Sunday, November 25, 2012

ENTANGLED PUBLISHING'S Baby It's Cold Outside Anthology and Holiday In Crimson by Patricia Rosemoor

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 We asked the authors of Entangled Publishing's holiday anthology what they enjoyed most about contributing to Baby, It's Cold Outside - and we asked them for blurbs of their stories.

Their answers follow, and then our Entangled Holiday Weekend ends with a post by Patricia Rosemoor about her holiday novel, Holiday in Crimson. Enjoy!


 

Aimee Carson

Aimee Carson
The BEST thing about writing for this anthology was tossing around ideas with my fabulous fellow authors, Amy Andrews, Heidi Rice, and Kate Hardy. Writing is such a solitary endeavor and it was an absolute pleasure to have company along the way!

Tis the Season to be Tempted
After the worst year ever, including divorcing her cheating, rock star of a husband, free-spirited Evie Lee rings in the New Year alone, swearing off men forever. With her parent’s upcoming thirtieth wedding anniversary, on New Year’s Day she has no choice but to battle her fear of flying and climb on a plane to travel home.  Things get complicated when her brother’s childhood friend, the perfect man with the perfect life, Wes Campbell, winds up on the same plane. She’s determined to ignore him. He’s determined not to take her seriously.  But when a snowstorm traps them at the airport with no way to finish their commute, his perfect body is tempting her to break her vow and expand her horizons—if only for one hot night!
Wes Campbell is famous for always doing the right thing. His years of sacrifice have earned him an enormously successful business, a divorce, and a past that included resisting his fascination with his best friend’s little sister. After ten years running into Evie Lee again is torture. He’s determined to continue his hands-off attitude. But with only one hotel room left, chivalry demands he offer Evie a place to crash for the night. Unfortunately, he wasn’t counting on the little hellion’s infectious smile, her killer body, and the hint of vulnerability in her eyes. Worst of all, she appears determined to change his mind about her. And, for the first time in his life, Wes is tempted to do the wrong thing…

Amy Andrews
Amy Andrews

The best thing about writing this holiday anthology for Entangled (apart from working with my three fab co-authors) has been the complete novelty of a snowy Christmas. You see, in my part of the world, Christmas is very different to log fires and sleigh bells. Here, in Australia, it’s usually stinking hot and we spend all day either indoors with the air-con set to freeze or lolling around the pool trying to stay afloat with three kilos of turkey and a hefty dose of pudding weighing us down!
When I was a kid – well actually even as an adult – my favourite Christmas cards were the ones with snowy scenes. Fields sprinkled with powdery white, gingerbread houses dripping thick coats of snow from the eves, a sleigh being pulled by liveried horses tinkling their away across a frosty frozen lake. Sigh…to a girl from the tropics those scenes could have been set on Mars they were so removed from my life experience. But, as a writer, I get to go to different worlds and it was fun being in that Vermont cabin with the snow bucketing down, drinking eggnog and hearing the crackle and pop of the fire in the hearth.


I shall think of it with fondness as I dive into my pool this Christmas Day!
Tis The Season to be Kissed
Thirty year old Tamara Green unexpectedly finds herself snowed in at her friend’s family cabin in Vermont on NYE. Depressed and freezing, she puts on all the clothes in her bag and tucks into the eggnog to keep warm. When she attacks an intruder with a golf club she has no idea it’s her friend’s younger brother - Sgt Luke Jackson – who’s on his way back home from his second tour of Afghanistan.  Slightly inebriated at nine in the morning Tamara is mortified. But with loosened lips she not only goes on to confess the sad state of her love life and her self-enforced year-long celibacy but strips off most of her clothes as Luke gets the fire going. 

Things start to hot up - in more ways than one.  Luke is attracted to the cute little pixie rugged up like an Eskimo who defended his family’s cabin and he’s determined that their NYE shouldn’t go to waste. Perhaps he could steal a NYE kiss? But Tamara has a 10 date rule before she allows such liberties so with 15 hours to go before the ball drops Luke sets out to woo her with a range of dates from a trip to Hawaii to a game of strip scrabble.

And when the clock strikes midnight, Luke and Tamara set off some fireworks of their own!


Kate Hardy
Kate Hardy 
I think the best thing about writing a holiday-themed novella had to be liaising with three other authors who are good friends, brainstorming the ideas and planning who was going to do what. It's such fun working as a team. And, as I'm a bit of a Method Author, I also had great fun making the gingerbread from my novella (and my family definitely enjoyed eating it!).

Tis the Season to Kiss Santa
 With the help of a sprig of mistletoe and some snow angels, a recently single pastry chef teaches a highly successful and sexy Scrooge the true meaning of the holidays on a snowy Christmas Eve that quickly heats up.


