Debra St. John Offers a Challenge About Her Holiday Book - New Year's Eve at The Corral

Please welcome my good friend and guest, Debra St. John, who happens to have just released a great holiday book called New Year's Eve at The Corral

First, here's what Debra has to say about her new book:

Tina Perkins thinks falling in love with your best friend is a tired cliché. She's had a flirty friendship with Nick Jameson forever, and she likes it that way. Until she's dared to sleep with him and suddenly can't stop thinking about what it would be like to cross that friends to lovers line. 
 
Nick wants Tina. Badly. New Year's Eve is the perfect time to make a resolution to get her into his bed. He doesn't want to ruin the friendship they share, but adding 'with benefits' to the label would make things perfect. 
 
As the clock ticks closer to midnight, there's a lot at stake. Will a night of passion ruin everything or lead to a lifetime of love?

AND NOW HERE'S DEBRA'S CHALLENGE:

When I submitted this story, my editor told me books of this length don't sell well. My immediate thought was how fun it would be to prove her wrong. (In the best way possible!)

Almost immediately an idea began to form. As crazy as it sounds, I decided to challenge myself to sell a thousand copies of this book.  Why a thousand, you ask? Simply because a hundred didn't seem like enough (LOL).

For less than the cost of a cup of coffee (and I'm not even talking about one of those fancy frou frou ones) you can help me win this personal challenge. All you have to do is buy a copy of the book.  (Passing word of the challenge along to your reader friends would be appreciated, too.)

You might be thinking: What's in this for me? Well, I'll tell you...First, you get to read a great story! You also have the chance to win  some prizes. (And who doesn't love prizes?) If you buy a copy of the book, if you tell a friend (or two or three or ten....you know, like those old commercials: And she told two friends and she told two friends and so on and so on...), if you Tweet about the challenge or post about it on Facebook, or if you leave a comment here, you can earn Rafflecopter entry points. The winner of the Rafflecopter drawing will get a paperback set (autographed of course!) of the original Corral series: This Time for Always, This Can't Be Love, and This Feels Like Home (If you're outside the continental U S of A the set will be digital.) AND digital copies (in the format of your choice) of the first four books in the Holidays at The Corral series (Christmas, Valentine's Day, Fourth of July, and Halloween).

So, what are you waiting for? Go grab a copy of New Year's Eve at The Corral !

TWRP: http://catalog.thewildrosepress.com/all-titles/4728-new-year-s-eve-at-the-corral.html             

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MEEI0NN?tag=thewildrosepr-20

B & N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/new-years-eve-at-the-corral-debra-st-john/1124933779?ean=2940156932573

Happy Reading and many, many thanks for participating in my challenge!

Rafflecopter Links:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/017cafc21/?

Twitter hashtag: #sellathousand

P.S. If you can't wait to find out if you've won copies of the holiday books, they are on sale for half price for  most of the month of January 2017.

The Christmas Card List by Morgan Mandel

This is a revised version of a short story I wrote in 2009 for a friend's blog. Since it's one of my favorites, I'd like to share it with you this Christmas Season.

Although this is a work of fiction, some of its aspects still ring true for me and many others who send out Christmas cards each year. I hope you enjoy it.

Abby frowned, as she set the Christmas cards on the kitchen counter and reached for her pen in the junk drawer. What used to give her joy now filled her with sadness. Once she’d groaned at the money she’d spent on cards and stamps. She wished that were still true.

Time marches on. Many of the people who’d touched her life were gone. Some had moved on and left no forwarding addresses, but too many others now resided where no mail could reach them.

“I miss you,” she said aloud to the empty kitchen.

A wintry afternoon snow/sleet mix pelted the windows. The wind howled, reinforcing Abby's feelings of abandonment.

Christmastime was supposed to be a happy season, but she couldn’t shake off her melancholy. She should be grateful for those who were left, and she was. Still, she longed for the one’s she’d never see again. Mom and Dad, sis, her niece, Nancy, her good friends, Judy and Maureen, and so many others were not around anymore. At times like this, she regretted not finding someone to share her life. Then again, maybe he’d have gone the way of the others.

She padded on her fuzzy slippers to the wooden table, pulled out the matching chair and began penning notes inside the cards.

It was hard to make her stiff fingers move right, with the arthritis taking over, not to mention she was more used to typing than writing in cursive.

Forty years as an administrative assistant, first on a typewriter, then a computer, did that to a person. Five years after retirement, she still hardly wrote, choosing to use a keyboard instead.

That reminded her. She hadn’t checked her e-mail and blogs. She’d do it after she finished the cards. Her heart lifted at the thought.

All too soon she’d stamped the few cards, placed Christmas seals on their backs, and secured them with a rubber band. She’d mail them tomorrow. For now, she’d switch on the laptop computer on her kitchen desk and see what everybody in the cyber world was up to.

The usual mass of e-mails awaited her from e-groups she’d joined over the years. Also, she hadn’t gone through her blog roll yet to see what was going on there, not to mention the Facebook and Twitter posts.

Smiling, she entered the world of her cyber friends, and commiserated and/or cheered, according to what was appropriate. Janet had had a baby girl and both were doing fine, Sue’s dog was eating chair legs, John wanted suggestions for an inexpensive, caring Christmas gift for his girlfriend.

When Abby started to get hungry, a glance at the monitor’s clock surprisingly told her two hours had passed. 

The time had been well spent. Though she’d only met one or two of them in person, her online friends were real and important to her. Every day they shared secrets, triumphs and sorrows with each other. Wasn’t that what friendship was about?

She wasn’t so alone after all. A feeling of warmth stole over her, kind of like when she drank a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter day. Her snail mail list may have diminished, but her Internet friends had grown. 

She was truly blessed. Smile widening, she got up to fix dinner.

Merry Christmas, Cyber Friends!

Morgan Mandel

Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/morgan.mandel

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/author/morganmandel

OUR FUR BABIES - THE JOY AND PAIN OF LOVING DOGS - NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE!!!

I'm excited to announce that my first non-fiction ebook has been released!!!
It's about a subject very dear to my heart, and that of many others: Dogs.

OUR FUR BABIES IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AT: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MTS3RVR

WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
In the 44 years since my husband, Paul, and I have been married, we've been graced with the presence of 5 separate dogs in our lives: Sadie, Missy, Morgan (from whom I got my pen name), Rascal, and Buster, our present fur baby.

In this book, I take you through the happy and sad times we experience, as each dog enters our home and our hearts. Lots of photos are included. In the cover photo, the two of us pose with our first dog, a basset hound named Sadie.

As the book progresses, for some odd reason Paul and I look older in the photos, but it's still us!

Maybe you'll relate to our experiences, or maybe by reading about them you'll be inspired to adopt a fur baby of your own!

                                             https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MTS3RVR