I'll Be Home for Christmas

By Stephan Michael Loy

Christmas is good cheer, snowmen, nog, and family get-togethers. Often, those reunions are strained. How much more tense might the holiday dinner become if you add space travel, time dilation, and alien influences into the mix? Charlese Tilbrenner and Bernie Oldman, heroes of Stephan Michael Loy's upcoming novel Galactic Geographic, are about to find out how twisted reunions can get as Charlese takes her man to meet the family, and Dad. A heartwarming comedy on the true meaning of Christmas, which might very well be survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephan Michael Loy
• Release date: Nov 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311502803

Stephan Michael Loy

Stephan Michael Loy has been churning out stories of adventure and fantasy since way back in junior high. He's been writing professionally since the 1970s, breaking in his writing chomps on the Louisville Courier-Journal and IU's Indiana Daily Student newspapers. He has a degree in Journalism from Indiana University and an advanced degree in Art Education. He is a military veteran, having served five years in Armor and Cavalry commands in Europe and the United States. He uses all of these experiences in the stories he creates. He has published multiple novels and novellas on Smashwords that can also be found in print at Lulu.com and Amazon, among other online sources. Go to stephanloy.com to easily find these books in print or ebook formats. Stephan Loy lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his wife Amy and their two criminal cats, Buffy (the Cat Toy Slayer) and Oz.

Book preview

I'll Be Home for Christmas

By Stephan Michael Loy

I'll Be Home for Christmas

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2023 by Stephan Loy

First published in 2013

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people except as stipulated in your user agreement. Outside of such stipulations, if you would like to share this book, please purchase another copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you by another person, please go to your preferred point of purchase and purchase your copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work and intellectual property of the author. We all gotta eat.

Be sure to check the notes following the conclusion of this ebook.

Contents

Part 1: Old Men and Younger Women

Part 2: Let It Snow, etc.

Part 3: Holiday Greetings

Part 4: Heeeer's Daddy!

Part 5: Holiday Horrors

Part 6: Nog: Extra Booze, Hold the Nog

Afterword

More Books by Stephan Loy

Part 1: Old Men and Younger Women

(Back to Contents)

The last blur of Kansas City flashed by his window, the last flash of wood, brick, and aluminum siding. The final rusted chain link fence whirred by before its unkempt backyard heaped with dirty snow, the essence of an unintended urban tour from the Southwest Chief high speed magtrain.

All trains are alike, Bernie Oldman thought darkly. They advertise vistas of golden desert and imposing mesas, of grand waterfalls and dramatic surf, but they deliver dirty backyards.

He turned from the window. The train cabin wasn't much better, no more than the interior of a well-appointed intercity bus. The tall bucket seats showed accents of mauve over gray with black piping around their plastic backs. Bernie's tray was down, straining under a Sunday Chicago Tribune eviscerated of its editorial section, international section, all the ad inserts, and the comics. Atop that jumble of real paper lay Bernie's pad, page thirty-four of Newsweek broadcasting from its screen in crisp, Ultrabright® color. Work. Bernie was tired of work.

Feeling warmth against his hand, he turned to watch lovely, sculpted fingers tease across his knuckles where he gripped the center armrest.

Such amazing fingers, he thought, and inverted his hand to caress that of the attentive girl sitting next to him. She was such a physical girl, had maintained such a physical life. Her fingers should have grown rough from use. They should not be the ornaments he stroked with his thumb.

Distracted, Bernie? she asked him, a lilt of amusement in her tone. She was blonde, her hair thick and feathered to her shoulders. Her violet-blue eyes laughed affectionately at him above a wide, toothy smile and a crinkled nose. She was beautiful, looking small just then in her black wool coat and her long, rust-colored corduroy skirt, but she was a half head taller than him, and twelve years his junior.

He squeezed her hand. "You