Merry Hiss-Mas
Merry Hiss-Mas
Sammy the Snake loves the snow. All he wants to do at Christmas time is ski, sledge and build snowmen. Unfortunately, it’s not easy for a cold-blooded reptile. What will it take to make his Christmas wish come true?
A delightful rhyming picture book for Christmas time
Take a look at the first few pages below
MH-p1
MH-p2
MH-p3
MH-p4
The inspiration for Merry Hiss-Mas, like most of Steve’s ideas, came from his daughter. Asked to complete a Christmas-themed A to Z by her Brownies troop, she got stuck on “S”. Skipping past obvious choices like snow, Santa, stockings, she settled on “snake”. This inspired Steve to write a story about a Christmas-loving snake, making sure that the story also included as many other Christmassy words beginning with S as possible.
The book was originally written in 2020, and entered into a workplace contest for “The Best Homemade Christmas Thing”. It won one of the top prizes.
In late 2022, Steve re-wrote and re-illustrated the story from scratch, aiming to self-publish the result within 30 days. You can see the results on the Youtube playlist linked below. Although a nasty bout of coivd prevented him from making the 30 days deadline, the book was published in time for Christmas and briefly ranked #1 in Amazon’s “Children’s Christmas eBooks” category.
