One of my favorite pre-holiday memories is heading to the craft store with my mom just after Thanksgiving. Every year there would be kits to make our own ornaments – paper and pictures, paints and markers, dough for some figures… The store was old and musty most days, but during the holidays the must seemed to lift, leaving only fresh air and possibilities. Over the year I made my own Christmas balls, a couple of disfigured horse attempts, but mostly stars or snowflakes. What I learned from those early attempts is that I’m not overly artistic. I can color with the best of them, but to draw my own pictures? Sad, sad, sad. So, as an adult, I’ve tweaked that tradition just a bit – we head to the mall on Thanksgiving weekend and pick out a family ornament from the ornament maker and have it personalized. Most years the kiddo (she’s 4) also picked out a personal ornament, too. This year it was a princess castle that looks suspiciously like Cinderella’s. One year it was a carousel horse on a candy cane…our family ornament this year is three owls sitting on a branch because, as the kiddo says, ‘it…

Living in a cultural melting pot gives people in the U.S. a wide range of holidays and traditions to celebrate.  At our house, Christmas is the favorite.  We do the traditional things like put up a tree, wrap gifts, and decorate the house, but those aren’t our only ways to enjoy the season.  We also read.  I’m working on revisions to GUARDIAN, my second book, but I’m also making time to read holiday-themed romances.  The festive settings and happy endings add to my generally good mood. Lately I find myself also looking back at the stories we read our son when he was small. He’s in college now, well past the age of being read to, but he seems open to the three of us reading A CHRISTMAS CAROL aloud again.  This is the dh’s favorite Christmas story.  His father read it to their family every year. My favorite story is a shorter, simpler one, O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.”  I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it, so I’ll just say it’s about the depth of love at the holiday season.  I found a beautiful picture book of that story when the boy…

Mary Strand says: We’re wrapping up a fun-filled year of the Story Garden on Fresh Fiction, and many of us right now are also wrapping gifts to put under the Christmas tree. Or, to be a bit more realistic, we’re THINKING about buying gifts that we’ll somehow wrap and get under the tree by, oh, say, 2 a.m. on Christmas Day. But in the midst of all that thinking and buying and wrapping for others, we decided to put a little thought into what WE would like — as writers and readers — under the Christmas tree this year. I got my own Christmas gift a couple months early, when I sold my first book, COOPER’S FOLLY, to Bell Bridge Books in October. Oh, happy day! If I’m allowed to be greedy and ask for more, I’d ask for books (and I still like them in real paper, not on a screen) filled with adventure and wicked humor and brainy characters and romance. And I’d ask for a trip this summer to Italy. And, for those who know me, it goes without saying that I’d ask for Hugh Jackman. What the heck: he doesn’t even need to be wrapped. Ho…

When I began writing The Brunson Clan trilogy, I was struck by the way the history of the Scottish Borders was captured in its ballads.  Long before books were commonplace, the stories of the Border Reivers (raiders) were immortalized in song.  In the midst of a bloody era, when family was more important than country, these men “prized a poem almost as much as plunder, and produced such an impressive assembly of local narrative songs that some people used to label all our greater folk poems as ‘Border ballads’” (A. L. Lloyd, Folk Song in England.) Poetic, stirring, memorable.  But accurate?  Not always. At least, that’s what my Brunsons discover during the course of the trilogy.  The story each believes – about the family, the enemy, or even about him or herself – is ultimately upset when the truth is discovered to be slightly different than oft-told tales. CAPTIVE OF THE BORDER LORD, the second book of the three, centers on the youngest child and the only sister.  She has grown up thinking that life is duty and that the valley where the Brunsons have lived for centuries is the only place she, or any Brunson, can truly call home….

What makes a Holiday tradition? It’s what families pass down to their children over the decades, even over the centuries. By necessity, oftentimes in the city, modern families give up some of those valued traditions, things like cutting their own Christmas trees, singing Christmas carols through the neighborhood, big family dinners, impossible in many city-size apartments. Living out in the country in Montana, we’re fortunate to be able to enjoy a lot of old-fashioned traditions. A seven-foot evergreen tree, a fire in the big rock fireplace, snow-covered mountains outside the windows, deer wandering through the fields. We always have a big family supper on Christmas Eve, and everyone opens a few of his gifts. Christmas morning, the grandkids come over to open whatever is left beneath the tree and enjoy a Sunday brunch. This year, along with the usual celebrations, I’ll be doing some Holiday promotions for my new book, AGAINST THE ODDS, the seventh book in my Against Series. It’s in bookstores December 18, just in time for Christmas shoppers. In the novel, Christmas was once the heroine, Sabrina Eckhart’s, favorite time of year, a holiday she and her mother always eagerly awaited–until Rina’s Uncle Walter died on his…

