Christmas Series 2013: A Pioneer Christmas Collection

A Pioneer Christmas Collection

Happy December writers! Annette here. Today we have Michelle Ule as our guest. She represents an author who contributed to the compilation, A Pioneer Christmas Collection, released by Barbour, September 1, 2013. 

An Interivew with 

Michelle Ule

How did this project take shape?

Barbour asked for submissions—and received nearly sixty—for a new Christmas collection. Our stories were chosen, though we did not "meet" as a group of authors until this summer when we began working on marketing collaboration efforts.

Share some themes of your compilation. What ties the novellas together?

We were tasked to tell a story set between 1700-1900 that included romance, Christmas, and an unusual setting. The authors certainly found different places to conduct their Christmas romances! Hardship, of course, was a central element to these stories and the weather caused problems as well. The pioneer pluck of the heroines served as a common thread through the stories along with their novel ways of celebrating Christ's birth.

What makes your project stand out from other Christmas titles?

I wrote a personal blog post about how this collection differs from others. You can see it here: http://michelleule.com/2013/08/27/12-days-of-pioneer-christmas-uncommon-romance/

Fully a third of these romance stories began with a married couple—I'd not encountered that before in romance novels and certainly not a third of the stories coming at romance from that angle. The situations were unique and they all had happy endings, but took us to places you don't often encounter in traditional romance stories.

Tell us one interesting fact about your novella.

My novella, The Gold Rush Christmas, features a fantastic and true tale of what happened to the prostitutes of Skagway, Alaska when a young missionary preached a funeral sermon inviting them to change their lives. 80 percent left town the next day thanks to the generosity of a steamship captain and a miner who had already found his gold.

What’s next for you as an author? Or for your team? Will you write together as a team?

I'm working on a World War I novel featuring Oswald Chambers. We do not anticipate writing together again as a team, though we've enjoyed getting to know each other as we've marked our book.

What else would you like to share about this project?

These are good stories, easy to read in an hour, which grapple with some hard truths even as a couple fall in love. Several feature unusual truths and they all end up celebrating Christmas in an unusual fashion--whether in a cave, a tipi, an abandoned Pony Express station or even a Tlingit long house--these stories provide new angle on the reason for love and the season remembering Jesus' birth.

I wrote another blog post about what makes this collection (and the other one: A Log Cabin Christmas Collection) inspirational: http://michelleule.com/2013/08/31/12-days-of-christmas-whats-inspirational-about-these-collections/

A Pioneer Christmas Collection

Christmas and Romance Follow Pioneers into Untamed Lands: The wild and untamed lands of America called to the brave and determined pioneers who desired a new way of life. Faced with primitive lodgings—a cave, a dugout, a sod house, a barn—settlers encounter their first Christmas in a new land with both trepidation and hope. From the mountains of North Carolina to the woods of Michigan, across the plains of Oklahoma and deserts of Arizona, these settlers soon learned that wherever the heart dwells, Christmas and romance can find a place to call home.

In this exclusive collection of nine Christmas romances, readers will relive a pioneer Christmas with all its challenges and delights as penned by some of Christian fiction's beloved authors, including bestselling authors Margaret Brownley and Lauraine Snelling.

Christmas Series 2012: A Patchwork Christmas Collection

Stephanie Whitson

Hey, everyone! How is your Christmas season going?  We're back this Monday with another Christmas title feature. This time, Stephanie Whitson is here representing her team from the historical romance compilation, A Patchwork Christmas Collection, which also includes novellas by Judith Miller and Nancy Moser. Read on for some behind-the-scenes nuggets we writers can relate to. And may your season be filled with peace and inspiration. ~ Annette

Welcome, Stephanie! First, tell us what makes your Christmas compilation different than others you’ve seen or read.
 

A Patchwork Christmas compilation

Using the patchwork theme creates a unique “connecting thread,” since each of the settings required that we learn about a different kind of quilt-making in order to be true to the setting and the time.

How did your story (and/or this compilation) come about?

I’ve been an avid quilt lover for a long time and have been writing a series of full-length novels (the Quilt Chronicles for Barbour) in which quilts play a role. Quilt-making images have many applications to the Christian life. One day, I was thinking about that in the context of Christmas and in my overactive imagination, the phrase “peace on earth” became “piece on earth” (i.e., make quilts) … and it grew from there.

What time of year did you write it and how did you motivate yourself to write a Christmas novel at that time of year?

Once my imagination takes me into a story world, I don’t have any trouble writing about a different season. The idea for my novella set in a snowbound sod house on the prairie is one that’s been lurking in my storyteller’s mind ever since I read the anecdote of a real event that inspired the story. It was a delight to finally be able to bring that idea out and work on it in earnest.

