I Wonder As I Wander…

 

Christmas carols have to be my favorite form of holiday cheer. My husband and I both sang in choir during college as well as in an adult classical chorus a few years ago. My children love to sing too, and one of our friends from church jokingly calls us the family Von Trapp.

As soon as the Thanksgiving dishes have been cleared away, we immediately grab the Christmas CDs and switch out the music in the car as well as in the home stereo. The kids love jamming out to the Phineas & Ferb Christmas album while my husband prefers Straight No Chaser. I love them all. But there is a special place in my heart for the classic carols that echo sounds of ages past.

One of my favorites is I Wonder as I Wander.Written in a minor key, this hauntingly beautiful song evokes strong emotion with it’s simple music and lyrics.

John Jacob Niles

I Wonder as I Wander originated as a folksong from deep within Appalachia. As is true of most folk songs, it was handed down through an oral tradition, the original author unknown. However, in 1933, a collector of folk music, John Jacob Niles traveled to Murphy, North Carolina and came across a revivalist family camped out in the town square. The mother was cooking and hanging her wash on the Confederate monument. The family had been deemed a public nuisance and was on the verge of being ejected by the police. They needed to hold one more tent meeting in order to earn enough gas money to take them out of town.

This is where Niles encountered the young daughter of the family, Annie Morgan. Unwashed but exceptionally pretty, she sang three lines of a song that captured Niles’s attention. He paid her a quarter to repeat the tune. And another, and another. He paide her eight times in all, giving him the chance to transcribe her music and put her lyrics on paper. She sang the same three lines each time, but it was enough to inspire Niles to expand the song and eventually publish it.

Today, this classic carol lives on, it’s haunting melody and spiritual lyrics touching untold hearts. And it all started with a young girl’s song.

I Wonder as I Wander

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky

When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow’s stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God’s Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, ’cause he was the King

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky

         In case you’re not familiar with the beautiful melody, I’ve included a recording for you to enjoy. Just click on the song title below. Merry Christmas! 

10 I Wonder as I Wander

Do You Hear What I Hear

Hello, Winnie here.  I love Christmas carols.  And not just at Christmas time – all year round.  I raised my children to love them as well.  When they were little, one of our nightly rituals was for me to go to each of their rooms at bedtime and sing them a song.  Among the usual (and not so usual) lullabies were show tunes and, yes, Christmas carols.  Many’s the night I would get requests for The First Noel, or Away In A Manger or Angels We Have Heard On High.  So, needless to say, I was very excited when we decided to do a special spotlight on Christmas carols event here at Wildflower Junction.

The song I picked to focus on was Do You Hear What I Hear, Partly because I’ve always liked the song and partly because I was curious to learn a bit about its history.  And what I learned surprised me.

 

I’d always figured this was a long standing traditional carol with European roots.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  In fact, it wasn’t even written as a Christmas carol at all. 

 

A little of the song’s history.  The lyricist was a man named Noel Regney (what an appropriate name!).  He was a Frenchman born in 1922 and trained as a classical composer.  Noel was drafted into the German army during WWII.  He hated the Nazis and secretly joined the French Resistance.  The horrors he witnessed during the war haunted him throughout most of his life.

 

After the war, Noel worked in French Indochina for the French Overseas Radio Service and then in 1952 moved to theUS.  There he met Gloria Shayne a pianist working in a hotel dining room and the two were married.  The couple wrote a number of successful songs in the 50s and early 60s.  Normally it was Gloria who wrote the lyrics and Noel who wrote the music.  But in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Noel, who had experienced the horrors of war firsthand, was moved to write the lyrics of this song as a plea for peace.  In a later interview, Noel Regney made this statement “I am amazed that people can think they know the song and not know it is a prayer for peace. But we are so bombarded by sounds and our attention spans are so short.”

Noel’s favorite version was the one sung by Robert Goulet.  You can hear it here


 

My favorite is this one, sung by Bing Crosby

 

And of course there is nothing more touching than a song such as this sung by a youth choir.  You can hear one such version here

 

To all of you out there I’d like to wish you a very joyful and blessed Christmas!

