All posts by Selim Ulug

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About Selim Ulug

Author of the short story collections Something Special and The Woman in Red. Author of the Big Finish Short Trips Landbound and Battle Scars.

On Turning Seventy

Life,

As of June, 2025 I’ve turned seventy. This means, depending on whether you’re a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person, that I’m either entering the prime of life or am just plain old. If I am getting old, I don’t really mind. After all, there is only one alternative, and it’s not very attractive. But it’s a hard thing to get your head around. My generation, the dreaded Boomers, defined themselves by their collective youth. I was still quite young in the 1960’s, but aware of the sense of optimism that, once our generation came to power, everything would be better. Sadly, that hasn’t quite happened. In fact, you could make a reasonable case that we’ve collectively screwed things up worse than just about any other generation. Does it help if I say we meant well?

Selim Ulug, June, 2025

It’s an interesting age, seventy. You can do most of the things you’ve always been able to, though you might find you’ve less energy than you did earlier. At the same time, you can clearly see eighty looming on the horizon. Assuming that I continue to avoid cancer and heart disease, I can be reasonably confident of hitting eighty. After that, based on what I’ve seen around me, all bets are off. I might make it to ninety. Most men don’t. And, in their eighties, pesky medical problems seem to have a way of piling up and quality of life can take a big dip. The long and short of it is that this is the last decade where I can reasonably count on being healthy enough to do what I want.

The problem therein is two-fold. First, what is it that I really want to do? Because that seems to change as time goes by. More on that in a minute. The second problem is that, at this point, a decade flashes past in the blink of an eye. It seems ridiculous to think that ten years has passed since my sixtieth. The next ten years will be likely pass even more quickly.

1955 Hits, Source: Apple Music

So, what do I want to do? That is the question of the hour. Or rather, the question of the decade. As an example of the problem, let’s consider books. I long imagined that, when I retired, I’d spend time re-reading old favourites. Along the way I’ve accumulated many books. So many that, at the time of writing, they’re in piles on my basement floor in addition to filling up multiple book cases. A number of my paperbacks date back to the 1960’s. Back then, I was terrified of breaking the book’s spine, and read them at odd angles while opening the book a crack. Perhaps not surprisingly, those books are in great shape. They include many of the Doc Savage series, a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, and Robert E. Howard. There was Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and, a favourite when I was young, E.E. “Doc” Smith. I was also a bit of a science nerd, so I have a couple of books about cosmology that are so old that they were written before the Big Bang was universally accepted, and they also cover a competing theory called Continuous Creation. I don’t spend a lot of time re-reading these books. To be honest, many haven’t aged particularly well, or perhaps were never meant for adult eyes. But they were a bright light in my childhood and I plan to keep them around a while yet. I do re-read my beloved Charles Dickens novels, but not a lot else. I don’t tend to re-read most of the books I’ve acquired since, preferring to read new books over old. So, I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I don’t need to keep most of my books. That being said, you’ll have to pry my favourite, The Little Prince, from my cold, dead hands.

Highest Grossing Movies of 1955, Source: IMDB

The world has changed a lot in seventy years. Among Doctor Who fans, it’s popular to ask, who was on the cover of Doctor Who Magazine the month they were born? In my case, not only was there no DWM, there was no Doctor Who! For me, 1963 was the year of Fireball XL5. I lived, breathed, and slept that show. People were sick of me going on about it, and I remain fond of it to this day. I also remember, in 1963, watching the funeral of President Kennedy on our black & white, vacuum tube TV. I remember pressing my nose against store windows when colour TVs started to become available. When we got ours, I particularly loved Batman, Star Trek, and whatever the Bugs Bunny / Road Runner show was called back then. My family was in England when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. It was the middle of the night, so, sadly, we didn’t watch it live. I was at a conference in the early 1990’s when a speaker asked the audience if we’d heard of a program called Mosaic. None of us had. This was our first introduction to the World Wide Web. Computer networks had been around for ages, but not a network of networks. Not the Internet. This, of course, changed everything.

As an aside, have you seen the movie Last Night in Soho? It concerns a modern-day fashion designer who finds herself transported to the Soho of the 1960’s. As I was watching, I found myself thinking, wouldn’t that be a thing—walking the streets of Soho in the 1960’s. Then I had to laugh out loud. Because I’ve done it. My mother’s family lived in the north-east of England. When we went to visit, we’d stay a night or two in London to get over the jet lag before traveling up north. We stayed at the Bonnington Hotel (now a Double Tree Hilton) and walked through Soho to a Turkish restaurant that was a favourite of my father’s. My recollection of Soho is a bit different to what I saw in the movie. It seemed rather seedy to my young eyes, but, most notably, we passed several establishments whose exteriors were decorated with black & white photos of topless women. And while my young eyes gaped, my father growled that I should watch where I was going. For what it’s worth, the restaurant was pretty good. I don’t remember its name, but no doubt it’s long gone. As for the hotel, the rooms were tiny and on each floor there was a TV room. There were no TVs in the actual guest rooms. I recall the TV room on our floor packed to overflowing with people. I walked into the lobby of the hotel in 2019 when I was last in the UK. Clearly, they had done the place up a bit. I didn’t like it.

