UPDATE: The winner is…Donna Bayar Repsher!
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I love gift-giving and our family looks for every opportunity to celebrate holidays with gifts, food, and fun. So, naturally, I’m already turning my attention to the next celebration.

Solve the puzzle, then tell me whether this is a holiday you like to get behind for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Julie Andrade!
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Here’s a little list of 10 things that make me sigh with happiness in December, listed in no particular order…

• ☕ Marshmallows in Hot Cocoa
• 🧝 Elves on the Shelf
• 🧥 Ugly Christmas Sweaters
• 🎁 Gift Giving
• 🍬 Delectable Sweets
• 🎵 Holiday Music
• 💡 Christmas Lights
• 👪 Family Time
• 🧙‍♂️ Christmas Gnomes
• 🎄 Christmas Decorations

You know what’s coming next! 😈

For a chance to win your choice of a download of any of my backlist of books, tell me five things that make you sigh during the holidays!

UPDATE: The winner is…flchen1!
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Yes, it’s a thing! And don’t you learn the least important stuff on my blog?

What are some of your favorites? Or maybe some tired ones you’d rather never hear again?

Here are some I’d love to go away: “Love is blind!” “All’s fair in love and war!” “A fool and his money are soon parted!” “Cold as a witch’s tit!” Okay, so maybe that last one isn’t quite so famous. My ex-Irish-husband liked that one a lot. (And no, he was not talking about me.) 🙂 We’re very good friends still.

So, with clichés in mind, let’s have a contest! Of course, we’re having a contest!

Tell me your picks for most annoying clichés and those you love for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift certificate!

UPDATE: The winner is…Eileen McCall!
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There’s just a slight chance of rain today, so we’re planning on hitting the pool this afternoon. The water’s still warm enough I don’t gasp when I step down into it. I have to make good use of the final days of our swimming season! The SIL worked 4-days-on/4-days-off as a police officer, so no impact there. He’s off though, so he can enjoy (hahaha) having the kids around today.

For those of you celebrating the Labor Day holiday—enjoy the day off! I hope you’re lighting up the grill and enjoying the sunshine.

So, in the spirit of Labor Day, tell me about your worst and best jobs for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift certificate! 

I’ll start.

Best job ever? Brand new butter-bar lieutenant assigned as a platoon leader to a unit that set up communications sites on mountain tops in the middle of winter in support of other units playing wargames. (Phew! That was a long sentence!) Living in a tent in 10-degree weather for a month (think about it—bathing in a bucket you warm on a Coleman heater, sliding on frozen paths to the latrine) was soooo hard and still so much fun. Climbing those microwave towers when they were coated in ice? Thrilling!

Worst job ever? Teaching 10th-graders history.

Your turn!

Psst! And don’t forget. I have contests to close out, but most of the ones listed on this post are still open!

UPDATE: The winner is…Karla Campos!
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First, solve the puzzle! Share your time, if you like. Then we can talk.

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me whether you have one, and if you do, what does yours feature?

I am tagging on to Delilah’s “St. Nick” post. If you haven’t read it, you can find it here. https://www.delilahdevlin.com/blog/2021/12/05/st-nicks-night/. She wrote on her family’s Christmas traditions. Let me tell you about mine.

I found it in the midst of utter chaos. I was chasing down the perfect gifts for loved ones, planning a party, and juggling visiting family with different schedules, dietary needs, and pets. Facebook was my escape from reality. It was my coping mechanism—don’t judge. There was a picture depicting Jolabokaflod. I looked at that photo of a blazing fire with an inviting chair under the snow-covered windows. A hot beverage next to a pile of books lay beside it.  I was immediately transported to Iceland. The house was quiet; the fire crackled; all my friends were curled up with books. I wanted that. Okay, I lived on the gulf coast, so snow and a roaring fire were not realistic, but I could give books on Christmas Eve. Setting up little reading nooks and an array of warm beverages were possibilities as well. I was now on a mission to adopt Jolabokaflod. It helped me rediscover my love of the holidays. Gone were the worries of making everything perfect and attending every party. What fun I had shopping for the perfect stories for my house full of guests.

