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We’re thrilled to celebrate the release day party for “North Pole
Reform School”, a young adult Christmas novel, today!
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Mistletoe Bell hates Christmas. So would you
if you had a name like hers. Her Christmas-mad parents make the festive season
last all year, and with another Christmas looming, Mis doesn’t think she can
take any more. After her carelessness causes an accident at school, it seems
like things can’t get any worse.
Then she wakes up to find The Ghost of
Christmases Ruined in her bedroom.
She is taken to the North Pole, to a
reform school run by elves determined to make her love Christmas. Stuck in a
misfit group of fellow Christmas-haters with a motley crew of the weird and
even weirder, watched over by elves day and night, she doesn’t expect to meet
cute and funny Luke, who is hiding a vulnerable side beneath his sarcastic
exterior. She doesn’t expect to fall in love with him.
But all is not as it should be at the
North Pole. A certain Mr Claus is making the elves’ lives a misery, and pretty
soon Mistletoe and Luke are doing more than just learning to like Christmas.
A YA romantic comedy in which Santa is
the bad guy, teaching reindeer to fly is on the curriculum, and zombies have a
fondness for Christmas music.
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Suitable for older teens and upwards
due to bad language.
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G48C42E
Excerpt
Two small people.
Two… elves?
No, they can’t be elves just because they’re small and
dainty and wearing red and green outfits. And they have pointy ears. A little
bit like Luke’s, actually.
“Good morning, everyone,” the female one says way too
cheerfully. “What a lovely day. It’s so nice to meet you all. I am Elf Tinsel,
and this is my husband, Elf Navidad.”
“Hello.” Elf Navidad waves enthusiastically. “Remember,
there’s no point in closing the stable door if the horse is wearing
spectacles.”
“Welcome to North Pole Reform School. Now, I’m sure you’re
all wondering what’s going on here, and we have come to tell you. If you’ll
just… wait…” She consults a clipboard in her arms. “There’s one missing, Navi.
Have any of you seen another one?”
“Another one of what?” Luke asks.
“One of you,” Tinsel says. She counts us with a pen. “Yes,
there are only four. There are supposed to be five. Have any of you seen the
other one?”
We all shake our heads in bewilderment.
“Go and see if you can rouse him would you, Navi dear?”
Navidad walks over to one of the other doors and goes
inside.
“Now, the rest of you, we’ve brought some clothes for you to
wear, and we’ll need you to put them on before we can get started, and—”
Navidad comes back out. “Bit of a problem, Tinsel. He
appears to think he’s dead.” He says it in what is supposed to be a whisper to
his wife but we can all hear him.
“You know we can hear you, right?” Luke asks.
Navidad turns to him. “Then you won’t mind helping. Be a pal
and go and convince the little boy in there that he isn’t dead.”
Luke shrugs. “Maybe he is dead. Maybe we all are.”
“You’re not dead,” Tinsel says. “None of you are dead. As I
was trying to get to, this is the North Pole Reform School. You’re in Santa’s
Village at the North Pole, and you’re all here to learn a very important
lesson. But we can’t start without everyone being here.”
Joe lets out a laugh. “Yeah, right.”
Luke rolls his eyes.
“What, Elf Boy? Why’d you have ears like theirs? Why do you
have elf ears? Something you want to tell us?” Joe questions Luke.
“No, okay?” Luke frantically tries to smooth his hair over
his ears again. “No, I have nothing to tell anyone. Nothing.”
“I think you’re—” Joe starts.
“Please don’t fight,” Tinsel interrupts. “I will explain
everything just as soon as I sort the fifth student out. All stay here,
please.”
Tinsel walks over and goes into the room Navidad just came
out of. We all go over to crowd around the door and look in. Even Duck Lady has
got off the sofa and joined us.
The small room looks the same as the one I woke up in. A
small window on one wall, a couple of feet of space between that and the bed.
In the corner of this room is a boy, cowering on the floor, the sheet from the
bed wrapped around himself and clutched to his chest. Tinsel is crouched in
front of him, talking gently. We hear her telling him he is safe and nothing
bad will happen to him.
