Christmas stories by MJ Fredrick (With a novella giveaway)

About this time every year, my grandmother would start stocking up on Christmas books. She loved the novellas by different authors that the publishers would put out. We found a lot of new authors that way, because she'd give the books to me when she was done, and I'd race to read them before Christmas.

She passed away in 2004, but every time I see a set of Christmas novellas, I think how she'd be gobbling those down right about now. She didn't watch as much TV as I do, and she'd take advantage of the long evenings to read and read.

Now novellas don't have to be bundled in groups for people to enjoy. Thanks to digital publishing, they can read novellas all the time. I have to say, I'm a huge fan. But I also like discovering new authors, like I did back in the day with my grandmother's books.

So Trish Milburn, Tanya Michaels and I took a trip to Alabama and worked on a set of related Christmas stories set at the beach. This is what we came up with:

Christmas isn’t always snow-covered with a frosty chill in the air. Sometimes it’s sandy beaches with balmy breezes.

And sometimes we find love in the most unexpected places, a place like Starfish Shores.

Here Comes McBride by Tanya Michaels

Shelby James has only truly loved one man — but Finn McBride broke her heart when emotional baggage from his past came between them. Now, Shelby is serving as maid of honor at a beach wedding where Finn is the best man. Will reuniting with Finn be a Christmas miracle, or the worst mistake she's ever made?

Two Hearts a Leaping by MJ Fredrick

After a break-up with her high school sweetheart, Harley Blume retreats to her brother's home in Starfish Shores to lick her wounds and figure out what she's doing next. But her brother is in the Coast Guard reserves and heading out of town, leaving her in the care of Liam Channing, his best friend since they played college football together. She's never been able to keep her tongue in her mouth when good-looking, easy-going Liam is around. How is she going to find her way if she can't keep her balance?

Cruisin’ for a Kiss by Trish Milburn

When Avery Phillips loses her magazine job right before Christmas, she heads back home to Starfish Shores to spend the holidays with the grandparents who raised her. The plan is to hit the job search hard so that she has a new position when the New Year arrives. What isn’t part of the plan is heading up a remodeling effort at her family’s beach motel or falling for the man helping to save the business into which her grandparents put a lifetime of work. As Christmas draws closer, will Avery stick to the original plan to leave town again or take a chance with Luke Taylor and a new life she never expected?

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

How about you? Are you hooked on holiday books? How do you find new authors? One commenter will win a copy of my other Christmas novella, Sanctuary with the Cowboy.

Football Culture by MJ Fredrick

Yesterday I went to my first college football game in Austin. My son's a student at UT, it's his senior year, and I wanted to go before he graduates. I like sports, though I don't love them, but my husband is less of a fan, therefore a harder sell.

I. Had. A. Blast. I want to go again, to the next home game in two weeks. But what intrigued me wasn't the football itself, though that was fun. It was the traditions. First of all, you've never heard "The Eyes of Texas" (AKA "I've Been Working on the Railroad") played so many ways. Fast versions, slow versions, sing-along versions. Then there was the "Fight Texas Fight" chant from one side of the stadium to the other. Then there was another chant after each score, which you clap, then say something (I think it was "Go Horns Go") and make the hook 'em sign.

Bevo was there, a real longhorn that has to stay in a corner the entire game, poor thing. There were students with no shirts and the letters for Texas painted on their skinny chests. No wonder they were skinny, they were moving during the whole game.

There's the gun, Old Smokey, which is fired at the end of each quarter and after each score. There's the big drum, Big Bertha, who is spun around and beaten. There are three cheer squads, which rotate during each quarter.

The most interesting to me, someone who went to a local university, were the people. These were people who had gone to school there, some recently, most decades ago. They wore all manner of UT shirts, and knew all the traditions and chants. Most were season pass holders, so knew each other relatively well.

(This was my favorite UT shirt of the day):

This was all educational to me, especially since my hero in my novella "Two Hearts a Leaping" is a former football star who played for Crimson Tide. When I went to Alabama for my research trip, I was astounded by all the Tide spirit I saw, everywhere I looked, and I incorporated that with my hero, Liam.

Here's the blurb:
Christmas isn’t always snow-covered with a frosty chill in the air. Sometimes it’s sandy beaches with balmy breezes. 

And sometimes we find love in the most unexpected places, a place like Starfish Shores. 


