Making Merry - and Making Plans

How do you celebrate this festive time of year?

We all have traditions - many of which involve food (feasting), family and friends. I always look forward to Christmas Day, which we celebrate with my side of the family. We have turkey with all the trimmings = the hostess makes the turkey but other parts of the feast come from guests. (I'm taking the pie this year.) There are gifts, of course, too, but the company is really the best part.

On the other side of our family, our tradition has changed in recent years, and this too is part of the magic of tradition. We think it has to be always the same, but actually, there's room for modification and variation. Mr. Math's mom used to make a roast goose dinner on Christmas Eve and we all went there. She was a fabulous cook and it was so delicious that none of us dared to try to cook the meal instead. Since she passed away, and Mr. Math's father shortly thereafter, we modified the tradition. I've been hosting a dinner for both sides of the family early in December (usually the weekend of first Advent) when everyone's calendar has a little more open space. I did roast goose the first year, but now understand why my MIL found the geese stressful to make. They are hard to predict, which makes it hard to time everything else to be done when they are. Last year, we had roast duck instead, and this year, we had prime rib. I think I'll go back to the duck again next year. They're more like goose, but easy peasy - which helps when you have the chaos of company!

Traditions can also be added to our celebrations. We used to have a neighbor from Scandinavia who burned a torch all night long on the solstice. Mr. Math thought this was wonderful, and it was neat to see the flame against the night. We now have a garden torch which Mr. Math lights on the night of the solstice (but we don't leave it burning all night long, just so long as we're watching it). This year, we had torrential rains on the solstice, so the torch had to stay in the garage, but there will be next year. (I lit some candles in the house instead to call back the sun.)

A bit part of this time of year for me is reviewing the last year and planning for the year ahead. I usually do that on the solstice. I've updated my work schedule and my publication list, and there's a post on that scheduled on my blog for January 4.

Of course, a part of this festive season is sending greetings and good wishes to friends and associates, many of whom are distant. We don't send or receive as many physical cards as was once the case, but I still send some - and we do receive wonderful email wishes, too. It's the sentiment that counts!

One of my writing traditions is to publish a new book in the week between Christmas and New Year. This year, it's a new boxed set of my Prometheus Project urban fantasy romance series, which features fallen angel heroes on a quest to save humanity. They voluntarily shed their wings for the greater cause, fully intending to reclaim them once their quest is complete, but love (and determined heroines) change their mind each time. I love these books, and the contrast between a gritty dystopian future and the promise of love, and am excited to offer all four complete novels in a boxed set. Currently, The Prometheus Project Boxed Set is available only at iBooks and Kobo. It will deliver on December 29.

Another of my seasonal traditions as a writer is to thank my readers with a book sale at this time of year. The Crusader's Bride, which is the first book in my current medieval romance series the Champions of Saint Euphemia, is on sale now at iBooks and Kobo for just 99 cents. It'll be on sale at the other portals next week. The Champions of Saint Euphemia is a linked series I've wanted to write for a while. Each book is a medieval romance, but the series follows the journey of a company of knights (some Templars and some former-Templars) from Jerusalem to Europe as they deliver a sacred relic to the Temple in Paris. Someone wants the treasure and is willing to kill for it. These stories are entangled, with each hero and heroine adding to the overall story. The Crusader's Bride begins the quest, as Gaston leaves the order to claim his inheritance in France and finds himself in need of a bride. He picks Ysmaine, and gets far more in a wife than he ever expected.

It's a good time to begin the series, too. The second book, The Crusader's Heart, was published in October, and book #3, The Crusader's Kiss, will be published in January. Book #4, The Crusader's Vow, will finish up the originally planned series in April - but there's been a fifth book added. The Crusader's Handfast is being published in monthly installments, and the first one was published on December 15. Part Two comes out on January 15. The complete book will be available in July, in both print and digital editions. Also (!), The Crusader's Bride will be available in an audiobook in January. You can listen to a sample from that audiobook, narrated by Tim Gerard Reynolds, right here.

