Ho Ho Ho Happy Holidays by Jenny Gardiner

Hey there!
This post probably catches you in the throes of the craziness of the holiday season, but I hope you've got a few minutes to read this funny little story that my family laughs about every year.
Here's wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Kwanza, and belated Happy Hanukkah, a Happy, healthy and safe New Year, and any other thing you might be celebrating, may it be full of love and laughter and family!

    I’m a sucker for the Christmas season. Always have been. Don’t know if it’s the deluded optimism the holiday thrusts upon us, or just a strange affinity for otherwise maudlin songs dressed up as cheerful seasonal chestnuts. I mean, let’s be honest, at any other time of year, who would actually listen wistfully to a yawner like “The Little Drummer Boy”?

    Whatever it is, I have always ensured that my family gets into the holiday spirit, starting with finding the perfect Christmas tree.

    When I was a kid, the search for the ultimate yuletide tree took us to the nearest gas station: hardly a romantic venue from which to choose the centerpiece of our holiday decor. We’d pile into the station wagon for the three-block drive to Buck’s Esso station, spill out onto the oil-slicked parking lot, mull over three or four already-netted spruce trees, and then dad would haggle down the price. End of story.

    Ah, so I was determined to rewrite that tradition with my own family. Early in my marriage, we decided the most festive tree-acquisition could only be achieved by cutting down our own (plus you get the added benefit of the needles actually staying onthe tree all month rather than littering the floor). Because we lived in citified Northern Virginia, the cachet of escaping to the “country”--i.e. the closest remaining patch of farmland untainted by greedy developers--only added to the allure.

    But one year, I found myself almost wishing for the chance to just pop down to the local gas station to buy a tree…

    That year, my husband and our three children, all under the age of four, trekked to the Clifton Christmas Tree Farm, where awaiting us were candy canes, hot chocolate, homemade wreaths and the typical abundance of forced holiday cheer that we craved.

    I had whipped my kids into a tree-chopping frenzy, and so they took their task quite seriously. For forty minutes, we foraged throughout the whopping half-acre “farm” until we found the perfect tree: seven feet of holiday splendor, as wide as it was tall, perfect to fill our cathedral-ceiling’ed living room and flood us with the Christmas spirit.

    The kids took turns on the ground with the saw while my husband supervised the chopping honors. Their excitement was palpable. We dragged the tree back to the cashier stand where the farmer’s son coiled the netting around our white pine. The kids stood by, sucking on candy canes, sipping hot cider and petting the farmer’s dog, who’d recently wandered over. I was just about to retrieve the car to load on the tree, when Fido lifted his leg.

    “No!” I shouted in what seemed like a frame-by-frame slow motion, as a steady stream was released onto our perfect tree.

    For a moment we stood stupefied, not knowing what to do. But we weren’t about to keep a tree covered in dog wee, so we grabbed the kids’ hands to head back into the wilds to hunt for a replacement one.

    Until our kids let us know in no uncertain terms, that this tree was the one, the only. They threw themselves on the ground, flailing and crying, thrashing and moaning, like something from a Greek tragedy. They wanted their special tree, and nothing else would suffice.

    Their wails did not subside until we relented, and agreed to load up the tainted tree.

    The farmer found a makeshift bucket, filled it from a nearby stream and doused the offending urine from the tree. We loaded it onto the roof of the car, and went home.

    I have to admit, I sort of detached emotionally from the tree that year. Couldn’t quite get over the psychological hurdle of having a tree the dog peed on in my living room. Somehow it clashed with the whole festive notion.

    But for my kids, the tree was just about perfect, despite its incumbent flaws. And maybe that’s exactly why I like the holidays so much: because at this time of year, we’re all a little more likely to forgive the small things in order to see the bigger picture.

Great news! I've got another free book for you to try! Falling for Mr. Wrong from the Falling for Mr. Wrong series is now free here:

Kindle
iBooks
Nook
Kobo
Google Play


Also Red Hot Romeo is free! A hot Italian, a gorgeous supermodel, and fabulous wines…what’s not to love?!

You can check out the first book in the Royal Romeo series for free here:

Kindle: bit.ly/RedHotRomeo
iBooks: http://bit.ly/RHRom
Nook: http://bit.ly/RHRNook
Kobo: http://bit.ly/KoboRHR
Google Play: http://bit.ly/RHRgoogle

Check out my Falling for Mr. Wrong series! Falling for Mr. Wrong,  Falling for Mr. Maybe, Falling for Mr. No Way in Hell  and Falling for Mr. Sometimes and Falling for Mr. Right are now available for pre-order.

Lastly, don't forget, book one of the It's Reigning Men series, Something in the Heir, is free here!

I hope you'll have a chance to check out my Royal Romeos series, which is a spin-off of my wildly popular It's Reigning Men series--please do check them out!


Skirt Chaser, Boy Toy and Cabana Boy are available!

Happy reading!

    

  

  

          

Nicole Locke - Get Me Out of this Car!

I’m a stay-at-home mom. Doesn’t that sound divine? To be fair, I know I have it easy. My husband makes the majority of the income, so I’m able to do the other stuff.

The other stuff is enormous. Huge. It’s so big, my husband has to help, too (the garage does not clean itself). I work as well. I do this writing thing, and it has deadlines, and some days it’s incredibly hard.

Add in this moving thing I did in December, and well…. My ship is sinking. In fact, I’m typing this at 10pm because it can’t wait until tomorrow, or the next because I have deadlines looming, and my 7yo daughter has this concert, oh wait, two concerts, and my 14yo son is in need of clothes because I’ve shrunk everything (or is he getting bigger--again!).

In truth, maybe if I had this home schedule all along it’d be easier because I wouldn’t know any different. But I’m in culture shock. London school life was so different.

There, I walked my daughter the half a mile to school every day. That got in my exercise and times-tables quiz time. All moms brought their kids to the gate, we visited, and then got on with our days.

 

My son had been getting himself to school and to his after-school activities by age 12. Other than making sure he did his homework, I didn’t have to worry about him at all.

In America, my son starts school at 8:45am. The bus can’t get him there on time unless he leaves much earlier. Since we are new, I’m not putting that burden on him. So I schlep him out of the house at 8:20. Unfortunately, my daughter has to come with us. Really unfortunately, her school doesn’t start until 9:30. So she’s stuck in the car an extra 45 minutes (we do her homework and run errands).

I’m not even going to mention that my son gets out of school at 3:15pm, and my daughter at 4:10. Or that some days he can’t get himself home. Like Tuesdays, when I have to pick him up, and drive him to the library for volunteer time. Then drive to pick daughter from school, only to return to the library (while she eats in car) to pick up son. Continue driving to another school so my daughter can have orchestra practice and where my son can take a bus home. She and I don’t return home until 7:30pm when we eat dinner (maybe…if I prepared it earlier).

I can’t start work until 10am and on good days I write until 2pm. And I don’t want to think about my house, that I’m living in a suitcase still or the fact our container full of clothes hasn’t arrived yet (though the moving company has had it since December 6^th). It’ll be Spring and I’ll still be wearing my winter wools….

Am I crazy. Is this driving all around schedule normal for parents in America? How have you been doing it all this time? And why is the image of stay-at-home moms all about eating bonbons? It’s not that way in the UK. Here, I feel I have to justify my day with people I meet. Do you?

Whew. I’m glad I can share this. I truly do want to know how you do it, and if I’m missing a trick. Please tell me there’s a magical time bending necklace I didn’t know about….

Nicole :-)

 

Nicole Locke is the author of Harlequin Lovers and Legends series. For more information about her and her writing, check out her website and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

 

Dani Collins: New Year, New Books!

I'm delighted start the year with a new book! Not In Her Wildest Dreams, released yesterday, Jan 15th!

I'm equally delighted to tell you that the wonderful Lee of Author Sound Relations, who runs this blog, was my cover artist. Didn't she knock it out of the park?

These books are very much a project of passion for me. I wrote them before I sold, back when I was struggling and facing repeated rejections and growing quite sure no one would ever read my books.

When you take twenty-five years to sell, you get pretty disheartened. But after much soul searching and fist shaking and crying in the shower, I accepted that I am a romance writer, whether my books find eyes beyond my own or not. I kept submitting because I hoped to sell, but I wrote because I had to.

I actually had an agent when I wrote these books, but they weren't picked up and we parted ways. I set the stories aside when I placed in Harlequin Presents Instant Seduction contest. By that time, I had realized that one of the reasons I hadn't sold was that I kept writing something different every time I sat down. Glamor? Check. Small town? Got it. Erotic Romance. Shh. Medieval Fantasy? Why not? I didn't know where I wanted to be.

Actually, I had always, always wanted to be with Harlequin Presents, so I focused on that and six or eight manuscripts later, this happened-->
(It should be noted that Harlequin Presents are published as Mills & Boon Modern in the UK.) The career I had been waiting for had arrived!

But I had all these manuscripts on the hard drive. Some were out on submission (The Healer) and some I'd started to look at indie publishing (Hustled To The Altar.) I no sooner had those published and I found Montana Born. Those six books filled my time between Presents for the next three years!

Paige and Sterling and L.C. and Mercedes waited quietly in the wings. Well, Paige was miffed, but she's used to being taken for granted so she just rolled her eyes. Sterling is perfection personified so he was like, "I know you're waiting for the right moment. I can wait, too." Mercedes was so busy running after her niece and nephew, she didn't have time to notice, and L.C. couldn't give a f--- about anything. Although, now that he and Mercedes have found their HEA, he's more pussycat than badass. Getting laid has a way of settling him down.

If you're a fan of my Montana Born books, you'll love these. They take place in fictional Liebe Falls. Actually, L.C. leaves after book one and winds up in Arizona, at a senior's complex, of all places, but certain things are calling him back.

They're longer books, full of quirky secondary characters, angst and drama and laughs. They're different from my Presents, but I hope you try them and enjoy the heck of them anyway!

Not In Her Wildest Dreams is available now on all platforms:

Amazon Universal | Nook | Kobo | iBooks | GooglePlay | Smashwords

Only In His Sweetest Dreams releases Feb 1:

Amazon Universal | Nook | Kobo | iBooks | GooglePlay | Smashwords

Dani Collins is the USA Today Bestselling author of thirty romances for Harlequin Mills and Boon, Tule's Montana Born, and herself. She lives in rural BC, Canada with her high school sweetheart. 

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Wee by Jenny Gardiner

    I’m a sucker for the Christmas season. Always have been. Don’t know if it’s the deluded optimism the holiday thrusts upon us, or just a strange affinity for otherwise maudlin songs dressed up as cheerful seasonal chestnuts. I mean, let’s be honest, at any other time of year, who would actually listen wistfully to a yawner like “The Little Drummer Boy”?

    Whatever it is, I have always ensured that my family gets into the holiday spirit, starting with finding the perfect Christmas tree.

    When I was a kid, the search for the ultimate yuletide tree took us to the nearest gas station: hardly a romantic venue from which to choose the centerpiece of our holiday decor. We’d pile into the station wagon for the three-block drive to Buck’s Esso station, spill out onto the oil-slicked parking lot, mull over three or four already-netted spruce trees, and then dad would haggle down the price. End of story.

Ah, so I was determined to rewrite that tradition with my own family. Early in my marriage, we decided the most festive tree-acquisition could only be achieved by cutting down our own (plus you get the added benefit of the needles actually staying on the tree all month rather than littering the floor). Because we lived in citified Northern Virginia, the cachet of escaping to the “country”--i.e. the closest remaining patch of farmland untainted by greedy developers--only added to the allure.

    But one year, I found myself almost wishing for the chance to just pop down to the local gas station to buy a tree…

    That year, my husband and our three children, all under the age of four, trekked to the Clifton Christmas Tree Farm, where awaiting us were candy canes, hot chocolate, homemade wreaths and the typical abundance of forced holiday cheer that we craved.

    I had whipped my kids into a tree-chopping frenzy, and so they took their task quite seriously. For forty minutes, we foraged throughout the whopping half-acre “farm” until we found the perfect tree: seven feet of holiday splendor, as wide as it was tall, perfect to fill our cathedral-ceiling’ed living room and flood us with the Christmas spirit.

    The kids took turns on the ground with the saw while my husband supervised the chopping honors. Their excitement was palpable. We dragged the tree back to the cashier stand where the farmer’s son coiled the netting around our white pine. The kids stood by, sucking on candy canes, sipping hot cider and petting the farmer’s dog, who’d recently wandered over. I was just about to retrieve the car to load on the tree, when Fido lifted his leg.

    “Noooooo!” I shouted in what seemed like a frame-by-frame slow motion, as a steady stream was released onto our perfect tree.

    For a moment we stood stupefied, not knowing what to do. But we weren’t about to keep a tree covered in dog wee, so we grabbed the kids’ hands to head back into the wilds to hunt for a replacement one.

    Until our kids let us know in no uncertain terms, that this tree was the one, the only. They threw themselves on the ground, flailing and crying, thrashing and moaning, like something from a Greek tragedy. They wanted their special tree, and nothing else would suffice.

    Their wails did not subside until we relented, and agreed to load up the tainted tree.

    The farmer found a makeshift bucket, filled it from a nearby stream and doused the offending urine from the tree. We loaded it onto the roof of the car, and went home.

    I have admit, I sort of detached emotionally from the tree that year. Couldn’t quite get over the psychological hurdle of having a tree the dog peed on in my living room. Somehow it clashed with the whole festive notion.

    But for my kids, the tree was just about perfect, despite its incumbent flaws. And maybe that’s exactly why I like the holidays so much: because at this time of year, we’re all a little more likely to forgive the small things in order to see the bigger picture.

Here's this year's tree--note the nativity scene underneath it is Mary and Joseph (and Rudolph) made from toilet paper rolls, baby Jesus is a clothespin. My son made them in pre-school ;-).

By the way! Today is my birthday! What better way to celebrate than starting a new book series! My Royal Romeos series is a spin-off of my wildly successful It's Reigning Men series--I hope you'll be able to check them out!

  

When the Parent Becomes the Student by Jenny Gardiner

I find that as a parent it’s easy to get caught up in being the teacher. While raising children for such an extended period of time, we have long been the ones in charge, the ones to impart lessons learned from our own hard-fought experiences (lessons our kids usually want nothing to do with learning). Moms and dads become habituated into being right, which isn't actually the best of habits, when it comes down to it.

But now that my kids are grown, more and more I'm finding that they've become the teachers, and I their student (sometimes willing, sometimes not so much). It's an interesting twist on the relationship but in many ways things seem to come full circle, which is nice role reversal.

Take for instance my son, who watched his peers signing on for big bucks jobs during the end of his senior year of college, and opted against that himself. Back when I was in college, that was pretty much what you did. (Well, except for those of us with degrees in Liberal Arts, who watched all of our peers making gobs of cash while we practically lived in cardboard boxes beneath bridge spans and begged for our supper). But nowadays I think our kids are learning that there's more to being happy than making lots of money. You're likely to be far more content when following your passion than filling your wallet.

My son did just that, instead choosing to travel for a while after working hard in college. And in so doing, was able to grow so much as a human being, immerse himself in vastly different cultures, learn a new language, and find inner peace under fairy Spartan living conditions. He reveled in being able to go with the flow, to be happy in the moment, and really grew to understand the importance of hard work. Such essential lessons to learn at such a young age, and I envy him that he was able to do that before becoming entrenched in the have-to's of life.

But not only did he do that, he also did it with a great level of fearlessness. So much of what holds us back in life is our fears: we need to arm our teachers for fear of random shooters, we practically strip naked (and remove our shoes) for fear of terrorists on planes, we need to live a life of fear in order to have a false sense of security. It's really a rather twisted way of living, when you think of it. At the end of the day, none of us has much control over our lives, and to spend so much of our waking hours trying to control things so that they don't go badly can end up being very self-defeating. You lose the true zest for life that way.

And speaking of fears, my older daughter teaches me often how important it is to not let worries win the day. Despite overwhelming fear of the unknown in going off to live in another country for a semester, she sucked it up and did it. And then proceeded to jump out of an airplane over the Swiss Alps, travel alone, staying in sketchy hostels at times, and even camp in the Sahara desert in Morocco despite not speaking a word of the language, which made travel there challenging. She shunned her anxieties and allowed herself the gift of going off to quite literally explore the world. It's not an easy thing to do; it's far simpler to be paralyzed with fear, which is what so many people opt for.

In addition, she has taught me so much about facing down adversity. In dealing with various medical problems over which she had no control, she has powered through hard times and kept a brave face going. It's more than many adults could do.

My younger daughter has shown me what strength and determination and hard work will get you. She worked hard enough to gain admission to an Ivy League school, no small feat. But then she had the maturity to decide the massive debt accrued by enrolling in such a school made little sense, and instead knew she would be perfectly happy at a highly-respected but more affordable school.

And she regularly proves to me that if you keep chipping away at a problem, a solution will be found. She has shown me time and again that if you fight through it, you will succeed.

Unfortunately, sometimes reflected off my children are my own vast shortcomings -- those things I desperately need to improve upon. It's my kids who will call me to task for being intolerant or critical or shrill. They're the ones who will remind me to not be impatient, or nosy, or annoying. And they'll gladly wince while telling me my jokes are painfully bad. They're sometimes too quick to find my faults but that's okay, because it's honest. I may not like what I see in the mirror they're holding up to me, but what better way to know what to prove upon? I don't know, maybe I'm just inherently quite flawed and they're wise to it. But I'd like to think this is just how the world works, and I'm at the tipping point now. It's their turn to get even, in a good way.

I've spent more than 20 years imparting my dubious wisdom on my kids, but it's abundantly clear they have much more to teach me: to follow your dreams, to do what makes you happy and happiness will follow, to struggle through adversity, to prove them all wrong.

I have become the Grasshopper to their Master Po (Forgive my bad Kung Fu reference), and I'm honored to be learning at their feet now.

Jenny Gardiner is mulling whether she has the courage to skydive too. Until then, you can find her at www.jennygardiner.net


Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

Slim to None

Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me

Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)

Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)

I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I'm a contributor)

And these shorts:
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions

The Gall of It All: And None of the Three F's Rhymes with Duck

Naked Man On Main Street

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