I've less than one month until the next book in my Wrapped Up in Christmas series releases. I've written over 50 books, but it's this series that I get the most nervous over as these books are so close to my heart. This book in particular is that way. As with the other stories, this one also brings attention to a real life organization called Quilts of Valor Foundation that wraps veterans in patriotic quilts of comfort and healing. But this story also brought comfort and healing to me in many ways. I sold this story on a basic plot, then had to fill in the flesh of the story when I started writing it. Unfortunately, my grandmother took a bad turn for the worse during fall 2024, went on hospice, then died in February 2025. While sitting with her in the evenings and sometimes all night, she and I would work on that fleshing out my story. We'd basically recap the same things that we'd said the night before and I'd be and say silly things to make her laugh. She'd agree and say those silly things had to be in the story. The thing she wanted most with this story, though, was for me to make her a Butterfly. Oh my heart. This is book 5 in this series so adding a Butterfly wasn't an easy feat to stay true to the previous four books, but I really couldn't not do this, could I? But I, hopefully, did it in a way that my readers will accept and love. She is certainly my forever Butterfly.
Do you ever read a story by a favorite author and find yourself wondering what was going on in their life while they were writing that story? That maybe some of those things have spilt over into their writing and you pick up on subtle differences in the way they present things? Is there such a thing as too much of an author's emotion bleeding into a story?
I supposed it could be said that if a writer was a good enough author then that would never happen because they could write through life. That isn't me. My emotions spill onto the page and my words flow like laughter and tears. Good or bad, I know that's the case. Sometimes in the self-editing I can tone back when I've let it go too far, but sometimes, I think those raw feelings are the best words I've written.
In Wrapped Up in Christmas Faith, my heroine, Maggie, is a wounded warrior, and has come to Pine Hill undercover. My firefighter hero is a single dad with a big heart but one that's been broken in the past. I loved writing the ups and downs of their love story and hope you enjoy reading it..jpg)
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