Last day today for FREE DOWNLOAD of
MAKING OUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT: A Merry Journey
by Alan Camrose
On AMAZON Books – eBook, paperback, hardback…
Just in the St Nick of time for Christmas!
Thank you!
IT’S HERE!
LAST CHANCE SALOON!
Making our Christmas Present: A Merry Journey
Non-fiction Christmas book
Free to download on Amazon for another 24 hours
It’s a humorous journey back in time to the origins of our modern Christmas
PLEASE REVIEW IT IF YOU LIKE IT!!!
THANKS EVER SO MUCH!
Alan
Alan Camrose
RIGHT NOW – FREE FOR CHRISTMAS
On AMAZON Books
MAKING OUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT: A MERRY JOURNEY
Free to download the eBook for a limited time
If you download it and enjoy it, please support me and please do drop a review!
Many, many thanks!
Alan
Alan Camrose
THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A FREE LAUNCH
MAKING OUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT: A Merry Journey is now completely LIVE and LAUNCHED on AMAZON Books in paperback and hardback!
There is a FREE DOWNLOAD OFFER of my eBook – FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. Don’t miss out!
Kindle Edition – FREE FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT – for a limited period
Hardcover – £ 24.99
Paperback – £9.95
Why do mince pies no longer look like coffins?
How do you navigate yesteryear’s family games without a fire extinguisher?
Why did Father Christmas trade in his wagon for a sleigh when he first came to town?
Why should you complain if you don’t receive at least one gold ball from the Big Man?
And how do the best Christmas songs jingle our bells?
A perfect festive stocking filler or present, this delightful book is illustrated with glorious pictures, and can be shared with your family and friends for years to come.
Title Fight!
Working out what couda been a Christmas contender…
I wanted to share with you some of my thought process about finding the title for my new release Christmas book for a chilled out festive season.
It has gone through various incarnations before it goes live on 4 November 2021 – in hardback, paperback and eBook. On Amazon.
First up, it was going to be part of a series that I will be publishing in the New Year about how beds tuck into our popular culture. My Christmas book was going to be the first in the series, called Two Turtle Duvets.
The Christmas project evolved into a stand-alone book on how the Christmas traditions that we have come to know and love have evolved. Nothing too serious, nothing too heavy, but a playful look at our Xmas season.
That demanded soemthing else on the title front, something catchy. I thought I had found it:
Checking it Twice: A List of our Christmas Present
Quite pleasing, I thought, but a bit too “list-y”, not least because of the cunning use of the word “list” in the sub-title… It didn’t last long enough to make it to the spell-checker. I didn’t want a laundry list; I wanted a walk, a search, a romp (no!), a promenade (too formal), a meander (too waffly…)…
A Journey.
I wanted to play with the double meaning of “Christmas Present”, and arrived at:
What makes our Christmas Present – on some sort of journey. Like the Three Wise Men but with a lap-top.
First make it sharper and snappier: Making our Christmas Present. With a better sub-title, then.
First thing that came to mind was A Brief History. That made it sound like an academic treatise, not a journey. So, getting closer, I decided on A Jolly Journey, but that sounded like a booze cruise.
I chose A Merry Journey, because who doesn’t want Christmas time to be a merry way of looking at the festive season?
And here it is:
Making our Christmas Present gives you an idea of discovering Christmas as it now is, with a merry journey to get you there.
There. I’m done, from Two Turtle Duvets to the final version, in the St Nick of time for Christmas…
I hope you like it!
Best wishes,
Alan
Alan Camrose
Santa’s Book is coming to Town
If you are one of my several thousand subscribers and you had a moment, could you please comment/share/comment/communicate on my recent post about my upcoming new book on
4 November 2021
I would love to hear from you to know that the post arrived and if you’re interested in the new Christmas book, under the limited time free download from that date…Or if you’re interested in the paperback or hardback.
Some help here would be much appreciated…
Thanks…
REVEALING THINGS ABOUT MY COVER REVEAL
Why do mince pies no longer look like coffins?
How do you navigate yesteryear’s family games without a fire extinguisher?
Why did Father Christmas trade in his wagon for a sleigh when he first came to town?
Why should you complain if you don’t receive at least one gold ball from the Big Man?
And how do the best Christmas songs jingle our bells?
All these questions that I wanted to answer about Christmas, packaged up in a glossy cover for my new book, Making our Christmas Present: A Merry Journey.
The answers and a lot more will be revealed from 4 November 2021.
This will be a FREE download, which I hope you will enjoy, and I would ask you please please please to take a few moments to post a review. It’s the lifeblood of authors like me, and I would appreciate it very much.
But enough of that!
I wanted to give you here a quick insight into my author thought processes around the book.
I wanted a snappy, Christmassy cover with instant appeal. I don’t know whether I managed that but this is how I got to where I am now.
The book looks at centuries of Christmas, and where the traditional bits came from that individually and together serve up most people’s vision of Christmas. It’s not a history epic or a social commentary or a heavyweight study. The heaviest it gets is fretting over Santa’s belt size…
So I needed light.
