The Author Guy Blog by Larry B. Gildersleeve (Dec 11, 2024)












Hello out there,

Welcome back. With the Christmas season now upon us, I’m drawn as I am every year to O. Henry’s brilliant yet extraordinarily brief short story The Gift of the Magi, first published in a hundred and twenty years ago. O. Henry’s real name was William Sydney Porter, a man of various professions (pharmacist, ranch hand, draftsman, and bookkeeper) who lived between 1862 – 1910.

My author journey, now in its eleventh year, was inspired over fifty years ago when I was in college and read the short novella Love Story that became a mega-bestseller for Eric Segal. Twenty years later, my desire was rekindled reading Robert James Waller’s Bridges of Madison County. With my two-book exclusive commitment to my new publisher satisfied with release of novels in mid-2025 and early 2026, I’m once again drawn to the brevity of essays, short stories and novellas.

I’m anticipating my next book will be a short, Christmas-themed novella, following in the footsteps of these authors with these offerings: A Christmas Memory (1958) by Truman Capote; The Christmas Box (1993) by Richard Paul Evans; and Skipping Christmas (2001) by John Grisham. These are but a few of the dozens and dozens of similar offerings that surface, and resurface, at this time of year. Hopefully, mine will be included for Christmas 2025.

I’m going to take a two-week “blog holiday” and return in the first week of the new year.

Best holiday wishes.

Until next year … Vaya con Dios

Larry B. Gildersleeve

Location: Bowling Green, KY, USA

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