Talking about audiobooks brings us to another way I'm thanking readers this month. I'm participating in a promotion with over 50 authors called #XmasAudio. Many of us are giving away an audiobook per day for the month of December. Right now, my featured audio title is The Snow White Bride, which is a medieval Scottish romance set at Christmas. All you have to do for a chance to win is comment on this post on my blog. You can also search for other #XmasAudio giveaways with the hashtag, on Facebook and Twitter.

How do you celebrate this festive season?

I hope your month is merry and filled with good friends, good books and good cheer. See you in 2016!

Happy Birthday to Me... errr, You!! #Giveaways #Presents #BirthdayFun @KaceyHammell

Good morning! Happy Wednesday. Happy Holidays. Happy birthday to me...and readers get the gifts!!

Today I hit 41 years young. Age is nothing but a number. While I don't care to celebrate birthdays, I don't mind getting older. I've lived, and still have lots to live, a great life, am very blessed and am empowered by the obstacles I've overcome through the years. I wouldn't change a thing.

This year I hope for continued great health for my hubby, kids and family. I've had some bumps in the road the last couple of years health wise but things have vastly improved. I wish all of my friends and writer colleagues all the success they can handle.

So, as I said, while it's my birthday, I'm doing some giveaways to win goodies.


Giveaway # 1 -- Comment below to win your choice of any of my titles currently available in ebook -- FIVE Winners!!!  Leave your email address as well please so I can contact you!

Giveaway # 2 -- Comment below to win $20 in Ebook Bucks from All Romance eBooks -- 1 winner! Leave your email address as well please so I can contact you!

Giveaway # 3 -- Comment below to win a swag pack from me (will need your snail mail address. will be shipped in the new year) -- 1 winner! Leave your email address as well please so I can contact you!


Winners will be chosen at random on Thursday Dec 17th.


Good luck!

Christmas ~ Canadian Style with author Jessica E. Subject #Canada

My Christmas alien romance, Hey, Santa, takes place at Christmas, and to me that not only means time with family, it also means snow. Living in Canada, we get snow in the fall, throughout the winter, and into the spring. Sometimes even in the summer. Although we don't have any that has stayed yet this season, it is rare for us not to have snow at Christmas. Now, every part of Canada is different in terms of the weather they get. The Maritimes seem to get the most snow, whereas the prairie provinces get really cold temperatures but not as much snow.

This weather can lead to some facts of life and memories. Here are some of mine:

• My grandparents live six hours north from us. In the winter, we rarely visited them. It was just a part of growing up, and it is still the same to this day.
• Just before Christmas, I was visiting my other grandparents, and my father came to pick me up from their place to bring me home for the holidays. Well, when he left, the weather was fine, but on the way home, the weather was so bad, that we had to stop in London and take the train the rest of the way home.
• In the snow, kids usually make snowmen, well, not my family. Instead, my mother helped my brother and I to make snowhorses, and we rode them until they melted.
• One winter, we went tobogganing in a nearby town. There was a giant hill that flattened out at the bottom, and then there was a river further out. Most people never made it to the river when sledding down the hill. Well, my brother went on the toboggan with one of my cousins. We all thought they were going to stop before the river, but they didn’t. Both of them fell right in. As a child, I had never seen adults move so fast. They had the two boys out of the water, back up the hill, and stripped to nothing within seconds. Thank goodness they were both okay.
• Thirteen years ago, when my husband and I were living in the country, I was driving to work, and I slipped on a patch of black ice. Now, on my right was a ditch, and on my left was a snowy field, hydro poles lining that side of the road. The truck slipped to the left. Thankfully, there was no traffic, and I slid into the field in between the poles. No damage was done to the truck, but the follwing summer, you could see where I went into the field by the lack of corn growing. Little did I know that at the time, I was just pregnant with my first child.

Do you get snow where you live? If so, what are some of your childhood memories of snow?