November 2012 On Sale: October 23, 2012 384 pages ISBN: 0778313948 EAN: 9780778313946 Kindle: B005HRQ0JQ Paperback / e-Book $7.99 Add to Wish List Romance Contemporary, HolidayBuy at Amazon.com Who to trust at Christmas An Angel For Christmas by Heather Graham A snowy mountainside… A starry night… The makings of a miracle… Christmas has never brought out the best in the MacDougal family. Still, year after year they gather together in the Blue Ridge Mountains to try to make the season merry and bright. But this year is an especially strained one, with Shayne’s impending divorce, Morwenna’s slavish devotion to work and Bobby’s reluctance to face what life has to offer. They’ve never felt less like a family. Then, in the midst of a snowy sibling shouting match, a mysterious stranger appears. He could be a criminal, a madman-or something far more unexpected. Despite their fears and the growing danger in the dark woods around them, the MacDougals take a leap of faith. But when another stranger arrives on the mountainside, they don’t know which of them to believe. One of these men can’t be trusted. And one is about to bring Christmas into their hearts. Previous Picks

A good man drowning in bad deeds  . . . A bad girl denying a good heart . . . I love stories about complex characters with dark pasts searching for the means to personal redemption, so that’s what I write.  When choosing secondary characters to step into the roles of hero and heroine in BETRAYED BY SHADOWS, the 7th book in my dark paranormal shape shifter “By Moonlight” series, readers were surprised by my choice of Giles St. Clair, the steadfast rock of advice for Max Savoie who goes from thuggish knee breaker to pseudo-CEO in Max’s ‘absence.’  They never considered him hero material and, until the later books, I probably would have agreed.  But there were things about Giles I really liked.  His loyalty.  His wry sense of humor.  His practicality.  And I got to thinking, what’s this guy’s story?  You won’t believe what I found in his past!! Talk about getting pulled off the right path . . . So I’ve got Giles, hero in the making, with his soft protective spot for Charlotte Caissie and Tina Babineau – females who will never belong to him.  What kind of woman should I throw in his path?  Someone…

November 2012 On Sale: November 13, 2012 224 pages ISBN: 0373278012 EAN: 9780373278015 Kindle: B0092MLAGU Paperback / e-Book $5.25 Add to Wish List RomanceBuy at Amazon.com Romantic Suspense for Christmas reads Christmas Confidential by Marilyn Pappano, Linda Conrad Two stories of private investigators hot on the trails of the women they love…just in time for Christmas! Holiday Protector by MARILYN PAPPANO The last person Miri Duncan wants to see on her first day out of jail is P.I. Dean Montgomery-the man who put her there. But when their cross-country drive turns dangerous, she can’t deny that Dean’s protection is good for her. But is it good for her heart? A Chance Reunion by LINDA CONRAD Who is the mysterious woman who looks so much like his dead wife? Gage Chance doesn’t know, but he has to find out. And when bullets begin to fly, he’ll risk his life to save hers and get to the bottom of things. Will the truth be more than he can handle? Two men find love they thought lost forever. Previous Picks

Okay, no, that’s not what Christmas means to me, but when I think of the holidays, I definitely think of food.  Cookies, sausage bread, soup, tamales, posole, caramel apples, Brad Pitt’s mother’s egg bake (yes, that’s what it’s called… I found the recipe years ago in a magazine.  It is, apparently, one of Brad’s favorite dishes, and we still use this basic recipe every year), and, wait for it… Caramel Corn. Sweet goodness.  Crunchy goodness. There’s just nothing better than this awesome treat, better still because I’ve had the recipe now for, yikes, 30 years!  I first learned to make it when I was in high school home ec class.  Yes, back when there still was high school home ec. It was good then, and it’s good now.  And we make it every year, give mountains of it away to friends, and basically just gorge. And we love every minute of it. The best part is that it’s so super easy to make. Pop about 8 cups of plain old popcorn. In a pot, melt 1 stick of butter ( ½ cup ).  Add 1 cup of brown sugar and ¼ cup of light corn syrup.  Next, add ½  tsp…

One of my favourite movies is Four Weddings and a Funeral.  It’s a fun movie because, as viewers, we are able to attend so many weddings and I love weddings.  I love the beautiful outfits, the gorgeous flowers, the speeches and of course, significance of the ceremony. But when the bride enters the church and looks down the aisle at her husband to be I always cry.  My favourite moment every time. Stupidly, I didn’t remember this for my own wedding. When I walked through the church door the tears began to rain down and there wasn’t a tissue in sight.  At least my flowers were well watered. My strong, brave heroine Sienna in THE CONVENIENT BRIDE doesn’t dream about being married, but if she were to do so, she’d definitely wear her mother’s wedding dress. Her mother has died and wearing her dress on that special day, would make Sienna feel as though her mother were close by.  Each year on the day of her mother’s death, she holds that precious garment and remembers her hard-working, feisty Italian mother. Then, she carefully wraps it up, stores it and returns to running the family hotel in her mother’s place. But…