Larry Benjamin. Wordsmith. Writer. Author.

Our Christmas tree isn’t just a Christmas decoration—it is a visual history. It tells a story, the story of me, the story of us, the story of our family. The idea of Christmas tree as visual history it predates Stanley. My story began before him but, often, I think his story began with me . I hang simple papier mâché ornaments from IKEA which I bought back when I was starting out and money was tight. While moving forward is important, I keep them and hang them each year to remind myself of where I came from, of how far I have come. There is an ornament an ex-boyfriend bought at a thrift store our first Christmas together. It had been his first real Christmas. I keep it to remind me of the joy that first Christmas, of how much we had loved each other, of how hurt I was when things fell apart but mostly to remind myself that I survived, moved on; I keep it to remind myself that broken hearts mend. There’s an ornament from Channing’s, my first dog’s Christmas. Each year, I bought an ...

My new short story, “The Christmas Present,” is now available as an individual eBook for just $0.99. All proceeds from the sale of this story go to benefit The Trevor Project . “The Christmas Present” is part of a holiday anthology which brings together 24 authors from the UK, the USA, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.   When my publisher and friend, Debbie McGowan, first approached me about joining the project, I knew I wanted mine to be a story of hope, because so many of our youth, so many of the youth The Trevor Project works to support, feel they are without hope. And I knew it would be set at Christmas, the season of hope. When I was a kid, hope was what got me through. But for me the season of hope was always in September. At the start of each new school year, I would be filled with hope: the hope that the bullying would stop, the hope that this year I would make a friend, the hope that this year the boy I liked would like me back. I remember during the last president...

Probably not many people know this but short stories were my first love. I cut my teeth, so to speak, on short stories. My second book, Damaged Angels , a collection of short stories, was actually the first book I wrote. But I was told more than once that I needed to publish a novel before I could publish short stories. At any rate, this year I’m returning to short stories—at least for a while. Writing novels is great because you have a longer time frame— What Binds Us spans a decade and Unbroken unfolds over 40 years—so you have time to develop your characters, to let readers watch them change and grow.   But I wanted to go back to short form fiction which has a much smaller time period.    My newest story is the holiday themed, “The Christmas Present,” which is one of 24 stories from the Beaten Track Publishing’s holiday anthology, Boughs of Evergreen . The story spans about two weeks in the life of a gay teenage who is neglected, marginalized, without hope u...