Good morning and happy Thanksgiving Eve to all! I hope you have a safe and wonderful holiday with family and friends. Relax and enjoy. Take some time to read a good book. And speaking of good books, I’m so proud to have friend and immensely talented author Peggy Webb here with us! I’ll turn the floor over to Peggy who has a very special gift for everyone who stops by today!

 

Thank you, Deb. I was going to chat with you about my holiday traditions, but when I started thinking back over the years, I realized that my Thanksgivings and Christmases have been anything but traditional.  My husband died many years ago, my children and grandchildren live in Florida and New Hampshire, and my dogs don’t give a flip about the holidays.  Every day is a celebration to them.

Once upon a time I had huge holiday feasts around my antique table that can easily seat fourteen, sixteen in a pinch. I ate turkey when the calendar dictated and spent the latter part of November and most of December putting together the perfect gifts, hanging the perfect stockings and making sure the dogs didn’t knock over the tree.  If I didn’t serve my special breakfast casserole on Christmas Eve, everybody in my family felt deprived. And if I didn’t show at my little country church to play the piano and lead the singing for Christmas services, the whole congregation did without music.

Change is inevitable, of course, and I found myself having Christmas in September – or October or November – with my New Hampshire family, Christmas after December 25th with my Florida family, and Christmas with friends everywhere in between.  These days, I sing in a fifty-voice choir at a larger church, and if I don’t show up to sing, the music goes on without me and my fellow choir members send chicken soup.  I’m likely to have three Thanksgiving turkey dinners at the home of friends everywhere from Mississippi to Alabama to Missouri, and I can’t count the number of times I get to celebrate Christmas.  How wonderful!

The best part of having non-traditional holidays is that I have more time to appreciate the spirit of the season.  I have developed a thankful
heart and I have learned that the best gift I can give is an act of kindness.

One of the things I’m thankful for is loyal fans. Through the years you’ve been amazingly kind and generous to me. My gift to you this year is a digital copy of Christmas in Time, FREE online.  This time-travel novella is a prequel to Only Yesterday, one of the romance classics in my Loveswept backlist that I am bringing back as e-books.

When I realized that Only Yesterday began with the death of Gilly Debeau, the owner of Windchime House and a woman folks referred to as an
“old maid,” I jumped at the chance to give her a love story.  She was the right age to have been a young girl celebrating her eighteenth birthday on the ill-fated Titanic. And so I sent her to Southampton on a business trip with her father and put her on the Titanic for the return voyage to America.  Because of my great love of music, I took Wallace Hartley, one of the two band leaders on the ship, gave him a new name and made him a hero for Gilly.

Download Christmas in Time Free, grab your favorite holiday drink, curl up in your favorite chair and keep a box of tissues handy. And do tell me about your holiday traditions. Share favorite recipes. Send chocolate!

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-in-Time-ebook/dp/B005R21Z6Y/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322053969&sr=1-2)

Peggy Webb is the author of almost 70 novels. She began her career in romance and currently writes the laugh-out-loud Southern Cousins Mystery series starring Elvis, the basset hound who think he’s the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll reincarnated.  Writing as Anna Michaels, she is the critically acclaimed author of The Tender Mercy of Roses, a literary thriller Pat Conroy calls “astonishing.”