With age comes a sort of wisdom. For instance, I can impart to you the Secret of Happiness at no extra charge. It boils down to the same 80-20 rule that applies to so many things. No matter where you are in your life, the business of life is drudgery. Groceries. Cooking. Cleaning. Working! All the busy work that needs doing. That can account for 80% of your time, and that might lead you to think you’re doing something wrong. You’re not. What you need to focus on is, not the drudgery, but that golden 20% — time spent with friends and family, quality alone time, whatever makes you happy. Simply put, the secret of happiness is to not expect happiness every moment of every day, but to appreciate that 20% of the time when you’re in your happy place. And anyway, if not for the 80%, the 20% wouldn’t seem nearly so lustrous.

Montreal Riots after “Rocket” Richard Suspended in 1955

Put another way, the old adage is true: happiness comes from within rather than without. It’s being thankful for what you have, rather than longing for what you haven’t.

Happiness can also be had by thinking back to key moments that you collect throughout a lifetime. When I started university, I wanted to be a scientist. It took a while, but getting accepted to grad school was definitely a key moment. Another was when my first scientific paper was published. Still another, of course, was when my Doctor Who stories “Landbound” and “Battle Scars” were published by Big Finish. That was a beautiful, mad time and I treasure the memory of it. And still another key moment was when I self-published my first collection of short stories. I suppose another will be when I self-publish my first novel. Assuming I ever finish the thing. Kidding! A Familiar Voice will be available later this year. (If you’re wondering, there have also been many key personal moments, but they’re, you know, personal.)

Does all of this mean that we have to be satisfied with our lot? With what we have today? Of course not. So here’s the actual, true secret of happiness: It’s learning to know what it is that makes you happy, and being happy with what you have while striving for the things that make you happy that you don’t have. I think it’s the striving that gives us purpose, and having a purpose is something that makes most of us happy.

Thanks for reading. May you enjoy many years of happiness.

Revisiting The Alternative War

Culture, Writing, ,

Doctor Who: The Alternative War is a two-part fan audio series from TT Productions 23. The “alternative” universe branches off from the TV Doctor Who universe at the moment of the Eighth Doctor’s regeneration. In the alternative universe, the Doctor regenerates into a female incarnation who is still very much the Doctor, but who must find a way to bring the Time War to an end. She is the ninth Doctor of this universe.

The first part, simply called “Doctor Who: The Alternative War”, was my first stab at a full-cast script. I won’t deny that I was in a bit over my head. Partly because I took on too much. I brought the cast together but didn’t have the means for them to record it live, so each actor performed in isolation, with the exception of Alia and Abi, who recorded together. I stitched the recordings together as best I could. Fortunately, Jaspreet Singh came to my rescue and tweaked the dialog and added sound effects and music. I enjoyed the result, but came away thinking that I could have done better. I could have written a better script.

And I did do better with the sequel, “Doctor Who: The Alternative War—Reprieve.” The recording used the normal TT Productions 23 process and was much better for it. There was a table-read to iron out the kinks, and then the recording proper with all the actors present. And boy, did the actors nail it. Abi brought us a more seasoned Aliana. Jack played two roles, the 10th and 11th Doctors. He nailed each of them and switched between them like a slippery chameleon. You’d have sworn there were two different actors present. I’ve always been fond of Jaz’s performances as the Third Doctor, and he tackled the role once again with gusto and vim. Marcus gave us a War Master who delighted in getting under the Doctor’s skin. But it was the Master’s sparring with Aliana that was a highlight for me. And then there’s Chelsea and Sam who played the constantly bickering Time Lords Strange and Love. I could listen to those two go at it all day. You would never think that the two actors had never met before the recording. The striking cover art is, as usual by ‪@johannesviii.bsky.social.

As for the script, I was very happy with the result. It was a bit of a large cast for the length of the story, with three Doctors, a companion, the Master, and Strange and Love. I wanted each character to have a purpose—to have agency. And so, the third Doctor has his own little adventure and gets to drive a fast car and reverse the polarity. Aliana, having grown since the first adventure, is often the adult in the room. The eleventh Doctor has a bad day, getting eaten by a lake serpent and then having his sonic screwdriver melted. The tenth Doctor, still recovering from his regeneration, has to keep his ragtag team focussed on the job at hand. And if you’re fond of ’50’s era sci-fi movies, there’s something here for you, too.

