Stars & Angels Sing

A family searches for the true meaning of Christmas, then must save it in an epic fantasy adventure told through poems.

Synopsis

Do you like The Night Before Christmas poem? 

Do you wish it had a ton more magic and an adventure to find the true meaning of Christmas?

Then you’ll love Stars & Angels Sing.

In a land where magic is illegal, Sarn must hide his magic and his son to stay alive. For an indentured man can claim nothing, not even his own child. 

When his master found out about his son, Sarn’s worst fear was realized. Will his master help him get custody of his son? Or will this tear his family apart?

With nowhere to go and no choice but to obey orders, Sarn must move his son in with his master’s family. They go from living in a chilly cave with no running water, and no idea where their next meal will come from to his master’s warm, multi-room home. 

Are they guests? Or are they here to serve?

This change of living quarters didn’t come with a change in station. As their foster family observes Advent, tensions mount as the symbols of a season and a strange holiday grow.

What is Christmas? Why does his master celebrate it? Should he let his son participate in this mysterious tradition?

Sarn has no way to find out except to ask his master about it and expose his ignorance. But this is the best place for his son, and he won’t risk losing it.

Thankfully, Sarn’s struggle doesn’t go unnoticed, nor does his wish to understand the reason behind the season go unanswered.

With help from Santa, an iceman, some determined fairies, and other holiday favorites, Sarn and his son discover the heart of the season and a new tradition. His struggle might just win him the only present he wants for Christmas, custody of the little boy that lights up his life.

This story is told in a series of poems that build upon each other to tell a fantastic adventure of a father and son’s search for the magic of Christmas.

***The 2023 edition of Stars & Angels Sing also includes stories and poems featuring Sarn and his family in their humorous quest to survive the events of Thanksgiving Day, and the book is 30% longer than the original version, including holiday stories that were written later but are part of the overall holiday storyline. 

Why is this book written in verse/poems? 

I wrote this book back in November 2015 as a way to cope with the sudden death of my sister and the hole her passing left in my family. Sarn and his son’s search for the meaning of Christmas and for a home became my search for those things too. 

After my sister passed away suddenly, life paused for me, but it moved on for the rest of the world. Cheery holiday music blasted from speakers in stores. Lights and decorations appeared on shops and homes. Cookies appeared at every register at the grocery store, and every reminder of the holiday was a needle pricking my hurting heart. 

I missed singing carols, trimming the tree and baking cookies with my sister. But I couldn’t do those things anymore with her. I needed to build a new tradition.   

Since I moved away not long after my sister’s death, I had no one around except my favorite fantasy characters who are always begging me to write about them. 

Unfortunately, they are fictional, so they can’t decorate cookies or trees or could they? 

The more I thought about that, the more I wondered. How would they celebrate Christmas? 

How would they know what Christmas is? 

At the time, Sarn and his son lived in a cave under a mountain. Since their world is an epic fantasy one, there’s no tv or internet, so they couldn’t google this Christmas thing they heard other people in the underground city talking about. 

So why write an epic Christmas fantasy story in poems? 

With my family shattered and my move away from them making me feel unmoored, I craved the structure and stability I lost. Poetry can be highly structured, and that appealed to me in 2015. So I wrote this story in verse. 

I published each poem in sequence on my blog from Nov. 28, 2015 and through Jan. 5, 2016.

And writing healed a part of my heart. I had one of the best holidays that year, even though that joy was bittersweet.

When the last poem published, readers who followed along requested a copy of the adventure in an easier to read format than clicking links to move between posts. So I gathered the parts of this epic Christmas adventure into an ebook and paperback publish them for a limited time.

Why release this now? 

When I unpublished this book in 2016, I planned to revise it and write it as a regular fantasy adventure in prose. And I still do. I just need the characters to cooperate with that plan. 

They keep running off on new adventures that are fun and interesting, and I let them. So I’m partly to blame. 

This book originally published in ebook and paperback, but I am bring it back with a brand new cover, and for the first time, it will be available as an audiobook. 

The 2023 edition of Stars & Angels Sing also includes stories and poems featuring Sarn and his family in their humorous quest to survive the events of Thanksgiving Day, and the book is 30% longer than the original version, including holiday stories that were written later but are part of the overall holiday storyline. 

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