Tag Archives: Christmas Delights

Christmas Novel Sale! Christmas Delights is $.99! #historicalromance #holidayreads

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Christmas Delights_100x150Buy Options

Christmas Delights is my holiday house party novel, a standalone part of the Victorian Redcakes series. It has a 4.3 Star rating on Amazon, and is available across all etailers. Get it for $.99 this November!

The sweetest gift is the hardest to unwrap. . .

Lady Victoria Allen-Hill never dreamed she’d be a widow at twenty-one—let alone a virgin. Her father insists that she attend a matchmaking house party in the snow-covered seaside town of Pevensey in hopes she’ll find a suitable husband. But for Victoria, it’s an opportunity to indulge in a passionate affair—and the handsome inventor she meets at the Christmas Eve masquerade ball may be just the man for the job. . .

Lewis Noble is the cousin of London’s famed Redcake sisters, so it almost stands to reason that he’s just as irresistible as one of their sugar-iced pastries. Lewis catches the eye of every woman at the party—but Victoria is the only one who catches his. He won’t be tied down in her father’s business, but watching other men court her amid a flurry of engagements ignites a jealousy he’s never felt before. A dose of honesty may be just the thing to mend their broken hearts—for many holidays to come. . .

I love to write about Christmas

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Christmas NookiesChristmas Delights_ebook200x300christmasagogot_msrCaptain Andrew's Flying Christmasholidayheart150

Can you tell I love to write about the holidays? Something about the special sights, scents and sentiments of the season gives me endless fodder for stories. This year I have a new Heather Hiestand holiday release, Christmas Delights, and as Anh Leod, “Wet Christmas” in the Christmas Nookies anthology. The top line of stories are sensual and the second line are sweet.

Learn more about all my books and holiday stories at the link below!

https://heatherhiestand.com/books/

One chapter ends, another begins

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One chapter ends, another beginsGender not specified View treeBorn:
Father: UnspecifiedMother: Unspecified
Children: none
Siblings: none

oldest running carThe oldest running car on the planet: the 1884 De Dion, Bouton et Trepardou Dos-à-Dos

It’s done! I just turned in Book 6 of my Redcakes series, which is Matilda’s book. Time to start plotting book 7, which will be the first book set at the new Redcake’s Tea Shop in Kensington! Yes, my Victorian tea shop story world is expanding a bit. Things can’t stay the same forever. But the heroine is someone who has been around since book 1, The Marquess of Cake, and she has a dark secret you’ll never guess. It’s time to finally get to know the real Betsy Popham, who readers have known since she was just seventeen.

I hope you’ve been enjoying my most recent release, Christmas Delights, which came out less than two weeks ago. In honor of Lewis Noble, the hero, I posted the photo of an early car above.  The vehicle Lewis uses to drive Victoria and Penelope to Brighton in 1889 would probably not have been much more elaborate than this. I hope you appreciate the visual!

I have my holiday menu planned, and tonight is the big Thanksgiving shop with my mother-in-law. We’re going to try baking a fancy new caramel shortbread bar in addition to pumpkin and apple pies. Should be tasty…

Happy shopping, prepping and eating this week! How many people are you eating with this Thanksgiving? We just have five this year, so it won’t be too crazy.

Christmas Delights: A Deleted Scene “The Birds”

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Christmas Delights_ebook200x300This extract from my new release had to be cut from Chapter One! It is one of three mini-stories I made up as part of my holiday house party tale.

from Christmas Delights, Chapter One:

“I know a story about birds,” Miss Redcake said dreamily. “I particularly remember it because my cousin Lewis used to make automaton birds. They spoke in the eeriest voices. When I hear the story I think of his creations.”

“Oh, do tell,” Penelope urged. “You can stop any time you feel out of breath.”

Miss Redcake nodded. “This is the story I was told. In Roman times, Clementina was trying to escape from a lover who’d become too insistent when they’d taken an after-dinner walk. She ran into a fen, to hide on a peat mound among the tall grasses and spindly willows, hoping the sounds of bird calls would hide her slow progress along the sand. It had rained a great deal, being spring, and she left footprints in the clay. But before she went deeper into the fen, she turned, fearfully, to look for her tormentor, and saw that her footsteps were being filled in by wildflowers.” Miss Redcake paused and sniffed her salts.

“My goodness,” murmured Victoria. Another spurned lover tale. She’d rather hear one about a lover catching the girl and laying her down in a meadow of wildflowers.

But no, Miss Redcake had a more poetic soul than she. “When Clementina turned back, she found her way blocked by a tall figure. The light was descending by then and she only had a faint impression that this was a man in a cloak or a habit. A monk perhaps? A traveler?

“Clementina stepped forward, holding out her hands in imprecation. When she looked back again, sure she’d heard footsteps, she found reeds had grown up all around her and the figure. Protection or imprisonment? She did not know.”

