Another scented candle, another box of biscuits. Or a cosy mystery where she is the one who solves the crime, and the whole family is in it.
Buying for a mother-in-law is a quiet test. Too practical and it looks like an afterthought; too personal and it can feel like you are trying too hard. Many people give up and go halves on flowers with their partner.
A Novellum book lands in the right place. Ask your partner for a few stories: her job, her garden, her village, the family holiday that went wrong, the thing she is famous for at Christmas. Pick up to two genres (a cosy mystery is a favourite with mothers-in-law who never miss a detective drama; comedy suits the one with the best one-liners) and we write a whole novel with her as the heroine.
It costs from $2.99 and arrives by email on the day you choose, with a message from both of you. Add the narrated audiobook, or print the PDF and wrap it.
This is how one of our books begins. The brief: Brenda Halloran, 66, a retired florist in Harrogate who has won the village flower show's dahlia prize nine years running, finds every bloom in her greenhouse cut the night before the show and sets out, with her sharp tongue and her long-suffering son-in-law, to unmask the culprit before the judging at eleven (mystery and comedy). The hero is invented.
Brenda Halloran refused to accept defeat from a pair of secateurs. She stood in the middle of her greenhouse in a dressing gown that had once been yellow and was now the colour of beeswax, hands on hips, and regarded the scene like a captain surveying the wreckage of her ship. Every dahlia pot that had been a riot of buds last evening showed only cruel short stumps this morning. The air was full of a damp, pungent sweetness and the metallic tang of cut stems. Brenda smelled grief and theft and a hint of someone else's perfume that was too floral for this weather.
"Do not tell me it was deer," she said. Nobody answered because the only other person present was Simon, her son-in-law, perched awkwardly on the potting bench with his trousers covered in peat. Simon was fifty and looked perpetually surprised by life. He chewed on the end of a pen as if it were an emergency biscuit.
A real opening Novellum wrote for an example brief, quoted unedited. Your book starts from your brief, and you read its page one free before you pay.
| Short novel, about 30,000 words | $2.99 |
| Short novel with its narrated audiobook | $7.99 |
| Medium novel, about 60,000 words | $4.99 |
| Full novel, about 95,000 words | $6.99 |
| Bundle: three Medium books, one now and two codes to give later | $13.99 |
Prices in US dollars, the same everywhere. You pay only after you have read page one.
Yes, if you can. They know the stories; you can add the bits she tells about them. Send it from both of you.
Plenty of people write themselves in as the hapless son-in-law or the helpful daughter-in-law. It is a good way to show you can laugh at yourself.
Gift books are warm by default. Keep the brief kind, leave out family sore points, and read page one free before you pay.
Cards go out at 13:00 UTC, which is 1pm in the UK. For a morning surprise, schedule it for Christmas Eve.
The Short is about 30,000 words, an afternoon or two. The Full, about 95,000 words, is the length of a typical paperback.
Yes. It is written by AI for one reader and says so on its final page.
Questions? Write to us. Novellum books are written by AI, for one reader only.