Katherine Moore is now a USA Today bestselling author!!!!

 We interrupt this Advent calendar for some spectacular personal news. My Christmas collection, Secret Santa, made the USA Today bestseller list. (They take the 150 top sellers for the week a book is first published. One week, that's all you get to make the list een if you later show up on it. It's that first week that means everything. We came in at #144 and could not be prouder.) 

I'm particularly pleased because this was my fourth try. My previous "list runs" have been with my pseudonym Kat Parrish. I write UF, Sci Fi, PNR, and genres in between under that name, Horror and mystery and nonfiction under my real name. 

I love love love Urban fiction, but lately I've been drawn to romance and to Paranormal Women's Fiction and to all things cozy. I used to write dark, noir-ish things as a way of dealing with the sheer L.A.ness of living in Los Angeles. For a long time after my little sister died, I poured my grief in there too. I was just so sad.

But once I started writing cozy, especially the Silver Birch stories, I found I could escape into a kinder, gentler world of my own making. And I liked it there. And also, my sales improved. So going forward, there will be more books from Katherine Moore and fewer from Kat Parrish. 

A Christmas Story...Day Twenty-two

 I actually read a couple of these pieces before the movie based on them came out. The leg lamp that the "Old Man" was so proud of is one of my favorite bits. And Peter Billingsley was a dead ringer for my little brother, so that always made me smile too.

Do yourself a favor and grab this collection of gentle, hilarious stories. You can buy it here.

Here's the blurb:

A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana—the book that inspired the equally classic Yuletide film and the live musical on Fox.

The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family’s typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker’s shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father’s pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie’s duel in the show with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie’s unstoppable campaign to get Santa—or anyone else—to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”?

The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.

Polar Expres...Day Twenty-one

 

Not sure what happened to my beautiful post from yesterday, but it was about the lovely picture book Polar Express, written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. I love the illustrations. Made into a movie, and the inspiration for many, many Christmas train-ride excursions.

Here's the blurb:Van Allsburg also wrote Jumanji. You can get the book on Kindle for just a skosh under $10 or the hardcover (go for the hardcover) for a little less than $12. You can buy it here.

Jennifer YOungblood's Christmas Collection...Day Twenty

 Jennifer Youngblood is a USA TODAY bestselling author of clean, sweet romance an romantic suspense. This collection is one of a bunch she's released this holiday season. You can see them here. This consolidates three novellas and is priced at only 99 cents. Buy it here.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas!...Day Nineteen

 I am pretty sure my father read How the Grinch Stole Christmas! to me when I was a child--he read to me and my siblings every night before bed. And then when I was fourteen, the animated version came out, narrated by Boris Karloff. I have watched that every single year of my life since then.

I have never actually seen the live-action Jim Carrey Grinch, despite all the talent involved. (I'm a hauge Ron Howard fan) becuase I love the original so much. Universal Music group has made the original available on YouTube. You can watch it here. Boris Karloff died two years after making this, and he was so prolific that they were still releasing his movies three years after he died. One of his last roles was on a show called Fame is the Name of the Game, which was a arotating trio of stories under one umbrella. His episode, "The White Birch" was about a group of crusading reporters and a Russian dissident, played by Karloff. I was blown away by his performance. I'd never seen him in anything but the monster movies. (His Mummy remains one of the most chilling I've seen.) Anyway, he was sadly miscast after the monster movies.

The kindle version of the book is actually nine cents more expensive than the hardcover, so I'd go with the hardcover. I had all my childhood Seuss books until a few moves ago when I left Los Angeles. You can buy it here.

Just FYI...we're very proud and grateful.

 

Jingle Spells...Day Eighteen

 This is a fun holiday novella from Christine Pope and it is part of her Hedgewitch series. Here's the blurb: 

Sweet baby Jesus, someone’s stolen a lot of Christmas dough!

All is calm and bright as Globe, Arizona’s holiday celebrations approach. Selena Marx should have known it wouldn’t stay that way. The painted snowflakes on her shop window are barely dry when her best friend, Josie Woodrow, bursts in with news that the baby Jesus is missing from the crèche in front of St. Ignatius.

Selena has enough on her mind without having to use her psychic powers to suss out the culprit. Her boyfriend Calvin Standingbear’s parents are still on the snow-covered fence about accepting her, which throws a dimmer on the town’s highly anticipated Festival of Lights. And when Calvin springs a surprise on the solstice, Selena realizes she has some work to do to reconcile the two men in her life: Calvin, and her cursed cat, Archie.

The last thing she needs is a spontaneous vision that indicates the baby Jesus theft was more than just a prank. And if someone doesn’t spill the beans soon, someone’s getting away with…well, not murder (this time), but a whole lot of dough — and we’re not talking cookies.

You can buy the book wherever ebooks are sold:

Apple Books

Amazon Kindle

B&N Nook

Google Play

Kobo