Beating Blue Monday -- Michelle Styles

Today Monday 15 January 2018 is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year also known as blue Monday. However it doesn’t have to be that way. There are a number of ways in which you can beat the January blues. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. 1.      
   
   Watch uplifting or feel good television. My daughter and I discovered The Marvellous Mrs Maisel at the end of  November and binge-watched it. It is a comedy with a little bit of drama about a Jewish woman from the Upper East Side New York City who becomes a stand up comic in the mid-1950’s. Beautifully acted with gorgeous dresses and a great sound track. Beats watching the news, an event which always seems to sap my will to live these days.
   
   2.       Book tickets to a great live action event. Last year, my daughter booked Hamilton tickets on blue Monday for December. She had to do as it was when they went on sale but the unexpected benefit was when ever something was not quite right or I felt a bit blah, I’d go ‘ah but we have Hamilton tickets’ and put the music on. But anything you can look forward to will work. It does need to be live and therefore what you are going to see will be unique.
   3.       Go see a great exhibition at a museum. I was lucky enough to see two brilliant exhibitions in December at the V&A – the Winnie-the-Pooh exhibit and the Balenciaga exhibit. The first allowed me to release my inner child and the second allowed me to indulge in my love of great clothes (see above for more about my love of great clothes). But any exhibition will do – go with an open mind and see what you can learn or simply enjoy.
   4.       Go for a walk and release your inner child as you do. Getting outside with natural sunlight can be a great way to lif your mood. If it is horrible out, consider wrapping up well and going puddle jumping or if icy, find some place to slide a bit. Watch the clouds and make up stories about what they represent. I find releasing my inner child is a great way to lift my mood. It means I don’t have to be serious and weighed down with responsibility.
   5.       Put on some favourite music and dance like no one is watching.
   6.       Make time to see an old friend and have a good natter about nothing in particular.
   7.       And last but by no means least, read a romance – something that will allow to escape into another world where you know the Happy Ending is guaranteed. It can be one you enjoyed in the past or a new one by a favourite author or even a new to you author.
   What ways  have you found that work to beat the Bluest of all Mondays?
   
   
   
   
2. 
   

Michelle Styles writes warm, witty and intimate historical romance in a wide range of time periods for Harlequin Historical. Her latest The Warrior’s Viking Bride will be released on 22 February 2018.

You can learn more about Michelle and her books on www.michellestyles.co.uk

My Top 5 Holiday Essentials

Seeing as it's Summer holiday season, and as you read this I will be somewhere hot by a swimming pool, I thought I'd share with you the essential items I pack in my suitcase.

1.    Teabags- Although I adore travelling and am an intrepid and inquisitive tourist, you cannot beat proper British tea. The impersonators sold in every other country never come close to a decent cup of Twinings, so I always pack a box in my suitcase and carry a few in my handbag for emergencies! Especially in America. American tea is the absolute worst.

2.    Double the underwear- I’ll grant you this is a weird quirk, but the thought of running out of clean knickers terrifies me. And I always buy new for a holiday- just in case the baggage rips open and my undies are displayed to the world.

3.    Kindle- I’ve never been particularly fond of watching films on planes. The screens are so small, there is so much engine noise and the other passengers and crew distract me from the action by wandering backwards and forwards down the gangway. Yet with a book, all that nonsense evaporates as I lose myself in the story.

4.    A decent pen- I can’t be doing with filling out landing cards or other documents with those cheap and nasty biros they give out. I like a fat gel pen. In blue.

5.    The TripAdvisor app- Choosing the right restaurant can be a perilous business at the best of times, abroad it can be catastrophic. I always pick eateries offering the local cuisine, with at least 40 reviews on them. That way I assume that all the reviews are not just from friends and family. No matter how good they are, any review that tells me tells me a restaurant offers a great selection of British or American dishes they are avoided like the plague. I want my food to be an adventure too. If I wanted to eat Shepherd’s Pie, I’d stay at home.

Why not take one of Virginia's books with you to the beach?

Christina Hollis: Six Tips For Keeping Your Valentine's Day Flowers Fresh

On Sale Now!

Happy Valentine's Day! I’ve written before about how I had to wait until I’d left school and started work before I experienced the romance of getting an  anonymous Valentine's Day card. As for flowers—well, not one of my boyfriends was old-fashioned enough to send me a bouquet, until I met OH. He knows how much I love flowers, so he often picks up a bunch on his way home from work. It's a really romantic gesture, which is why I’ve made sure Sara, the heroine of my new book, His Majesty's Secret Passion, gets the right royal treatment. Her boyfriend has just dumped her, and she makes an embarrassing mistake in front of a handsome stranger. King-in-disguise Leo sends her a huge explosion of sumptuous lilies—but it's not the romantic gesture you might expect.  There's a sting in the tail (and the tale!) of Leo's generosity.

Sara's flowers are arranged for her by staff at the luxury hotel where she's having the holiday of a lifetime. If you want to keep your Valentine's Day bouquet (or any cut flowers, for that matter) fresh for as long as possible, here are my top tips:

1. If your bouquet comes complete with cut-flower food, mix that up according to the instructions. Use tepid water, as flowers find this easier to drink. If your bouquet didn’t come with a sachet of flower food, you can make your own. Dissolve a dessertspoon of sugar in a little hot water, add a teaspoon of bleach, and put this mixture to your vase before topping it up with plain water.  

2. Work at a sink—or over the bath, if you’ve been very lucky! Strip off any leaves that would be under water when arranged in your vase. Trim off the bottom half inch of each stem at a slant, to give a big surface area. Then put each flower straight into a bucket of tepid water, so the cut surfaces don’t have time to dry out. 

3. Flowers with hollow stems need help to draw up water, as those stems are full of air. Turn each one upside down, fill the stem with tepid water, and put your finger over the end. Turn the flower right way up again, get the cut surface below the water in your vase, then take your finger away. It helps to work fast with this trick!

By Liz West

4. Stand your finished arrangement out of direct sunlight. The flowers won’t open so quickly, and they’ll keep their true colours for longer. Don’t stand them near the fruit bowl, either. Bananas in particular give off ethylene gas, which promotes ripening in fruit, and ageing in flowers. 

5. Last thing at night, move your flowers to the coolest part of the house. This could be at the bottom of the stairs, but you may need to take them out to the garage. Just make sure they are kept cool, but not frozen. 

6. Every few days, empty out all the water, wash the vase and repeat the stem trimming. Snip off any flowers and/or leaves past their best. Fill the vase with fresh, tepid water including more cut-flower food, or the home-made sugar and bleach mixture.

You can keep some cut flowers going for nearly three weeks using these tips, although what starts out as a full bouquet will dwindle as time goes on.   

What’s the best Valentine’s Day present you’ve ever had? There’s a signed copy of His Majesty's Secret Passion on offer for a comment drawn at random, after 15th February.

Christina Hollis writes contemporary fiction starring complex men and independent women–when she isn't cooking, gardening or beekeeping. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and she’s sold over two million books worldwide. You can catch up with her at http://www.christinahollis.blogspot.com, on Twitter, Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at http://www.christinahollis.com. Her current release, His Majesty's Secret Passion, is available from its publishers,  Wild Rose Press, and also from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Christina Hollis - 3 Lifelines For Writers

There are three things every writer needs - a story to tell, a way to tell it and the opportunity.

Everyone has their own ideas about the first two items on this list. Put three writers together and you’ll come up with a dozen different plots.  Each of them will have their preferred way of working, too. That can be dictation and voice-recognition software, typing straight onto the computer screen, good old pencil and paper or a combination of all three.

It’s getting the opportunity to write that causes all the trouble. Here are three tips I found useful when working on Lady Rascal, and my current WIP, Jewel Under Siege.

1. TIMETABLING: When do you do your best writing? If it’s first thing in the morning, set your alarm an hour earlier and use that time just for writing. If it’s after work or the children’s bedtime, lay in plenty of coffee and get writing once it's quiet. DO NOTHING ELSE! Don’t let yourself get distracted by anything at all. Set a kitchen timer, or call on the team at #1k1hr on Twitter to get yourself motivated. 

2. A SPACE OF YOUR OWN: Make sure you've got your own dedicated writing area. No matter how small, it'll be your private territory and that will give you a boost. It also means you don't have to hunt all around the house for your dictionary, thesaurus and other reference books, once they're all concentrated in one place. If your writing space doesn't include access to the Internet, that's better still-unless you're single-minded enough not to go online while you're working. The net is a great help with research, but it can turn into a terrible time-waster.

Mother's Little Helpers

Try to get your family to share the domestic chores so you can write. Make it fun for them, use bribery-anything to make sure you can get your “me time”. You might discover somebody has a hidden talent. When our children were small, we worked our way through The River Cottage Family Cookbook among others. As they've grown in age and experience, they can now take their turn in cooking dinner.

That's a real luxury, as long as you can shut your ears to the racket coming from the kitchen (or the eerie silence, which can be worse...). This spaghetti carbonara and chilled fruit pudding was produced by Son No.1. It was delicious!

That's a real luxury, as long as you can shut your ears to the racket coming from the kitchen (or the eerie silence, which can be worse...). This spaghetti carbonara and chilled fruit pudding was produced by Son No.1. It was delicious!

3. SHORT CUTS: Online shopping is a Godsend for the time-poor. Try your local supermarket delivery services. They're convenient and reduce the amount of impulse-buying, too. The discipline of making out a list to shop just once a week is another time-saver if you usually hit the aisles every day. We use Abel and Cole and Laverstoke Park Farm, too, for those times when there's nothing in the garden.

Of course, all these tips can easily be adapted to other areas of your life, such as reading or hobbies. How do you organise your own "me time"? 

If you'd like to keep up with the latest news about Jewel Under Siege, you can subscribe to Christina’s newsletter by sending her an email at christinahollis@hotmail.co.uk with the word “subscribe” in the subject line. You can also read her blog athttp://www.christinahollis.blogspot.com, and see a complete list of her published books athttp://www.christinahollis.com.

Three Top Tips For A Happy Holiday

Think back - when you were little, what are the things you most remember about this time of year? As well as the toys and sweets, anticipation was always such a big thing. Waiting to take part in the school play, then for the school term to finish, finally opening the last door on the advent calendar and then waiting for Santa to arrive - the time crawled by, without a thought for the supporting cast. Now you're all grown up and likely to be the one doing the hard work, there never seems to be enough hours in a day to get everything done.  This is always going to be a hectic time, but here are a few ideas for making it a bit less painful...

1. PRIORITISE:  Getting the whole family around the table is a major undertaking. Forget about being a martyr - if anyone asks if you want help, accept their offer. Even if it's just taking care of the children for half an hour, it's one thing less for you to worry about. Guests could bring-and-share a pudding or some snacks, and that will help reduce the pressure. If you're cooking for a bigger number of people than usual, don't feel you have to do all the catering yourself. Even if you love cooking, there's so much meeting and greeting to be done, try and find some shortcuts. Good quality ready-made pastry is almost indistinguishable from home made, and if you prepare as much as you can ahead of time (prepping the vegetables and making a chilled dessert, for instance) it'll reduce the stress on the day.

2. HAVE A PLAN B: Take nobody's word for it. If you're lucky enough to buy your Christmas in a box from some grand department store like Harrods, double check delivery times and dates to make sure it arrives when you want it, and have contact numbers on hand in the unlikely event it doesn't. If you're spending Christmas out of town, make sure there's a generator in case the power fails at a critical moment (that's happened here more than once). As insurance, make sure you've got a little something that won't need cooking, fresh fruit, some good cheese, decent crackers - and plenty of chocolate, of course!

3. REHEARSE YOUR SMILE: When everything goes to plan, it'll be the perfect finishing touch. If there are a few wobbles in your perfect holiday, remember it could be worse. Have another bit of cake and tell yourself this was only a trial run. There's always next year.
Finally, if it all gets too much, a look through this list will really restore your faith in human nature - bit.ly/12jBFpS . 

What's your best Christmas memory? There's a signed book from my backlist on offer to a comment picked at random - and my sincere wishes for a peaceful, happy holiday for you all.

Christina Hollis has written both Historical fiction and Modern Romance/Presents for Harlequin Mills and Boon Ltd, as well non-fiction for national magazines and prize-winning short stories. Her current release, Lady Rascal is available for download from  Amazon, iTunes  and many other retailers, while her next book,  Changing Fortunes, will be published in early 2013. She loves to hear from readers - you can contact her through her website or her blog.