So if you haven’t listened to it yet, give Doctor Who: The Alternative War — Reprieve a try. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Panic in the Cave

Writing, , , ,

When I think of 2019, I think of it as The Before Times. Before the world was frozen in time while researchers scrambled for a vaccine to beat back the beast known as COVID. Some pretty good things happened that year, including my first visit to a Doctor Who convention. I had the pleasure of attending Chicago TARDIS and enjoyed an all-too-brief encounter with Katy Manning.

Katy, of course, was Jo Grant, assistant to the third Doctor, played with panache by Jon Pertwee. Katy left the show after her character married environmentalist Clifford Jones. She has since played Jo Grant and Jo Jones many times for Big Finish.

She was a delight on the show and an even bigger delight in person, doling out hugs to all the fans who lined up for autographs. As we chatted, I might have let slip that I’d written a couple of stories for Big Finish. After all, “Battle Scars”, my second Short Trip for Big Finish, was released just a few months earlier. She narrated Short Trips sometimes, she said, and suggested I write one for her.

A story idea came to me almost immediately. I let it percolate until late last year when I decided to go ahead and write it as fan fiction. As I do these days when I get the urge to write Doctor Who. If there was any chance that Katy would narrate the story, I would have centred it around Jo Jones and Kate Stewart. However, since the story was going to be fan fiction, I decided that it would feature Jo Grant and the Brigadier, and as the story progressed they would bond with each other and gain a measure of mutual respect. The result is a short story called “Panic in the Cave.” It’s hosted by the Doctor Who Project.

Something is stirring in the cave system beneath Yorkshire. Locals are near deafened by eruptions of bone-rattling sound, and tremors have been reported, sufficient to split the earth and swallow vehicles. Before he can be notified, the Doctor takes his TARDIS for its first test flight since the Omega affair. Jo Grant, eager to prove her worth to the Brigadier, insists upon her involvement in the investigation. But, without the Doctor’s support, will she be able to face her fears and confront the unknown?

The Doctor Who Project hosts edited fan fiction stories which are set in alternative timeline. They also host “Brief Encounters” which are short stories set in the “classic” Doctor Who timeline. The editors had some good suggestions for improving my story. Do check the site out.

And please have a look at “Panic in the Cave” and let me know what you think of it.

Star Trek Picard: Second Self

Culture, Writing, , , ,

I knew a guy who, before purchasing a book, read the last couple of pages. Why would you do that? I asked him. Wouldn’t that spoil the whole thing? Because, he said, why would I read a book if I don’t like the ending?

Fast forward to the present, where I’ve been listening to January LaVoy’s narration of Una McCormack’s Star Trek Picard: Second Self. I started at the beginning, but even before reaching the end, I knew that I could recommend this book without hesitation. Doubly true now that I’ve listened to the whole thing.

To be honest, I don’t often enjoy spin-off novels. There are exceptions, most notably Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy. And there are others I’ve enjoyed, including some Star Trek and Doctor Who novels, but Second Self is something special. Why is that?

Well, for one thing, it’s clearly a book for adults, or at least for the older YA crowd, with its mature themes of war-time atrocities and drug addiction. This book has other things going for it. Motivations are clear. There is a lot of inner dialog which expands our appreciation of Raffi’s (Raffaela Musikerz) character. Backstory, of which Star Trek has untold volumes, is provided as required without overwhelming the current story.

Second Self concerns Raffi, who, at the behest of Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, undertakes an off-books mission to bring a war criminal to justice. The problem is, intelligence reports have the criminal last seen on Ordeve, a planet with which Raffi has unhappy associations. The focus of the book later shifts to Raffi’s earlier time on Ordeve, and then to events that occurred before that. It’s a good story-telling technique, motivating us to understand what went before.

Aside from the very effective prose, there’s January LaVoy’s exquisite narration, with so many voices that you’d almost swear that this was a full-cast audio. I’ll be looking for more audio books narrated by this voice actor.

To be honest, I picked up this audio book because it was on sale. Now that I’ve listened to it, I would happily pay full price. Pick up a copy or listen to the audio version. If you enjoy Star Trek, you’ll be glad you read Second Self.

Star Wars: The Motivation Problem

Culture, Writing, , , ,

This post contains SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Acolyte

If you’ve listened to “Landbound“, the Doctor Who Short Trip I wrote for Big Finish, you’ll know that it begins with the Third Doctor driving off in a temper from Unit HQ until he finds himself at the seaside in Whitby. In my first draft, the Doctor was simply having a bad day and was fed up with the Brigadier and his rules and regulations. Ian Atkins, my editor, suggested making the reason for the Doctor’s anger clearer by setting the opening right after the TV episode, “The Silurians.”