He doesn’t look like he believes her.
“Let me help,” Duck Lady says and pushes herself into the
room with the boy and the elf.
Even as I think it, I can’t believe I’m taking this
seriously. Elves don’t exist. Santa and his village in the North Pole don’t
exist. And yet here I am, watching an elf try to cajole a little boy into
believing he isn’t dead.
Luke is squashed in the doorway next to me and I can’t help
but look up at him. He really does have the same ears as Tinsel and Navidad. He
must sense me looking because he glances down and winks at me. I can’t help but
smile back.
Now Duck Lady is crouched in front of the boy too, and
Tinsel seems to have taken a step back. Maybe Duck Lady has gone to tell him
he’s being watched by ducks; no doubt that will make him feel better.
“Don’t crowd around, please.” Tinsel comes over and starts
to herd Joe, Luke, and me out of the doorway. “Go and wait on the sofas—we’ll
be out in a minute.”
She eventually pushes us back far enough that she can shut
the door in our faces.
“Well, that was rude,” Joe says. “I was only trying to
help.”
“No, you were all gawking,” Navidad says. “Not everyone
copes as well as you apparently have. Never mind; if life gives you lemons, ask
the fish for oranges instead.”
“Yeah, well not everyone is sane,” says Luke.
“So, be straight with us, little elf man.” Joe turns to
Navidad. “What’s going on here? We in some kind of weird dream or mad
scientist’s experiment or what?”
“Nothing like that,” he says. “We’ll explain everything when
Tinsel gets back with the boy.”
“Okay, but where are we really?” I ask him. “I mean, I know
we’re not in the North Pole, so where are we? Why have you two put so much
effort into your elf costumes? We all know you’re not really elves, so why not
just stick on a pair of pointy shoes and be done with it?”
“Wrong on both counts,” he says. “We are in the North Pole
and we really are elves.”
“That’s impossible,” I say. “Elves don’t exist, and if we
were in the North Pole then we would be dead by now. If the temperatures hadn’t
killed us then the polar bears would have.”
“We’ll explain everything in a minute,” Navidad says.
“Hey, maybe you can tell me, little elf man,” Joe says to
Navidad again, “what’s white and round?”
Luke and I groan simultaneously.
Navidad thinks it over. “A snowball.”
“Wrong,” Joe says happily. “A red cube.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, well not everyone is sane,” Luke repeats.
The door opens and Tinsel comes out, closely followed by Duck
Lady and the dead boy.
She goes to stand next to Navidad again. “Now that we’re all
here, the most important thing is to get dressed.”
“The most important thing is for you to tell us what the
hell is going on here,” Luke says.
“All in good time,” she says. “Navi has arranged some
clothes for you. These will be your outfits for the duration of your stay here.
Please take them and go back to your rooms to change. Once you have your
clothes on, come back out here and we’ll tell you everything.”
“Why not just tell us now?”
“It’s important for you to be dressed in your outfits
first.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Not everything has to make sense at first glance,” Navidad
says. “A picture is worth two camels on a roundabout.”
Luke rolls his eyes.
“Now, please come and take your outfits from Navi. The
sooner you do so, the sooner we can answer all your questions.”
Duck Lady goes up to take her outfit and the little boy
follows.
I glance at Luke and he smiles at me. “It can’t be any worse
than thermal long johns, right?”
We go and get our outfits too, and I go back to my room to
change.
Luke was wrong, though. It can be worse than thermal long
johns, and it is. Much worse.
They’ve given me an elf outfit.
About the Author
Jaimie is a 28-year-old English-sounding Welsh
girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys
writing, gardening, drinking tea and watching horror movies. She hates spiders
and cheese & onion crisps.
She has been writing for years, but
has never before plucked up the courage to tell people.
She is the author of chick-lit romantic
comedy Kismetology and YA romantic comedies Afterlife Academy, Not Pretty
Enough, and North Pole Reform School.
Links
Website: http://www.jaimieadmans.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/be_the_spark
Facebook: http://facebook.com/jaimieadmansbooks
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