Stars & Angels Sing: Curse Breaker, #12

By Melinda Kucsera

A family searches for the true meaning of Christmas, then must save it in an epic fantasy adventure told through poems.

Do you like The Night Before Christmas poem? 

Do you wish it had a ton more magic and an adventure to find the true meaning of Christmas?

Then you'll love Stars & Angels Sing.

In a land where magic is illegal, Sarn must hide his magic and his son to stay alive. For an indentured man can claim nothing, not even his own child. 

When his master found out about his son, Sarn's worst fear was realized. Will his master help him get custody of his son? Or will this tear his family apart?

With nowhere to go and no choice but to obey orders, Sarn must move his son in with his master's family. They go from living in a chilly cave with no running water, and no idea where their next meal will come from to his master's warm, multi-room home. 

Are they guests? Or are they here to serve?

This change of living quarters didn't come with a change in station. As their foster family observes Advent, tensions mount as the symbols of a season and a strange holiday grow.

What is Christmas? Why does his master celebrate it? Should he let his son participate in this mysterious tradition?

Sarn has no way to find out except to ask his master about it and expose his ignorance. But this is the best place for his son, and he won't risk losing it.

Thankfully, Sarn's struggle doesn't go unnoticed, nor does his wish to understand the reason behind the season go unanswered.

With help from Santa, an iceman, some determined fairies, and other holiday favorites, Sarn and his son discover the heart of the season and a new tradition. His struggle might just win him the only present he wants for Christmas, custody of the little boy that lights up his life.

This story is told in a series of poems that build upon each other to tell a fantastic adventure of a father and son's search for the magic of Christmas.

***The 2023 edition of Stars & Angels Sing also includes stories and poems featuring Sarn and his family in their humorous quest to survive the events of Thanksgiving Day, and the book is 30% longer than the original version, including holiday stories that were written later but are part of the overall holiday storyline. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melinda Kucsera
• Release date: Feb 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224633678

Melinda Kucsera

I write fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories usually at sword point. Everyone should have such eager characters......Hello readers!Yes, this is a fictional character speaking to you. My fellow characters just locked our scribe (Melinda) in a tower. She needs to finish our latest adventure.Want to meet us? Hop on over to get our first adventure for FREE: http://www.mkucsera.com/enchantedWe’re eager to entertain you with our magical mayhem. So go download our book! We're waiting for you.

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—The cast of the Curse Breaker Series

Copyright

Copyright © 2016 by Melinda Kucsera

Cover art © 2023 by Melinda Kucsera

Commentary, notes, and stories  © 2023 by Melinda Kucsera

Additional stories new to this edition are © 2023 by Melinda Kucsera or on the year of publication noted in the text.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Melinda Kucsera.

The characters, places and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Melinda Kucsera

http://melindakucsera.wordpress.com

Table of Contents

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Copyright

Table of Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Before You Dive In

Why doesn't Sarn know  about Christmas?

What’s Stars &  Angels Sing About?

Why Did Sarn Lose His Home?

Ran’s Holiday Rant

Welcome To the Dream

How It All Began

Sarn

Shayari

River Nirthal

Mount Eredren

Mistaken

Reflections

The Stories We Tell

A week before Thanksgiving

It Was All the Scribe's Fault

Turkey Monsters Don’t Exist

The Turkey Monster

Not Thankful

Staircase To Nowhere

Morning Rituals

The Low Market

Working The Enchanted Forest

The Feast

Turkey’s Revenge

Interlude 0:  Giving Thanks

Pumpkin Chuckin’

Stars & Angels Sing: Advent

Faith

Light The Wreath

Interlude 1: Waiting

The Perfect Stone

Sparring

An Ill-Fated Trip

Buttonholed

Shopping With Mages

Beloved

The Trouble With Magical Security

The Christmas Faries

The Rusted King And The Drum

The Nutcracker

The Fairies Try Again

Seconds

Light The Tree

A Fool For Christmas

Fairies Interrupted

Attack of The Winter Wights

Winter Solstice

Fools And Farewells

The Christmas Fairies’ Festive Plan

Deck The Mountain’s Halls

Wreathed In Light

The Iceman Comes

Sleigh Ride

Winter Wights

Battle Of The Bells

Berry Wight

Interlude 2: Night Lights

Grandma Joins the Adventure

Grandma Hitches  A Ride With Santa

Interlude 3: Scenes From Seeing Stones

Santa Clause

Santa’s Mission

Santa’s Flight

Tell No Tales

Heading To Bethlehem

Brothers

Crossing Borders

Magicians

The Wisemen

Magi

Interlude 4: Star Of Change

Follow Yonder Star

Nolo Struggles

Nolo’s Lament

Interlude 5 The Guilt That Haunts Nolo

Sarn’s Decision

Healer’s Dread

Nolo’s Fury

The Guilt that Haunts Nolo

A Visit To A Manger

Stars And Angels Sing

Interlude 6: May Angels Lead You In

May Angels Lead You In

The Epiphany

Sons And Holy Ones

The Holy And The Lowly

The Last Present

Little Christmas

Interview With The Damned

Allies And Anthems

HOW TO SURVIVE THE HOLIDAYS

Ran’s Guide to Food, Fun & How To Stay Off a Demon’s Plate this Holiday Season

9 Survival Tips From The Fictional Pros

The Proof:

Commentary

How It All Began

The Stories We Tell

The Turkey Monster

Stars & Angels Sing: Advent

An Ill-Fated Trip

The Christmas Faries

The Fairies Try Again

Attack of the Winter Wights

The Christmas Fairies’ Festive Plan

Iceman Comes

Grandma Joins The Adventure

Santa Clause

Heading To Bethlehem

The Wisemen

Nolo Struggles

A Visit To A Manger

The Epiphany

The Last Present

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Memoriam

About The Author

I’d Love To Hear From You!

The Curse Breaker Series

Curse Breaker Boxed Sets

Curse Breaker’s Companion

Divergent Heroes

Robin of Larkspur

His Angelic Keeper Series

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my sister,

Carolyn Kucsera,

1984-2014,

at whose request I am publishing it.

May she rest in peace.

May Angels Lead You In

I hope Angels bore you hence,

back to whence your life did come.

Like a dove, I hope you winged,

carried on the breath of dawn.

May Angels lead you in.

Here below we’ve no suspense;

one day we’ll hear death’s song strum

and we’ll fly to the one kinged

long ago in glory drawn.

May Angels lead us in.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to all who backed the Kickstarter to bring this new edition to life! Thank you to my Patrons on Patreon, especially Glenda Andre. Thank you to my family, (Mom, Dad, Al, Irina, and Danny too.)

Thank you to my WordPress family of readers in 2016, especially Carol, FT Ledrew, Dajena and Rose. You guys write such awesome stuff. I am humbled that you find my words worthy of a read.

Thank you all for your support on this journey!

Before You Dive In

Hey, Reader, since this isn’t normally how I write books, I wanted to give you a little background on Stars & Angels Sing and how it came about.

You don’t need to have read any books in the Curse Breaker series to enjoy this book because I wrote it before I wrote any other book in the series. So all the currently published books about Sarn and Ran, and there are a lot of them, were just ideas percolating in the back of my mind.

Only part of Curse Breaker Enchanted, the original 2016 version, existed when I wrote most of this book. But I added some stories that I wrote later, making this version 40% or 16,000 words longer than the original version.

So where did Stars and Angels Sing come from?

It started as a series of holiday poems I posted on my blog (melindakucsera.com) from November 28, 2015 to January 5, 2016.

Where did the idea come from?

My sister passed away in February of 2014, and the first Christmas after her passing was very sad. It was a difficult time for my family, and we didn’t do much celebrating. We just gathered together and remembered her life.

Before that first Christmas without her, I actually moved to be closer to where I work. So I was further away from family and had to basically start over and build new traditions because I wasn’t there for all the things that I grew up with.

