This holiday season, my wish for you is to be merry and bright, just like in the songs and stories. It has been a very tough two years but everyone (and I mean everyone) can find a blessing in their lives.
Did you wake up this morning? You are alive! Did you get dressed? You have clothes on your back! Did you eat something? You are fed! Did you thank God, the fates, the goddess for the day?
You are blessed!
Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! May blessings rain on you this year and the coming one!!
Jill James, author of the Mistletoe Valleyseries of holiday books
My favorite part of the holidays are the traditions that make up a family. From the required foods for Thanksgiving to the time you open presents for Christmas. Every choice. Every memory. Tied together in your family history.
One of my favorite family traditions started when I got married. We got a First Christmas Together ornament and after that I knew I wanted one for every year. Some came with the year on them and some years I picked an ornament I liked and wrote the year on there. As one would imagine, after 32 years of marriage we have a lot of “year” ornaments. This year’s is the cute snowman with gummy numbers! I love it.
In my Christmas book this year I wanted to have Laura, who has never celebrated Christmas, discover what traditions do to connect a family at the holidays, all year long, for all time over the years.
Excerpt of Trapped in Christmas
Christmas in Mistletoe Valley had been as close as possible to perfect before when she’d been researching to write her story, looking for something fake and crooked. Looking for the hidden scam of the town. But embracing the spirit brought Laura as close to enjoyment of the holiday as she’d ever been in her life. This must be what children felt when they saw the presents under the tree and knew Santa Claus had found them yet again.
Passing the antiques store on Candy Cane Lane, she spotted a familiar doll in the window. Blonde hair and blue eyes like her own peered back at her. The dolls with the dimpled faces and their own birth certificates had been all the rage when she was little. She’d rejected Christmas, but her dad rewrapped the much-wanted doll in birthday paper that year. Sara Jane had been her prized possession until she’d tired of dolls in her teen years and let her father donate them.
She couldn’t have loved that doll more if she’d requested it from Santa and he’d made her dreams come true. The love was no less knowing her father had bought it and wrapped it for her.
Leaning against the window, Laura sighed. It took so little to make a child happy. A doll. A bike. A racetrack for mini cars. It wasn’t the shopping-mall Santa’s fault he couldn’t promise the return of missing mothers and fathers.
A bell jingled as she pushed the door open. The scent of lemon polish filled the store. And something more. Of wood cared for many years. Of cushions used and loved for generations. Tradition filled the store as if it were something you could smell and see and touch. The new furniture in her apartment lacked that heaviness of years of loving and caring.
“Good morning and welcome to Levin’s. I’m Anya Levin. Let me know if I can help with anything.”
“Thanks. I was looking at the stuff in the front window.”
A smile graced the young woman’s face. “Yes, I saw you. We get lots of window shoppers, but it is such a pleasure to welcome you inside.”
Laura returned the smile. The quaint manner of speaking brought to mind the old country. Maybe Poland or Germany. “You have a wonderful store. I was wondering about the doll in the window. I had one just like it when I was little.”
“Ah, Christmas brings out the kid in all of us, doesn’t it?” Anya walked over to the window and grabbed the doll, bringing it back to the front counter, placing her gently on the surface as if she were made of porcelain instead of vinyl and fabric and stuffing.
Laura’s fingers trembled as she stroked the blonde hair. Someone had lovingly cleaned up the doll’s shining face. The dress was different from the blue one hers had. But it looked just like Sara Jane.
“It’s one of the older ones. It’s hard to find them without damage. This one is in good condition, but some child must have loved it very much. They wrote their name on the bottom by the dollmaker’s signature.”
Anya lifted the doll and pulled its dress up. A sloppily written Laura stood out in bright, red marker ink.
“Other than that, the doll is in good condition.”
Laura pulled off the right shoe and stared at the tiny stitches in khaki thread. The only color her dad had to do simple rips in his police uniform. Those too small to worry about taking to the cleaners for repairs.
She’d been running around their apartment and snagged Sara Jane’s foot on a table corner. She’d cried like her heart was breaking until Dad got his needle and thread and did surgery to ‘save’ the doll’s foot. He’d been her hero that day. One time in a long list of many.
“I’ll take her,” Laura said without thinking twice.
Anya smiled. “I love when a beloved piece finds a new home.”
Laura’s grin grew as she paid four times what her father paid for the doll new. It didn’t matter. She could hear her Dad’s voice in her head from their talk before she’d left for this trip.
“Sometimes life puts us right where we need to be.”
I hope you will discover Mistletoe Valley and the magic it brings to the season!
Most years I’m writing my Christmas book about this time and trying to figure out how to write about snow, holidays, and chilly weather when it is so hot that I’m sticking to my leather office chair. LOL
This year I’m working on other projects because my Christmas book for this year was done in January!!
I worked on Trapped in Christmas during Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) last November. Finished up after Christmas 2020 and edited in January.
