Third Annual Super Bowl Commercial Awards by Kristin Wallace

It's that time of year again. I’m back with my third annual Super Bowl Commercial Awards for 2020, reviewing my favorite spots from the Big Game. With my background as an advertising copywriter I tend to pay attention to commercials more than many people. However, the Super Bowl is basically…well…the Super Bowl for advertisers. 

Here’s a look at my favs from this year…

1. NFL - Next 100

Last year, the NFL ran with a hilarious spot featuring the greats from football tearing apart a fancy ballroom in pursuit of a football. This year’s spot was just as good. It also featured many past players. However, the star was a young boy running while the players encourage him to “take it the house, kid”. Best part of the spot was the end when the kid from the spot ran onto the field.

2. Hyundai Park the Car

This spot highlighting the "smart park" feature on the new Hyundai also features the infamous Boston accent as a character, along with famous actors who are actually from Boston, including Chris Evans, John Krasinski, and Rachel Dratch. Clever and funny.

3. Jeep® Groundhog Day

This spot is a hilarious take on the Bill Murray classic film, Groundhog Day. In the spot, Bill Murray is once again stuck on Groundhog Day. Even the annoying salesman Ned Reyerson shows up. However, he doesn’t mind because he found a Jeep to play with and he became best friends with the groundhog.

4. Walmart Parking Lot Delivery

Last year, the spot featured famous cars from TV and movies arriving to pick up groceries from Walmart. This year, even more characters showed up, including Bill from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Flash Gordon, the aliens from Mars Attacks, the pug from Men in Black, R2D2 and C3PO, and Marvin the Martian.

5. Reece’s Take 5

This one pokes fun at various play on words when one office worker can’t believe her co-workers have never heard of Reece’s Take 5. Wait for the hilarious visual representation of “got your head up you’re a@@?” at the end.

6. Amazon #BeforeAlexa

This spot features Ellen Degeneres asking what people did before Alexa and then we see various versions of historic “Alexas” responding to requests.  

7. Google Loretta

Warning…this spot is a tearjerker so have a Kleenex handy. It features a man asking Google to remember things about his beloved wife… I’m not crying…you’re crying!

8. Little Caesar’s Delivery

I don’t want to leave you on a sad note, so including this funny spot featuring a poor marketing exec who has to come up with the next "best thing since sliced bread" since Little Caesar’s delivery has claimed that distinction. Fans of The Office might recognize Dwight as the hapless exec.

Kristin Wallace is a USA Today Bestselling Author of sweet contemporary and inspirational romance filled with "Love, Laughter, and a Leap of Faith". It's not too late to pick up her holiday box set featuring three Christmas romances (Finding You At Christmas, Falling For You At Christmas, and Loving You At Christmas). Christmas in Shellwater Key is available on Kindle Unlimited so go ahead and scoop it up now. 

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Christmas in Shellwater Key...by Kristin Wallace

For December I have a surprise! I'm putting out a holiday box set with my 3 Shellwater Key Christmas novellas. I’m excited to revisit these fun & touching novellas set in the Florida beach town of Shellwater Key. The main stories in the series center around 3 friends who revive the old Paradise Dinner Theatre. These holiday novellas venture beyond the theatre.

Here’s a little preview….

Finding You At Christmas

She’s going to find her destiny this Christmas…

After years of looking out for everyone else, preacher’s daughter Janie Worthy is ready to get a life of her own. But on the way to her first date, her car decides to quit, and a stranger on a motorcycle becomes her savior. The short time she spends with Caleb Montgomery on the side of the road might
be the most romantic interlude Janie can remember. Of course, it’s all a fantasy, and soon Caleb is riding off into the night.

Until he shows up again in her hometown of Shellwater Key. When Caleb decides to stay in town for Christmas, Janie can’t help but wonder if she is the reason. Except people don’t fall in love in one night…Right? As the holidays kick into high gear, Janie must find the courage to move beyond past guilt to embrace the future and open the best Christmas present she could ever find.

Falling For You At Christmas

A nativity story for the modern day…

Pregnant and alone at Christmas, Cassie Stevens decides to take a holiday vacation in Shellwater Key before her baby girl is born. Then she discovers her reservation is lost and there is literally no room left at the inn. Thankfully, single inkeeper, Jared Lathem, offers to let Cassie stay with him and his young daughter. She won't have to sleep in a manger, but being in close poximity to the gorgeous Jared might be dangerous t her piece of mind...and heart.