For many years, my mom, my sister, and I sang in a church choir. I can’t remember when we started. But after I moved, I was no longer a part of that church anymore. It was too far away to get to practice or anything after work, especially with the commute I had, so I could no longer be a part of that.

And starting over in a new church was hard, I knew no one, and I’m not a social person, so I don’t make friends easily or connect with people.

As that second Christmas without my sister drew closer, I felt disconnected and cut off. I struggled to find any joy in the season. And that's where these stories and poems came from. I was struggling to make sense of this holiday season of light that I used to enjoy so much and searching for a new tradition just as much as Sarn does in this book.

So I started blogging. Before my sister passed away, she begged me to finish and publish the stories I've been telling her. I'm about four and a half years older than my sister, so I was basically telling stories to her since she was a baby. Because that's what four-year-olds do.

If you've read my other books, you know that Ran is quite fond of telling stories. His are usually true while mine were quite fictional. So that promise was also looming over me.

But finishing something was hard. It was not something I'd done before. I used to tell people stories, but I didn’t always write them down.

Back in 2016, the idea of publishing them was a bit scary. I didn’t know how to do it. And all of that weighed on me too as that second Christmas rolled around. I still hadn't done anything to make good on that promise yet, because I was still too shattered by grief to write much of anything. Or so I thought.

But I needed to make a start on that, so I put together a website so I could start small. I've always worked on websites ever since I graduated from college with a degree in English.

Why did I start with a website/blog?

I took classes on Shakespeare and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, but the minute I left college, I got a job working on websites, and I slid further into information technology roles as the years passed. So starting my own blog was the natural next step since I worked on websites all day long at work.

And writers need a web presence. So that's where I chose to start. And at the time that I started, blogging was at its peak in popularity. Since my recent move put me massively in debt, I started with a free WordPress.com site, and I met a lot of people through it.

Why did you write this story in poems?

Everyone I ‘met’ through my blog were poets, and they encouraged me to join their writing prompts. They weren’t holding contests or challenges. They would just come up with prompts, and everybody would write something using the prompt. Then everybody would read what others wrote for the prompt and the hashtag.

It was a lot of fun, and there was so much creativity and love poured into these poems. They inspired me to use what I learned in those Shakespear classes and write a Shakespearean sonnet.

The structure gave me the freedom to experiment with a scene that I had in mind, so I wrote about Sarn and his family. And that's where the story poems in this book came from.

Why write a Christmas story in poems?

Since I moved away not long after my sister's death, I had no one around except my favorite fantasy characters who are always begging me to write about them. 

Unfortunately, they’re fictional, so they can't decorate cookies or trees or could they? 

The more I thought about that, the more I wondered. How would they celebrate Christmas? 

How would they know what Christmas is? 

At the time, Sarn and his son lived in a cave under a mountain. Since their world is an epic fantasy one, there's no tv or internet, so they couldn't google this Christmas thing they heard other people in the underground city talking about. 

Why publish this now?

Writing the poems in this book healed a part of my heart. I had one of the best holidays that year, even though that joy was bittersweet.

When the last poem was published, readers who followed along requested a copy of the adventure in an easier to read format than clicking links to move between posts. So I gathered the parts of this epic Christmas adventure into an eBook and a paperback and published them for a limited time.

When I unpublished this book in 2016, I planned to revise it and write it as a regular fantasy adventure in prose. And I still do. I just need the characters to cooperate with that plan. 

They keep running off on new adventures that are fun and interesting, and I let them. So I'm partly to blame. 

So if you're struggling or looking for the reason for the season and something to rejoice about, I hope this book will help you as much as it helped me. Or at least entertain you for a little while.

Why Doesn't Sarn Know

About Christmas?

In Shayari, the fictional country where this story takes place, a form of Christianity is slowly spreading through missionaries from other countries. But most people still follow shamanic ways, especially where Sarn lives deep in the enchanted forest. 

Only the rich have embraced Christianity because the church denounces magic and that aligns with the ruling classes' desire to strip all magic from the land and kill all mages. Since Sarn must hide from those who hate magic, he doesn't encounter many people who practice Christianity. 

But the middle class