A Down Home Christmas

One of the things I love about Christmas is traditions. I’m a farm girl, and I have a lot of “country” based traditions that I remember fondly. Some of them have gone by the wayside as I bring up my own family, but I remember them with a special sense of nostalgia, and one of the things I love about writing Christmas stories – in particular westerns – is that I can bring those traditions back to life.

Sometimes I think those traditions are part of what’s missing these days, too. Our lives get so busy that it’s a challenge to take the time to put in extra effort-  it’s easier to go into a store and buy it. But there really is nothing like a down home holiday and I think readers like them too – it provides a connection that they might not experience, or it may bring back fond memories too.

So what makes a down home Christmas?

Do you all know the scene in Christmas Vacation where they go out looking for the Griswold Family Christmas Tree? It’s a little extreme, but there’s nothing like going out in the back 40, finding the perfect – or not so perfect – tree and cutting it down for Christmas. Then freezing your feet off when you haul it back on a toboggan, and then put it in a Christmas tree stand and turn it to hide the “bad” side.

For our family, it’s also Christmas carols and movies. We have our favourites and make a point of watching them curled up on the sofa, or playing the carols as we work around the house. When I was a girl, I adored The Sound of Music. And I lived for Christmas specials on television. DVDs have kind of made that a little more “unspecial” because you can watch it when you want, however many times you want.

How about a candlelight Christmas Eve service at church?

When I was a girl we also used to gather at my brother’s house after church on Christmas Eve and have a potluck. My fond memory of that time is my sister in law’s chocolate bundt cake with peanut butter frosting. MMMM!

And speaking of food – how many traditions revolve around food? I’m guessing more than any other. There’s the Christmas dinner, of course, complete with turkey and stuffing and potatoes and vegetables and any number of desserts. My mom used to make a steamed pudding with sauce, and she always had pie for anyone who wasn’t into pudding. But beyond the meal there’s so much more to enjoy. For me, it’s the making of it that is as special as the eating. I have carried a lot of traditions forward to my girls. Some we’ve changed to suit our tastes – making shortbread is a big one, and fancy iced cookies, and my daughter makes a gumdrop cake each year and her younger sister is the master of Chocolate Peanut Butter Clusters. I remember being in the kitchen and making mocha cakes with my mom – what a mess! My mom did so much Christmas baking she could feed an army – and often did. We had a lot of drop in company in December, or she’d go to a church or community function with a big tray of goodies. Peanut Butter Balls, Scotch Cakes, Mocha Cakes, Doughnut Holes, Squares of every variety….

And there was always time to put on a kettle.

When the baking was done and the mess cleaned up, it was pretty normal to find my mom sitting with her latest knitting project in her hands, too. That’s how you’ll find me a good portion of the winter – especially Sunday afternoons, curled up with my girls and a movie.

It’s those sorts of things that make me really happy to be writing a holiday story right now. Not just drawing on the experiences but the warm, happy feelings that the memories bring. I can’t wait to bring this story to readers next November!

 

Janet Tronstad and Mail-Order Brides

First, I want to thank all of you for welcoming me to Petticoats and Pistols.  I’ve been sitting here at my desk trying to think of what I would say if I was placing an ad for a spouse.  It’s a daunting task, believe me.  But hundreds of men and women did just that in the Old West.
Numerous newspapers ran ads for mail-order brides, but the one who took it most seriously was a San Francisco matchmaking newspaper called the Matrimonial News.  In its own words it was dedicated to ‘promoting honorable matrimonial engagements and true conjugal facilities’ for men and women through its personal ads.

Each edition began with the same words: ‘Women need a man’s strong arm to support her in life’s struggle, and men need women’s love.”

I’m not sure women today would respond to that call, but in its day the Matrimonial News claimed to successfully bring together
three thousand couples.

For twenty-five cents, a man you could place a forty word ad if he agreed to accurately and truthfully describe his appearance (height, weight) and his financial and social position.  Ads were free for women. Because no one wanted to reveal their name, the newspaper assigned a number to each ad.

The following are two examples of the profiles listed in the Matrimonial News:

245 – I am fat, fair, and 48, 5 feet high.  Am a No. 1 lady, well fixed with no encumbrance: am in business in the city, but want a partner who lives in the West. Want an energetic man that has some means, not under 40 years of age and weight not less than 180. Of good habits. A Christian gentleman preferred.

292- A girl who will love, honest, true and not sour; a nice little cooing dove, and willing to work in flour.

I’ve always been intrigued with mail-order brides and was delighted when the opportunity presented itself to do connected
mail-order bride novellas with my good friend, Jillian Hart. We were both interested in railroads so we have our two brides befriending each other as they come West on the train.  Each one gets off at a different train station in the Montana Territory and both of them are surprised at what they find.  I won’t say any more as you will discover their respective challenges for yourself if you read our Mail-Order Christmas Brides. I will tell you that my heroine, Eleanor McBride, gets off close to where the small town of Dry Creek is developing (I have a long-running contemporary series set there) and Felicity Sawyer gets off the train in Angel Falls (where Jillian Hart has her series).

I’m curious what you think about mail-order brides.  Would you marry someone based on a few letters? Just the thought makes me nervous.

Fortunately, I have a less risky proposition for you.  If you post a comment, you will be entered for a chance to win a copy of Mail-Order Christmas Brides. The good thing is that you don’t need to take any vows at all.

To buy Mail Order Christmas Brides Click Here

http://janettronstad.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheryl St.John: OTannenbaum!

I can’t let a December go by without a blog about Christmas trees. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a nut for beautifully decorated trees. At one time I put up four or five in my home, but since our downsize, I’ve taken to enjoying other people’s trees all the more. In fact I hold the Annual Great Christmas Tree Tour every year from Thanksgiving to Christmas. If you haven’t already sent me a photo of your tree, please don’t wait any longer! Here’s my email: SaintJohn@aol.com

It’s difficult to get good photos of Christmas trees without fancy lenses, but if you know how to slow down the shutter speed, you can do a pretty good job.

Every year since our children were small, we’ve spent an evening driving around and enjoying the lights.  The houses are so lovely.  Some people are extreme in their decorating, but my favorite part is still seeing that lighted tree in the front window.  Over the holidays I usually have a chance to see several of our friends’ homes and trees, and I never get tired of the experience.

Late in the Middle Ages, Germans and Scandinavians placed evergreen trees inside their homes or just outside their doors to show their hope in the forthcoming spring. Records have it that the first Christmas tree can be traced to France in 1521, though the Germans are most often credited with its origin. (OTannenbaum) The first trees were decorated with apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers for the pleasure of the wealthy people’s children.

George Washington didn’t have a Christmas tree. Many colonial religions banned celebrations, claiming that they were tied to pagan traditions. The New England Puritans passed a law that punished anyone who observed the holiday with a five-shilling fine. The Quakers treated Christmas Day as any other day of the year. The Presbyterians didn’t have formal services until they noticed that their members were heading to the English church to attend theirs! This sparked the Presbyterian Church to start their own. It was the Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Lutherans who introduced Christmas celebrations to colonial America. December 25th actually began a season of festivities that lasted until January 6th–the Twelve days of Christmas. January 6th was called Twelfth Day, and colonists found it was the perfect occasion for balls, parties and other festivals.

Legend has it that one crisp Christmas Eve around 1500, Martin Luther was walking through snow-covered woods and was struck by the beauty of a group of evergreens. Their branches, dusted with snow, shimmered in the moonlight. When he got home, he set up a little fir tree indoors so he could share this story with his children. He decorated it with candles, which he lighted in honor of Christ’s birth.

 

In the early 19th century, decorating a tree became popular among the nobility and spread to royal courts as far as Russia. Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg introduced the Christmas tree to Vienna in 1816, and the custom spread across Austria.

In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the delighted 13-year-old princess who later became England’s Queen Victoria wrote, “After dinner…we then went into the drawing-room near the dining room…There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments, all the presents being placed round the trees.” A young Victoria often visited Germany and most likely picked up the customs she enjoyed. A woodcut of the royal family with their Christmas tree at Osborne House, initially published in the Illustrated London News of December 1848, was copied in the United States at Christmas in 1850. Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at court immediately became fashionable–not only in Britain, but with the fashion-conscious east coast American society.