Hey, Santa

An Alien for the Holidays story

She doesn’t want a lot for Christmas…

Claire Otton dreads spending another holiday alone. When her best friend convinces her to approach the sexy mall Santa, she takes the chance and asks him out, hoping for so much more.

He’s waiting under the mistletoe…

Although Andreas Castellanos blends in on Earth, he knows he will never belong. But when the gorgeous woman he’d been staring at invites him to dinner, he has a hard time saying no.

All they’re asking for…

Can these two lonely souls find magic together or will their secrets steal their chance of a happy Christmas?

Available From:

      

Enjoy an excerpt:

Claire smoothed her dress across her lap. The short hemline didn’t come close to reaching her knees, or barely her butt for that matter. Though a festive red color, the dress’s plunging neckline revealed even more skin. She shivered in her chair, ready to ask for her coat back. Why did she have to buy the shortest dress possible?

Like she needed it anyway, with her date already ten minutes late. She doubted he would show. Who wanted a socially inept woman? Heck, what man wanted to start dating someone two days before Christmas? She sighed, resting an elbow on the table. Why did I ask out Santa? She didn’t even know his name, what he looked like. Yet, she’d given him enough personal information to stalk her. Way to go, numbskull. She might as well have given him her house key. And since Tiffany had driven her to the restaurant, she’d have to take a cab back home.

“Hi, Claire. Sorry, I’m late.”

She jerked her head toward the deep, husky voice. Her Santa had arrived. But instead of the white-haired, bearded man with the fuzzy red suit, she stared at a Greek god. Broad shoulders. Muscles constricted by the sleeves of his dress shirt. His wavy brown hair looked wet, as if he’d recently stepped out of the shower. Or maybe snow had started to fall since she’d arrived. Pulse racing, she dared to gaze into his crystal blue eyes, the part of him she remembered from their meeting in the mall. Yet, even with his tanned complexion, something seemed not quite right with the color of his skin.

Was he as nervous as her? Her last non-double date occurred so long ago, she didn’t know how to act.

Not wanting to be rude, she stood to greet him. He had, after all, arrived rather than standing her up. And the sooner he touched her, the better.

Resting his hand on her hip, he moved closer, kissing her cheek, his lips soft and gentle. His breath smelled of fresh mint, a far cry from the last guy Tiffany had tried to set her up with.

If you'd like to get the next story in my An Alien for the Holidays series, ALIEN KISSES AT MIDNIGHT, for FREE, simply subscribe to my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/eX1Zw It will be emailed to newsletter subscribers on December 26th. 

Happy holidays! See you again in 2016!

http://jessicasubject.com

Canadian Sense of Humour

Do you think that Canadians have a specific sense of humour?

I read an online article last week and it got me to thinking about this. (I'll share the link at the end.) The article is a compilation of comments by Canadians on Tumblr, in which they're "pulling other people's legs" as my mom would say. I'm wondering whether this kind of joke is one that we do particularly well, or that maybe is more common here.

There certainly are a lot of comedians who came from the Great White North (which is in itself a Canadian joke about Canada). Here's the Wiki list of Canadian comedians and it's a long one.

I think we live with this kind of quick humor all the time. My husband, for example, does a great deadpan delivery. He'll say something completely preposterous but do it so seriously that the other person often believes him. The Queen Bee - the dog we lost two years ago - was a standard poodle. Poodles are an old breed but he took the stories to a new level. One night, we had guests for dinner and one of them commented on how the QB turned in tight circles before lying down. All dogs do this, of course, but Mr. Math rolled with it.

"It was a survival mechanism developed by the Wild Poodles of the Serengeti," he said solemnly. "By bedding down in the tall grasses of the savannah, they could hide from predators at night."

"Really?" said our guest. "I had no idea."

"Oh yes, the Wild Poodles of the Serengeti were the origin of the breed."

"There must have been a lot of predators there, though. What about lions?"