Here Comes McBride by Tanya Michaels 

Shelby James has only truly loved one man — but Finn McBride broke her heart when emotional baggage from his past came between them. Now, Shelby is serving as maid of honor at a beach wedding where Finn is the best man. Will reuniting with Finn be a Christmas miracle, or the worst mistake she's ever made? 

Two Hearts a Leaping by MJ Fredrick 

After a break-up with her high school sweetheart, Harley Blume retreats to her brother's home in Starfish Shores to lick her wounds and figure out what she's doing next. But her brother is in the Coast Guard reserves and heading out of town, leaving her in the care of Liam Channing, his best friend since they played college football together. She's never been able to keep her tongue in her mouth when good-looking, easy-going Liam is around. How is she going to find her way if she can't keep her balance? 

Cruisin’ for a Kiss by Trish Milburn 

When Avery Phillips loses her magazine job right before Christmas, she heads back home to Starfish Shores to spend the holidays with the grandparents who raised her. The plan is to hit the job search hard so that she has a new position when the New Year arrives. What isn’t part of the plan is heading up a remodeling effort at her family’s beach motel or falling for the man helping to save the business into which her grandparents put a lifetime of work. As Christmas draws closer, will Avery stick to the original plan to leave town again or take a chance with Luke Taylor and a new life she never expected?

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

What about you? Have you ever been to a college football game? Any football game? Are you a fan? Did you go to college away from home and get the "college experience?"

The Appeal of the Small Town Romance by MJ Fredrick

I’m a city girl—born and raised in San Antonio—but lately I’ve been on a small-town contemporary reading kick. I’ve read Barbara Freethy’s first Angels Bay book, Suddenly One Summer, and Susan Wiggs’s Summer at Willow Lake, Toni Blake’s One Reckless Summer and now Blackberry Summer by RaeAnne Thayne. (Notice something else similar about all those books? Hey, I’m a teacher, summer is my favorite time of year!) I’m a bit behind on Robyn Carr’s Virgin River books and Meg Benjamin’s Konigsburg series, but I love those books, too.

So what is the appeal of the small-town romance? Here’s what I think. Feel free to add your own.

1) A slower pace. I know I’m not alone in running dawn-to-dusk during the school year. I’ve been known to hit the grocery store at 6 AM before heading to school, squeezing in as many errands as I can after, then coming home, cooking a healthy dinner, keeping house and finding time to write! But in small-town stories, there doesn’t seem to be this urgency. Yes, the characters keep busy and have responsibilities, but everything is calmer. No rush-hour traffic. No business meetings that run late. No crowds at the grocery store (unless they’re there to gossip!)

2) Traditions. My city has traditions, too. We have Fiesta and parades and fireworks on the Fourth (except this year—danged drought!) But people don’t feel as compelled to be a part of them as characters in small-town romances do. For instance, in the book I’m reading now, Blackberry Summer, the elementary school puts on a Spring Fling production, and most of the town goes. Doesn’t that sound cool? It reminds me of the Little House on the Prairie books, where they’d have the spelling bees and the singing school and other things that everyone in the town was a part of.

3) Everybody knows your name. This can cause lots of delicious tension in a small-town romance, especially when the hero and heroine are just getting started. Do they approve? Disapprove? Other people are invested in the relationship. It’s not a book, but I love the show Gilmore Girls. When Lorelei finally slept with Luke, and came downstairs to the diner wearing his shirt, then wondered why no one in town was talking about it…what a neat twist to the nosy neighbor trope!

4) Family. I come from a close-knit family, but it’s small. I love to read about family dynamics in small-town romances, because they seem to play a large part. Even if the characters don’t have a large family by relation, they have close neighbors or other people who love them and want their happiness.

5) Idyllic settings. Small towns are generally born out of an author’s imagination, so they can be set on the California coast or in a small town in the Rockies or on a lake in Ohio. The characters can make a sustainable living running a bead store or an art gallery or a sporting goods store while living in this beautiful place.

I set Something to Talk About, from Lyrical Press, in a fictional small town and made the setting part of the conflict. Everyone knows my hero and heroine and NO ONE wants them to get together.

So what do you think the appeal of the small town romance is? What are some of your favorites, and why?

*****

Where to find MJ:

Twitter: @MJFredrick

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mjfredrickfanpage

Blog: http://mjfredrick.wordpress.com

Website: www.mjfredrick.com

My Ghostly Inspiration by MJ Fredrick

A Ghostly Charm, from The Wild Rose Press, started as a dream. I dreamed that Dean was running a ghost tour for Halloween, to help support he and Sam's demon-fighting job. I started writing it, may even have finished it that way, but it didn't really work for me. I know I completed it, but let it sit. It wasn't ready. Then another writer friend came up with the idea of having connected stories, based on a cursed object from an antique shop, and I pulled this up and started again. This time I thought--what if he led the ghost trips and DIDN'T believe in ghosts? That made writing the story a lot more fun, as was cutting the word count to pick up the pace of the story.

