If you're like me, your favorite four-letter word is FREE.
Here's a freebie romance promotion running for the next couple of days.
If you're like me, your favorite four-letter word is FREE.
Here's a freebie romance promotion running for the next couple of days.
every year, Jennifer prepares seasonal boxes of sweets you can customize to your taste. She even has gluten-free options (this month it's a yummy coffee cake and her scrumptius candied walnuts.) There's also an "off the menu" option for a small "chef's assortment" of cookies that includes shipping for just $25.
You will not be disappointed. Everything she makes is incredible.
She'll orovide a tracking number and put in personalized messages if you're sending the sweets as a gift. (She only ships to continental US.)
And if you're a fan of a particular sweet from a previous list, shoot her an email and ask her you can special order anything. (I'm fond of a couple of things that she only has at Christmas, but I know she bakes year 'round.
In my parents' house, a forsythia hedge separated their back yard from one of our neighbors. It was about five feet high and in spring it was solid yellow. It was always the first thing that bloomed, always just a week or so before the pink and white dogwood trees started to blossom, and about the same time as daffodils and violets. The Pacific Northwest is pretty stunning in all the seasons, but the spring with its apple and cherry blossoms and flowers is one of the best.
When I went to 20 Books to 50K in Vegas, everone seemed to have a logo--on their business cards, on their websites, even in front of their books. Everyone was talking about "branding," and it felt like if I didn't have my very own logo, I was going to be left behind.
So I went to my favorite place (Etsy) and commissioned an artist to make me two different logos. One is for my regular books--the Love is in bloom logo, and the other is specifically for my Christmas romances.
Christine Morgan made the designs (for a very fair price), and I could not be happier with them. She's a star seller and also does book covers. You can find her here.
Years ago, I read a really intersting magazine article (remember print magazines) where the writer had gone to five different people--celebrities and regular people alike--and asked them about their support system--who helped them be their best selves. then the magazine photographed them with their "entourages" and it was everything from their mailmen (who picked up packages sent out by a home business) to massage therapist. I could not exist as a
The entrepreneurs and artisans on Etsy and Fiverr work hard for their money and offer incredible value and deals. I could not do what I do without them.
In addition to my Silver Birch stories, I'm starting a new collection of cozy workplace romances, all with the "enemies to lovers" trope. The series title is: Corporate women. The series kicks off with Lydia from Legal, the tale of a corporate merger and two feuding lawyers who knew each other in high school (#second chance romance) and can't deny their attraction to each other, even though they hate each other.
The series continues with Sara from Systems, Anna from Admin, Rita from R&D, Sofia from Sales, and Faye from Finance. Book Covers Online did Lydia from Legal's cover, Dawn Taylor created the follow up books.
I love vector-based covers for this type of story. I feel like they convey the tone of the story and that they're on the sweeter side of romance. (Although not always. I just read a hilarious spicy romance featuring a southern woman who is in love with a hometown boy who is definitely a bad boy. (It's called Enemies with Benefits by Roxie Noir. Check it out. Noir brings both the snark and the spice and as someone who was brought up in Virginia, the southern stuff really rings true as well. It's one of a series about a family with a bunch of interesting sounding sons.)
It's been fun plotting this series and trying to get in what it's like to work in different departments at a big corporation. Before I went freelance, I had a lot of jobs. (Back in the day, I worked as a temp. Remember Kelly Girls?) I worked at banks. I worked at utility companies. I worked at an insurance cmpany. I worked for government agencies. At one of my temp jobs, all I did, all day long, was type type up purchase orders for various different screws and bits and pieces of hardware needed to make Magnasync movieola machines (which are now virtually obsolete.) I would amuse myself by mentioning that the names of the suppliers sounded like Nordic porn magazines (Benthic Screw is the only one I can remember) and oddly, no one thought that was funny.The Christmas just keeps coming!!! Katherine Moore has got a lot of Christmas stories out this season. In this anthology, she returns to Silver Birch with a story of second-chance romance, "Countdown to Christmas." You can pre-order it here.
Here's the pitch:
*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺ 𝕲𝖞𝖕𝖘𝖞 𝕻𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕻𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘 ༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚
One thing I've noticed is that certain themes keep surfacing. One is that I write a lot about family. My parents died young and I miss them. My little sister died young too, and I really miss her. We were eight years apart in age but close in sisterhood. We spent most Christmases together the last decade of her life.
I also write about heroines and their grandmothers. I was brought up in a three-generation family, with my maternal grandmother living with us for huge swathes of time while my grandfather was in and out of the nearby veterans' hospital. My grandfather was old and rather remote, but my grandmother was very much involved in our lives. And she was a character and a half. I use a bit of her and her various sisters and friends every time I write an older woman. You can purchase it here.
You can also pick up the other stories (all of them bite-sized and available on Kindle Unlimited for your reading enjoyment).
Available December 4, 2023.A Cozy Christmas Night
Preorder here.
This is one of two divorced couples/second chance love romances on offer this Christmas. The other is Merry Christmas, Darling, which is one of my Silver Birch stories.
You can preorder that here.
Probably one of my favorite stories on preorder is Gifts for Christmas, which is a love story, but it's also about a distressed community coming together and providing a lovely winter holiday for all its citizens. This is a story that was first inspired by the loaves and fishes, but also by the children's book Stone Soup. I first learned about that book becuase it was one of the books featured on Captain Kangaroo. I've remembered it all these years.
Both my grandmothers were award-winning bakers and fine cooks, and during the holidays, they set bountiful tables. I've akways been grateful for that bounty, and as I've gotten older, I have become well aware that too many people are hungry. There are all kinds of giveaways for the holidays, and people are usually generous with their donations to food banks around the season, but people are hungry all year long. I'm lucky in that there's a tiny food pantry near me, so donating is easy. But when I have extra money, I also like to support the work of Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen.