{"id":2982,"date":"2020-12-04T11:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.pelicanbookgroup.com\/?p=2982"},"modified":"2023-05-26T09:14:04","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T15:14:04","slug":"a-new-hope-for-christmas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/a-new-hope-for-christmas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Hope for Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\tIn early November, 2019, I saw a post on social media seeking prayers for a family in Texas who had been in a car accident. The father and one child died, the mother and the other child lived. As I prayed for the survivors, it inspired me to write a <em>very <\/em>short story (about 2,800 words) about how a grieving family got through their first Thanksgiving. I titled it <em>The First Thanksgiving,<\/em> and a couple of my critique partners loved it.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tFast forward to February, 2020, when I discovered PBG&rsquo;s Christmas Extravaganza opportunity. That story was still stuck in my mind and I wondered if I could expand it and turn it into a Christmas story.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThat&rsquo;s when <em>The First Christmas<\/em> was born. With my heart in my throat, I submitted the first chapter to PBG in mid-April.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThey eventually asked for the full manuscript and in early July, my life changed when I opened an e-mail stating that it had been accepted for publication. The only thing was&hellip;another manuscript had a similar title, and I was told my title would probably change.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tI admit that at first, I was disappointed, but it turned out to be a tremendous blessing! <em>A New Hope for Christmas<\/em> is the perfect title for a story of <em>hope<\/em>, the gift God gives us when we have nowhere else to turn and no other choice but to put our faith in Him.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tI still pray for that family in Texas, even though I never knew their names. We all know someone who is grieving this holiday season. I pray that <em>A New Hope for Christmas<\/em> will touch the heart of every reader in some way. There is no greater gift in these troubled times.\n<\/p>\n<h1 id=\"authorInfoHeading\">\n\tErin Stevenson<br \/>\n<\/h1>\n<p>\n\t&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A New Hope for Christmas (Christmas Holiday Extravaganza)\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"1080\" height=\"550\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen style=\"max-width:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/card?preview=inline&#038;linkCode=kpd&#038;ref_=k4w_oembed_z68vvja7qek54v&#038;asin=B08KSH7946&#038;tag=kpembed-20\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In early November, 2019, I saw a post on social media seeking prayers for a family in Texas who had been in a car accident. The father and one child died, the mother and the other child lived. As I prayed for the survivors, it inspired me to write a very short story (about 2,800 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[746],"tags":[776],"class_list":["post-2982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","tag-holiday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}