Here's the blurb:
An isolated island off the coast of South Carolina, a cursed Celtic symbol, a ghost tour led by a handsome charlatan, and a reporter determined to debunk anything supernatural come together in A Ghostly Charm.
Maddy Saunders has come to McDavid Island on assignment for a new magazine, wondering how she’ll ever rebuild her ruined reputation by writing about ghosts.

Mal Sheridan leads a ghost tour to bring business to the island for his sister’s New Age shop. Business is good as long as no one is looking too closely. When his creative stories start to come true, he has to figure out why there are ghosts where there weren’t before.

Maddy decides to help Mal figure out why this is happening, while fighting her attraction for this inappropriate man. She has to put her faith in Mal, in something she never thought she could believe, to break a curse.

Available at: Barnes and Noble
Amazon
The Wild Rose Press

*****

Where to find MJ:

Twitter: @MJFredrick

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mjfredrickfanpage

Blog: http://mjfredrick.wordpress.com

Website: www.mjfredrick.com

Ten things to do when stuck on a deserted island with your ex by MJ Fredrick

Ten things to do when stuck on a deserted island with your ex

1) Panic.

2) Spell out SOS with coconuts. Climbing that tree will take a lot of energy, and get you out of his reach!

3) Build a sandcastle with room for ONE.

4) Go for a swim and ignore the fact that he looks better than ever.

5) Go fishing—you aren’t horny, you’re HUNGRY.

6) Explore the island, and hope there’s a hotel around the bend. For RESCUE—not that other thing.

7) Hang out under the waterfall in your underwear and hope he’s not paying attention.

8) Do NOT think about sex.

9) Light a big bonfire, hoping someone will see it and rescue you before you do something stupid.

10) Be grateful he packed condoms.

Reunion stories are one of my favorite romance tropes—which is weird considering there’s no one in my past I want to reunite with—I married my high school sweetheart. But I just love the idea that something happened to a couple that was bad enough to tear them apart, but there’s still love there. It’s a huge hurdle to overcome, isn’t it? And we make a lot of mistakes when we’re young, so in Three Days, Two Nights, out this week from Carina Press, Nat and Tess are college sweethearts who made some life-changing decisions after they were married. Now Nat decides he’ll do whatever it takes to get her back!

Do you like reunion stories? What are your favorites?

Where to find MJ:

Twitter: @MJFredrick

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mjfredrickfanpage

Blog: http://mjfredrick.wordpress.com

Website: www.mjfredrick.com

Exotic Locales with MJ Fredrick

I live less than ten minutes away from the house where I grew up. I’m married to my high school sweetheart and my son went to the same high school where we met. And I like it that way.

BUT in my head and in my books, I love to travel. I have been to almost every continent through research and imagination. The farther and more different than my South Texas home, the better (though my first book, Where There’s Smoke, is set in San Antonio.)

Hot Shot took me to the mountains of Montana during fire season. Boy, howdy, did I do a lot of research for that book.

Beneath the Surface took me, well, beneath the surface of the Caribbean coast to discover a shipwreck.

Breaking Daylight was my first jungle book, set in the wilds of Honduras.

Don’t Look Back was my second jungle book (I LOVE jungle books, all steamy and sexy, though I never ever want to go to one!) set in treacherous Central Africa.

Midnight Sun took me the farthest, to icy Antarctica. Hey, it may not sound sexy, but body heat, people! Fun book to write.

And Three Days, Two Nights brings me back to the jungle—on a deserted island, no less. (Another think I like about jungles—isolation and privacy!)

I have some domestic books, too—Something to Talk About set on the central California coast, Road Signs set on the road from Wisconsin to Seattle, A Ghostly Charm set off the South Carolina coast, Star Power set in northern New York, Bull by the Horns set in West Texas and Sunrise Over Texas set in Texas almost 200 years ago. My December release, Guarded Hearts, will be an Austin-set book.

I snatch up those jungle books like they’ll be gone tomorrow, and I see Carina Press has an Antarctica book coming out, too. What about you? Do you enjoy reading exotic locations?

******

Where to find MJ:

Twitter: @MJFredrick

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