Fun Facts for “The Elves Who Wrote the Lesbian Christmas Song”

Factoid One
In 2021, I had started writing a very different story for Hannah and Harper. It was to be the first of a new series of book I was going to write about lesbian artists who all lived in Oceanside. I had managed to get several chapters into it before deciding to abandon it (temporarily, I thought) in favor of focusing on getting more Carlsbad Village books written, based on how popular the first few installments of that series was.
I never returned to it.
Earlier this year, when I started thinking about what story I wanted to write for my 2023 holiday offering, I decided to reuse the characters of Hannah and Harper. I also managed to salvage several scenes from the original story I had for them, to use in this holiday tale.
In 2021, I contributed an excerpt of the original Hannah-Harper story to be included in The Weston-Super-Anthology 2021, a collection of excerpts and short stories from sapphic authors.
I believe I may still return to that original concept I had for Hannah and Harper (albeit with different characters and some new scenes) one day.

Factoid Two
Originally, I wasn’t going to have a song produced to go along with the book. But the idea kept nagging at me, and I realized that if I didn’t, I was probably going to regret not doing so.

Factoid Three
Harper’s aunt, Ivy, is named after a girl I had a serious crush on when I was 12-years-old.

Factoid Four
In Chapter 3, the way I describe Harper’s father beginning phone conversations with cryptic statements, as opposed to things like, “Hello, how are you?”, is fashioned after the way my own father will greet me on the phone when he calls.
Case in point: he called me less than 24 hours ago, and when I answered, he greeted me with, "That time in high school, when you were sixteen..."

Factoid Five
Like Harper, I will also refuse to talk to my Dad on the phone if I happen to be topless when he calls.

Factoid Six
The idea of giving Hannah a Murphy bed for her apartment had its genesis in a discussion my girlfriend and I had when we were deciding how to design our guest bedroom in such a way to maximize the space in the room. A loft-style bed was seriously considered for a while, but then we also considered—and began to favor—the idea of putting a Murphy bed in there.

Factoid Seven
If you’re a follower of my stories, you can now add North Dakota to the list of states my various characters have indicated (subtly or directly) they would never want to live in.

Factoid Eight
Like in the epilogue, stores in the Carlsbad and neighboring towns started displaying Christmas items back in July. I even said, “Are you fucking serious?” aloud to my girlfriend when I saw the first display of Christmas items.

Factoid Nine
The story of how Dana instantly offers Harper a job as manager of the bookstore, even though Harper had no experience doing that and had, in fact, applied for a more low-level job, was based on something that happened to a cousin of mine in San Francisco.
She had accepted a job at an independent clothing store, showed up for work the first day, and the owner told her, “I like you, I’m going to make you the manager so I can focus on other things.”
Boom! She became the manager.

Factoid Ten
The name of the donut shop where Frieda works came about because when I had reached the point in the manuscript where I first mentioned it, my brain was fried, and I did not want to bother coming up with a clever name for a donut shop. So, I shrugged, and called it Donuts Donuts Donuts: the simplest name I could come up with.

Bonus Factoid
It was my godfather—my father’s best friend from New York—who wrote the lyrics for “Dear Santa…”
He happened to be visiting us in California soon after I finished the book. One day, he took me and my girlfriend out to lunch, and I told him that I had decided to include a song with this new holiday story, but that I had no idea how I was going to come up with one.
He’s not a songwriter, but he’s quite clever and artistic, and he spent some time thinking about it, and came up with a rough draft of the lyrics in only a day, which he then refined over the next few days of his stay. He referred to it as, “The Lesbian Complaint Song.” It’s no wonder he and my father are best friends.
I actually feel bad that I made him work during his vacation.