Saturday, December 21st, is our gift of fun writing blog post day.
I'm not a winter person, so my family who all live in the UK, is still puzzled as to why I ended up in Canada, where there is so much winter. I have been here long enough to have experienced snow every month of the year.
My preference for Christmas would be for it to snow on Christmas Eve, stay for Christmas Day, and then disappear on Boxing Day. As Alice says in my short story All I Want For Christmas, included in the anthology A Cowboy This Christmas, snow at Christmas is like cake with icing.
It's not that we didn't have snow in the UK. I'm old enough to remember the winter of 1947 and then the flooding the following spring when it thawed. In December 1962, it started snowing on Boxing Day, and we had snow lying around until June 1963. This was one of the coldest winters on record for the UK. 1978-79 was another cold winter. We lived in a 300-year-old country house without central heating or double-glazed windows at the time, so it was COLD. We kept warm with a solid-fuel stove in the family room and an open fireplace in the dining room. Hot water bottles and extra blankets were required for bedtime. But, despite the cold, the snow did give us some good memories. This is the willow tree in my backyard which looked like a decoration all on its own
and Charlie, one of my dogs, just loved being outside.
That was the year my sons decided a dog team would be a great idea to go to the local store about a mile away. Charlie, Sue, and Tim (those latter two dogs not so keen on the winter weather) were somehow hitched to an old toboggan. To the cries of 'mush, mush,' the dog team sat down, looking bewildered, and then 'mushed' back indoors as soon as they were unhitched.Whatever the weather is in your part of the world, there is nothing more rewarding than curling up in a cozy chair with a good book. What better than this anthology of short, sweet, contemporary Western romance stories from nine authors? Cowboys and Christmas, what could be better?
My story is entitled All I Want For Christmas. Rancher Luke Evans expects to spend Christmas alone. His brother is a professional musician who is always on the move and hasn't been home for Christmas in years. Their father finally gave in to their mother's longed-for winter cruise and booked it as a Christmas present for her with some additional encouragement from Luke who volunteered to stay at home and look after the ranch.
A snowstorm (of course there's a snowstorm! It's winter in Alberta, Canada) strands Kate Cooper and her five-year-old daughter Alice at the ranch. While the child's smile warms Luke's heart, will widowed emergency nurse Kate dare to love again? Could she and Alice become the family he always wanted?
That's the simple premise, but there is a lot more to this family story. Luke's brother arrives with a new wife on his arm, followed by their parents, who gave up on the cruise because Mom realised a cruise couldn't beat home sweet home.
So, all the ingredients for a happy family Christmas are there. It's the 'sweetest' thing I have ever written, and I had fun writing it. If you'd like to take a look, here's a link:
A Cowboy This Christmas:
Now, I want to visit my fellow bloggers and see what fare they have served for this month.
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-3nE
Diane Bator https://escapewithawriter.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
