Hello from the Cold!

The holidays are truly upon us, and I've been thinking a lot about how to express to all of you how very grateful I am for our Cold forum. It's a place, I believe, where nothing is off limits, and where we endeavor to address topics of real meaning, and stories of true consequence, whether they are fiction, family lore, or history.

I thought about writing a short story, holiday-themed perhaps, or offering some of my favorite holiday photos along with some anecdotes I thought you might enjoy.

But ultimately, I decided on something a bit outside of my usual wheelhouse. You can read it, or you can listen to it. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you absorb it and take it into your hearts. Because I mean this from the very bottom of mine.

The Twelve Cold Days of Christmas

by Yours Truly

This is more of a song than an essay. It’s certainly inspired by a song; one I’m sure you know. You’re welcome to do your best to sing it to the tune of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Or rap it, if you prefer. Doesn’t matter…as long as you take it into your heart, as I said. Maybe if it stays there over not just these next twelve days, but twelve months, you’ll find the spirit of these words and their concurrent offerings will accrue.

Don’t be fooled – this man works all year round.

On this first day of Christmas, chilly and clear, a dusting of snow on the mountains outside my window, I, a humble author who writes about True Love an awful lot, gives to you, dear reader, a cardinal, the color of a Hitchcock blonde’s scarlet lipstick, perched on the bare branch of a weed tree.

On the second day of Christmas, this author who writes about True Love an awful lot, as I said, also offers you two shots of good whiskey plus two handsome middle-aged males snoring on a living room sofa (although one of those fetching males is a canine), and a cardinal, the color of a Hitchcock blonde’s scarlet lipstick, perched on the bare branch of a weed tree.

On the third day of Christmas, this True Love obsessed author with a curious interest in killers, spies, and grandiose destinies, gives you, my faithful reader, an on-going story trilogy made of ancient curses, star-crossed lovers and archaeological adventures, two shots of hella good whiskey plus two true-hearted handsome middle-aged males snoring on a living room sofa (remember, one is a canine), and a cardinal, the color of a Hitchcock blonde’s scarlet lipstick, perched on the bare branch of a weed tree.

There are 9 more and they only get better!

Cold Podcast

This year, I'm offering the above "song" in both written and audio formats. I want to make sure you can enjoy it however works best for you. Happy Holidays, my Cold friends.

The Twelve Cold Days of Christmas

Larry's Music Box

This is really special and particularly joyous. Many of you - at least those of you who have been around the Cold for a while, know how much I love jazz singer Haley Reinhart. So, when I found this video of her singing O Holy Night, I knew I would be sharing it with you. This Christmas carol never fails to give me chills.

A Little Extra Holiday Spirit

As for the fictional universes we traffic in here in the Cold, I wanted to offer you a taste from my first novel, The Bone Church. This excerpt chronicles a very different kind of Christmas. One that takes place in the midst of a war. Lovers Felix and Magdalena have just escaped a German transport and travelled to Prague, looking for a safe haven. What they find instead are streets filled with menace, and a curious stranger.

The Bone Church

by Yours Truly

Prague, December 25, 1943

It was mid-afternoon and the sky was white with the gloomy comfort of a coming snow. The coal-tinged air, still heavy from a run of cold nights, gave the yellow gaslights a luminous glow. Despite their circumstances, Felix felt happy to be home.

The driver parked and Felix lowered Magdalena onto the pavement before bidding him farewell. Felix watched the man, bow-legged and arthritic, enter a pub at the corner of Karlova and Liliova streets.

"I hate this part of town," Magdalena said.

It dressed in a false gayety that she found disingenuous in the best of times and grotesque under their present circumstances.

"There's always Jaro's."

"Jaro," Magdalena said.

Felix new she'd never like his Uncle Jare either. Too handsome, too rich, two times divorced, and he was always leering at her. Not to mention the fact that Jaro used to procure women for Felix when he first started playing for the Czech national hockey team. Not girls - women - and they had indulged all of the carnal fantasies of his fifteen-year-old self. Although it was long before he and Magdalena had fallen in love, she couldn't forgive Jaro for it, and he could hardly blame her.

