Writing can be really draining, really hard. Sometimes the well feels dry and other times it is gushing with life. I am currently working on a Christmas novella that is dear to my heart. Why so dear? Because it started as a short story. I have been working on this short story for over ten years (my attempt to be literary not commercial) and I think it’s some of my best and most prose/poetic work. I was nervous about changing it, adding to it, making it grow into a novella but I wrote a brief scene yesterday and feel better about it. I want this book to sing. Does that make sense? I want it to be a delight upon the ears. I want it to have the cadence of a dance and touch the chords of our hearts. I am currently listening to “A King’s Sadness” from the movie Despereaux. I loop it and listen over and over. It is now at play count 5333 on my iTunes.

Here is a snippet of a scene. Imagine stumbling through bitter cold and snow into Dawson City, Alaska during the gold rush. It’s 1898 and you don’t have much money, you are all alone and you’re a woman:

The steps that took to me the ground floor of the Monte Carlo were narrow, the tips of my pointy slippers hanging over their edge, as they creaked in protest, like my heart. My silver-blue gown whispered around my legs as I descended down, down, down into a world I had never seen nor imagined.

Jonah had always kept us alone. Quiet. My life was always silence with bursts of fright or anger. Red hazes against the colors of gray. Now, as I walked down those steps, saw Kate’s beautiful, glorious face as she looked up at me and beckoned with her eyes toward this new life, I saw and heard and smelled life at full tilt.

The piano was in full swing. I’d met Rag Time Kid once before…ran into him in a hall in the morning hours while we were both passing with breakfast on our plates. He usually played at the Dominion Saloon and was well known there, but Kate had handed him a heavy purse for my debut. I had learned that and other ripe gossip after trying on my gowns. The girls of the house had flooded in to see what the fuss was about, envy riding high in their arched brows and pursed lips. Everyone, it seemed, knew how much trouble Kate had put into me…my coming out.

I clutched at the railing that slide beneath my elbow-length, white gloved hand and pressed back the anxious knot in my stomach. I reached the bottom step and paused, Kate grasped my upper arm in a tender-tight hold. I looked up at her as the music ground to a crushing weight pause. All eyes turned. All those faces. All those men.

I let my gaze wander from eye to eye to eye. I breathed in tiny breaths.

“Don’t be shy.” Kate’s voice was a small, almost a silent whisper in my head and in my heart. “They are going to love you.”

Love me?

A little laugh escaped my painted red lips. I started to press my white gloved hand against them and then remembered the stain that mistake would cause. I lowered my hand back to my side and let Kate lead me further into the lantern-lit flicker of the room.

I could hear my breath go in and out in the silence of the room. Kate took my hand, held it high, like a prize and turned me in a slow round and round circle, as if we were dancing some strange dance wherein she was master. She stopped in a sudden way that made me almost stumble and then held our clasped hands up in the air.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen,” her voice lowered to a soft purr that held every man in taut silence. They craned forward to hear her words as if an angel of God stood among them. “Gentlemen, I give you,” she paused and smiled down at me, whispering. “Have you thought of a name, dear?”

I shook my head, my eyes full of tears that I blinked and blinked back until they were hidden in my heart.

She shrugged a silken shoulder and turned back to her rapt audience. “I give you the golden girl of your dreams, I give you the gemstone of Dawson City. Gentlemen…I give you Jewel.

Good night sweet friends.