"Oh, the Wild Poodles had a symbiotic relationship with the lions. They guarded the lions while they ate, and in return, the lions left the bones to the Wild Poodles. They preferred the marrow, and their tongues were shaped perfectly to extract it from the bones, which the lions didn't do as well."

"Really?"

"Of course, French explorers noted this behaviour and it was from their drawings of the Wild Poodles of the Serengeti consuming marrow that French silversmiths originally derived the marrow spoon. The shape is perfect for its task, and in fact, their bringing Wild Poodles to France - where ultimately they evolved into the poodles we know today - could be directly attributed to the French admiration of their ability to extract marrow. Do we have a marrow spoon?"

He would have gone on like this for as long as possible, but I didn't have a marrow spoon, (much less a bone with marrow) to compare with the dog's tongue, and our guest finally caught on.

I'm not "the funny one" but I've often had to remove these kinds of exchanges from my books, because my American editors didn't understand them. That's happened hundred of times, but here's one example for which I still have documentation. This is a passage from Ember's Kiss, my edight Dragonfire novel. Kira (a friend) and Brandon (the hero and a surfer) are talking about the Banzai Pipeline, a beach with a specific wave form in Hawaii. It's tough to surf the Pipe, but Brandon is good at it. This is the originally delivered manuscript.

Here's what happened in the edits. If you've ever used Track Changes in Word, this will look familiar. Track Changes allows multiple people to work on a document, each using a different colour. In this case, the copy editor (CE) is using red, and the author (AU - that's me!) is using red. The CE highlighted the last line in the excerpt shown above, and here's the comment:

I could have fought for this, but by this point in time - my last New York edited book - I was tired of these exchanges. And the fact is that if the CE didn't get it, probably a lot of American readers wouldn't have gotten it either. Still, I liked the line. I have the rights back to this book and when I republish it, that line will be in the final book.

Why talk about humour this month? Of course, I have a devious reason for it! (Ha!) My Coxwell Series of four contemporary romances and romantic comedies in now available in a digital boxed set. You can get Third Time Lucky, Double Trouble, One More Time and All or Nothing in one file for a special price - only at iBooks and Kobo. I price my boxed sets of series so that if you buy them all at once, you get one free. There's also an excerpt in the back of this boxed set for Simply Irresistible, the first book in a new series of contemporary romances and romantic comedies coming next June. (There's an excerpt on my website, too - just follow the link.) This time, there'll be no one to comment on my Canadian jokes!

And here, as promised, is the link to the article that started me on this train of thought: 19 Times Canadians Mercilessly Trolled The Rest of the World on Tumblr

Enjoy! Then tell me whether YOU think Canadians have a specific sense of humour. I'll give away a trade paperback copy of Double Trouble one person who comments. Good luck!

November is the month of New Releases!

In the four years I've had books release, I've found that my books tend to release during certain months, while I don't have any titles release in other months. January and April tend to be popular for me, as well as November. Last year, The Star Princess released in November. And in 2013, Alien Admirer released in November. So did Sex Boot Camp, a story I originally wrote under the pen name Paisley Brown, as it is very naughty. 

Now it's November 2015, and I've just released Alien Attraction, with Accidental Romance re-releasing next Monday. 

I've always wanted to do NaNoWriMo, but new releases seem to always get in my way. I'm still writing though. On December 31st, I'll be sending out a special short story called Alien Kisses At Midnight to my newsletter subscribers. And I'm working on the first book in my Galactic Defenders series, called Bryce. Will it release in April or November? I'm not sure. I'll know when I get it finished.

Until then, let me know what month you tend to buy the most books in...

ALIEN ATTRACTION

Erotic Sci-Fi Romance

She wants to be more alien.

He wants to be more human.

Born a galaxy apart, will Angela and Chal have a chance at love, or will their extraterrestrial secrets leave them running to stay alive?

