Steamy Christmases in Australia

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…

Well, one day I might see a white Christmas if I travel to the other side of the planet during the holiday season. But as an Aussie, my experience of Christmas is quite different to many of my American and European friends and readers.

I’ve been thinking about Christmas in Australia lately, since I’ve just written and released a Christmas-themed novella set in my home city of Melbourne, Australia. There’s shopping and mayhem, plus a little romance. Also, steamy weather changing from thunderstorms with lightning to hot sunny days over 35 degrees C (95 degrees F), maximum strength sunscreen and hat required. This is Christmas to me!

As I write, we’re experiencing a spring heatwave with temperatures over 30 degrees C already. I can tell you I don’t feel like doing any Christmas shopping. Or writing. I must admit my brain turns to mush in the heat, so it's just as well the holidays are coming.

Christmas as an Aussie kid

Leading up to Christmas, we often made our own paper chains and Advent calendars at school and then decorated our lounge room with them. My favourite decoration was the pretty angel doll that went on the top of the tree. It was always exciting to decorate our Christmas tree in December. When I was younger we had a massive pine tree in our backyard, so Mum and Dad would cut off a good sized branch to be our tree. The whole house would be filled with the scent of fresh pine.

Our family usually went to Catholic Mass on Christmas Eve. I’ll admit it wasn’t much fun – too hot, too crowded and too many hymns and long-winded readings were boring to a child. But some years we went to the children’s service when kids would dress up as Bible characters like shepherds and angels, and that was fun.

As a kid, we’d often have a barbeque lunch for Christmas dinner or Boxing Day, when we’d see a few more members of our extended family. Lots of sausages (snags) in bread, hamburgers and salads, seafood platters and cold ham.

My favourite Christmas desserts were always Pavlova (fruit and cream-topped meringue dessert) and cheesecake, maybe ice-cream too. I never did care for hot Christmas pudding or fruit cake.

Despite being from England, my mother doesn’t like the traditional English hot dinner in the Australian heat. I don’t blame her – I wouldn’t want to cook roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in stifling hot weather with no air-conditioning either. My cousins and I would sometimes play a backyard cricket match after lunch. None of us were very good players but it was still fun.

Later, after Christmas dinner, we’d relax and eat leftovers, play with our new toys and then go to the beach over the next few days. I loved when we’d go to our family holiday house on the Mornington Peninsula, a gorgeous spot close to the ocean beach. Since it was also school holidays, we’d sometimes stay there for a week or two.

Christmas Eve – making our own traditions

As an adult, my boyfriend (now husband) and I started our own tradition of hosting Christmas Eve parties at home. We have lots of food and wine, catch up with old friends and family and the kids run around outside until late. The Christmas Carols in the Domain (a Melbourne live concert) is usually playing on TV. We do a Kris Kringle exchange of presents for all the kids. Last year we gave everyone water pistols, so they all got soaked but it was hot weather and good fun.

My two little boys love laying out their Christmas pillowcases ready for Santa Claus to come after our party winds down. We also leave out a few snacks for Santa and his reindeer near our Christmas tree. We’ve found Santa likes red wine and chocolate cake, while Rudolph prefers a carrot.

Last year my boys received BMX style bikes (still with training wheels at the time). This year it might be skateboards as well as Lego and other fun bigger kid things. Exciting! I'm sure we'll be riding and skating at the local park on Christmas day.

Getting ready for summer holidays

The kids will be on summer holidays for six long weeks from the end of December, so it will probably mean a slow-down in my writing. It will probably also be hideously hot and sticky, so I’m hoping to take off to the beach somewhere for a while.

I won’t be travelling anywhere white or snowy this year, but I’ll watch a couple of Northern Hemisphere Christmas movies and live vicariously through them…while I sip white wine or eat gelati by a beach somewhere!

What are your Christmas traditions and favourite holiday treats? I'd love to hear from you all.

Christmas novella - Heart Note

My new release is titled Heart Note: A Christmas romcom novella. It's out now at all major ebook retail sites and already has some wonderful reviews. The story is about Lily, a perfume counter manager at a major Australian department store. In the lead-up to Christmas, it's all about gift sets, keeping the grumpy customers happy and maybe...finding romance and catching some criminals!

Blurb

A funny, romantic comedy Christmas novella, perfect for fans of Love Actually . . . from the award-winning author of Girl on a Plane.

Love is like a fine perfume. The top note draws you in, an instant attraction, but the Heart Note is the true essence. Like true love – a great perfume should be a woman’s perfect match.

At least, that’s what perfume counter manager, Lily Lucas, tells her customers in one of Australia’s largest department stores. 

It’s almost Christmas, the store is bedecked with baubles and Lily has about eleventy billion gifts to wrap and sell. She and her team of spritzer chicks are glamorous, professional and hoping they don’t have to wear the hideous red onesies and reindeer antlers the store manager has in mind.