I started by thinking about Christmas. There is of course more than one major defining point:
But I fastened onto Santa and how he became the figure we know today – instantly recognisable for the cover, at least today’s version.
I thought about him using an evolutionary cover, something like this, with overlapping pictures merged together:
Too complicated.
Too serious.
So, Plan B was initiated. A Christmas Kiss – otherwise known as A Christmas Keep It Simple, Stupid
Christmas trees. We all think of brightly-lit and decorated trees at Christmas time…
So why not go for a more sophisticated dark background, and a blurry tree.
Much better. I like this but it’s a bit tooo sophisticated for a book that’s supposed to be merry while Santa is “Checking it Twice”. That had been the original title. This pic was too serious, looking like it was dressed up for cocktails…
Third time lucky, then.
I went for Christmas trees again, but not just any old Christmas trees. Toy ones, with the addition of a Santa hat on one of them.
I think (hope) that hits the more amusing, whimsical vibe that I’m after, which fits in with my writing style.
And here it is, in all its glory with the new title, the one that will be published on 4 November: on Amazon Books:
More playful, less creaking with history, not so blingy…
I hope you’ve found this insight into this part of my creative process interesting
More to come on other stuff soon, and you’ll get it first on my blog…
Cheers!
Alan
Alan Camrose
Christmas movies to sleigh you – Update
Welcome to my Blog at The Lair Of The Camrose
It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix. You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…
This time, we are feeding our Christmas spirit with Christmas movies…
In the first Lockdown, we watched through all the Marvel MCU movies in order (we weren’t nerdy enough to slot the TV episodes in order too). For the festive season, we have decided to work through a – fairly random – pile of Christmas films, and I thought I’d take you with me on that sleigh ride.
So far, and ranked in order (upwards) – I will update as we go along – latest updates in bold below:
A jolly tale with Kurt Russell. Bad but jolly. Having seen the trailer for Christmas Chronicles 2 it could have been worse, we might have seen that. To be fair, there are some excellent moments, including Santa Kurt banged up in a jail cell with musical prisoners and a cool sax. May just edge into the watchable with that…
Better movies to come, methinks…
#8 – National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
A product of its time – Chevy Chase is a combination of winning and really annoying. It’s the first time that I have seen the movie the whole way through, I’ve tried three or four times before and not made it past 22 minutes. Not hilarious, but a few genuinely funny scenes, and the nagging question as to why everything’s alright for Christmas once the compensation arrangements have been finalised…
A child of its time.
#7 – Gremlins
Accompanied by hot dogs, nothing made in a blender with all due respect to one of the Bad Gremlins. A sharp, nasty and cute Spielberg presentation masterpiece with annoyingly catchy music and a brilliant view of how much fun Snow White can be. Some nice digs at consumerist Christmas, and Gizmo is so much cuter than Baby Yoda. Fab!
It reminded me of a couple of things: craving food after Midnight, shunning water, avoiding the light. Turning into Sources of Evil. But I wrote in my previous post about the kids coming home for the holidays, so no need to repeat myself.
Let it snow on the soundtrack, lots of snow and heavily armed terrorists – a sure-fire Christmas hit. Notwithstanding those credentials, it still feels it has sneaked onto this list, much more of a Summer popcorn-busting movie. A sneaky twist that’s not that surprising and a lot of very well choreographed action scenes. The Family scoffs at anything beyond the original, but there is fun to be had here and hasn’t aged too badly
Yippee-ki-yay…!
#5 – Nativity!
Shameless manipulation and Martin Freeman doing his Everyman schtick. Love it! Had the Offspring cringing nicely, and we knew we’d struck gold when one demanded never to have that sort of movie inflicted on him ever gain. Yesssssssss! Hollywood is shown to have a golden heart, so this movie needs to be put at the far, far away fantasy end of the spectrum…
#4 – Frozen
A true classic. Not totally Christmas-themed, but enough snow and reindeer action to squeeze in. Beautiful animation, a kick-ass soundtrack, including That Song, what more can you ask for in a holiday film. A neat subversion of the usual fairy tale tropes to boot. Not too much saccharine, and any that sets off a Mush Alert, just Let It Go…
#3 – Arthur Christmas
Saw this last night eating hot dogs on hot dog platters, and some ace Christmas bark (melted and re-formed white and milk chocolate with random stuff stuck in it).
First time I’ve seen it and it’s a hoot. Stellar cast, great animation – Aardman, without a naughty penguin or cheese in sight. A cartoon with a warm mix of Mission: Impossible and Santa Claus: the Movie.
#2 – Love Actually
Perfect casting, sharp writing, believable characters. Class act.
#1 – Elf
In my top three fave Christmas movies – along with Die Hard and White Christmas. Buddy Elf is the role that Will Ferrell was born to play. Very funny, not sickly but perfectly judged, and James Caan and Mary Steenburgen add extra class to the proceedings. Well, class.
