A Holiday to Remember Notes

Author’s Notes

I can’t believe it’s my fourth anniversary as a Jix Author!

First, I would like to thank the owners, administrators, and members of Jix for making it one of the most special places on the internet. I have met so many Trixie friends here, who have encouraged me in my writing and helped me in my attempts to learn how to do html and graphics, and to post my own stories. None of that would have happened without Jix.

I also need to thank my generous and thoughtful editors, Trish, Ryl, and Ronda, who are always willing to read a new story of mine and offer constructive comments. You ladies are the best!Any improvements are theirs, any mistakes are mine!

Many thanks to Vivian, who is not only the webhostess with a heart of gold, but also a fabulous teacher and encourager when it comes to learning to post my own stories and set up my own pages. I still use the page layout that she did for my first story (A Lucky Man), because I think it is beautiful. But she has been a huge help to me in choosing colors and textures, and it was my lucky day when she offered to host my Jix Sixth Anniversary Project story, Memories, and make graphics for it. Terry (chromasnake) has also been a huge help and resource to me, always ready to help out when I can’t figure out how to make a page look the way I want it to look.

The title to this story came to me as I was starting to write it. It was nearly complete when I was perusing Pat K’s site and discovered she had posted a story with the same title.I thought of changing it, but “A Holiday to Remember” has been used as a title in several different movies as well as short stories. So I left it.

Many people find first-person narrative annoying, but I’ve always liked it. A member of another book discussion group to which I belong addresses a point about first-person: “one of the places where having a first person narrative helps a lot… we're explicitly being asked to see things from a 14 or 15 year old point of view; a certain narrowness of perspective can become part of the fiction.”

This story is a CWP #5: Holiday. The elements are:

A Seecrud - Trixie secretly secures the jalopy with her ring.
Pecan Pie – one of the Thanksgiving desserts.
Auction - your choice: live or Internet, or the mention of— Tom and Celia won some furniture at auction.
King Kong - Ben, Diana, and Bobby watch KK on TV.
Changing a tire - Ben has to change a tire on his way to Sleepyside.
Shattered glass – during the hurricane – a broken window at the trailer.
A personal paper that is missing - Ben’s old girlfriend’s Dear John letter – he tears it up and throws it away.
A storm - tornado, tsunami, hurricane, snow, rain - whatever you want! – the hurricane.
A broken heart – Trixie pretended to have a broken heart; Ben is nursing a broken heart when he arrives and is cheered up by Diana’s friendliness.
Carryover element - plaid – Trixie’s plaid skirt.
And of course, a song! Could I Have This Dance? Anne Murray didn't release her song by this title until 1980, and this story takes place in 1969. Mart asked Di the question, "Could I have this dance?"

Notes on the story: The Mystery Off Glen Road is one of my top six Trixies, even though the mystery may be weak. I love the dialog, the character development, and the devotion to her family that Trixie shows in giving her diamond ring to Mr. Lytell as security for Brian’s jalopy. It’s probably the Trixie I have reread the most times! I wondered how Ben Riker experienced the Thanksgiving visit to his cousins’ home, so I decided to listen to him and write his story. You may have noticed that in several sections the dialog is lifted straight from that book. This is done without the permission of Random House, which owns the rights to the Trixie Belden series. Some of the narration describes the same events, too – but I tried to describe them from Ben’s POV. Now, the story was nearly half over by the time Ben arrived, so he was in the dark about several things, and he was purposely kept in the dark about other things. That’s where Diana comes in.

If you’ve read this far, I’m guessing you have finished the story.I hope you enjoyed it – thanks for reading!

Image of tree from istockphoto. I merged the Mustang into the tree picture, and it turned out pretty well, I thought! Image of Mustang from MustangAttitude.com. I wrote to the site owner asking for permission to use the image, but never got a response. I took that as permission! In any case, I’m making no money from its use, and in a way, am advertising his site. Isn’t it a beauty?

Disclaimer: Characters from the Trixie Belden series are the property of Random House. They are used without permission, although with a great deal of affection and respect. Title image from istockphoto; graphics on these pages copyright 2010 by Mary N.