Slightly Off the Mark

The Twelve Books of Christmas

Okay, on the surface of it maybe there are better Christmas presents than books: A new car, a private island, a lifetime supply of chocolate. But I don't produce those things, so here, still in time for Christmas shopping, is an eclectic list of what I do produce.

First of all, of course, are the romantic comedies. I write fiction in many different genres, but for the most part all we've published so far are romances, which I'll admit was not on my to-do list when I first started writing. Still, I think we've got some pretty good ones.

Fiction to the right, non-fiction to the left.

I realized while preparing to write this that all my romantic comedies take place during summer. So curl up on the couch under a blanket, with a hot chocolate and a fireplace on the TV, and take yourself to a better time.

My short story collection, also (mostly) set during summer, is part of the Storm Chaser series that includes The Notorious Ian Grant and The No-Campfire Girls. We should have a Storm Chaser prequel out before the end of winter: That one's set during winter, so maybe we should publish it during summer.

If you get it for Christmas and read outside, I'm not responsible for the frostbite.

I like to make the books in my series (and other planned series) standalone, although it helps to read Storm Chaser first. The short stories in Storm Squalls generally take place around the time of the original Storm Chaser. The No-Campfire Girls is more of a spinoff, featuring a character from Storm Chaser and another from a YA mystery--which you won't notice, because that hasn't been published yet.

Have I told you lately that I have a lot of writing work to do?

My last published fiction, and the only one that doesn't take place in Indiana, is Radio Red. We have print copies for sale through the website (or through a private message, or stopping by), but at the moment it isn't available as an e-book, or through various websites; Emily is working on it.

The bird in this photo was a happy accident.

My teenage grand writing plan was to write fiction. Just fiction. Then my first paid writing job was for a newspaper, and now, with the publication of Haunted Noble County, Indiana, exactly half of our published books are non-fiction. (I had also planned to have a winter home in Hawaii.)

Not only that, but my best selling book so far is a humor/history combo called Hoosier Hysterical: How the West Became the Midwest Without Moving At All.

Okay, so it's a lot easier to tell what non-fiction is by the title. For instance, anything with the word "haunted" in it probably has to do with hauntings.

Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights: A Century Or So With the Albion Fire Department, just about has to be about the Albion Fire Department, and the only question is which of the two dozen Albions in America it's talking about.

Images of America: Albion and Noble County has to involve (historical) photos having to do with Albion and Noble County, and to my knowledge the only combo of that town and county are in Indiana.

You'll notice that the books traditionally published have short, reasonable titles, while the ones self-published have subtitles so long that they take up the first three pages. Sorry about that.

The books I knew would sell the best were the ones that collected my newspaper columns. They were pretty popular, and a lot of people were upset with the way I lost that job, so I knew they'd support me when the books came out.

They're my worst selling books.

Everyone wants more humor, but when it comes to books they want their humor from names they're already familiar with. Comedians, actors, talk show hosts, and so on. Still, I hope people will eventually buy enough for me to write a third. Well, rewrite.

Do I have any books specifically about Christmas? Yes, but it's not published yet. Did I mention I have a lot of work to do?

But you can still buy books for Christmas, so here you are: Our twelve books, with something for almost everyone except non-readers. I'll never understand those people enough to figure out a present for them, anyway.

There’s still time to order for Christmas, from many of these places:

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

· Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

· Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

· Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Remember: Every time a book is sold, an author gets a cup of hot chocolate.

The Real First Thanksgiving, More Or Less

Thanksgiving in America continues to be one of the most traditional holidays. It still features the original four hundred year old activities of overeating, football, and complaining about Black Friday.

In the Hunter household, as in all of Indiana and much of the world that’s not outside this country, we battle the overeating. How?

By serving food that, the rest of the year, we hate.

Stuffing stuff. Cranberry things. Pumpkin anything. It was good enough for the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians, who the Pilgrims politely invited to share a meal in the new home they’d just stolen from the Wampanoag. The Indians brought a housewarming gift of deer, mostly because they didn’t want to eat cranberries or pumpkin.

But what was actually served at that original celebration? And did they really all sit down at long tables outside, in New England, in November? That’s a recipe for a nice heaping helping of frostbite.

The first Thanksgiving was a three day event, leaving one day each for the meal, football, and shopping. The Pilgrims were naturally dismayed to discover no mall or Wal-Mart in sight. Rumor had it there was a Target down the road, but both the trip and the name were a bit more dangerous at the time. They compensated by throwing another feast that third day, during which they discussed the football.