But Jaro spent the winter at his country house in Cesky Raj, a hundred kilometers north of Prague. He left his penthouse empty, giving his maid the time off with pay.

"It's worth a chance," he said.

Magdalena nodded. Felix saw she hardly meant it, but there was no where else to go and they couldn't very well stay on the streets. They avoided Old Town Square by taking a longer way around the back of St. Michael's Church, where marble angels leapt from the stained-glass windows like doves frightened by a noise. Guarding the church's rear entryway was a statue of Christ. New. It hadn't been there last month. He was depicted in His agony, and already black with coal dust except for a gilded crown of thorns.

Magdalena peered up at Him and His eyes - so cleverly sculpted - appeared to return her gaze.

For Magdalena, His look had always been one of apathy: the same one He'd been giving her since she was a child suffering through the Lutheran masses her grandparents made her attend. He looked bored on that cross, staring towards the heavens the way an assembly line worker stares at a clock during the last twenty minutes of his sift. Perhaps for Christ, she thought, this was a full-time occupation. With all of the civilizations that must exist in the cosmos, Magdalena imagined He must have a great many people to save and die for and had lived out this melodrama a million times in a million different solar systems.

In an alleyway hardly a block from Jaro's penthouse, a German officer was shaking down a man who'd bought cheese from a black-market vendor. He pushed him up against a wall and pocketed his purchase.

"Prosim Vas, bitte!" The man begged after a kick to the belly and chin. A thin stream of blood trickled from under his loose tooth.

"What are you looking at?" The German spat at Magdalena. She didn't realize she was staring.

The cheese man took advantage of the distraction and tore away down the street, but not before the German ripped his gun from his belt and fired into a gaslight, an apartment window, and past the head of an elderly man carrying a sack of baked good. The man fell on his bad knee and his daughter's still-warm strudel tumbled out of his sack and into the sewer by the street side. The German ran by him, kicking his fallen bag out of the way and shouting threats into the dark. Felix hurried to the strudel, wiping it off on his coat flap and slipping it back into the sack. He gave it to the old man, who tucked it into his cape and limped away down the alley corridor.

"Is there a back way?" Magdalena wrung her hands on the ebony door handles of Jaro's building. There were iron and baroque carvings of Old Testament parables etched into the wood of the front doors, and no modern fixtures like doorbells. The doors hardly looked like something that belonged with Jaro and his velvet smoking jackets.

Felix heard keys jingling, a muffled cough, and quiet footsteps. He pushed Magdalena into the shadows as a man appeared from around the corner.

"Hello, sir," Felix said.

The man's hands were shaking, and he dropped his keys. Felix bent down to pick them up. He smiled, appealing to the man's eyes - red and swollen from wiping them with the cuff of his coat.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Felix said. "I'm not a policeman or anything."

"I can see that," the man said, appraising Felix's rumpled appearance. His voice was nasal and rough.

"I'm Jaro Andel's nephew." Felix held out his hand and the man shook it. "He lives on the top floor. My wife and I are in a bit of a bind and find ourselves locked out." Felix unclasped his hands. "We were visiting my uncle at his country house, in Cesky Raj. We'd hoped to return much earlier, but our train was late, and then this. I left the keys in Raj. It's embarrassing, really."

The man said nothing but moved closer to study Felix's face. Felix offered an eye for the man's inspection, but then thought better of it, tilting his head back into the shadows.

"I thought that was you," the man said, breaking the spittle bars connecting his lips. He stepped back, revealing a tailored coat that had to be twenty years old, and bared his mother of pearl teeth.

"By golly, you whooped the Russians last year. I thought we'd lost for sure, but you were as fast as a kitchen mouse and scored right under their noses." The man scratched his eyes and sniffled.

"One of my favorite games," Felix told him. "You should've seen their faces."

"I did. I was there." The man relaxed some and began fumbling with his keys again.

"So, your uncle lives here?" he said. "So do I, but I don't know him. Well, maybe if I saw his face, but not by name, no." He coughed and cleared his throat. "Damn this winter," he chuckled. "My sister's house was too drafty for me. Miserable. I should've never gone out - but it is Christmas."

"Yes, of course, Christmas," Felix said. He'd completely forgotten.

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