Jolabokaflod is the Icelandic tradition of giving books on Christmas Eve then going off to read them with a non-alcoholic hot drink. It started after World War II, when paper was not rationed, and booksellers were trying to hawk their wares. They published a list of books and mailed it to everyone in November encouraging the giving of books for Christmas.

At my house, the big night arrived—Christmas Eve. The weather was warm.  I kicked on the air to frigid, so people could snuggle up with cozy blankets.  I had chosen to keep my guests in the dark about the evening’s event, so their faces were filled with anticipation as I handed out the beautifully wrapped gifts. I even learned how to make fancy bows, which is a huge feat since I am the least crafty person on Earth. Thank you, YouTube. My drinks trolley overflowed with cider, teas, coffee, and hot chocolate. I explained the tradition. Then everyone took turns revealing their books. There were oohs and ahhs and a few puzzled hmms. Friends selected beverages and dispersed to find the perfect reading spots. It was amazing. We were alone but together, kind of like a silent book club. After a couple of hours, we gathered back for a late supper of roasted lamb and flatkaka to keep with the Icelandic theme. The conversation flowed and ranged. Huge success. It was all that I had hoped for and more. Jolabokaflod is now my annual Christmas Eve event. The participants and books change, but the feeling of discovery and friendship thrive from year to year. Give it a try.

If you are looking for a book gift, I highly recommend Passionate Ink’s Falling Hard anthology (which is currently FREE in KU!). It contains seven steamy stories to warm your cold December nights. Michal Scott writes of Eve trying to escape an unwanted marriage in 1898 in Who Can Find a Virtuous Woman. Ryley Banks’ hot ginger TJ comes face to face with his teenage crush, Harley. Who doesn’t love a hot ginger? Find out what happens in Hard Cider Crush. Calia Wilde’s Burned Bones doesn’t disappoint with demons, dragons, and scorching sex. Learning that there is life after tragedy is the story of Roger Callahan. Ryan T. Osborn’s Claiming Papa is a daddy story that stays with the reader. Jordyn Kross’ Open Enrollment has you rooting for Dr. Chandra Russell from the first paragraph. What a steamy alien love story that has you hoping for a sequel. “When it comes to love and death, time is just another four-letter word.” Deni Dawson has a way with words. In her Between Love and Death, you find yourself thinking about houses and ghosts in a new way. A Facebook (can you tell it’s my story?) reconnect of first love leads to more than chaste kissing in The Homecoming.

All proceeds for Falling Hard go to Proliteracy.org!!

Want a sexy variation on Jolabokaflod? Pick up an erotic novel from your favorite author, pour your favorite beverage for a special person(s) of your choice, and take turns reading passages out loud. You don’t even have to wait until Christmas Eve!

Do you have a book tradition that you would like to share? I am always looking for new ways to celebrate with books or just celebrate!

Thank you, Delilah, for letting me share my favorite holiday tradition with your readers. Happy Holidays and Reading.

XOXO
Candy

To find out more about Candice LaBria, visit her website at www.CandiceLaBria.com or her socials at Bria_writes on Instagram and Twitter and Candice LaBria on Facebook.

UPDATE: The winner is…Colleen C!
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I want to start by thanking Delilah for letting me come play in her space again today! It’s been a while, and I always enjoy visiting all of you here.

We just wrapped up my favorite holiday of the year here in the U.S. Thanksgiving is just the start of a long stretch of holidays, though. When I still worked in retail, that meant one of our busiest times of year, which made the holiday season a whole lot less fun with all of the extra hours we put in and some people who didn’t care if they were on a naughty list. I bet some of you have dealt with the same things in one way or another.