“Good heavens,” Penelope breathed, letting the bag of peppermint candies she’d taken out of her pocket drop to her lap.

Miss Redcake smiled. “The sound of footsteps diminished. The figure in front of her raised its arms. Clementina shrank back, then all of a sudden, the figure dissolved into hundreds of sedge warblers. Their frantic squeak chirr calls sounded in deafening repetition. But five seconds later, the birds were gone, flown over the reeds. And Clementina was alone, her virtue safe for another night.”

“Lucky her,” Victoria said sarcastically.

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Meet Lewis from Christmas Delights

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Meet my Characters Blog Hop~Meet Lewis from “Christmas Delights.”

Hi everyone! I was invited to participate in this blog hop by Heather Heyford. You can read Heather’s post here: http://heatherheyford.com/?page_id=1419

First, a bit of info about Heather Heyford:
Campbell crop lo (1) Author Bio:
Born in the Northeast, Heather Heyford learned to walk and talk in Texas, and then moved to England. (“Ya’ll want some scones?”) While in Europe, Heather was forced by her cruel parents to spend Saturdays in the leopard vinyl back seat of their Peugeot, motoring from one medieval pile to the next for the lame purpose of ‘learning something.’ What she soon learned was how to allay the boredom by stashing a Cosmo under the seat. Now a recovering teacher, Heather writes love stories, feeds hardboiled eggs to suburban foxes, and makes art in the Mid-Atlantic. The first book in her Napa Wine Heiresses series from Kensington Publishing, A Taste of Chardonnay, is available in print and digital. For Kindle or in print: http://amzn.to/1u3zFhF Nook: http://bit.ly/1u3zIKq
For iPad, download iBooks app or go to the iTunes store on-line. Or go to HeatherHeyford.com

Thanks, Heather, for the invitation!

Now, I’m supposed to choose one character from a work-in-progress or a recently published book and answer seven easy questions. Here goes!

What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?
Lewis Noble. He is fictional, although he’s been living in my head for so long he seems real. His first appearance was in The Marquess of Cake, the first in the Redcakes series, set in 1886. Now, he finally gets his own story.

When and where is the story set?
Christmas Delights is set in London and Pevensey, England over the 1889-1890 winter holiday. This is my 12 Days of Christmas/holiday house party story.

What should we know about him/her?
Lewis is a sexy, absent-minded inventor. He’s a humble and brilliant man. Back in 1886, he was living in his uncle’s home and mostly working for the man, inventing improved equipment for the family’s baking businesses. He loves all machinery though, and is mostly focused on horseless carriages these days. He has a teenaged ward, Eddy Jackson, who we met in One Taste of Scandal, who acts as his apprentice.

What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?
He thinks he’s in love with his cousin, the Marchioness of Hatbrook, who married another man a few years before the start of his book. This lost, perfect love keeps him from searching for a lasting happiness with a woman. Did he really love her, or is the ideal of her a useful convenience?

What is the personal goal of the character?
He wants to perfect whatever piece of machinery he’s tinkering with. During the book, he’s working on a submarine with his friend, the Earl of Bullen, during the holidays.
Is there a working title for this novel and can we read more about it?
The working title was Castle in the Sea, but it was changed to Christmas Delights.

Here is the blurb:

The sweetest gift is the hardest to unwrap…

Lady Victoria Allen-Hill never dreamed she’d be a widow at twenty-one—let alone a virgin. Her father insists that she attend a matchmaking house party in the snow-covered seaside town of Pevensey in hopes she’ll find a suitable husband. But for Victoria, it’s an opportunity to indulge in a passionate affair—and the handsome inventor she meets at the Christmas Eve masquerade ball may be just the man for the job…

Lewis Noble is the cousin of London’s famed Redcake sisters, so it almost stands to reason that he’s just as irresistible as one of their sugar-iced pastries. Lewis catches the eye of every woman at the party—but Victoria is the only one who catches his. He won’t be tied down in her father’s business, but watching other men court her amid a flurry of engagements ignites a jealousy he’s never felt before. A dose of honesty may be just the thing to mend their broken hearts—for many holidays to come…

You can access all of the buy links here:
https://heatherhiestand.com/books/christmas-delights/

Follow the blog hop! Next up is J.A. Kazimer on October 27th!
j.a. kazimer J.A. Kazimer is a writer living in Denver, CO. Books include The Junkie Tales, The Body Dwellers, CURSES! A F***ed-Up Fairy Tale, Holy Socks & Dirtier Demons, Dope Sick: A Love Story, SHANK, Froggy Style: A F***ed Up Fairy Tale, The Assassin’s Heart, and the forthcoming Deadly Ever After series from Kensington Books – The Fairyland Murders. You can find her online at jakazimer.com.