The Silurians, an intelligent, lizard-like race, ruled the world before humans came along. They’ve since been in hibernation. In the episode, they awake and wish to resume their place on the Earth’s surface. The Doctor tries to achieve a peaceful solution only to have his efforts undermined by the Brigadier, who seals them underground and likely kills them all in the process. The Doctor, of course, is furious.

With that change, the reason for the Doctor’s anger in “Landbound” begins becomes much clearer. And clear motivation, I’ve learned, is key to good storytelling.

Which brings us to Star Wars: The Acolyte, the latest Star Wars series from Disney, in which very few character motivations are clear. For instance, the Jedi are shocked — shocked! — that the Witches of Brendok are raising two children. I wonder where they thought big witches came from if not little witches. Are the witches inherently evil? Or just different. Or does different equate to evil? Do witches roam the galaxy, turning people into newts? Why is it so very important to the Jedi to remove these children from the witches? Particularly since these not-so-old children are apparently too old to train.

What motivates Torbin, the Jedi who instigated the awful events on Brendok? Why is he so whiny? Why does he want so badly to return to Coruscant? Why does he wear his heart on his sleeve when the mission of the Jedi seems to be to drum emotion out of their students (more on that in my next post)? Why does he wantonly disregard his master? Is he campaigning for Worst Padawan Ever?

There’s a tracker in the show, a diminutive creature with a great sense of smell. He’s not just a dog on two legs, though. He’s quite handy with technology as it turns out, and effectively caused Sol’s ship to crash-land. What’s his story? How does he communicate with people? Why does he do what he does?

In the final episode, Osha and “the Stranger” leave but apparently they simply must leave Mae behind. Why is that? Is the ship not big enough for three? Is it that a Sith can only have one apprentice at a time? Enquiring minds want to know, and it wouldn’t have taken long to explain.

There are other questions, of course, but I won’t list them all. Except to question Jedi Master Vernestra Rwoh, and her desire to hide what’s going on in Acolyte from the Jedi Council.

There are a lot of screen writers out there and by all accounts it’s nearly impossible to get a treatment to the point of actual production. Studios, it seems, have the luxury of selecting from the best of the best. Given that, I’ll end with a final question: why would Disney accept a script in which reasonably clear motivation is so lacking?

What Day is it?

Writing, , ,

It’s Missy’s Day!

Missy was the 12th Doctor’s antagonist, a version of the Master in female form. Played delightfully by Michelle Gomez, Missy could be alternately cold-blooded and playfully witty. She was different from her previous incarnations in that, in her own, stumbling way, she wanted to regain the Doctor’s friendship.

I wrote “Missy’s Day” during COVID lockdown and found it a very welcome diversion and I greatly enjoyed the writing of it. Follow the link to read it. I hope you enjoy it.

Missy’s Day

Being There

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This Summer Will Be Different is a novel by Canadian writer Carley Fortune. More specifically, it’s a romance novel.

As you might know, romance isn’t my go-to genre. I explored romance a bit when I was trying to find myself as a writer. You see, my most popular fan fiction stories were the “mature” ones, the ones where amorous things happened. Was I a budding romance writer? After sampling a few novels in the genre, I decided that no, I wasn’t.

So, with that in mind, why did I choose to read this novel? And why did I enjoy it so much?

It started with an article on the CBC’s website about the author. Specifically, it was about Fortune’s use of setting to put the reader there, so that you see, smell, and feel the emotional reaction of the protagonist to the setting.

This interested me greatly. Even though my current project is a thriller, surely the thrill would only improve to the extent that the reader feels part of the action. If they are there.

The setting for This Summer Will Be Different is alternately Toronto and Prince Edward Island over the course of several years. When we meet PEI for the first time, it is described thusly:

Water glittering like sapphires beneath rust-coloured cliffs. Seaweed lying in knotty nests on a strip of sandy shoreline. A wood-sided restaurant. Stacks of lobster traps. A man in hip waders.

Sea brine filled my nose and the putt-putt of a fishing boat my ears. A salt-kissed breeze sent the skirt of my dress flapping against my calves, and I smiled.

This was protagonist Lucy Ashby’s first impression of PEI, and I think we’ve got pretty much all the senses accounted for. More importantly, you can imagine yourself right there with her. In the story, PEI is more than a place. It’s almost another character, one with the power to calm and heal.

In Toronto, Lucy, the owner of a flower shop, is always working, always micromanaging, always worrying. This contrasts to her time in PEI, where she can stop to breathe in the smells of the ocean and the local flowers and walk barefoot in the red-tinged sand. The contrast between the two settings is very effective.

As for the actual characters in Summer, I found them believable, fleshed-out, and three-dimensional. My only quibble is with Lucy’s love-to-be, who’s maybe too perfect, with his long, wavy hair, blue eyes, muscular, cleft in chin, facial stubble, and did he have washboard abs? Probably.