Heidi Rice
Heidi Rice

Easily the best thing about writing Tis the Season to Go Shopping was getting to brainstorm with my three fabulous writing friends Amy Andrews, Aimee Carson and Kate Hardy. We pinged emails back and forth between Oz, the US and the UK coming up with the snowed-in theme together then had a ball trying out story ideas, thinking up titles and then pitching it to Entangled. And the icing on the cake? Reading the other stories in the anthology and getting that lovely sexy, seasonal, snowed-in feeling in August! I am so ahead-of-the-game with Christmas this year now. That said, I haven't done my Christmas shopping yet. Ironic, huh?

Tis the Season to Go Shopping


Unlucky-in-love department store marketing manager Kate Braithwaite really doesn’t think her Christmas could get any suckier after being dumped via email on Christmas Eve. Until a trip into work on Christmas Day leaves her snowbound in the deserted Fifth Avenue department store with her boss’s far-too-tempting playboy son Ryder Sinclair. 

Ryder’s rugged, reckless and none too pleased to be stuck in a place he hates with an uptight workaholic like Kate. But as the night draws on, the lights go out and the temperature rises, until they’re both wondering is this the season to get lucky?

You can find Baby It's Cold Outside at Entangled Publishing

Holiday In Crimson by Patricia Rosemoor

Patricia Rosemoor
As a child, I lived in the far reaches of the city, then in the suburbs of Chicago. I didn’t know much about the downtown area, nearly twenty miles away by electric train, except that I always looked forward to my infrequent trips there. My mom treated me every holiday, taking me downtown to see the Christmas windows of the department stores. My favorites were always the windows of the iconic Marshall Field’s (now Macys) on State Street.




That’s why I used Marshall Fields as the model for Westbrook, the main setting for HOLIDAY IN CRIMSON and NIGHTMARE IN CRIMSON, the related holiday romantic suspense novels from Entangled Publishing for their Dead Sexy line.


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About HOLIDAY IN CRIMSON:


Westbrook Department Store's Christmas party wasn't that wild--until, that is, Santa ended up dead. Now window designer Shelby Corbin is the prime suspect in his murder, and the holidays are anything but festive. If Shelby doesn't figure out who killed Santa, she'll be ringing in the new year behind bars.


Westbrook's impossibly sexy co-owner and CEO Rand McNabb's romantic attentions both thrill and frighten Shelby. But is he really helping her search for the truth about that fatal night? Or does Rand have a deadlier motive for courting the only possible witness to the crime...?


In thinking about a holiday romantic mystery, I knew I wanted to use a department store like the one I loved as a child. I wanted to involve the Christmas windows. And I wanted the murder victim to be Santa Claus. No, wait! Not the realSanta. The department store one. Rather the one dressed as Santa for the annual Christmas party. Okay, so I have a bizarre sense of humor.


Part of me is in my heroine Shelby. TheYay! It’s Christmas! part. From the time I moved out on my own until we learned my late husband was ill, I had an annual Christmas tree-trimming party. I made dozens and dozens of Christmas cookies and gave most of them away I collected a new special Christmas ornament every year, just as Shelby does, so I could experience my holiday history every time I looked at the tree.


Because I always loved Christmas, I enjoyed creating this intricately plotted romantic mystery. A fun task, and a fun story, one I hope readers will make readers smile.


With more than 90 novels and seven million books in print, Patricia Rosemoor is fascinated with "dangerous love" – combining romance with danger. She has written various forms of romantic and paranormal romantic thrillers, even romantic horror, bringing a different mix of thrills and chills. Patricia has won a Golden Heart from Romance Writers of America and two Reviewers Choice and two Career Achievement Awards from RT BOOKreviews, and in her other life, she teaches Popular Fiction and Suspense-Thriller Writing, credit courses at Columbia College Chicago.
You'll find Holiday in Crimson at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

You’ll find Patricia at http://PatriciaRosemoor.com   
or on FACEBOOK

4 comments:

Judith Ashley said...

Love the connections you all made in writing the Anthology. Great title...one of my favorite winter songs is "Baby, It's Cold Outside".

Patricia, I've been in downtown Chicago at Christmas and at Marshall Fields - what a gloriously crazy place! My one and only time (well-over twenty years ago and before cell phones) was Very scary because I didn't know the store or city and was terrified I'd get disconnected from my friends. I think, if he still has it, Marv's coat has the imprint of my clutched hand! LOL

Paty Jager said...

These all sound like great reads. I agree when you collaborate with another writer on a project it's a lot of fun brainstorming.

Margaret Tanner said...

Hi ladies
Your anthology sounds awesome. Love all that snow. I am an Aussie liked Amy (hi Amy), and we don't get snow here at Christmas time, only wished we did.

Regards

Margaret

Linda Lovely said...

What fun reading about your anthology and your collaboration. I'm usually too long-winded to write short stories or novellas, but you made me want to give it a try if it gave me the opportunity to brainstorm with author friends.