Margaret Brownley's Lucky Horseshoe Tree

A German immigrant living in Ohio was the first to decorate a tree with candy canes. In 1847, Imgard cut a blue spruce tree from a woods outside town, had the Wooster village tinsmith construct a star, and placed the tree in his house, decorating it with paper ornaments and candy canes. The canes were all white with no red stripes.

Ornaments were made by hand during those early years. Young ladies spent hours quilting snowflakes and stars, sewing little pouches for secret gifts and paper baskets with sugared almonds in them. Popcorn and cranberries were strung on thread and draped as garland. Tin was pierced to create lights and lanterns to hold candles, which glowed through the holes. People hunted the general stores for old magazines with pictures, rolls of cotton wool and tinsel, which was occasionally sent from Germany or brought in from the eastern states. Small toys were placed on the branches. Most of the trees at this time were small and sat on a tabletop. They weren’t the six and seven foot trees we think of today when we think of Christmas trees.

Some believe the Christmas tree tradition most likely came to the United States with Hessian troops during the American Revolution, or with German immigrants to Pennsylvania and Ohio. Most resources site Germans as some of the first to decorate Christmas trees. But the custom spread slowly. The Puritans banned Christmas in New England. Even as late as 1851, a Cleveland minister nearly lost his job because he allowed a tree in his church.

 

Tracy Garrett's Tree

The Christmas tree market was born in 1851 when a Catskill farmer by the name of Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. By 1900 one in five American families had a Christmas tree, and twenty years later the custom was nearly universal.

In 1880 England, Christmas trees became a glorious hotchpotch of everything one could cram on and grew to floor-standing trees. They were still a status symbol, the more affluent the family, the larger the tree.

The High Victorian of the 1890’s was a child’s joy to behold! It stood as tall as the room, and was crammed with glitter and tinsel and toys galore. Even the middle classes managed to over decorate their trees. It was a case of anything goes. Everything that could possibly go on a tree went onto it. Kind of like my philosophy: More is more.

The Christmas tree market was born in 1851 when Catskill farmer Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. By 1900, one in five American families had a Christmas tree, and 20 years later, the custom was nearly universal.

Christmas tree farms sprang up during the depression. Nurserymen couldn’t sell their evergreens for landscaping, so they cut them for Christmas trees. Cultivated trees were preferred because they have a more symmetrical shape then wild ones. A F.W. Woolworth brought the glass ornament tradition from Germany to the United States in 1890. I love vintage ornaments, how about you?

 


If you don’t have a copy of Snowflakes and Stetsons yet, order a copy so you can read it sitting by the tree, sipping hot cocoa.

Do you have memories of Christmas trees from your youth?  Remember tinsel trees, those aluminum lovelies with the turnwheel light that made it change colors?  My grandma had one of those. I inherited a few of her decorations: A set of cardboard houses crusted with glitter that have tissue paper windows and a set of Santa and reindeer that were among the first products made from plastic.

Is your tree up yet? Send me a photo!

 

A Home for Christmas by Robin Lee Hatcher and Mary Connealy

Hello, everyone. Thanks for inviting me to visit Petticoats and Pistols again.

As Mary Connealy shared last week, she and I teamed up to bring readers two Christmas novellas in an e-book called A Home for Christmas. It’s priced at only 99 cents, so please tell your friends about it.

I love Christmas novellas. They are quick reads that I can enjoy during the hectic holiday season. I don’t have to worry about getting into a big novel and then not being able to get back to it for days or weeks. Novellas can usually be read in one or two sittings. Mary’s wonderful story, The Sweetest Gift, kept me on the treadmill an extra ten minutes so I could finish it. Any story that keeps me working-out means it’s GOOD! I hope my story, A Christmas Angel, will do the same for someone else. After all, we need to burn even more calories during this season of cookies and fudge and stuffing and … Well, you know what I mean.

