“The more you write a story, the more the story writes itself.”

As I was browsing Facebook the other day, fellow author Geoffrey Knight posted this quote. I’d been trying to put a handle on my writing journey the last three months as I wrote White Christmas in the Desert, and that seemed to wrap it up quite nicely.

Normally, it takes me around six months to complete the first draft of a book, as I usually write two or three chapters in a month. Sometimes, it takes longer, like it did with Hex of the Dragon Fruit. That took two years to complete, although in all fairness, I was writing other books simultaneously and put the fantasy novel on the back burner.

The exact opposite happened with White Christmas in the Desert. I finished the book in 12 weeks, averaging a chapter a week. There was one instance where I wrote two chapters in a weekend, and on the last weekend I completed the first draft, two and a half chapters took form. As I typed the last few words on my laptop, it was like I’d been in a trance, determined to make it to the finish line like a maniacal marathoner.

This writing fever struck as I was trying to figure out what to write for my 20th book. I had finished off my 10th installment in the Zachary Gagewood Mysteries and was starting to feel a little burned out on Gresham. When I wrote Hex of the Dragon Fruit, it felt good to divert my attention away from the series, but even as I wrote Dine Out and Die!, I felt like I needed to write something in another location, taking a sabbatical from the mysteries.

That’s when I realized I hadn’t written a book that takes place where I was raised. In 20 books, most of them were in Wisconsin, with the exception of Hex of the Dragon Fruit and the A Cure For Hunger trilogy. While the Cure books were set in Arizona, there was no mention of Chino Valley.

As I was figuring out what to write next, the Christmas season was in full swing, which made me start to think that a holiday novel was in order. In the course of the mental mishmash in my brain, it hit me that the story should take place in Chino Valley. Rural settings usually work for me in my writing, because that’s where I’ve lived pretty much all my life, so I knew I needed a country Christmas tale was in order.

I looked back on the other two Christmas novels I’d written—An Eagle River Christmas and Sleigh Bells and Slain Belles—and it occurred to me that snow needed to be a factor. Of course, snow on Christmas is easy to write about when the setting is in Wisconsin.

Snow in Arizona, however, is a bit more unusual, as much of the climate there is desert. There have been some years where there was little to no snow for the winter, and then having snow on Christmas Day itself? That’s a rare event—5% of the time it snows on Christmas Day in Arizona. It’s true. I looked it up.

That’s when it occurred to me to bring in a child making a wish at Christmastime. After all, how many of us dreamed of a white Christmas when we were young? Plenty. Once that idea hit, things took off from there. I had some of my memories from childhood—the hot air balloons decorating Chino Valley’s skies as an example—and I knew there were a ton of Christmas activities in the area that could help move the story forward.

I started writing the book in January, so I still had the high of the prior Christmas season to motivate me in the beginning. However, the further you get from Dec. 25, it tends to be more difficult to think Christmas, at least normally. This time, however, it was like the holiday cheer combined with thinking about where I grew up provided a super-fuel to make me put words on the screen, and almost 80,000 words later, there’s a charming and heartwarming tale.

I imagine that this would be the kind of pace I’d be on if I were able to dedicate myself to writing books full-time. It makes it all the more surreal that I was able to do this at a time where I’m working overtime at a full-time job during a relatively mild winter (for Wisconsin) where I would normally want to spend time outside. Even when I wrote my first book, The Colors of Love and Autumn, the words didn’t come out this quickly and easily.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have this kind of wild ride again, where I’m breaking my own personal barriers to bring a story to life. I hope I do, as that was an amazing sensation to have that much creativity coursing through my blood. My only regret is that Christmas is still eight months away, so I can’t share the tale. I could, but the Christmas message might be lost in the spring season.

Maybe Geoffrey Knight was right. The more you write a story, the more the story writes itself.