Gets me every time, as my gleeful Offspring pointed out to me at the end…Big Softies of the World unite.
Make sure you don’t sit on a Throne of Lies this Christmas!
Have as happy a festive season as possible…
Cheers,
Alan
Alan Camrose
Driving home for Christmas (from uni)
In a year where Dancer and Prancer have been temporarily subbed by Tracker and Tracer, it has been good to welcome home the Offspring back from their unis in time for Christmas.
Offspring 2 made her way back in the Mini in a flurry of tyre pressure and dead battery warnings to make the journey just that little bit more exciting. Followed by me driving back a shortish distance round the M25 with her to her digs to pick up the stuff that she’d:
- forgotten
- changed her mind about its usefulness until next year
- changed her mind about how cute it would be to have it at home base
- decided to torment me about trying to fit in the car (making me pleased she doesn’t ski)
- all of the above
Less Driving Home for Christmas, more 2000 Miles.
Offspring 1, based in the Midlands, was given one shot: popping back to his uni for spare earphones is not going to happen…
His pad was like the door in the Advent Calendar that it’s best to leave closed. My reflexes as Bin Czar (see previous) allowed me to dodge the fifteen sacks of rubbish that the four guys had managed to skillfully accumulate over the weeks, transforming from trash into art.
More rank than a military parade. The bin men have sensibly disguised themselves as posties on bin days.
Offspring 2, not to be outdone on extremes, regaled us with the resurrected chicken, the one that had been left for weeks in the fridge by one of them at their lair. Offspring 2 claimed innocence, so she can be let off this time, including from the rampage of the revenant. The same fate will not befall the Christmas lunch turkey. That was an unexpected blip in the fascist stormtrooper work details set down by the housemates aiming for the tidiest and most wholesome student digs in history.
Very low bar, and I remember limbo dancing under that standard when I was at uni.
Age provides perspective and in my case self-knowledge.
The great thing about university accommodation is that the door can be shut on it from a parent’s point of view with a flick of the rose-tinted spectacles- a point of view eagerly adopted…Now it’s the why are there six open tubs of butter in the fridge conversation and that the smoked salmon has been taken out to make room for the cider. The bonus Santa sacks of washing lovingly saved up to be brought home at the end of term brought a tear to the eye.
Christmas will iron out all of those things out and create a smooth and seamless festive period, as seamless as those bags of rubbish. Great to have them home.
Cheers,
Alan
Alan Camrose
The Game’s Afoot, Santa…
Welcome to my Blog at The Lair Of The Camrose
It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix. You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…
This time, we are trying to find a game to play for one to three households…
This is a more or less COVID-free blogpost in the hope that we will have a predominantly COVID-free 2021. My thoughts are with anyone affected and thanks to all key workers of all types.
Christmas is nearly here, the stupid jumpers, the funny (in your dreams) hats, all that stuff. And the games.
One of the great pleasures is sitting around a table, on the floor, wherever, and breaking out a game for all the family. Assuming of course that agreement can be reached as to what to play. Winner chooses. Of what?
The Household, brimming with Christmas spirit, has a number to choose from, they appear to multiply in the cupboard. What sort will hit the spot, preferably none with a running total to avoid anyone asking for a recount, that never seems to work so well.
Highly cerebral and scary – Funny Bunny – pic below – invented by those twisted fiends at Ravensburger who are probably poachers with fluffy red-brown tails. It involves a tense and lethal journey around a treacherous meadow. A meadow that eats bunnies. It culminates in a break-neck lollop to the top of the hill to crown King Thumper. Not for the faint-hearted. Mind you, it pairs well with strong alcoholic drinks.
Cerebral – Scrabble. This is the variant requiring a minimum of six-letter words to be put down, no swapping, and absolutely nothing in Swahili or Klingon.
Sheer luck – Anyone for Chess? That does look fun based on our Queen’s Gambit experience where it appears to be a drinking game. We have never got on with the four player version with the extra colours, or is that Ludo?
Villain bent on world domination – One of those hidden traitor games where someone – assuming they can keep their cheating, lying face straight. Often that baby-faced Grandmama lurking in the corner like a viper…No offence…
Monopoly – In a class of its own for internecine skulduggery (see Scrabble – above). My mother-in-law used to demand all of the pink ones before the game started as a pre-conditon for playing. A bit like a Wonka Golden Ticket. Brutal. Suffice to say we never everplay this game with Offspring Number One, he has inherited her ways of evil that overwhelm our feeble resistance.
Other family games – Mother’s general aversion to games apart from Funny Bunny limits the debate somewhat. We shall work on her this Christmas, she will crack and victory shall be ours, MWAHAHAHAHAHA. That is, opening the box.
Reducing the world to a coloured game board where the rules are clear and outcomes – within bounds – predictable sounds like the best game in town this Festive Season…
Cheers!
And a Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Alan
Alan Camrose