With Felix and Lucy, it was definitely a case of lust at first sight. But what about later? Their relationship has ups and downs and it feels believable. They both grow and change, but Lucy has the most growing up to do. In particular, she needs to work out how to let go, how to trust, and how to understand what she really wants from life.

A romance novel needs to be quite sensual, not just in terms of sex, but in the way it fills the senses. The smell of a place. The taste of the food. The sound of the surroundings. The pace is more leisurely and there’s space for a lot of description and internal monologue. As I mentioned, my current project is a thriller, a novel called A Familiar Voice. For a thriller, the pace is faster, and too much lingering, too much descriptive prose runs the risk of the reader losing interest.

It’s going to be interesting to find the right balance. I do want the novel to have a palpable sense of place, just as long as I can keep everyone interested in reading to find out what happens next.

I’m glad I read This Summer Will Be Different and encourage other writers to leave your comfort zone and treat your senses with this novel.

Remember Me?

Culture, Writing, ,

If you remember my short story collection, Something Special, then you might remember a story therein called “Remember Me?” It was one of my favourites.

The story concerns Will Fallon, a man muddling his way through life, and his encounter with Susan Follows, a woman who claims she can travel between worlds. Susan wants to take Will’s cat away.

Puzzled at his lack of success with relationships, Will isn’t quick to trust. “Remember Me?” is really about him learning to open up to people and to the wonders in our every day lives.

I first envisioned “Remember Me?” as a Doctor Who story from the point of view of a companion who gets left behind. But that was just the begining. I wanted to do more with the story, take it in a different direction.

The Something Special version of the story is set in Kingston, Ontario. When TT Productions 23 agreed to produce an audio version, I moved the setting to London, UK, and Will meets Susan in Kensington Park near the statue of Peter Pan, a location that I adore.

The audio version is otherwise nearly identical to the original, with the exception of an opening scene that I added to set the stage for what was to come.

Abi Louise, TT Producer and jack-of-all-trades extraordinaire, assembled a small but stellar cast, including Connor Sumner, Vanessa McAuley, and Ellaika Villegas. They nailed their lines on the first take. As is often the case, the actors breathed new life into the story, in ways that I found surprisingly touching. I mean, considering that I wrote the thing.

I hope you give the audio a listen and if you like it, please tell your friends. If you’d like to learn what happens next, there’s a sequel to “Remember Me?” in my second collection, The Woman in Red.

Something Special audio on YouTube

Something Special and The Woman in Red are available at your regional Amazon store. Go to the store and search for “Selim Ulug.”

The Perils of Writing Doctor Who

Writing

Some things are not meant for the faint of heart. Writing Doctor Who is one of them.

Consider why you’re writing Doctor Who in the first place. We’re in the 21st century and you’re writing Doctor Who because the show is very successful. In fact, it has sixty years of history. Sixty years. There have been TV episodes, novels, comics, not to mention audio plays and books from Big Finish and the BBC. Even through the wilderness years, after the show was cancelled, there were many stories, including the TV movie. That’s a lot of content.

How does one get one’s head around it all? Short answer: you can’t.

How much of that content is canon? What is canon, anyway? The answer to that depends on who you are writing for. In all cases, the TV episodes are canon (mostly). Depending on the TV showrunner, some Big Finish might be canon. If you’re writing for Big Finish, previous Big Finish will be canon. I’ve always preferred the TARDIS wiki’s approach. For them, the question is meaningless. There is no canon. I mean, just think about it. We’re talking, after all, about a show in which time can be rewritten and the entire universe can be rebooted.

Let’s say you’ve got your head around all of that, and you’ve written a story that’s wonderful. Perfect. It has thrills. It has chills. It has humour and pathos and tragedy all rolled into one. And it’s published. That’s where Doctor Who fandom, bless their collective hearts, come in. I will always be grateful that my Big Finish stories were greeted with mostly positive comments. But whenever you put your writing out there, you’re taking a risk. Fans might love it. They might hate it. They might say, “meh.” Some might accuse you of ruining Doctor Who, or ruining their childhood, or being “woke” (heaven forbid). You just don’t know. I don’t have an answer for how you prepare yourself, except that, if you truly believe in what you’ve written, then the rest will fall into place.

It might sound as if I’m being negative, and I don’t mean to be. But I do want to be realistic. Being asked to write Doctor Who is a huge thrill. You might even say it’s the trip of a lifetime. I humbly suggest that, if you’re given the chance, you buckle in and enjoy the ride.

But what, you might wonder, is the worst thing about writing Doctor Who? Easy: it’s addictive. Despite all of the above, you never want to stop.

The Tinselator – The Complete Tale

Writing, ,

Some time ago, I posted a partial version of my Christmas tale, The Tinselator, to this site. What follows is the complete story as it appears in my collection, The Woman in Red. My way of wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

At our house, to add tinsel to a Christmas tree is to tinselate the tree. And from this came the following Christmas fantasy. In answer to the obvious question, yes, of course Santa’s real. Santa Claus is the manifestation of our collective love of children. How much more real does it get?

