Revisiting Iverhill this Christmastime.

Iverhill is a small logging town in the Adirondack Mountains. The best way to reach Iverhill is to drive up the Northway until you smell sweet pine needles, then take the next exit.

Iverhill is the basis for a collection of short stories and novels. I started writing the Iverhill cycle in college, as part of my senior thesis in creative writing. Back in those ancient times (the early 1980’s), I used the college’s nascent computer technology to write a 200-page magical fiction novel – I think my thesis professor gave me an A+ just because it was thicker than all the other creative writing major projects combined.

When I first signed up to the Times Union’s blogging portal in 2009, I took that old manuscript and edited it and re-serialized it as a three-times-a-week blog feature. It received plenty of love from the readers, and I eventually put the Iverhill stories together as a book.

Since I felt there were more stories in this small town, I started a new blog feature, “Christmas in Iverhill,” featuring some of the characters from The Robins of Iverhill, along with new characters and different settings, all taking place in the weeks and days before Christmas 1973. I was happy with how the stories turned out, and over time I wrote a few each year.

I’m adding a new one this Christmas. Mackie and Charm’s First Date. It will hit the blog on Christmas Day, so if you’re still unpacking gifts and need a quick check to see if I’ve written something on the blog – yep, I have.

You can see past “Christmas In Iverhill” stories by clicking on “The Robins of Iverhill” category on my blogroll. There’s definitely a few you might enjoy. Or at least I hope you do.

And maybe next year, if I think someone would buy it, I might just bind up all those “Christmas in Iverhill” stories and add them to a self-published book on Amazon. I mean, why not?

Just a simple Christmas thought this morning.