I’ve written over 60 novels and novellas over the course of my career. Enough that I’m never surprised by similarities that pop up in books. I had to smile when I discovered that both Mary’s and my stories begin with our heroines headed to a new location on a train. We didn’t plan it that way. It just happened. I love the serendipity nature of writing fiction.

Since A Home for Christmas is an e-book only release, I should remind everyone that you don’t have to own a Kindle or Nook or other reader in order to enjoy e-books. There’s free software for smartphones and computers that will allow you to read them on those devices. And, just in case you would like to win a Kindle, you should pop over to my Facebook Page and “Like” it. When my next full-length novel for Women of Faith, Heart of Gold(set in an Idaho gold rush town during the Civil War), releases in February, I’ll be hosting a Facebook launch party and one of the prizes will be an Amazon Kindle Touch. If you Like my Page now, you’ll know when the launch party is happening.

Thanks again for allowing me to drop by for a visit. I’m wishing all of you a Happy Thanksgiving and a very Merry Christmas.

Robin Lee Hatcher

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

Links to buy A Home for Christmas:A Home for Christmas, Kindle

A Home for Christmas, Nook

Best-selling novelist Robin Lee Hatcher is known for her heartwarming and emotionally charged stories of faith, courage, and love. She makes her home in Idaho where she enjoys spending time with her family, her high-maintenance Papillon, Poppet, and Princess Pinky, the cat who currently terrorizes the household.

A Home for Christmas

I have a book that released this week called

A Home for Christmas

I didn’t even know it would come out for sure until the day it did. It’s an ebook and this is a brave new world for sure. People were emailing me that they’d bought it and they were reading it about ten minutes after I found out it was there.

AND it costs (brace yourselves) 99 cents.

We’re experimenting with ebooks and decided to start with a very REASONABLE price to lure people in. (that sounds diabolical, I apologize for that!)

I contains two novellas. One by me called The Sweetest Gift and one by Robin Lee Hatcher called The Christmas Angel.

Here is a little bit about the books.

 

The Sweetest Gift by Mary Connealy 
A spinster with a master’s degree who is a world traveler, librarian by day and concert pianist by night, marries a Nebraska rancher with an eighth grade education. Their worlds are so far apart that each is afraid to admit their marriage of convenience is turning into a love match.

When Christmas draws near Adelaide must decide if she can give up her hopes of owning a beautiful piano so her husband can have the stallion he needs for his ranch. And Graham may need to risk his perfect brood mare to show his love for his wife by buying her the Christmas gift of her dreams.

A Christmas Angel by Robin Lee Hatcher

Idaho 1892
Ten-year-old Annie Gerrard, stuck in a wheelchair since falling from the barn loft, hopes for a beautiful angel to go atop the Christmas tree, but God’s answer to her prayer is completely unexpected.

Annie’s widower father, Mick, hated to ask his in-laws for help, but he had no other choice. He never imagined they would send his wife’s stepsister, Jennifer Whitmore, to care for his daughter. Nor did he foresee the love she would bring into their home. Did he and Annie dare hope that Jennifer might choose to stay?

 
To buy it for Kindle click HERE
To buy it for Nook click HERE

HAVE YOURSELF A PARANORMAL HOLIDAY!

Love time travel? Crazy about holiday reads?  Well, then, I’ve got some great short stories to tell you about, including my latest release, MEANT TO BE, that appears in a new Christmas anthology from VICTORY TALES PRESS.

MEANT TO BE is a time travel set on the last Christmas of the Civil War, in 1864. A young single woman, Robin Mallory, from present day set out to pay a surprise holiday visit to her elderly relatives. When one of her tires blows out, she finds herself stranded on a lonely stretch of road with no one to call for help. 

When a handsome ‘Confederate soldier’ tackles her in the early evening shadows, Robin is outraged and frightened. Jake Devlin is dressed from a time gone by, but what are re-enactors doing in these woods over the Christmas weekend? When the predicted winter storm moves in, Robin has no alternative but to take a chance and trust Jake.