The pandemic and quarantine sucked for life and people, but did something for my writing. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, I read and I wrote more than ever before. I’m trying to keep those habits now that we can go and do things and see people. The time locked away in our homes taught me we have all the time in the world, it just matters how you use it.
Jill James, author of Trapped in Christmas, coming Christmas 2021
From elementary school through high school, my daughter was in the choir. She has a beautiful singing voice. A talent she most definitely did not get from me. LOL As my grandson once said, “Nana, do you know you can’t sing?”
My favorite song they did was Carol of the Bells. These kids had talent! Enjoy!!
Do you have a favorite Christmas song?
Jill James, author of My Mistletoe Hero, included in the Christmas Heroes on Main Street, Christmas 2020 author anthology
Writers have to make a choice with their stories–real or made up? We have to decide that for locations, businesses, organizations, lots of things.
Lots of writers, including some here at Authors of Main Street, make up fictional small towns for our Main Street stories. I’ve used Lake Willowbee, a fictional town in the Sierra Nevada mountains for my stories with the AoMS, and with this year’s Christmas story I’ve started a new, fictional town, Mistletoe Valley, quaint town again in the Sierra Nevada mountains that epitomizes the holiday season.
Businesses and organizations are a little more difficult. Not only do you have to check if you can use a business name, but just by using it you might ‘date’ your book for future readers. What if Starbucks was gone tomorrow? A reader five or ten years down the road might wonder what Starbucks was and what your character was getting there. The other worry is trademark infringement. Some businesses don’t want you to use their business name at all. When in doubt, make it up!
When I started writing My Mistletoe Hero I knew I wanted my male main character to be in a group like Doctors Without Borders. Checked it out. Yep, trademarked. I didn’t want to take the time to get permission, maybe not get it, get a list of what I could or couldn’t say about the organization. So…I made up a group; Doctors Behind the Lines. My group cares nothing about boundaries or lines drawn in wartime. They will go anywhere help is needed. And, no trademark worries!
In my book, Tara Early thinks her husband, Dr. Brent Early is a hero and she wants him getting the honor of the Mistletoe Hero Award more than anything else in the world. Or, at least, she thinks that is all she needs, until life shows her there are more important things in the world than awards.
Chapter 1
“If only I could bottle that energy,” Tara Early muttered to herself as her sons sped through the living room for the hundredth time in the past hour. A yelp and a clatter of toys announced enough was enough.
“Joel.”
“Robby.”
Their crestfallen faces let her know her voice had ratcheted up an octave too high. A deep breath brought her heart rate down and the heat leaving her face. It wasn’t their fault school was out for vacation and Christmas was less than two weeks away. And their father was on the other side of the world. How did single mothers do it?
She glanced at their anxious faces and sighed. Eight and four years old was too young to spend a gorgeous winter day inside. Tara bit her lip. She had to get this letter done, but her children were only children for a short while. A blink and their childhood would be over. Did she want them to look back and only remember their mother had no time for them?
Staring out the window, she made up her mind. “Let mommy finish this letter to the mayor and we will go get the Christmas tree. Joel, help Robby with his snowsuit and I’ll be all done.”
“What are you writing, Mommy?” Joel asked.
She smiled at his eager grin and Robby hopping up-and-down in anticipation. “A letter to the city council to have your daddy be the Mistletoe Hero this year.”
“You’re a hero, too, Mommy. Maybe they’ll pick you,” Joel intoned sincerely. Robby nodded.
Her cheeks heated with a blush as she swept her hair out of her face. “I’m just a mother and a wife. Your dad is across the world, saving lives. He’d the hero. Now, let’s get ready to go.”
Their bright smiles were reward enough. As they ran to their rooms, she finished up the sentence, saved, and shut her laptop. There! She would send the email when they got back, and Brent would be one step closer to being nominated for the Mistletoe Hero this Christmas. She crossed her fingers, closed her eyes, and sent the happy wish for her husband out into the universe.
My Mistletoe Hero by Jill James will be coming out in the Christmas 2020 anthology by the Authors of Main Street.
I love finding places where you can play with photos for blog posts and Facebook posts. Thanks, The Book Designer for telling me about PhotoFunia.com It is so simple to use. This took literally 10 seconds to make and upload:
There are all kinds of pictures there to use and add your photos (or book covers, for authors). Or just a little holiday fun. Enjoy!!
Jill James
author of In My Dreams, one of the stories of Christmas Wishes on Main Street
It is that time of year again…holidays with the family! Time for all the remembered foods. Time for all the remembered traditions. But…
Sometimes traditions have to change. People move away and it is harder to get together. Dinner that used to be at six o’clock has to move to brunch at noon or a late dinner at nine to accommodate work schedules. Opening presents has to happen on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning so that everyone can be there. Still…
The feelings. The happiness. The excitement remains the same. The family is together, hopefully, and the fun can commence.
