Holiday Gifts Of Love Blog Hop #HolidayHop #freebooks #winakindle

Welcome to my little corner of the Holiday Gifts Of Love Blog Hope where we are celebrating the season.
So from Dec 14th to Dec 17th, all 200 or so of us participating Authors and Bloggers will be blogging about the holidays.

Or rather Christmas, and what it means to us. Forgive me, but I'm in the UK, and it's Christmas!

*smiles*


While we do that, we are EACH doing a giveaway. Yep. There will be over 200 giveaways on each blog hosted by that Author or Blogger.

But that's not all....

We have THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times!

Now what are those prizes?

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet

2nd Grand Prize: A $200 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!

Please note that all the prices are International, apart from the Swag Pack, which is US only.

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So, what does Christmas mean to me? A chance for life to slow down and us to just enjoy being together as a family. With my eldest now away at University, it will be lovely to have her home, and to have all my brood under the same roof, just us. Well, I say, just us, lol. There is eleven of us, so no 'just us' about it. But it's chaotic and fun, and utter madness at the crack of dawn when the little ones get up to see if Santa has been, and all hell breaks loose. A ton of wrapping paper and excited screeching later, they all settle down with their goodies and I get started on the Christmas dinner.

We may or may not go to church, depends on the weather, and how lazy we are, lol, and once the turkey is ready we all stuff ourselves until we can't move. Then watch the Christmas telly, and just chill. It's great fun and completely different to the Christmas traditions I remember growing up, but that's okay, because we have made our own traditions. 

I always get a bit teary at Christmas, because I miss my Gran. She made Christmas truly special, and as there were only Gran, me, and Dad, and then eventually my step mum, it was a very quiet, and dignified affair. A direct contrast to the boisterous mayhem that is Christmas at my house now, but I like to think she is looking down on us with a twinkle in her eye, perhaps remembering Christmas times when she was growing up. She had five brothers and three sisters and they all lived in a tiny two up and two down house, with the grand parents and great grandmother, so I reckon it was not dissimilar to our Christmas now, lol.

So this year, like every year, I will raise my glass of German beer and say a silent prayer to my gran in the midst of all the organized chaos, and count my blessings.

Before I go, let me share my two Christmas releases with you.

My story in that anthology is called Santa's Beard, and my heroine expects another lonely Christmas. What  she gets is something else entirely...

You can check out the details and read a hot excerpt HERE.

My other Christmas release is For The Love Of Mutt.

In this paranormal story both my hero and heroine are determined to make a difference this Christmas. What they didn't count on was falling in love.

For more details and to read an Excerpt click HERE.

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Now, that shameless self-promo is over and done with, let me tell you about my giveaway. I am giving away two copies from my back list, which  you can check out HERE. Winners choice. 

Just tell me about one of your Christmas traditions, old or new, in the comments, and don't forget to leave your e-mail address.

Have a lovely festive season, however you celebrate it !