Jake’s presence is comforting, and Robin welcomes the sanctuary from the raw night that his camp offers. But something isn’t right. Once they arrive at the camp, she realizes she’s walked down a gravel road that’s taken her backward in time nearly 150 years. Jake is an officer of the Confederate Army, serving under Cherokee Chief, General Stand Watie.

Unsure of Robin’s motives and who she is, the general puts her in Jake’s care. When they are separated from the rest of the unit, Jake is severely wounded. What will Robin do? Will she seize the only opportunity she may have to return to her own time? Or will she stay in 1864 with Jake and take a chance on a love that was MEANT TO BE?

MEANT TO BE appears in the Victory Tales Press Sensual/Spicy 2011 Christmas Collection anthology, along with four other great stories by my fellow authors, Kit Prate, Stephanie Burkhart, Christine Schulze, and Sarah McNeal.

I also want to tell you about some great stand-alone paranormal holiday short stories that are available for only .99 through WESTERN TRAIL BLAZER PUBLISHING.

MEANT TO BE is not the only paranormal Civil War era holiday short story I’ve written. Another one, HOMECOMING, is a sweet love story that first appeared last year about this time in A Christmas Collection: Sweet through VICTORY TALES PRESS (VTP). It’s still available in the anthology, but now is also available in the .99 gallery at WESTERN TRAIL BLAZER as well. Though it’s a Civil War themed short story, it has a very different take and a surprise ending I hope you will enjoy.

Homecoming by Cheryl Pierson
A holiday skirmish sends Union officer, Jack Durham, on an unlikely mission to fulfill his promise of honor to a dying Confederate soldier—his enemy. In an odd twist of fate, a simple assurance to carry young Billy Anderson’s meager belongings home to his family a few miles away becomes more than what it seems.
As he nears his destination, the memories of the soldier’s final moments mingle with his own thoughts of the losses he’s suffered because of the War, including his fiancee, Sarah. Despite his suffering, can Jack remember what it means to be fully human before he arrives at the end of his journey? Will the miracle of Christmas be able to heal his heart in the face of what awaits him?

 

SCARLET RIBBONS is a story of lost love regained through a holiday miracle. The hero, Miguel Rivera, is a bordertown gunslinger who believes his heart can’t be touched. Christmas brings him a miracle he never expected; one that can’t be ignored.
 SCARLET RIBBONS by Cheryl Pierson
Miguel Rivera is known as El Diablo, The Devil. Men avoid meeting his eyes for fear of his gun. Upon returning to a town where he once knew a brief happiness, Miguel is persuaded by a street vendor to make a foolish holiday purchase; two scarlet ribbons.

When Catalina, his former lover, allows him to take a room at her boarding house, Miguel soon discovers a secret. Realizing that he needs the scarlet ribbons after all, he is stunned to find them missing. Can a meeting with a mysterious priest and the miracle of the Scarlet Ribbons set Miguel on a new path? 

A NIGHT FOR MIRACLES is a novella available through THE WILD ROSE PRESS. This story takes place in Indian Territory of the 1800’s. A widow takes in a wounded gunman and three children on Christmas Eve. The small gifts she gives them all reveal something even more precious for all of them on A NIGHT FOR MIRACLES.

These are all great holiday short stories that will leave you wanting more. I f this isn’t enough paranormal reading for you, try my latest novel, TIME PLAINS DRIFTER, a WESTERN TRAIL BLAZER publication. Here’s the blurb for this time travel story of good vs. evil.

Trapped in Indian Territory of 1895 by a quirk of nature, high school teacher Jenni Dalton must find a way to get her seven students back to 2010.  Handsome U.S. Marshal Rafe d’Angelico seems like the answer to her prayers; he is, after all, an angel.  In a race against time and evil, Rafe has one chance to save Jenni’s life and her soul from The Dark One—but can their love survive?

 

The 2011 Christmas Collection can be purchased here:
http://www.amazon.com/2011-Christmas-Collection-Sensual-ebook/dp/B005Z8VOVG/

All my other novels, short stories and the anthologies I am a part of can be found here:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002JV8GUE 

 I write a mix of contemporary romantic suspense and historical western romance.  Please leave a comment and let us know the best paranormal western romance you’ve ever read. This is kind of an up-and-coming subgenre, and one I’d love to read more of.  I’ll be giving away a copy of the brand new 2011 Christmas Collection to one lucky commenter! Please be sure to include an e-mail addy in your comment.