My favorite part of Christmas is reminiscing of holidays past. Thinking of where you got a favorite ornament as you put it on the tree. Laughing about the Turkey Fiasco of ’87 as you are working in the kitchen. Baking cookies with mom’s recipe handed down from her grandmother. Sitting around the dinner table and talking about the shared memories of the past year.
My favorite memory: Every year my mom, my brother, and I would make Christmas cookies. Making cookies with kids is fun but messy. We made sugar cookies, butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and more. My mom had numerous slips of paper from magazines and handwritten notes from relatives in her cookbook. Some years we tried new recipes and sometimes we just did the usual. Sometimes the new recipes worked and got added to the cookie making day. Sometimes they failed spectacularly and we laughed as we tried terrible tasting cookies and tossed them and moved on. Making cookies in our household was a day-long event. Meals were fitted in between putting cookies in, taking them out, and letting them cool.
But one thing was a guarantee each year. My mom would wear black pants. And by the time we were finished they would be covered with flour handprints. And every year she would swear to remember not to wear them next year. As I spend another Christmas missing my mom, I would give anything to be baking cookies and laughing at her flour-printed black pants.
I love to read Christmas romances just before the holidays. Love, romance, and holly and green. Writers like Grace Burrowes can lavish you with Regency holidays. The balls. The gowns. The dashing men under the mistletoe. Ahhh! I can spend a whole day in a snowy English wonderland.
In the summer I love to read adventure tales. I binge on Andy McDermott, James Rollins, Dan Brown, Brad Thor, and Jonathan Maberry. The lure of other lands, of larger-than-life heroes and heroines is an easy way to escape the heat of summer. I am not an outdoors kind of girl. Give me a corner of the couch, a good book, and a glass of iced tea and I’m good to go for several hours.
Do you find your reading follows the calendar? Do you only read Christmas stories during the holidays or beach reads during the summer? Or do you branch out and read whatever strikes your fancy?
Jill James, writer and reader
working on Christmas novella: names and title still a work in progress. 🙂
“I don’t think she misses those kids at all. They weren’t her real kids, you know. They were adopted. You can tell she never loved them–not the way she loves the kids she had naturally with her new husband.”
This statement was uttered by a coworker yesterday regarding the long-ago breakup of a celebrity couple and the subsequent fallout to their children’s relationship with Mom due to Dad’s involvement in a religious cult.
There are a lot of times I have to zip my lip or run to the ladies room to bang my head against a hard surface during the day job. My brow is still throbbing after this one.
I’m fortunate that I know all kinds of mothers, and let me assure you the giving birth aspect of motherhood has nothing to do with the love any of them have for their children. Every one of them is a real mother who considers all of her children her “real” children. It doesn’t matter if these are natural children of the parents, adopted children, foster children, grandchildren they’re caring for, or…yes…furbabies. Take it from me. No one spends years cleaning up poop and puke, dabbing bloody knees, gushing over dandelion bouquets, worrying about missed curfews, and comforting broken hearts because there’s nothing decent on television. You do it out of love: deep, unconditional, abiding love.
A real mother is emotionally invested in every one of her children. She does not have less love for one than another. She loves all her children equally, but uniquely. What do I mean by uniquely? Just as each child is an individual, a real mom’s love reflects that same level of individuality. She’ll know, and be able to recite in the blink of an eye, her children’s flaws and gifts. She can tell you which one is gullible, which one is the leader, which one feels too deeply, and/or which one is the creative dreamer. She knows their likes and dislikes, can name her children’s best friends, favorite activities, the meals they dislike, their best and worst school subjects. When one of her children hurts, there’s no difference in the measurement of her empathy based on the circumstances of their birth. When one of her children makes her happy, she couldn’t care less if she carried that one inside her for nine months. The real mother is proud of all her children’s triumphs, commiserates with their disappointments. Real moms are human. Sometimes, they make mistakes. But the depth of their love is never one of them.
This Sunday, here in the States, we’ll honor those real moms for all they’ve done for us. To celebrate, I’ve placed my Calendar Girls novella, CHARMING FOR MOTHER’S DAY, on sale for 99 cents for ten days, beginning today. This holiday story introduces readers to the town of Snug Harbor, where all my Calendar Girls stories take place. Colin Murriere has returned to Snug Harbor, the winning chef from a reality cooking show, ready to win back the girl he left behind. Lucie Soto’s life took a downward spiral when Colin broke up with her after a summer fling years ago. Now a single mom struggling to maintain a normal life, Lucie wants nothing to do with him or his dreams of a shining future. But her daughter, Ariana, an expert on fairy tales, knows Prince Charming when she sees him and will stop at nothing to bring these two their Happily-Ever-After.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the real moms. It may not always seem like it, but we know we’re the luckiest kids in the world because you’re ours!
Book 6 of Holiday Babies Series: Available on 
Prequel to Holiday Babies Series: Available on 
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