But the magic of the season can change everything. Cassie is suddenly surrounded by a group of friends, who all seem have names relating to another important birth long ago. And when Christmas Eve brings an unexpected delivery, Cassie will discover that miracles are still possible even in modern times. 

Loving You At Christmas

This Christmas will become the opening act for her holiday happily ever after…

Annaliese Matheson once had the perfect life, with a successful career on Broadway and a loving husband who was her greatest champion. Then her husband died. Devastated, she left the stage behind and only returned when her best friend, Grayson Kendall, asked her to perform at The Paradise Dinner Theatre in tiny Shellwater Key, Florida.

Annaliese is convinced she’ll never love again, but when she steps in to direct to Middle School Christmas Show, nothing will ever be the same. A man unlike any she’s known awakens her buried heart, giving her a second chance at forever with the last person she would have expected. It will take a miracle for Annaliese to let someone else in and embrace happiness again...but then it is Christmas.

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Kristin Wallace is the USA Today Best Selling Author of inspirational and sweet contemporary romance filled with “Love, Laughter and a Leap of Faith”. The Christmas in Shellwater Key boxes et will release this winter. 

A Shared Journey by Aileen Fish

A writer’s life is primarily one of solitude, us alone with our computers and characters. We do need critique partners and/or beta readers, and very much need our fans, but so much of what we do we do on our own.

Unless we’re lucky enough to find a group like Sweet Romance Reads. Having friends to work with you in promoting your books, or just introducing yourself to new readers, is beneficial in more ways than just increasing sales. We share knowledge and experiences, convince each other to try something new with the potential to move beyond what we’ve come to think of as our niches.

We did that this summer, with the project coming to completion just under two weeks ago. We contributed stories for our anthology, and set to work plotting and planning the best ways to get the word our there to new readers as well as the ones already watching for our next books.

It took the full team of our fourteen authors to accomplish our initial goal of hitting the top 100 at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. In addition to the prestige of being a bestselling author, that puts our book where more people might find it. But I’ll tell you a secret: deep down inside, most of us get giddy over the accomplishment of reaching those numbers. We only try to be blasé, while we’re screaming in excitement to our families.

Sometimes we get amazingly lucky, and all that works allows us to reach an incredible number of readers, as it did with out anthology. Our boxed set reached #51 on the USA Today Bestseller list! That’s like having your movie being one of the top earners for a weekend. It’s our version of a blockbuster, along with the other major bestseller lists.

So, what you find here at Sweet Romance Reads these days are some very happy authors, grateful to have found these amazing women to work with, and even more grateful to have an increasing audience of sweet romance lovers who want to read our books.

I know the others join me in saying thank you to each and every reader out there who has ever enjoyed one of our books. You make our writing lives complete.

~*~

Aileen Fish is the still-giddy USA Today Best-selling Author of sweet contemporary and Regency romance. Her most recent work, Christmas in White Oak, appears in the boxed set Sweet Christmas Kisses, and will be available individually on October 29th.

Stay up to date with her on her website http://aileenfish.com and on Facebook or here at Sweet Romance Reads.

Halloween Cometh by Kristin Wallace

It’s officially fall. At least the calendar says so. In my part of the world in South Florida, not so much. We had one day…ONE DAY…of relief from 100% humidity and then it was right back to business as usual.

It is officially October which means Halloween is right around the corner. I saw this sign in the window of a costume store the other day. As a writer is warms my heart. 

Halloween was always a fun time growing up. My mom used to make my costumes. There was a witch, a princess, Pocahontas. I’d go trick or treating with my older brother. Then we’d get to dump all the loot on the floor and go into a sugar coma just looking at all that chocolate. If you went to a party you were sure to play Bobbing For Apples, and they were bound to play Monster Mash & Thriller. (Who still remembers the Thriller dance?) Those are nice memories, along with pumpkin patches and cider and hayrides. When I was very young and still living in Reston, VA we went to a real pumpkin farm. That was the most magical place. Full of color and incredible smells. Sadly, no pumpkin farms in South Florida...just various places selling them on the side of the road. Not quite the same.

So what were your favorite Halloween memories growing up? What traditions? Do you carry on the traditions with your family?

Kristin Wallace writes inspirational romance and women’s fiction filled with “love, laughter and a leap of faith”. She is the author of the Covington Falls Chronicles, romances set in a quirky Southern town with a character all its own. The fourth installment (By CHRISTMAS) can be found as part of SWEET CHRISTMAS KISSES, a Sweet Romance Reads box set featuring 14 holiday novels by USA Today, national bestselling and award-winning authors. Visit her website at Kristin Wallace Author