Available From:

Amazon US | UK | Canada | Germany | Australia

ARe | Nook | CTR | Play | iBooks | Kobo | Smashwords

ACCIDENTAL ROMANCE

New Adult Contemporary Western Romance

Her plans changed in an instant…

Once finished college, Leanne intended to take over her family dairy farm, let her father retire and finally take a vacation. After one tragic night, her dreams go up in smoke. She loses the ability to do the most basic of things.

And brought him closer…

Jake, the farm hand who lives down the road, refuses to let Leanne give up on her goals. He remains by her side throughout her healing. But, when he confesses his true intentions, their friendship takes a drastic turn.

If only she’d known before she lost her arm.

Pre-order from:

Amazon US | UK | Canada | Germany | Australia

ARe | Nook | CTR | Play | iBooks | Kobo | Smashwords

Jessica E. Subject is the author of science fiction romance, mostly alien romances, ranging from sweet to super hot. Sometimes she dabbles in paranormal and contemporary as well, bringing to life a wide variety of characters. In her stories, you could not only meet a sexy alien or two, but also clones and androids. You may be transported to a dystopian world where rebels are fighting to live and love, or to another planet for a romantic rendezvous. 

When Jessica is not reading, writing, or doing dreaded housework, she likes to get out and walk with her giant, hairy dog her family adopted from the local animal shelter.

Jessica lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and two energetic children. And she loves to hear from her readers. You can find her at jessicasubject.com and on twitter @jsubject.

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I'm Back! Hopefully Not With a Cold Front Either.

© Can Stock Photo Inc. / firewings

Howdy folks, and welcome from the freezing north. While there's no snow in sight, yet, I suspect it really just around the corner.

You're probably wondering why I'm even mentioning snow before Remembrance Day, or the American Thanksgiving. That's because usually come Halloween, the first sign of snow has arrived. Last year it was mid-November the snow came and never left until April. We're pretty much hoping we don't have a repeat of last year, so pray for us. LOL

In other news unrelated to the cold and dreary season upon us, my previously published novella Scandal at Vauxhall and the following books in the Pleasure Garden Follies series will be rereleasing starting in February by Liquid Silver Books.  I'm so glad my first historical romances will be returned to ebook retailers soon.

I've also got a few new series in the works and will share more information as soon as I can. In the meanwhile, how about you tell me how you prepare for the winter chill? I usually make sure I have tons of blankets throughout the house so everyone has an opportunity to curl up, especially with an awesome book. If I had an actually wood burning fireplace, I suppose now would be the appropriate time to make sure the wood was ready too.

In the name of keeping warm, how about I share a teaser from erotic contemporary novella His Unexpected Submissive.

Alex couldn’t help but be amused at how red the woman had turned. If thongs weren’t her thing, who was he to deny if she wanted to go bare? His blood rushed to his lower extremities. She kept herself meticulously groomed, but her bare ass would look lovely marked with his handprint. If she stayed long enough tonight, he’d even see to her preparation personally. If she were interested.

“Now, now, Mercedes. There’s no need to be shy. Poppy, run along. Master Brian is waiting. I do believe you’ll be needing this.” He passed her a black riding crop. “Be sure to tell him you’ll need three strikes for deliberately breaking house rules.”

“Yes, Master Alex.” She accepted the implement and stormed off, clearly knowing how much trouble she was in.

He walked further into the room and stopped behind Mercedes, bending his head to take in the soft, feminine scent of vanilla. Alex kissed the crook of her neck and pulled her back into his chest. “You look utterly delectable, Mercedes. If it helps you, for tonight, I’ll permit you to keep your polka-dot panties on…but the bra has to come off.”

Alex felt her tremble beneath his touch. Was she afraid, or simply inexperienced? He’d find out soon enough, as he intended to bring her much pleasure.

He turned her around and lifted her chin. “Mercedes, I asked you to do something. You will acknowledge me by answering with ‘Yes, Sir’.”

Want to read more? Pick up your copy today!

It's been a blast, my friends. Come find me here next month, and I just might have an exclusive for you. xo