Holidays as adults are a lot different than when we were kids, aren’t they? All the work, not as much of the fun. Shopping, cooking, baking, wrapping, decorating, other obligations. Kids get to enjoy only the good stuff, the fun things. They rip into gifts with no thought about the huge pile of crumpled wrapping paper shoved into a corner. They get to eat the foods without any of the prep work, though when I was a kid, we did ‘help’ my mom with the baking, as kids do—getting in her way, spilling flour and sprinkles all over the kitchen, then getting out of the way when fresh cookies came out of the oven and leaving her to deal with the clean-up. Wouldn’t you sometimes like to do things that way now? Take part in all the fun bits, but none of the messy stuff?

I’m afraid I can’t really help with that, but thinking about holidays as a kid also makes me think of favorite things from those long ago holiday seasons. Like my grandma’s nut rolls—she always made extras to put in the freezer so she had something quick to pull out when company came throughout the year, and I loved getting a nice slice with butter on. I begged her for the recipe for a few years before she gave it to me, and it still makes me smile when I look at the index card with her neat handwriting and imprecise measurements and directions. My nut rolls are still not quite there yet, but I work on them every year. (I also cheat and make the dough in my bread machine now.) Or my other grandma’s sand tarts. She rolled that dough so thin, you could see light through it when the cookies were baked. I gave up on making those a long time ago—much too hard to get that dough that thin, then all the time spent with the cookie cutters and decorations, and such a mess to clean up afterward. My mom did that every year, too, and I can’t imagine doing it with a kitchen full of kids underfoot. But I really miss those cookies…just the right amount of sweet and perfectly crisp.

For our Thanksgiving dinners, I used to experiment with different kinds of stuffing each year, until I discovered how amazing stuffing is when made with sage and onion bread. That is a constant on our Thanksgiving dinner table now, along with a corn pudding and some variety of homemade cranberry sauce, plus the turkey of course. One thing that has been on our holiday table for years, though, is my grandma’s china. My Pop-pop gave it to me as a gift one year, and using it for holiday dinners makes me remember Thanksgiving dinners at their house when I was little, with immediate and extended family and friends around the table.

I think most of us have some favorite holiday recipe or family tradition that we try to continue even as adults, right? Something for our kids or even just ourselves. I’d love to hear about yours, and if you share by the end of Friday, December 3, 2021, I have an ebook copy of my most recent release, Protecting Medusa, up for grabs via a drawing on RandomResult.com. 

Protecting Medusa Blurb

Being the Medusa will put a real crimp in a woman’s social life. Lucky for Philomena Gregory, she gave up on men long before Athena’s curse landed on her head—she learned as a child men don’t stay, a lesson reinforced when she was a lovesick teenager. Not even the hot naked man in her bathroom will change her mind.

Ryder Ware has waited six years to meet Mena in person. She’s managed to avoid him every time he’s visited his son, her nephew. Flirting on the phone and via email is no substitute when a man is so intrigued. But now that Athena’s Harvesters have found her, Mena has no choice but to let him keep her safe—and close, very close.

Philomena may have to accept his protection, but, even if the chemistry between them is hotter than Hades, she won’t change her mind about a relationship, even after a little hot sex. Or even a lot of sex. Good thing Ryder’s a patient man. After years of waiting, what’s a few more weeks to convince the woman of his dreams he wants forever?

About the Author

Elizabeth Andrews has been a book lover since she was old enough to read. She read her copies of Little Women and the Little House series so many times, the books fell apart. As an adult, her book habit continues. Almost as long as she’s been reading great stories, she’s been attempting to write her own. Thanks to a fifth grade teacher who started the class on creative writing, she went from writing creative sentences to short stories and eventually full-length novels. Then, as a teenager, she found her mother’s stash of romance novels, and her future direction in writing was pretty well set in stone.

Along with her enormous book stash, Elizabeth lives with her husband of more than twenty-five years, and their two young adult sons live near enough to see frequently, though no one else in the family reads as much as she does. When she’s not at work or buried in books or writing, there is a garden outside full of herbs, flowers and vegetables that requires occasional attention, plus some neighborhood stray cats who like more frequent attention.

You can find out more at ElizabethAndrewsWrites.com