It was the steady beat that woke her.

Dum … dum … dum … dum….

Kaylee sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. With the night light on her bedside table, she could make out the clock on her wall. Five minutes after twelve. After midnight.
It couldn’t be. Could it? Was Santa Claus in the house?

Dum … dum … dum … dum….

It didn’t sound like any Christmas music she’d heard. But Mommy said there were new Christmas songs every year, so … maybe?

Lifting the covers off, she swung her legs round, stood on the hardwood floor, and put on her slippers. The big toe of her left foot wriggled in the open air. Mommy said that maybe she’d get a new pair for Christmas.

As she glanced at her feet, she noticed that her pyjama bottoms had ridden up her calf. Tugging at them, she was surprised that they wouldn’t go any lower. It was the same with the sleeves of her top—they had ridden a couple of inches up her arms. Was she bigger? Or had the pyjamas shrunk since she went to bed? She heard the sound again, and that drove way any thoughts of growing or shrinking.

Dum … dum … dum … dum …

After grabbing Panda, Kaylee stuck her head out in the hallway and listened. There it was again.

Dum … dum … dum … dum …

It was coming from the living room, which was to her left. To her right was Mommy’s room. She should wake Mommy up. Yes, that would be the right thing to do. Except that Kaylee was curious. Very curious. She would tiptoe and be very quiet and just have a peek and then come back and wake up Mommy. If anything was wrong.

Dum … dum … dum … dum….

Peering around the corner, she noted that the living room was dimly illuminated by street lamps through the thin curtains. There was the Christmas tree in the corner, sparse of limb and decoration, but Kaylee loved it. Beneath the tree were a few presents in wrapping paper or stuffed into bags and topped with colourful tissue paper. They’d been there for a few days, and Kaylee knew that the wrapping paper was a patchwork of used wrapping from previous years. To her eyes, that simply made them more beautiful.

The empty stockings were lying on the floor against the outer wall. Santa just fills the stockings, Mommy had told her. Kaylee’s friends had told her that Santa wasn’t real, and she believed them. But she hadn’t told Mommy yet.

Something moved from a dark shadow in the corner of the room. A man! A tall man. He was wearing a black leather jacket, dark pants, and boots. His hair kind of stood up on end and, even though it was dark, he was wearing sunglasses. And he had a really, really big gun.

“You’re not Santa,” Kaylee observed as she stepped into the living room.

The big man swung around and fixed his gaze upon her.

“Correct,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your home has been targeted for tinselation,” he monotoned.

Dum … dum … dum … dum …

“What’s that noise?”

“My gun needs to charge,” said the man as if that was an explanation.

There was silence for a moment while the man and child regarded each other.
With a tilt of his head, the man asked, “What is your name?”

“Kaylee.”

“How old are you, Kaylee?”

“Five.”

After another period of silence during which the man cast his eyes about the room, he said, “You are poor, Kaylee.”

This was a sensitive topic. The kids at school teased Kaylee for all she didn’t have compared to them and their rich families.

“No, we’re not!” she said, stamping her foot on the ground to emphasize the point.

“The curtains have been patched by hand seven times. The furniture is scratched and old, probably purchased second-hand. Your slippers barely fit and one of them has a hole at the toe. This room is tidy, but judging by the amount of dust, your mother doesn’t have time for housework. Likely because she has more than one job. She does this to provide you with what she can. Conclusion, she loves you. You defended your mother by denying that you were poor. Conclusion, you love your mother as well.”

The anger Kaylee felt left her, leaving her teary-eyed. “Mommy does have two jobs. She works at Walmart and Loblaws for lots of hours every day. She tries really hard. And she’s good to me when she’s here. She helps with my homework, takes care of me when I’m sick. My mommy is the best mommy there is. Even if we’re poor.”

“Remember: if you are loved, you are rich by every measure that matters. If a child is not loved, even though their family is wealthy, they are the worst kind of poor.”

Her eyes wide, Kaylee said, “You’re very smart.”

“Of course. I am a tinselator.”

Dum … dum … dum … dum …

This time the sound was followed by a soft chime.

“It is time,” said the man, hefting his gun and pointing it at the tree.

In a quivering voice, Kaylee said, “You—you’re going to shoot the Christmas tree?”

With the ghost of a lopsided smile, the man said, “Trust me.”

Kaylee heard a whoosh, as from a strong breeze, and then a ball of silver emerged from the gun. It slowly rose to just above the top of the tree, then fell onto it, breaking into long silver strands that covered the tree from top to bottom.

The tinsel glowed, even in the dim light. Kaylee felt her face glowing as well. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

The man turned and stepped toward the shadows from which he’d emerged. And then he was gone.