 Here’s wishing you a very happy holiday season with lots of great reading ahead!
 

 

 

 

Cheryl St.John: My Christmas Story and a Giveaway!

I just love writing novellas for the western Christmas anthologies and am always tickled when my editor invites me to participate. I’d wanted to do a train story for a long time, so when I got the call, I immediately started thinking about a train. Some stories are meant for novellas and others have enough plot for a full length book. A wise writer knows which is which. I often come up with a story idea and then tuck it away for the future, because the premise won’t sustain a full-length novel.

This time I didn’t go to those stored ideas, I sat down and brainstormed new characters. Characters always come first. Once they’re established, I know what they’ll do and how the plot will come together.

Jonah had a few other names in the process—names are a number one priority for my creative process. Without the perfect names I can’t move forward. I considered and dismissed Cole McAdam, Grady Neville, Ivan Kingsley and Jeremiah Thorpe among others. But Jonah Cavanaugh won out. He sounds like a duty-bound U.S. Marshal, doesn’t he? He’s inflexible, honorable, protective and always on the lookout for danger. With Jonah it’s all about duty.

Meredith was always Meredith. Her name came to me with the story premise, and she was the easiest to flesh out. Born into a well-to-do family with a railroad tycoon father, Meredith is living up to expectations. She doesn’t like to feel ordinary. Nothing is grand enough for her; she loves drama, and she has an adventurous spirit. She’s competent, bossy, headstrong and used to getting her own way. But while Meredith is fearless, she hides her lack of confidence regarding her true worth.

Now to get these two together.

Christmas = snow.

A few days before Christmas Jonah is protecting a gold shipment on a train pulling the Abbott’s luxury Pullman. When he spots a notorious bandit aboard, he knows there’s trouble coming, so he alerts the engineer and uncouples the last three cars, stranding the mail car, the luggage car—and the Pullman in a blizzard.

Little does he suspect the railroad heiress is traveling alone on her way to a Christmas Eve party in Denver, where her suitor will propose. Now, not only does he have a strongbox filled with gold to protect, but a pampered female—and before the day’s out—two stowaway orphans.

I had so much fun writing this story about the true meaning of Christmas and the promise of love that I believe it’s one of my favorites. If you’ve already read it, I hope you’ll leave me the gift of a comment or brief review on amazon.

If you leave an amazon review today CLICK HERE, send me a quick email: SaintJohn@aol.com and I’ll add your name to a drawing for this beautiful 50” single strand bead necklace! (The round disk beads are pale pink, which you can’t see well in my photo.)

If you haven’t read Snowflakes and Stetsons yet, here’s the link to order:

 

If you order today, let me know and I’ll add your name to the drawing.

Among my favorites by other authors are Mary Balough’s Christmas anthologies. Many readers tell me that the novellas are their favorite Christmas reads and they buy them all. Are you one of those readers?

Snowflakes and Stetsons in Stores Now

Harlequin Historical Western Christmas anthology

The Cowboy’s Christmas Miracle by Jillian Hart

Wrongly imprisoned, Caleb McGraw is finally free—but the bitterness he holds still makes him feel trapped. Until he sees the beautiful Caroline holding a little boy with eyes just like his own. Discovering his long-lost son is just the start of Caleb’s Christmas miracles!

Christmas at Cahill Crossing by Carol Finch

One Christmas night, outcast Lucas Burnett finds a silver-haired angel buried in the snow. But Rosalie Greer is no pale spirit—she’s a fiery, independent woman, as wild as the mustangs Lucas breeds. Can she be the one to finally thaw Lucas’s frozen heart?

A Magical Gift at Christmas by Cheryl St.John

Meredith has always dreamed of a grand life but, stranded on a train in heavy snowfall with two young stowaways, she unexpectedly finds she has everything she needs with just one strong man to protect her….

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