Governor William Bradford sent four men on a fowling mission beforehand. We don’t know for sure what they brought back, but it might have been turkey. It also might have been ducks, geese, or swans, which explains the song they invented about the meal and the entertainment. If it hadn’t taken so much time to memorize it, the song would have been “The Twelve Days of Thanksgiving”. That would have turned our holiday world upside down.

Why are game birds called “fowl”? Because they had no refrigeration. It was a warning: “Eat it fast, before it’s fowl!”

On a related note, this has carried over into football, which during the first Thanksgiving was so primitive it was watched on a black and white TV, with no remote control, or blimp. Whenever a player gets caught doing something that stinks, it’s called a foul. The spelling was changed during the Great Depression, when a letter shortage caused double U’s to be singled.

There was indeed an abundance of cranberries at the First Thanksgiving, mostly because the Natives used them as dye. (Good dye, although it tended to run in the washing machine.) By then the Pilgrims had run out of sugar, so there was no cranberry sauce or relish, or anything cranberry. That’s one of the things they were thankful for.

Potatoes were … absent. The Spanish had discovered them in South America, but they weren’t popular with the English yet. Instead they probably had seafood—lobster, clams, oysters, all that stuff you find on the Thanksgiving menu today. Actually, these days the closest we get to that is either oyster dressing, or “see? Food!”

Pumpkin? Absolutely: in their pie, their coffee, donuts, milkshakes … kidding—Starbucks didn’t deliver. They did have pumpkins, but no butter or flour for any kind of crust. They may have hollowed out the pumpkins, filled the shell with milk, honey, and spices, and roasted them in hot ashes.

I’m not making this up. I get paid to do this research.

A Fall photo taken from the office of my chiropractor, who I probably wouldn't need as much if I stopped overeating over the holidays.

I’m sure you’re all wondering what kind of beer they washed all this down with. I mean, Sam Adams, right? That’s the state beverage of Massachusetts. But no, it turns out they hadn’t had time to make beer, and didn’t yet have apples for cider, so they drank water. This helps explain all those Pilgrim paintings with dour expressions.

Add this to native foods like plums, grapes, leeks, and squash, and you get … *gasp* … a meal that’s good for you! It turns out health food nuts aren’t a new thing; it’s just that back then it was involuntary.

Interestingly, I found no reference in historical records about stuffing being served at the first Thanksgiving. I suspect the Pilgrims planned it, until the Wampanoag heard about the idea:

“So, once we get the birds ready, we’ll mix old bread crumbs and tasteless vegetables together, throw a bunch of spices on them, and stuff them up the fowl butt. Instant side dish!”

“Um … we’ll just take our smallpox blankets and go.”

Imagine how they reacted to fruitcake.

I would be personally grateful if you made my black Friday green.

Googling Yourself Is Strange

Yeah, I Google myself ... what's your point? And I found out things I, the Googled, um, Google-ee, never knew.

Okay, so, Haunted Noble County is available in the Netherlands. No, seriously:

https://www.bruna.nl/engelse-boeken/haunted-noble-county-indiana-9781467156066

You can read it to yourself, if you can read it. Which I can't.

If one of you can't afford the book, go Dutch.

I haven't gotten around to contacting local libraries about getting copies of our newer books (I know, my fault), but somebody has. Somebody, specifically, in the Plainfield-Guilford Twp Public Library in Plainfield, where Haunted Noble County, Indiana, Images of America: Albion and Noble County, and Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights are shelved in new local history & genealogy. Or so I'm told. It turns out all of our books are evergreens, or more specifically available through the Evergreen library system:

https://catalog.evergreenindiana.org/Union/Search?view=list&lookfor=Mark+R.+Hunter&searchIndex=Author&searchSource=local

I found our 21Alive TV interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdh8YfU6JiU

Which makes us a YouTube sensation? No? But we're there, anyway.

"Missed it by THAT much."

Our publisher posted about us on Twitter ... I mean X ... nah, it's Twitter:

https://x.com/HistoryBoooks/status/1957025429329514775

Which, I guess there's really no reason for me to know.

This is also how I discovered I'm now a top 10 Amazon author. Well, sort of: I did make it to number 8, but it was in a subcategory. But the good news is, I can just leave out that small detail.

None of this really bothers me--they're just fun surprises. It reminds me of when I did an interview at the WAWK studio in Kendallville, and right after we stopped at the nearby Walgreens to discover Images of America: Albion and Noble County on a book display. I knew the publisher was going to try to get the word out: I just didn't know when or where.

The Netherlands thing was a shock, though.

It’s really not hard to find us, even without Google: