What is family?

Questions.

That's where all stories start. 

What if?

Something Perfect (the last book of the Hometown Weddings and the second last book of the series) started with the question What if...? and then proceeded with a daughter asking, Who am I? Where am I from? What is family? 

You've seen me ask and answer those particular questions over and over again in my books.  Each character and each story has a slightly different answer. But all those answers are rooted in the same place...Love.  That's what makes a family.

For me, that question of where I'm from—who I'm from—is foundational.  I didn't meet my bio-father until I was in my thirties. Knowing he was out there but not knowing anything about him left me with so many questions.  And as a writer, questions are part of my job description. I had a burning need to find the answers. When I first met him, he tried to answer as many questions as he could. (I come from generations of Appalachian stock with a titled Englishman, a Scottish laird and some Quakers.) He was nice but he wasn't family. As time went on and I grew to know and love him and one day he was. Just like that. Like magic. He was family. Love...that makes family more than DNA.

The Hometown Hearts Wedding trilogy (Something Borrowed, Something Blue and Something Perfect) is all about how a family is made.  Three women become friends and grow into family. Each of them finds their own true love...and their own true family!

There's a short story, Something Unexpected, this summer, then the final book, A Hometown Christmas in September. 

Thanks all of you who've taken these journeys with me! 

Holly

Hometown Hearts

Crib Notes: Hometown Hearts #1

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A Special Kind of Different: Hometown Hearts #2

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Homecoming: Hometown Hearts #3

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 Suddenly a Father: Hometown Hearts #4

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Something Borrowed: Hometown Hearts #5

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Something Blue: Hometown Hearts #6 

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Something Perfect: Hometown Hearts #7 available 5/21

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Preorder: Something Unexpected: A Hometown Hearts short story, available 7/21
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Preorder: A Hometown Christmas: Hometown Hearts #8, available 9/21
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Family

 I tend to join Ancestry every few years to update my family tree. They're always adding new resources, so there's generally something new to find. One great-grandmother was a complete mystery when I started my family tree. My grandmother was adopted. A family friend told me her adopted father was in actuality her biological father. I found her original birth certificate and the father listed was a variation of his name so I thought that clicked. And there was a mother's name listed.

Before DNA testing was available, I was pretty sure I tracked down my grandmother's mother. And I listed her adopted father as her bio father on my tree, though I didn't have proof. Since then, DNA has shown that her dad was her biological father, and my guess at her mom was correct as well.

Here's the thing, I like knowing who I came from, but I also know who my family truly is. I look at those names on my family tree and can trace my roots to Ireland, England and Germany.  I can follow my northern family lines from a Brown University founder to Erie, PA. I can trace my southern family line from the Appalachian Mountains, to Erie. I know I've had politicians, doctors, sea captains, train engineers, homesteaders and share croppers in that tree. 

All that is great and truly fascinating but my family? My real family? Well, there's John. Papa John to me. He wasn't related through DNA, but he was my Papa through and through. He gardened. Every Christmas he brought me a poinsettia and every Easter a hyacinth. (Himself occasionally tries to buy me an Easter flower to remind me of Papa...and he invariably buys a lily. But that always makes me smile and think of Papa anyway! LOL) Then there's Elmer. He wasn't a blood relation either, but he was my grandpa. He lived on a farm in western Erie county. He mowed a golf course in the summers and had permanently sun burned arms. His mom was named Maggie Mae and I have the vaguest memory of her in a rocker.  Both of these "grandfathers" were my real family.

Family isn't DNA. I mean, I love knowing these people and their paths that all converged and led me here, but Papa and Elmer...they were family. 

I think my fragmented family tree is why writing stories about how families come together is such a theme for me. That's what the entire Hometown Hearts series is. In Crib Notes there's an unexpected pregnancy and a baby who finds a true father. In A Special Kind of Different there's a special needs character who brings together a special relationship and creates a family. In Homecoming a loss leads to the discovery that hearts have infinite room...loving someone new doesn't take away from others you've loved. And in this month's Suddenly a Father, Tucker was a teen mom who spent her adult years taking care of her son and her career. She's never needed anything—anyone—else. But she meets a man who truly knows what family is and is willing to put his entire life on the line for them. How can she resist him? (She can't. LOL)

Next year's stories continue that exploration of family in Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Something Perfect and Something for Christmas. 

Family. It's a fascinating subject that I will never get tired of exploring in my life and my writing. 

Thank you everyone who's come along for the ride! I hope you'll pick up this month's release, Suddenly a Father and the first three books as well!

Holly

Crib Notes: Hometown Hearts #1

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A Special Kind of Different: Hometown Hearts #2

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Homecoming: Hometown Hearts #3
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Suddenly a Father: Hometown Hearts #4

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Something Borrowed: Hometown Hearts #5
PREORDER. Available 1/21
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Found Time- Between the Holidays

by Joanne Rock

I love the week between Christmas and New Years. The hardcore holiday prep has passed, leaving me with a week of relative quiet to enjoy the family, the décor I worked hard on, the good leftovers and—did I mention?—the relative quiet!

Duchess and I are on the same page.

Ideally, I never plan much for this time of the year. I block it off as holiday time and try not to work much. Lucky me, I know. But I notice even friends with more traditional jobs are often able to take lighter schedules this week. And, failing that, there’s less “work” in that the baking, shopping, wrapping frenzy is over. I love Christmas and the hoopla that accompanies it, but the downtime afterward feels just right—sort of like a quiet scene in a book that follows that big action moment! Both are good, but one helps you catch your breath from the other.

Today, I have a list of minor errands but they can all wait. I have a few Christmas returns, a post office run to make, a prescription refill… nothing urgent. First, I’m enjoying getting back to a routine, something that always comforts me. I like the ease of mind that comes with routine because the repetition lets my mind wander. I don’t need to be terribly mindful fixing my go-to breakfast or doing the laundry, so I can think about my stories and characters in a way that doesn’t feel like work. Basically, I daydream, and that’s always fun for me.

A gift for one random poster

Beyond that, I’m going to have fun searching up new book releases and doing some reading. I have a hockey game to watch tonight (go Pens!) and my dinner is going to be something like Tostitos with cheese since I’ve eaten relentlessly for days and don’t need one more decadent meal. My feet are up and I will check out social media for the first time in days so I can enjoy photos of friends’ kids and grandkids that they snapped over the holidays. A day of perfect aimlessness.

Happy 2017 to you all, my friends. I hope it brings you blessings, happiness and much love.

***

So I’m curious what you’re up to this week. Reading? Playing with something new that was under the tree? Share with me today on the blog and I’ll send one random commenter a prize with SCANDALOUS MISTRESS, a sexy 3-in-1 of stories by Leslie Kelly, Kira Sinclair and me, plus a Desire 2-in-1 with reads from Kat Cantrell and me, and a bonus notebook for your New Year’s resolutions! 

Virginia Heath: Life Through a Lens...

The first time I went to Disney was 20 years ago. I will never forget the experience. My two kids were little and totally believed all the characters in those fancy suits were real. It was, as Disney so often promise, magical.

I especially remember the fireworks. All those twinkling patterns set to music, high above Cinderella’s castle. Next to me was a solitary man who watched the whole display through the viewfinder of his video camera, while his children stood next to him. At the time, I thought it was an odd thing to do. Here he was, surrounded by all this atmosphere, his three children filled with awe and wonder, missing the full experience as he recorded it for posterity. It struck me as a waste of a good memory.

Twenty years later, we visited Anaheim again and just had we had that first time, and on numerous visits to different Disneylands around the world since, we found a spot on Main Street and waited patiently for the fireworks. This time though, we were one of the few spectators in that sea of people not holding up our smartphones and watching the spectacle on the screens.

Back home in London a few weeks later, I was sat outside a café on the banks of the River Thames. To my right was the magnificent Tower Bridge. To my left, the wonderful Tower of London. A group of Japanese tourists walked by, and it struck me that they were all holding selfie sticks, viewing those amazing sights on the small screens of their phones rather than experiencing it in the flesh. Since then, I see this all the time. Every event seems to be so meticulously filmed that the people doing the filming are distanced from the great things happening in their own lives.

My point is this, it is Christmas Eve. A time for sharing all the joy of life with those you love. For the next few days, put down your phones people. Live in the moment. Enjoy it. Those memories will be revisited more often than all those hours and hours of video ever will.  

Happy Holidays!

Virginia Heath writes witty, fast-paced romances filled with feisty heroines and mouth-watering heroes she would want to fall in love with.

The Discerning Gentleman's Guide, is out now.

Failure To Communicate by Jenny Gardiner

A while back I made the deliberate choice to take some alone time, which is how I ended up traveling on my own hiking in Switzerland and Italy a few months back. Those days during which I walked exclusively for hours on end reaffirmed something I already knew quite well: I'm sort of a people person, and get sick of being by myself pretty quickly. Which certainly begs the question: well, then, why did you go off alone? Don't ask. But being on my own made me very much appreciate the gift of being with others, something I'm afraid so many of us take for granted nowadays. I realized this yet again the other day when my husband and I were having breakfast. Nearby sat a couple with two elementary school-aged kids. As I spied on them (sorry, the writer in me compels me to snoop sometimes) I felt sad, because no one in that family appeared to make much of an effort to communicate. The parents sat in silence, faces aimed downward, typing away on their smart phones. The kids were glued to theirs as well, barely coming up for air, let alone conversation. The family couldn't have been less together had they been in separate corners of the restaurant. This was something I noticed so often while in Italy. I was fairly starved for communication with someone familiar, having been walking for sometimes up to eight hours during the day without seeing another person. As it is, my family occasionally cringes at my tendency to strike up conversation with complete strangers (yes, even in elevators), and that's when I'm not craving human contact. They couldn't imagine the lengths to which I about went to speak with people — in another language, no less — when deprived of normal discourse for even a few days. I got to the point that I'd chat up anyone who would listen to me (and put up with my rusty Italian at that). When I ended up in larger cities and found English speakers? Jackpot for me. Poor English-speaking tourists who sat next to me during a meal! Who knew just hearing someone else speak my language would be such music to my ears? That concept of quiet self-reflection and alone-time upon which my trip was intended must've jumped right out the window. Yet wherever I went, I noticed that so many other people gathered together never seemed very together anyhow. I would see a table full of people, with everyone transfixed by their mobile phones, the cool glow of the lit screen reflecting off their faces, completely ignoring each other. I felt such a pang of jealousy for them being able to be with friends and family — yes, even though I'd made the deliberate choice to not be with mine. Here they had people right there, yet they chose instead to hone in on the digital brain in their hands, that whole other world hidden in their smart phones. Now don't get me wrong. I spend far more time than I ought to online. Between the unlimited accessibility to information that the Evil Genius Google provides, and the non-stop chat-a-thons available via Facebook, Twitter, or far too many other social media to even list, I often allow the Great Time Suck to get the better of me despite my good intentions to the contrary. I can be like a heroin junkie, seeking just one more fix. I follow a link to a compelling story which leads me to a link to another compelling story and so on, and the next thing I know I've frittered away hours on nothing other than added fuel for my brain full of useless Jeopardy factoids which I'll never use anyhow. It was a huge gift for me to be a stranger in a strange land on my own and appreciate how wonderful it is to be able to be with those you love. And to give me some time to break away from that electronic addiction to which most of us are enslaved these days. I befriended an Australian woman who just completed walking the entire length (about 1300 miles) of the pilgrimage route on which I hiked. She's been walking since late August from Canterbury England, and arrived in Rome a few days ago. She claims to be an introvert, yet reading her blog daily, I can see that she has been, nevertheless, desperately lonely. It's hard to walk alone for hours on end, often seeing no one, then arrive in a town, have to find a place to sleep, while hoping to find a restaurant or bar in which to find some food, and with any luck, maybe some human contact. You find yourself going out of your way to talk to anyone when you have no one there. If given enough time I'd likely have been known as the strange babbling woman, frankly. One of those mad-professor types with a crazed glint in her eyes, rambling ceaselessly. I don't think I'd have it in me to have walked alone for three straight months for the sheer lack of engagement with loved ones with which I'd be missing out. Clearly I'm not one for the lone pursuit experience for very long. I know I took for granted the ability to be with those I love and care for. As I reflect during the holidays time, I'm all the more grateful for those who have made my life more interesting, engaging, and exciting. For those who have shared their love, their hearts, and themselves with me. And for my not having to follow link upon link to find them; rather to know that they've been right here all along.



Slim to None

Anywhere But Here

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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