Kaylee was soon nestled back in bed with Panda, her eyes wide with wonder. Sleep seemed a long ways away. Still, she eventually found herself starting to doze. But another sound jolted her awake. It was coming from above. Were those … hooves on the rooftop?

With a yawn, Kaylee thought, How’s a girl supposed to get any sleep around here?

Kaylee sat bolt upright in bed. That wasn’t something she would say. Was it? It was darker than it should be. The nightlight had gone out, she realized. Still, there was just enough light to see that she was no longer wearing her Pokémon pyjamas. Now she was clad in plain green top and bottoms. She felt her hair. It was longer, shoulder length. Hadn’t she had a pixie cut when she was up earlier?

Getting out of bed and standing next to the chest of drawers, Kaylee could see over the top, something she couldn’t do earlier.

But wait. She’d been five years old when the tinselator came. Now she was … eleven. That’s right. She must have been dreaming about when he’d come, and had just now been awakened by some other noise.

Of course, she was a lot older now, and didn’t believe that a magical being had come to decorate the tree. Obviously, it was a man, a normal man, some friend of Mom’s who’d played a trick.

After noticing that the sounds on the roof had stopped, Kaylee felt rather than heard something soft and heavy landing on the floor somewhere in the house.

Once again, she peered out the bedroom door, considered waking her mother, and instead crept towards the living room. It hadn’t changed very much since she was five. Her mother had bought some new curtains. Or rather, she’d bought some material and had fashioned curtains from them. They were still thin, though, and she could easily see the contents of the room from the streetlights shining in.

All was as it should be: sofa, chair, coffee table, the TV and the plant stand. It’s just that there was something there that didn’t belong: a man, dressed in red, with snow white hair and beard, and wearing white gloves. Next to him on the floor was an enormous, bulging sack, standing about five feet high, tied-off at the top with rope.

The man was snuffling and scratching his head as he looked at a long piece of paper.

“You’re not Santa Claus,” Kaylee pronounced.

The man started, dropped the paper, and stood up. “I’m not?” he said.

“No. You’re not Santa Claus because there’s no such person.” Kaylee said as she crossed her arms.

The man looked down, scratched his head again, and said, “That’s funny. That’s very funny. Because I’m quite sure that I was Santa Claus when I left the North Pole. Yes, I definitely remember Mrs. Claus fastening the top button of my coat before I left. She said, ‘Now then Santa, you’ll be just fine without me. After all, you’ve been doing this for over 2,000 years.’ So, you see, I must be Santa Claus. The problem is, even though I have been doing this a very long time, things always change. People move around, new children are born, other children grow too old for my toys, it all becomes such a muddle.”

His eyes began to tear up and he withdrew a handkerchief and gave his nose a loud blow.
Finding that she was starting to feel sad for the man, Kaylee spoke in a softer voice. “But how do I know that you’re Santa? You could be anyone in a red suit with a big sack.”

Now the man’s eyes began to twinkle. “Oh, but this isn’t just any old sack. Come here and I’ll give you a peek inside.”

After untying the rope, the man gave the sack a tug with both hands, opening the top to its full width. Then he tilted the sack a bit so that Kaylee, who’d cautiously approached, could peer inside.

The inside of the sack seemed endless, filled with packages wrapped in all patterns and colours of paper, and tied with ribbon. Wide-eyed, Kaylee looked up at the man, who was smiling now, and then back into the depths of the sack. The longer she looked, the deeper it seemed, going far past the living room floor, past the ground underneath the basement, and much further down than that.

Kaylee staggered backward and sat on the chair. She had to swallow before she could speak as her mouth had become very dry. “You—you are Santa Claus.”

“Yes, my dear, I believe that I am. And you are Kaylee, are you not?”

Kaylee nodded, not surprised, after what she’d just seen, that he knew her name. Eyes still wide, she regarded Santa as he sat upon the sofa and picked up the paper he’d dropped, turning it one way, then another, until, with a sigh, he set it on the coffee table.
“It’s no good,” he said, voice heavy with defeat. “Mrs. Claus always does the organizing. She knows which houses to visit in which order and what presents to leave. She even wrote it down for me. But it’s beyond me. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Why couldn’t she come with you?” said Kaylee.

“Well, it’s her sister,” said Santa. “She’s the North Star, you know. She’s been feeling a bit dull, and Mrs. Claus has gone to help her to feel brighter.” Santa sighed again.

Curious, Kaylee moved to the sofa and picked up the instructions. They were written upon a sheet of legal-size paper with red ink. But the language wasn’t English. In fact, it wasn’t any language at all as far as Kaylee could tell. It was all symbols: stars, triangles, rectangles with inner circles and stars of various sizes within the circles. To make things worse, the symbols were in motion, slowly navigating across the width and length of the page. Some faded into nothing while others slowly appeared. She had no idea what to make of it.