What’s next for you in writing? (Will you do more Christmas stories?)
I am about to submit the manuscript for book 3 in my Quilt Chronicles series for Barbour. The Message on the Quilt releases in the spring of 2013. I hope to continue to write more quilt-inspired fiction, although my next contracted book is set on a Missouri River steamboat. As to the Christmas theme, working on this collection has reminded me to pay more attention to mention of Christmas in the pioneer diaries and reminiscences that often inspire my historical fiction. 

Thanks for visiting today, Stephanie! 

A Patchwork Christmas Collection released September 1st from Barbour Publishing. 

Three quilt stories take readers to the Amana Colonies (a wedding quilt), a snowbound sod house on the prairie (a doll quilt), and Gilded Age New York (a crazy quilt) and share the stories of three women who encounter unexpected love. Jilted by her fiancé, Karla packs away her wedding quilts and her plans for marriage. Nearly destitute, Jane heads west to marry a prosperous man she barely knows in order to give her daughter a better life. In New York, Ada, a wealthy ingenue, inadvertently causes grave injury to a poor man she once considered quite a catch. Each woman must search her heart and change her plans in order to patch together a new life. (This novella collection also includes bonus recipes and craft projects.)


(print version)            (e-book)

Christmas 2012 Series: Christmas Roses by Amanda Cabot

Happy Monday, writers! Today we've got another author interview for you. Amanda Cabot's latest Christmas title, Christmas Roses is a delightful read! You can read my review for her book at Net's Book Notes today as part of her blog tour/promotional. (I didn't plant that, but it's perfect timing!) Let's learn some interesting behind-the-scenes facts, shall we? Read on! ~ Annette

What makes your Christmas story different than others you’ve seen or read? 

I’d like to say that my book is different from every other book that’s ever been written, but we know that’s not true.  After all, there are only so many basic stories. What differentiates Christmas Roses from other holiday stories is the setting—a fictional mining town in eastern Wyoming—and the characters. Celia is a widowed Swedish immigrant who wants nothing more than to keep her daughter safe, while Mark is an itinerant carpenter searching for his long-lost father. Neither one is looking for love or marriage, but ...  

What genre is your story?

Historical romance.

How did the story come about? 

I’m a fan of Christmas novellas. I love everything about them—the shorter format, the special theme, the fact that many of them are published in hard cover—and so after I read Kathleen Morgan’s series of Culdee Creek Christmas stories, I knew I wanted to write one of my own. Christmas Roses is the result.

The biggest challenge was choosing the setting. Although I toyed with the idea of making this another Ladreville story, featuring secondary characters from my Texas Dreams trilogy, for marketing reasons, my editor suggested I create a story with no ties to my other books.

Where would it take place? The same night that I received my editor’s suggestion, I attended a lecture about a copper mining town called Sunrise, Wyoming, and I knew I’d found my setting. My town is fictional, but it is a copper mining town, and it’s located in the same part of the state as Sunrise. As for the characters, they’re purely fictional, although don’t tell Celia and Mark that. While I was writing, they became real to me, as I hope they will for you.

What time of year did you write it, and how did you motivate yourself to write a Christmas novel at that time of year?

As it turned out, I was writing Christmas Roses in the fall, so it wasn’t a huge stretch to imagine myself in a snow-covered landscape. One of the things I’ve discovered, though, is that when I’m immersed in my writing, I’m oblivious to the outside world. At one point, I was writing a book with a blizzard scene in the middle of a particularly hot July. When the doorbell interrupted me and I realized it was hot outside, I was shocked.

I love getting lost in the writing zone too. Just happened recently. What’s next for you in writing? (Will you do more Christmas stories?)

My next release (January 2013) is the second of the Westward Winds trilogy.  Like its predecessor Summer of Promise and Christmas Roses, Waiting for Spring is set in Wyoming. This time, though, I’ve used a real location, namely Cheyenne, rather than a fictional town. And, yes, I’d love to do another Christmas story. I have, in fact, proposed one to my editor. Will she buy it? I certainly hope so!

Thanks for visiting today! What a pleasure to see this behind-the-scenes peek. 

To learn more about Amanda Cabot, visit her website. 

Christmas Roses released September 1, 2012 from Revell. 

Celia Anderson doesn’t need anything for Christmas except a few more boarders, which are hard to come by in this small mining town. She certainly doesn’t have a husband on her Christmas wish list. But when a wandering carpenter finds lodging at her boarding house, she admits that she might remarry if she found the right man—the kind of man who would bring her roses for Christmas. It would take a miracle to get roses during a harsh Wyoming winter. But Christmas, after all, is the time for miracles . . .

Amanda Cabot invites readers to cozy up with a romantic, heartwarming tale of the greatest gift of all—love.

 

(hardcover)                        (e-book)