{"id":4302,"date":"2015-12-19T17:59:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T17:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=4302"},"modified":"2015-12-19T17:59:48","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T17:59:48","slug":"12-blogs-of-christmas-guest-author-jennifer-ellis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=4302","title":{"rendered":"12 Blogs of Christmas guest author Jennifer Ellis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jennifer<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m once again participating in the 12 Blogs of Christmas<\/strong> with eleven other writers, organized by Martin Crosbie. As part of the event, we are to write about\u2014not surprisingly\u2014Christmas. Many of the other eleven bloggers have written about fond or funny memories of Christmas. Last year, I wrote about my fraught relationship with Christmas\u2014acknowledging the magic of Christmas but also the busy-ness, commercial aspects, and guilt associated with Christmas (we have so much, and so many people have so little). So I can\u2019t do that again. Most of my stories about Christmas go something like\u2026 we got too much, ate too much, spent too much (even though we don\u2019t spend that much), stressed about a turkey, and were really happy to be able to go skiing and eat leftovers on Boxing Day.<\/p>\n

I exaggerate. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve had some nice Christmases, but since I\u2019m often up to my elbows in a turkey, and have not had any famous disasters, they are not the stuff of stories. Then again, my memory is famously poor\u2014all that living half the time in another world. This year I\u2019ll be sure to burn the turkey, so I have something to tell you about next year (Hmm, I\u2019m getting a strong turkey vibe here. It might be time to start serving Christmas steak).<\/p>\n

To me, Christmas is about gratitude and reflection on a year gone by. In an effort to dredge up some Christmas spirit (and not seem like cross between Eeyore and the Grinch\u2014I promise I\u2019m actually not\u2014Christmas commercials make me cry), I decided to do a post on the 12 writing things I\u2019m most grateful for this Christmas<\/strong>. That\u2019s not to imply that there are not a lot of non-writing things I am grateful for (there are so many of those things), but this is a writing blog (and I think this sentence is a triple-negative) so\u2026read more<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Jennifer lives in the mountains of British Columbia where she can be found writing, hiking, skiing, borrowing dogs, and evading bears. She also works as a climate change researcher, evaluator and strategic planner. She has wanted to be a writer since she first read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/em> and didn\u2019t want to come out of the wardrobe.<\/p>\n

Jennifer writes science fiction, romance and dystopian fiction for children and adults, including In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation<\/em> and A Pair of Docks<\/em>, which was a bestseller in children’s time travel fiction. She has also contributed to several anthologies, most notably Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel<\/em>, which hit #16 in the Kindle Store.<\/p>\n

You can subscribe to her blog for writing tips, industry insights, and two free short stories at www.jenniferellis.ca<\/a>, and check out her writing on Amazon at: http:\/\/bit.ly\/jenniferellis<\/a>. She tweets about writing, cats, and teenagers at @jenniferlellis<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m once again participating in the 12 Blogs of Christmas with eleven other writers, organized by Martin Crosbie. As part of the event, we are to write about\u2014not surprisingly\u2014Christmas. Many of the other eleven bloggers have written about fond or funny memories of Christmas. Last year, I wrote about my fraught relationship with Christmas\u2014acknowledging the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4305,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302\/revisions\/4305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}