Coming your way just in time for the holidays - Return Of The Christmas Bride!

 

 

 

 

 My latest release from Evernight Publishing will debut on December 13th, just in time for Christmas which is perfect because it's a Christmas story.

The title is Return Of The Christmas Bride.  Like many (but not all) of my Evernight titles, its a Romance On The Go, stories designed to be read more quickly than a novel.

I've heard them billed as short reads that are long on romance.

Here's the gorgeous and amazing cover:

And here's the blurb:

 

They fell in love as teenagers and became lovers, promised to wed. Delaney Sackett wanted to experience the wider world to attend college elsewhere but Guthrie Travis begs her not to go, afraid she won't come back. When she does, they plan a Christmas wedding.

She leaves again and doesn't return for a decade and by then, everything they once had is ancient history. When she returns to their hometown, their chance meeting ends in a kiss. They talk about what happened and realize that neither had known the full story. Within weeks, they're together again, planning another Christmas wedding that neither believes anything can stop.

When Delaney is abducted, however, their lives – and the wedding - are on hold and hers may hang in the balance. With days left until the planned Christmas Eve wedding, it will take a holiday miracle for Delaney to return and for the wedding to kick off the rest of their lives together.

 

 Excerpt:

 

“We started planning a wedding—a Christmas wedding.”

            Delaney had the dress. She had carried it with her through multiple moves, tucked inside a garment bag, the full length, white satin off-the-shoulders gown with lace accents she had selected. She’d chosen white and pink poinsettias to decorate the church. Her bouquet would have had red and white roses, some holly leaves with berries, evergreen sprigs, and a few pine cones.

            She nodded, a knot in her throat stopping speech for the moment.

            “Then you got a job offer, writing for some magazine in New York City.” His voice carried resentment and he laid on the sarcasm when he mentioned New York.

            “It was a good offer, they paid me well.”

            “And you went,” Guthrie replied, his voice a low growl with dangerous calm. “You left me again. And any question of a wedding vanished.”

 

 

A season for everything under the heavens - a season for Thanksgiving!

In Ecclesiastes, we read that there is a season for everything and a time for every purpose. I find myself often reflecting on those words of wisdom as I race through my days and rush through the seasons.  

My perception of the changing seasons or the current season at hand seems to differ from modern society because to me, despite the growing tide of Christmas advertising and common perception, it is not yet the holiday season.

Somewhere over the past few years, I failed to realize that many people now consider Halloween the start of the “holiday season.” 

I must be old-fashioned, because I have yet to get behind the now long-standing notion that Thanksgiving begins the holiday season. During the years when I was a child, each holiday stood alone, in perfect clarity and with its own celebration.

Halloween, days after my birthday, was a favorite celebration, a simple evening of trick-or-treating and fun. The next day, The Feast of All Saints followed by All Souls were part of my church tradition. 

 

 

Thanksgiving stood alone as an all-American holiday that celebrated the pilgrims as well as our nation. We gave thanks with a feast, and it was a time for both food and family. I can recall when the push for the Christmas season crept into the day after Thanksgiving and how my grandparents complained that it rushed the holiday season too much. They remembered when the holiday season was still just the Christmas season, beginning about two weeks before Dec. 25.   

In those old days of my youth, no one heard much about Christmas until after Thanksgiving, maybe not until at least Dec. 1. It was then that the barrage of Christmas music, special programs and shopping specials began to herald the holiday season.

For me, the holidays or the holiday season remain Christmas and New Year’s Day with Hanukkah thrown in for good measure. I don’t begin to put up a Christmas tree until the calendar reads December. Although I may do some advance Christmas shopping, I like to save the wrapping for cold December days when I can listen to holiday music and be in the mood to hear it.

This year, someone I know complained that one radio station moved from “Monster Mash” late on Halloween night to Christmas music at the stroke of midnight. One television commercial for a popular discount store no longer found in our area has a wife rushing out to go Christmas shopping although her husband protests that they have just carved pumpkins. Christmas decorations were up in many retail stores even before my kids had a chance to say their first “trick or treat,” and holiday merchandise was on the shelves even earlier.

When I see holiday open houses, Christmas shopping sales, holiday-themed advertising and hear Christmas music before I have roasted my Thanksgiving turkey, I am sad. Somehow, the rush for an early Christmas season steals some of the splendor and robs me of the anticipation for the special time of year that I love. In my faith, Christmas is a holy observance as well as time for family, friends, and sharing. Our season of Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas Day and is a time of anticipation for the coming of Christ. It is both solemn and joyful, but the anticipation is part of the season.

Whether we are waiting for Emmanuel or looking forward to presents beneath the Christmas tree, let us keep Christmas in its own time, in the right season. Let us mark the remaining days of autumn, celebrate Thanksgiving, and enjoy waiting for the true holiday season to begin!