The high point of Lily’s work life is Christos Cyriakos, ex-cop, security guard, possible Greek god. He's a mystery box she’d love to unwrap. But can she trust him?

All Lily wants for Christmas is to kiss Christos (and more), catch a band of thieves running amok in the store, and live happily ever after. Is that too much to wish for?

Buy links - books2read.com/HeartNote 

About Cassandra O'Leary

Winner of the global We Heart New Talent contest. Nominated for Best New Author in the 2016 AusRomToday Reader's Choice Awards for excellence in Australian romance fiction. 

Cassandra O'Leary is a romance and women's fiction author from Melbourne, Australia. You'll find her drinking coffee, dreaming of Italy and Spain, and raising two mini ninjas with her superhero husband. 

Cassandra loves romantic comedies and is having fun writing her own romcom books. Heart Note: A Christmas romcom novella, was released in November 2017. Her debut novel, Girl on a Plane, was released in July 2016. It's also being translated into Czech!

In 2015, Cassandra won the global We Heart New Talent contest run by Avon Books/HarperCollins UK. She was also a 2015 finalist in the Lone Star contest, Northwest Houston Romance Writers of America, and a 2014 finalist, First Kiss contest, Romance Writers of Australia. 

Read more or sign-up for Cassandra's newsletter at cassandraolearyauthor.com

Fun with Carols

By Robin Weaver

“They” say writers should avoid being clever. At all cost. But in my Merryvale holiday novellas, I didn’t listen.

Cleverness was attempted. Sort of.  But…

I restricted my attempts to the chapter subtitles. For each of the three stories, I tried to modify the title of a Christmas song to create a one-line summary of my chapters.  Thinking this would be fun for the readers, and definitely fun for me, I also hoped those kind of subtitles would help get the reader into the spirit.

For example, in CHRISTMAS TREE WARS, the first chapter is called O’ Little Town of Bets—a play on Carol of Bets. Obviously, there’s a wager (to goad our heroine into entering the Christmas Tree Contest). Chapter Two of the second book (FULL CONTACT DECORATING) chapter two is subtitled, Deck the Halls…with Shiny Red Balls.  It’s not what you think—or maybe it is. :)

What was the reaction? Mixed.  One reviewer loved it, another considered it kitschy.  Even my own critique partners had opposite opinions; one said I should cut the subtitles, another said the carol-word-play was the best part of the book. Regardless, since I’d kitsch’d my titles in the first two novellas, I felt I had to continue the trend in book three, THE GINGERBREAD SKIRMISH.

My personal favorites include:

·       Do I Have to Be Home for Christmas

·       What Childishness Is This

·       Chestnuts Roasted

·       Do You Hear What I Heard Wrong

·       I Saw Mommy Hugging Santa Claus…Cost Him Five Percent

Perhaps it’s just as well that THE GINGERBREAD SKIRMISH is the last story in the series—I’ve run out of Christmas songs. :)  I hope readers can at least tolerate the subtitles, because I had soooo much fun with them. At the end of the day, don’t we writers deserve a little fun with words?

Have the best holidays ever!

Robin

THE GINGERBREAD SKIRMISH will be available December 16^th from Amazon.com and the Wild Rose Press.

A freak snowstorm represents financial ruin for Kaley McIntire. She can’t transport a special order of gingerbread and no delivery means no payment. Thus Kaley can’t make the rent on her in-the-red coffee shop.

Abandoned in the middle of nowhere, the same snowstorm represents frostbite for Tanner Clayton. Instead of showing appreciation when Kaley rescues him during a blizzard, he fixates on getting home to his violets. Not understanding his plants are part of a NASA experiment, Kaley presumes he’s gay and Tanner doesn’t correct her mistake.

Stuck in her cabin for three days, chemistry heats up the mountain home, but can love possibly grow from a friendship built on a lie? A lie that turns to a lump of coal when a visitor arrives, making the couple doubt everything.

The Christmas Tree Alliance

Make sure to enter the Christmas Tree War contest—see details at the end of this blog.

Inspired by Book Cover

To celebrate the launch of my holiday novella on December 10^th, I used Debbie Taylor’s cover art as inspiration for one of my three personal Christmas trees. While I’m not exactly thrilled with the results of my blue and white creation, I do like it.  I am however, pleased with my other trees. I really enjoyed decorating all three.  In fact, I like decorating trees so much, I start planning a new theme each January (yes, I know I should be in a program). Worse, I’ve infected several of my friends and they, too, start planning eleven months early.

This year, I fashioned a green and pink tree—inspired by a hydrangea display I saw in a store window in Asheville, NC. Normally, I only design one “new”  
tree each year and simply recycle designs from prior year favorites for the other two. Did this obsession inspire The Christmas Tree Wars?

Not exactly.

