Letters From Father Christmas...Day Twenty-three

 J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, was a fond father, and this is a collection of the notes he wrote to his children on Christmas. Here's the blurb:

Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for J.R.R.Tolkien’s children. Inside would be a letter in strange spidery handwriting and a beautiful coloured drawing or some sketches. The letters were from Father Christmas.

They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how all the reindeer got loose and scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone Polar Bear climbed the North Pole and fell through the roof of Father Christmas’s house into the dining-room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces and made the Man in it fall into the back garden; how there were wars with the troublesome horde of goblins who lived in the caves beneath the house!

Sometimes the Polar Bear would scrawl a note, and sometimes Ilbereth the Elf would write in his elegant flowing script, adding yet more life and humour to the stories. No reader, young or old, can fail to be charmed by the inventiveness and ‘authenticity’ of Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas.

You can purchase this book in all the formats here. I love this cover...

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.