The Christmas Rat

Robert, from Newark, NJ writes, “I read that one of your favorite books is that book, A Christ­mas Car­ol. Did you ever write a Christ­mas book?”

I did.

Some years ago, I was asked to con­tribute a short sto­ry to a col­lec­tion. I agreed and set about to do as asked. The short sto­ry how­ev­er grew into some­thing more, the more being a short nov­el titled The Christ­mas Rat.

I am, in many respects, a sen­ti­men­tal per­son. Christ­mas and A Christ­mas Car­ol brings it out in me. I read Dick­ens’ clas­sic every year. When I wrote The Christ­mas Rat, I very much want­ed to com­pose a tale of Christ­mas, but in a dif­fer­ent way. The result is a some­what eerie, maybe even a lit­tle creepy, sto­ry which nonethe­less evokes Christmas.

It is based on a man I once met, an insect and ver­min exter­mi­na­tor. I asked him how he got into his line of work. He explained that he had been a sol­dier in Viet­nam, and had, so he said, been so con­di­tioned to kill, that he feared what he would do when he stopped being a sol­dier, “unless I found a legal way to keep killing.” If that seems like an unlike­ly inspi­ra­tion for a Christ­mas sto­ry, I am will­ing to agree, but there it is.

I’m told The Christ­mas Rat works well, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those upper mid­dle class kids who run from sentimentality—but who, all the same, love a tale of Christmas.