Except … except that the longer Kaylee looked at the page, the more she got the feeling that the symbols were speaking to her. Singing to her in fact, as she began to hear a soft melody that spoke to her of hope and love and peace.

And now she understood. It all made perfect sense.

“Don’t worry, Santa,” said Kaylee. “I can help you. I understand exactly what you need to do.”
“Do you? Do you really? Oh, Kaylee, that’s wonderful. Why, that’s the best Christmas gift I could have asked for. Would you be able to come with me, do you think, while I do my rounds? You’ll be perfectly safe, and it will take no time at all.”

“No time to visit every house where they celebrate Christmas?” Kaylee couldn’t help the skepticism in her voice.

“Exactly. Because we’ll be out of time, you see. What I mean to say is, we won’t be running out of time, we’ll literally be outside of time so that, on Earth, no time will have passed at all.”
This was almost too much for Kaylee. So much of what she believed about the world had changed in just a few minutes. But what choice was there? If she didn’t help, children all over the world would wake up disappointed. She’d watched a movie with her best friend Sheila where one of the characters said, “There’s no decision to make.” Right now, she realized, there really wasn’t.

“Yes, I’ll come with you. Um … will we be starting off here?”

Santa stood and let out a loud “Ho ho ho! Of course we will. Now tell me, what am I to leave for you this year?”

Picking up the list, Kaylee told him. Then, after Santa had filled her stocking, they and the sack full of gifts were on the roof of her house. Santa introduced her to each of the reindeer. Some licked her hand, others nuzzled their head against her. Finally, after mounting the sleigh, they were on their way. And at each stop, Kaylee told Santa what gifts he was to leave and where the next stop was.

Kaylee didn’t remember coming back home. But she must have done, because the next thing she knew her mother was at the door telling her to “rise and shine.” It was Christmas morning.
That was unusual. Kaylee was always the first one awake on Christmas, and would run into her mother’s bedroom and climb into her bed, poking at her mother until she let Kaylee lead her by the hand to the living room and the Christmas tree.

It almost wasn’t a surprise to see that things had changed again. She was now wearing a red tank top and white bottoms dotted with red hearts. And she was taller yet again. And there were other changes.

But of course. She was eighteen, not eleven. She’d been dreaming, remembering dreams she’d had when she was younger.

After the presents were opened and as they were finishing their breakfast of pancakes and sausages, Kaylee said, “Do you remember when we woke up on Christmas and the tree had been decorated with tinsel?”

“Yes, of course I do,” said her mother. “What a nice surprise that was. You’d brought some tinsel home from school and put it on the tree while I was asleep.”

“Um, no, that’s not what happened. You’d had a boyfriend staying over, right? And he put tinsel on the tree.”

Her mother nearly choked on her pancake. “Not quite, Sweetie. The very first time I had someone stay over was when you were sixteen.”

Kaylee set down her fork. “Are you sure?”

With a smile, her mother said, “Do you think I’d forget something like that? No, Dear, the first time was when you were sixteen.”

“But then … who put tinsel on the tree?”

“It wasn’t you?” said her mother.

“No. He called himself—“ Kaylee cut herself off.

“What was that name you made up?” her mother said. “It was really cute. Oh yes, you called him the Tinselator.”

Kaylee didn’t answer. Instead, she straightened and looked around her. “Do you hear that?” Kaylee said. “That music? I’ve heard it before.”

After a moment of silence her mother shook her head. “No, Dear, I don’t hear a thing.”

“I’ll be right back,” said Kaylee, and set off to follow the sound. It became clearer and more pronounced as she left the kitchen and approached the living room. Turning her head slowly to the left and right, she followed the faint music to the Christmas tree. She hadn’t noticed before, but there was a red envelope on the wall-facing side of the tree. The music was louder now. Taking the envelope, she opened it and withdrew a white sheet of paper with red markings.
That’s when she called for her mother with a choked scream.

Her mother arrived in seconds. Kaylee held up the page for her to see. It was a legal-size sheet of paper, with red symbols drawn upon it. Symbols which moved about the page on their own volition.

Her mother’s jaw dropped. “What is this? How are you doing this?”

“It’s not me,” said Kaylee.

They both looked at the paper for a few seconds, until the symbols began to fade. They were replaced with red letters that spelled: “Merry Christmas, Kaylee, from Santa and my dear friend, the Tinselator.” A few seconds later, the letters disappeared, leaving Kaylee with a blank page.

“What does this mean?” her mother whispered.

Kaylee smiled and reached to give her mother a tight embrace. With her head resting on her mother’s shoulder, Kaylee said, “It was real. They’re real. The Tinselator and Santa Claus. I thought they were just dreams. Oh, thank you Santa. Best. Gift. Ever.”