

“Oh, right. I’m here to chat about Christmas, Shifters, and Grannies,” I say. “But first…”

In a blink of an eye, I transport us to a beautifully decorated house, complete with a towering, artfully decorated Christmas tree and a crackling fireplace.

It's not my home. I rent an apartment, my tree was decorated by a 4-year-old, and my couch was destroyed by a cat who treats furniture like his personal scratching post.

But just like my home, it's warm, bright, happy, and full of love.

Mini Mortal’s rocking a reindeer onesie as she races around the Christmas tree with a toy car. “Look what Santa got me!" she shouts, grabbing another present. "And Eva gave me this book!" she bounces up and down. "It's about a cat. And a hat… And snail ice cream."

“Snail ice cream?” you ask.

Mini Mortal nods and plops on the couch with her book. She starts flipping through it, while a delicious smell wafts through the room.

“Pancakes, anyone?” Not a Vampire calls from the kitchen. He's an amazing chef, which is further proof that he is not, in fact, a creature of the night. “We’ve got hot cocoa, orange juice, and tomato juice!” he adds.

I grimace. Why me? But at least he hasn’t walked in sipping the red liquid.

I turn to you. “Did you grab your free copy of Granny’s Christmas Shifters after our last adventure? I’m taking the freebie down in a few days, and I don’t want you to miss it.”

“Thanks, Mia,” you say. “But… why?”

The question could mean many things. Why did I give you the book for free? Why does the book cover look so distinguished when the story is hilarious, lighthearted, heartwarming, and spicy? Why did I write a romance about an 80-year-old and gave her three hot, young men?

I decide to start at the beginning. The book cover.

“Before I started writing Granny’s Christmas Shifters, I created some covers for inspiration.”

“Wow, they’re…” you trail off, searching for the right adjective.

“They look like Christmas threw up…” I finish for you. “but hopefully in a good way?”

“My favorite is Nana’s cover,” I tell you. “There’s just something about that pose. But they all make me happy. They’re a Christmas explosion—bright, colorful and chaotic, kind of like my brain when I was writing Granny! The best part is, I bet those women never expected to be book cover models. I hope they don’t sue me for giving them hot young men for Christmas.”

We both chuckle.

You take another look at the covers. “So, does this mean you’ve written five books? Not just Granny’s Christmas Shifters?”

I shake my head. “I wrote half of Granny’s Christmas Vampires, but that’s about it. I was planning to finish it for Christmas this year, but I’m still working on Minnie. Plus, there isn’t much of an audience for Golden Year Paranormal Romance.”

“Golden Year Paranormal Romance?” you ask.

“I made that up, since Golden Years are the years after retirement. It’s not so real genre, but it sounded better than Granny PNR.” I pause. “Maybe I should go with something shorter, though. How about Golden PNR? PNR Gold?”

I grin, thinking of the time I accidentally went to Zumba Gold, completely unaware. Those older ladies danced circles around me.

“Are there a lot of Golden PNR books out there?” you ask.

I shake my head. “Not that I know of. But one of my favorite authors, Lynsay Sands, has one. The Accidental Vampire. The main character, Elvi, is in her sixties. She gets turned before the story really really starts, so she doesn’t look it. But her friends are all her age, and human, which makes for a great cast of characters. It’s actually my favorite of all of Lynsay’s books, and my muse latched on to the idea of an older character after I read it about a decade ago.”

“A decade?” you ask in surprise.

I nod. “Granny’s Christmas Shifters wasn’t my first Golden PNR idea. Neither was Violet—well, the older Violet, anyway. I actually came up with a Golden PNR vampire romance years ago, back when I worked in a mind-numbing minimum-wage job where I had a lot of time to think. I basically lived in one fictional world after another while stuck at work, and I came up with this amazing Golden PNR I might write one day!”

“Why not just write it?”

“I need to release Minnie 2 first. I can’t remember if I told you during the last adventure, but I finally finished it!”

“Congratulations!” you say as two mugs of celebratory cocoa appear in our hands.

We clink glasses. “It’s just a rough draft, so I’m working through an edit.” I hesitate, then admit. “The story isn’t done. There’s going to be a Minnie 3.”

“Some stories are like that,” you say sagely.

I nod in agreement. “Minnie was supposed to be one book, but it got really out of hand.”

“Do you think you’ll write another Golden PNR when it’s finished?” you ask.

I shake my head. “I have a few thousand book ideas, and I’ll never be able to write them all. Plus, there isn’t much of an audience for Golden PNR. I guess if there’s a lot of interest—or, well, any interest, really—I’ll finish Granny’s Christmas Vampires. Maybe for next Christmas? Otherwise, it’ll just continue to live in my head with all the other stories bouncing around in there.”

“Do you really have thousands of story ideas?”

“At least. Maybe more. Oh, hey, I forgot to finish telling you about the cover!” My phone appears in my hand. “My friend suggested I tone it down a bit—make it less crazy—so I designed the version below.”

You nod. “Definitely less crazy.”

“But I hired a cover artist for the actual cover I use on retailers. Meraki Cover Design. And the paperback is large print because ‘granny’, of course.”

You nod. “Of course.”

I show you all three covers side by side.

“Let me know if you have any other questions about Granny’s Christmas Shifters, and I’d be happy to answer them.”

And just like that, you find yourself back in front of your screen with a reminder to grab a free copy of Granny’s Christmas Shifters conveniently in front of you, so you don’t have to scroll back up. If you did, you might get sucked right back into my fictional home, where Mini Mortal would convince you to try snail ice cream.

My voice echoes in your head. “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!”