Jeannie Moon: Traditions

I’ve always liked to bake and I tend to do it when I’m at my most stressed out.  The control I exert over flour and sugar and butter will calm me in ways nothing else can.  I don’t know what it is exactly, but there’s something very Zen about cookie dough.

My Aunt Catherine was a baker as well.  At the holidays there were dozens of treats in her house, many of them traditional Italian cookies.  Struffoli, anise drops, and pizzelle were my favorites and when I was writing my Christmas novella, This Christmas, my heroine Sabrina’s mother, Enza, also infused their home with Italian Christmas treats. 

Over the past few years, I’ve been learning the art behind some of the Italian cookies my aunt used to bake.  First, I bought a pizzelle iron.  It took quite a number of batches to get the temperature and batter consistency correct, but my daughters and I finally did it.  This year I conquered anise cookies. Next year I think the Struffoli, or honey balls, will be next.  Each time something new is brought into my baking repertoire, I not only feel wonderfully happy, but I feel like I’ve kept a piece of my heritage, which is becoming diluted as years pass, from slipping away.

It was important to me to keep these Christmas traditions alive for myself and for my family.  We have our own traditions, like Christmas Day brunch and cinnamon rolls on holiday mornings, but I’ve been feeling the need to reconnect with different parts of my heritage. 

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. Maybe it’s because the people who introduced me to these traditions are no longer around and I want to keep them with me.  Whatever it is, Christmas has become a little warmer, and less about things, since I started introducing these treats.

I don’t fully understand it, but maybe there really is magic in cookie dough.

Jean­nie Moon has always been a roman­tic. When she’s not spin­ning tales of her own, Jean­nie works as a school librar­ian, thank­ful she has a job that allows her to immerse her­self in books and call it work. Mar­ried to her high school sweet­heart, Jean­nie has three kids, three lov­able dogs and lives in her hometown on Long Island, NY. If she’s more than ten miles away from salt water for any longer than a week, she gets twitchy.  Visit Jeannie’s web­site at www.jeanniemoon.com

Lilian Darcy: Great Holiday Reads

I’m writing this while most Americans are sitting down to their Thanksgiving dinner. We had ours last night. Yes, we live in Australia where Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated, but my husband is American, so we do celebrate it in our family.

We had a big, golden, crispy-skinned turkey, and lots of baked vegetables – potatoes, pumpkin, parsnips, carrots, asparagus – and then for dessert there was pumpkin pie accompanied by a friend’s to-die-for home-made ice-cream.

We all sat around the table, and the kids are at an age now where they’ll do that. They’re happy to relax and chat instead of scooting off as soon as they’re done eating, the way they used to.

So I’m thinking about holidays. And I realize I don’t often use those big, festive holidays as themes in my books. I don’t think I’ve ever written a Christmas story. Which is weird because I do love all those big celebrations.

I do want to alert you to some great holiday reads that others have written, however.

Top of the list would have to be Jane Porter’s The Kidnapped Christmas Bride. Yes, it is every bit as fast-paced and sizzling and dramatic as it sounds, and yes, the cover matches the mood perfectly. As well as the drama, there is layer upon layer of real emotion, and celebration, and family, and change, and a love between two people that’s survived more than its share of challenge. You will read this one in a single sitting, while not even hearing your family talking to you.

A close second is Megan Crane’s Come Home For Christmas, Cowboy. The passion and emotion in Megan’s stories is so intense, you feel as if you’re living inside her characters and you don’t want to come back out again. It’s like jumping into a chalk pavement picture in Mary Poppins, only adult-themed. Dare and Christina belong together but they’ve lost their way, and it takes her strong stance and a big, warm family Christmas to help them find each other again. I loved this story.

My third recommendation is actually four stories, all centered around the theme of Christmas in New York. Four friends who’ve grown up almost like sisters, four stories of second chances and lost and found love. Each story is very different and can be read alone, yet together they create such a vivid picture of the diversity and magic of Christmas in one of the world’s best cities. It’s a magical series altogether. The individual stories are This Christmas by Jeannie Moon, All I Want For Christmas by Jennifer Gracen, A Light in the Window by Jolyse Barnett, and Goodness and Light by Patty Blount.

Finally, if you’re ready to skip past Christmas and on to Valentine’s Day and chocolate fantasies, my own women’s fiction novel The Sweetest Thing is free on most major ebook sites. I hope you’ll like it. 

Amazon

www.liliandarcy.com