Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Time: 8:00 AM
Song: Are You
Lonesome Tonight?
Artist: Elvis Presley
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on the way to work.
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4wM7V31TsZzzDBEH02Hltb?si=8080c50c8da14e75
We had our Christmas party last night at Write On. This included a book exchange, treats, and the following writing challenge. We were provided with a Hallmark movie challenge which through selecting random number correlated with different aspects of the typical Hallmark movie plot. I finished the opening scene during our writing time.
Here is the prompt:
A Hard-Working Female TV personality is unhappy because her Christmas Tree and all her decorations were stolen, and she doesn’t have the money to replace them. Everything changes when she meets a troublesome male family man whose two kids are still mourning his recently deceased wife while they’re both moping around at a karaoke bar and get pressured into singing a Christmas duet. Through crazy circumstances and a little help from her wise old father, she soon discovers that Christmas isn’t Christmas without someone to love.
Here is the scene that I wrote:
About thirty seconds into stepping into the place, Stacy’s cover was blown. The large sunglasses. The rain bonnet covering her trademark auburn locks. The trench coat. All made obsolete by her father’s boisterous voice over the microphone.
“There she is,” Dad’s tanned face beamed, a glass of scotch in one hand and the microphone in the other. “My daughter – the beautiful and talented and single if you happen to be Prince Charming - Stacy Dash.”
A few people clapped, probably either missing the blip about her in last week’s news cycle or already forgetting thanks to the barrage of other political, athletic or criminal outrage or hoopla careening through the airwaves and interwebs. Some didn’t clap though. Some stared at her with knowing looks that said: “You’re that Stacy Dash. Big-time TV Person. You’re the one that not only had that tree with all those immaculate and valuable decorations stolen from under your nose, but also unwittingly let the thieves into the room at the TV station to take it.”
She thought she heard someone whisper that she was probably in on it. Some of those ornaments had diamonds and gold and real silver. That tree was going to the children’s hospital, you know. It was going to be auctioned to raise money for those same kids. Thousands and thousands of dollars lost.
“This one goes to you, my Dash of joy,” Dad said, and then he began to croon “White Christmas” like he was Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby.
She found a table near the corner, hoping it hid her from the angrier stares from the other patrons at “Sing-On” Karaoke Bar and Buffett. Since Dad had retired, himself a respected news anchor for forty-three years at the local CBS affiliate, he’d become obsessed with Karaoke bars, hitting one almost every night of the week. The only way she could see him, it seemed, was by showing up at one of his many performances.
She ordered a club soda from a snooty waitress before deciding to go ahead and remove the silly bonnet – it had been her grandmothers after all and probably hadn’t seen the light of day in ten years – and the sunglasses.
There were two men seated at a table behind her, and quickly she became more interested in their conversation more than her Dad’s singing.
“Aubrey’s bloodied three kids noses just this week,” one man said.
“Really, any reason.” His companion faked a chuckle.
“Oh, yeah, important reasons. One looked at her the wrong way. One called her name. One happened to be at the end of her fist. And then there’s Kevin, he won’t say a word. Hasn’t since… well you know.”
Stacy didn’t know but her curiosity was piqued. She risked a look back, saw both men. One in a suit, hair slicked back, phone in front of him. The other was wearing a collared golf shirt and a pair of jeans.
“The doctor says that kids are resilient and they’ll get
passed this…”
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That's where I ran out of time
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