I participated in the Winter Holiday Spectacular 2019, an initiative from authors Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, uniting 35 Christmas stories in various moods: mysteries, romantic stories set around the 25th of December, and winter stories exploring other traditions or special days. My own Christmas story « Winter Pariah » celebrates the winter solstice, the Great Christmas Bird Count, and our troubled humanity, in a combination filled with hope and wonder.
This Christmas tale will be up for one week only, and it will be later published on paper next year.
Pour mes fans francophones, une version française suivra l’an prochain. Pour cette année, j’offre un conte en français sur mon autre blog, en ligne du 23 décembre 2019 au 2 janvier 2020.
Et ces photos d’oiseaux prises par moi-même!
Winter Pariah
The subzero air prickled the inside of my nose as I breathed through the acrylic scarf rolled over the bottom of my face. Through the earmuffs, I could hear the stamping of many boots on the packed snow, the whispers of nylon coats brushing against each other as the members of our birding group huddled closer together.
The ancestral reflex evoked images of buffalos standing in a protective circle around their young.
***END of EXTRACT****
This story will be published in 2020 by WMG Publishing
Cette histoire paraîtra dans une anthologie vers la fin de l’année 2020.
