Reading Tomorrow’s Destiny at Lady Jane’s Salon

Victorian Christmas Goodness!

This month, I read my Victorian Christmas novella, Tomorrow’s Destiny at Lady Jane’s Salon, the Manhattan, NYC reading series I co-founded back in ((gulp)) 2009. Like the Dickens’ classic from which it draws inspo, Tomorrow’s Destiny is a paranormal Christmas story. Only instead of ghosts, I have guardian angels. Guardian angels masquerading as the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future. One in particular, Fern, needs to score a h-u-g-e HEA for her human ASAP — or wait another hundred years for a shot at winning her wings. And in lieu of a mean-spirited, bent-back miser hoarding gold, I have my Scrooge-like heroine hoarding the best thing ever — books!

Yes, you read that right. My heroine, bookshop proprietress Fiona MacPherson, IS the Scrooge character. ‘Tis almost 2021, after all.

Watch my reading here on Youtube along with those of Salon guests Rose Lerner, Stacey Agdern, Harper Miller, Cara Bastone and Piper Huguley.

My intro and reading start at 38:10 minutes into the video.

You can get the Tomorrow’s Destiny novella as an ebook and audiobook, the latter voiced by my uber talented Salon co-founder, author Leanna Renee Hieber.

Scribd ebook
Scribd audiobook

This December’s Lady Jane’s Holiday Salon program is both deeply special and bittersweet. After twelve magical years as NYC’s first and only regular reading series devoted to romance fiction, we’re drawing the curtain on our beloved naughty red room at Madame X.

All our virtual Salon programs will continue to live online on Youtube and on the Lady Jane’s website. Please remember our wonderful house charity, Win (Women in Need, Inc.) in your end-of-year charitable giving.

Wishing you and yours a happy, healthy and safe holiday season.

XO Hope

Free Christmas Novella

Now through 11/16, download my Christmas novella, A Cinderella Christmas Carol FREE across platforms. Get the ebook, part of my Suddenly Cinderella series of contemporary romances, and discover why bestselling author Jacquie D’Alessandro dubbed it “a delightful and heartwarming holiday treat.”

Here’s a bit about the story…

There’s nothing On Top managing editor Cynthia “Starr” Starling hates more than Christmas. With an important deadline looming, plus her dreaded Christmas Day birthday, Starr just wants the holiday to end. But when she wakes up Christmas Eve night to the ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future-all in the form of the super-hot Matt Landry, the new art director-she knows she’s in for a long night. Matt is the one person on Starr’s team she can’t boss around and the only one she doesn’t need to. He’s also her employee and totally off limits, even if he does seem interested. Though he’s seven years younger and all kinds of forbidden fruit, he’s the form the Powers That Be decided she’d be receptive to. Because they have a message for her: learn the true meaning of Christmas spirit or risk being alone for the rest of her life.

Get the FREE A Cinderella Christmas Carol ebook here:

Kindle

Nook

iBooks

Kobo

Google Play

Entangled

And be sure to check out my other holiday offerings, A Wonderfully Sexy Life, contemporary time-slip romance set in my birthplace of Bawlmer – Baltimore – Maryland and Tomorrow’s Destiny, a Neo Victorian – and feminist – take on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

It’s beginning to feel A LOT like Christmas…

xo Hope

Congratulations, Contest Winners

Congratulations to Tracey T of Gassaway, WV, Karen H of Colorado Springs, CO, and Jessica P of Norman, OK who knew that in Every Breath You Take, Cole saw that the old Alex was still there from the glimmer in her eyes.

The three winners will each receive coverflat keepsakes for my Victorian-set historical, Untamed and TWO signed copies of Strokes at Midnight — my winter holiday Blaze — one for themselves and one inscribed to a person of the winner’s choosing, perfect for a sweet and easy holiday gift.

And if you didn’t win this time ’round, don’t despair. Check out my new contest, which just started yesterday.

Let the merry making begin…

Hope

Welcome

Welcome to the launch of my new and first-ever blog. It’s been a year of “firsts” for me personally and professionally. Per the latter, It’s A Wonderfully Sexy Life is my a) first ever contemporary, b) first ever Harlequin, c) first ever paranormal and d) first ever Christmas book.

And I’ve just finished my second paranormal for Harlequin’s Extreme Blaze line. The Haunting will hit bookstores, both brick-and-mortar as well as online, this April 2007. The book begins with my heroine, Dr. Maggie Holliday, discovering a 150-year-old diary buried behind some loose wallboard in the attic of her newly purchased historic home in the Fredericksburg, VA historic district where I’ve made my home coming on six years now.

Having just moved from an historic home that (amazingly!) resembles my heroine’s Victorian dream house, I’ve been struck by all the miscellaneous “stuff” you discover when you’re ramping up to pack. I’d always seen myself as a neat nick but the whole house purge in preparation for packing indicated otherwise. In The Haunting, Maggie finds the diary, which happens to have been penned by her previous Civil War era incarnation, Isabel Earnshaw.

What hidden treasures (or terrors) have you found when ramping up for a move? Maggie’s move from the Washington, DC area to Fredericksburg, VA went considerably more smoothly than mine did. What was your worst ever absolute nightmare move? Or, on the perkier side, what the best move you ever made and why?

Whether we get there by the short, smooth easy road or the long, prickly bramble-riddled one, it’s my personal belief that we’re all always exactly where we’re meant to be.

Here’s wishing you a safe, joyous kick-off to the winter holidays…
Hope