Pink and Green

Pink Tree without Lights

In the past, I always felt a bit odd for my multiple tannenbaums—until I met my friend Pam.  She had twelve Christmas trees--or maybe the number was even higher. Of course, she counted the small tree on the tank of her bathroom toilet (the woman was ahead of her time). Pam had a wonderful assortment of Radko decorations and lights for every color of the rainbow.  Since I have a new theme each year, I must be more budget conscious about my ornaments.  Not only do I modify dollar store decorations and paint inexpensive boxed ornaments, I also create a lot of folded ornaments. Yep, the very same ones you made from Christmas cards as a kid. Except I use Wonder-Under and shiny/lacy/metallic fabric to give them a more grown-up flavor. You can find the instructions on my website, www.AuthorRobinWeaver.com.

Sometimes art imitates life and sometimes it doesn't. The effort my friends and I expend on our trees each year certainly ignited the idea for The Christmas Tree Wars, but there are no battles. Ours is more of a Christmas tree alliance; we each keep an eye out for ornaments befitting the theme (both our own and others).

Some might say spending so much time on a tree that’s displayed for only a month or so is a waste of effort. I say it’s a thing of beauty.  After all, isn’t that what makes life worthwhile—those moments of beauty?

Wishing all of you a very happy holiday!

Robin

Don’t forget to enter the Christmas Tree Contest.  Send a picture of your Christmas tree to ChristmasTreeWars@yahoo.com.  I will be posting the pictures on my facebook page and will select at least one winner on December 15th. The winning entry will be selected on December 15th and will receive a free copy of The Christmas Tree Wars AND a copy of Ashantay Peters holiday tale, Dickens of a Death. Also, one lucky person leaving a comment on either of my Facebook pages (Robin Weaver OR Christmas Tree Wars) will win a copy of the novella--so leave those comments.

Christmas is Fun!

Ha!  I sit here at my computer with piles of presents sitting on the floor waiting to be wrapped.  There's menus to plan, grocery lists to make, cookies to be baked, cards to be addressed and sent, and the house needs a thorough cleaning!

I thought I was ahead of the holidays this year.  I bought my Christmas cards in October, all the stamps in November, and now I ask you, where did the time go?

We bought our tree on Tuesday and decorated it Wednesday.  I’m starting to get in the mood for Christmas.

I kept putting off loading my Christmas picture of myself, my husband and my mom on the Costco site.  I wanted to include this picture in with the family Christmas cards.  So here it is 12/12/13 and tomorrow I can pick up my pictures.  Sigh!

Seems like I’ve just now recovered from Thanksgiving, we were lucky enough to have wonderful visits from family near and far.  So enjoyable!!  And as I said my last goodbyes to departing family, I remember thinking a few days to recover and rest and then I’ll start on Christmas.  Ha!  I let that thought fly right out of my head.

Tomorrow I’ll get my Christmas cards sent.  (At least I don’t have to wait in the Post Office line, since I did already buy my stamps.  That’s terrific isn’t it?)  Then I can scratch one more thing off my to-do-list.  I’m feeling better already!

Now I’m thinking about what kinds of cookies I should make.

Watch out Christmas, here I come!

Happy Holidays to All!!!

What is your favorite thing to do to get ready for Christmas?  My favorite thing is baking cookies!!

Silent Night & a Cheese Ball

Silent Night and a Cheese Ball

Oh, how I love the Holidays! Starting off with Thanksgiving, and this year 21 people for dinner, and ending with the magical Christmas holiday.

For the past five years I’ve made the “Pinecone Cheese Ball” for an appetizer at either Thanksgiving or Christmas. The first year my 12 year old grandson wanted to know if it was a football cheese ball. The shape had not hardened up or kept its shape as planned.

It may not always look pretty, but it is always a big hit. The Pinecone Cheese Ball is the one thing that doesn’t last. Oh there might be a tiny bit left, and does it make it to the next day? Never!

I thought I’d share this wonderful recipe with all of you.

Pinecone Cheese Ball

2 pkgs (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened

1 pkg (3 ½ to 4 ounces) soft chevre (goat) cheese

1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1. Beat all ingredients in medium bowl with electric mixer on med/low speed until smooth. 
2. Shape mixture into upright shape like a pinecone, pointed on top, fat on the bottom waxed paper or plastic wrap 
3. Press sliced almonds into cheese ball, sticking the almonds up at top and angled on the rest just like a pinecone. 
4. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm (2 hours but no longer than two days) 
5. Garnish with sprigs of rosemary around plate and grind up rye crisp crackers to sprinkle on almonds. Serve with your choice of crackers. 

This is a great appetizer to make a day or two in advance.

Another thing I enjoy about the season besides all the company, food and cheer, is to sit quietly with a cup of hot chocolate and the fireplace going and the tree lights on, and just ENJOY!

A Silent night and Christmas meditation! It’s wonderful!

Do you have a special tradition for relaxing at the holidays?