By Peggy Sturdivant

“Everything hurts,” is what the illustrator Jan Harvey-Smith was saying as I let her hide her cold-ravaged face behind the seasonal middle children’s book “Frankenstein Meets Santa” in the accompanying photo. Both parents of identical sets of twins they have teamed to create a book for the holidays.

As in the photo M.J. McDermott is the more public face, generally in front of weather graphics as the morning meteorologist for Q13. Jan Harvey-Smith is mostly behind the scenes as Master Scenic Artist for Pacific Northwest Ballet, especially busy this fall with an entirely new set for the annual production of The Nutcracker.

Before Jan dragged her less-than-well self from Whittier Heights to our meeting at Java Bean I asked M.J., why take on the additional work of writing and self-publishing a book? Her reply, “What are you supposed to do when you still have your health?” (Which struck me as slightly ironic once Jan made a brief appearance).

If you know M.J. from around Crown Hill or Ballard then you know her off-screen energy level is equally high. She bubbles with the creative juices that led her into majors in drama, atmospheric sciences, and fuels her love of writing. She calls it “writing in the cracks,” between work and family.

McDermott finds that writing, which has included a novel, The Improv, this work and a forthcoming A-B-C picture on weather from Blue Apple Books, is what she finds most fulfilling. “I just feel better,” she said.

“Frankenstein Meets Santa” was a story in a drawer that she decided she wanted to self-publish while waiting for the A-B-C book. She met Jan through her racquetball partner (who she’d met through a PEPS group). Once they started working together Jan read through the manuscript and made doodles to get a sense of how she would do illustrations. M.J. loved Jan’s vision from the very first elf.

Illustration seems too light a word for the black-and-ink sketches that open each chapter. The drawings suggest a fantasy that is more black licorice than cotton candy. Some consider Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus”” to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction, for others its genre is closer to horror.

McDermott recalls finishing Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and pondering the seeming oddness of the monster going to the North Pole to end his life. Harvey-Smith’s drawings keep that brooding tone even as McDermott leads her version of the monster to redemption. The 2015 author and illustrator of this reimagining consider their product to be more Christmas fable, “for middle readers and the young at heart.”

Frankenstein’s monster as a “Modern Prometheus” has probably lost its original meaning over the last two centuries. In 1818 a reference to Greek mythology still had relevance. Prometheus was a Titan who supposedly stole fire and then gave the gift of fire to mankind. (It didn’t end well for him). Shelley was twenty when the book was published; how many twenty-year-olds even know Greek mythology today? Nike is a brand, not a winged goddess. Frankenstein is a Halloween costume.

Available since the end of October “Frankenstein Meets Santa” will only be available for sale through December 24, 2015. The book is online and for sale at Clover on Ballard Avenue.

Between work and families with twins not everyone would want to fill the cracks with more work; for McDermott and Harvey-Smith it’s evidently essential. And they are as unstoppable as Christmas carols before Thanksgiving, but with much, much fresher material.