Two Naperville authors with stories in the anthology “Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Christmas” are set to host a book talk and signing at Anderson’s Bookshop this Sunday. The authors, Carmela Martino and Julie Phend, have been featured in the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series before.
“They get thousands of submissions. And so it’s not that easy to be accepted,” Phend, a retired Naperville middle school teacher now based in Virginia, said. “It really is an exciting thing to write for them.”
“Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Christmas” features 101 holiday-themed stories based on real life events from the authors’ lives.
Phend’s story for this year is called “Home for the Holidays” and is a story about one holiday season in 1977 when she was traveling to see family and everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong.
“My daughter got sick and she was a baby,” Phend said. “She threw up on the plane. There was a snowstorm in Chicago. The plane got diverted. … We missed our connecting flight. We had this sick baby. It just went on and on.”
That experience was unpleasant to say the least. Yet, Phend said it was also unforgettable.
“It’s the kind of story you tell over and over again,” Phend said. “And so since you tell it, you might as well write it down.”
Martino’s story for this year, titled “Blessing in Disguise,” is based on a more recent experience: waking up on Christmas Day last year and realizing her engagement ring was missing.
“Part of the story about the ring is the fact that I’m a very, very frugal person,” Martino said.
When she picked out her engagement ring years ago, she intentionally chose a ring with a small diamond. Martino said her partner was “sweet enough” to ask her if she wanted a ring that was a little bit bigger, but the ring Martino ultimately settled for was only slightly bigger than the one she originally picked out.
“After we got engaged and I had the ring, I realized everybody else has a bigger diamond,” Martino said, which she noted gave her a bit of “diamond envy.”
“My husband, bless his heart, I expressed that to him and he’s like ‘Well, we can get you a bigger diamond,’” she said. “And I’m like ‘No, this is the diamond we picked out together.’”
So when Martino realized that her ring was missing, it helped her find a new sense of appreciation and gratitude not only for the ring itself, but all the memories that accompanied it.
Both Phend and Martino, who have known each other for years, picked up writing after first pursuing other careers. Phend spent nearly 20 years teaching at Lincoln Junior High School. She retired in 2005 and decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer after that.
The first book she wrote, called “D-Day and Beyond: A True Story of Escape and POW Survival” was based on the story of Stanley Edwards, a World War II veteran who was a pilot on D-Day. Edwards was dropping paratroopers into Normandy when his plane was shot down.
“It’s a story of how he survived,” Phend, who wrote the story with Edwards, said. “And I met him at Lincoln when he came to talk to our students about World War II, so that’s kind of how I got started.”
Martino’s career started out in the computer science industry. She worked in the field of data processing for about five years before switching to write course materials teaching people how to use computers.
“That reminded me how much I love to write,” Martino said.
That led her to being a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines for many years, eventually earning a master’s degree in fine arts. She taught writing classes for 20 years at the College of DuPage.
Martino also has a few books published, including one called “Rosa, Sola,” based off of a moment in her childhood, when her mother gave birth to a stillborn baby boy and nearly died when Martino was 10.
Martino and Phend’s Prior Chicken Soup for the Soul Stories
This is the second time Phend has been featured in the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series. Her first piece was published in 2023 for “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miracles and the Unexplained.”
That story was based off of a bad car accident she got into in Virginia in 2019. In one moment, Phend was exiting a highway. The next moment, she heard a loud bang. Another vehicle struck her and she was flying across multiple lanes of traffic.
“I really thought I was going to die and I heard this voice and it said, ‘Just keep steering.’ And so I did.” Phend said.
As she kept turning her wheel, Phend was able to land her car right next to a concrete barrier on the opposite side of the highway. A man helped her out of car and told her “I’m really glad you’re alright, but I gotta tell you, that was a heck of a piece of driving you did.”
For Martino, this will be her third time appearing in a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” collection. The first time she appeared in “Chicken Soup for the Soul” was in 2008 for a poem she wrote for a collection geared towards teens.
Last year, her story about how her ‘Good Things Jar’ helped her navigate the pandemic was included in the “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tales of Christmas” anthology.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a ‘Good Things Jar.’ You keep a jar where you write a note every time something good happens, and you just write a note and put it in the jar,” Martino said. “And by the end of the year, you collect these notes and it’s a fun way to watch for the good in your life.”
But during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, she thought she would never add anything to the jar ever again.
“Having that jar actually helped me get through that difficult time that I was depressed and helped me to see that there were good things happening to me despite the lockdown and not being able to visit family,” Martino said.
Phend and Martino will celebrate the release of “Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Christmas” at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 23 at Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville. Tickets to the event can be found online through Anderson’s website. Pre-registration is required.
cstein@chicagotribune.com
