Winter Blogfest: Laura Strickland

This post is part of Long and Short Reviews’ Winter Blogfest. Leave a comment for a chance to win an ebook copy of my Christmas story, Northern Magic.

The Past is With Us at the Holidays

Is there anyone who, at this time of year, doesn’t look back toward childhood? No matter how you celebrated, or whether childhood was happy or otherwise, memories of the holiday season stand out so vividly.

In my home, we celebrated Christmas. My mom saved up all year to give us a wonderful holiday. Each time my dad got paid, she would squirrel away a dollar or two in an envelope clearly marked Christmas. Having gone without a lot of things as a child, she’d learned to be frugal. But when Christmas came, all that changed. We would have cookies wall to wall (some of my best memories are of baking with her, in a fragrant kitchen) and gift-wishes would somehow, miraculously, come true. Looking back, I’m not sure how she managed it, and I’m certain there was a little magic, as well as a lot of love, involved.

And that gets me thinking…where did my mom, deprived of so much, including her own mother at a young age, get the desire to make us a magical Christmas? How did she come by her cookie recipes, if not via memories of watching her mother, who once ran a tearoom, bake? And where did my grandmother learn to bake, except from her own mother? In all this I see a woven chain of tradition, stretching back through the ages—an unbroken connection of love.

A man with any appalachianmagazine.com cheap cialis sexual problem is just powerless. In Brazil it has gained legendary popularity and is being consumed by many millions every viagra low price day. The use of this classification can help physicians characterize group of patients, provides the rationale for specific management strategies, and allows the design of future clinical trials with more accurate selection and stratification of the population levitra for women under investigation. The informal group of stockbrokers organized themselves as the The Native Share and Stockbrokers Association which, in 1875, was formally organized as the Bombay Stock Exchange and cialis without prescription overnight they are still being followed. Whatever your customs this holiday, be they hanging special ornaments, secret gift exchanges or preparing a feast, give a thought to those who came before us. They are not gone from us, not so long as we remember the past. For today, we still carry out their promises.

Just because she’ll be alone this Christmas, is no reason for Beth Manning to feel sorry for herself. A busy nurse with plenty of friends, she knows she can keep occupied and have a good holiday. But when a tiny package containing an antique locket arrives, she tumbles into a century-old mystery. Is it intended for her, or for a relation of the same name, who lived four generations ago? Why does the image of the young soldier, inside, tug so hard at her heartstrings?

When Tommy Rafferty accompanies his injured friend to the hospital, he’s not thinking about romance. Yet as soon as he meets nurse Beth, his heart gets its own ideas. He’s sure he wants to see her again. But what a strange coincidence, that the tiny package he found and mailed just days ago, while cleaning out a relative’s property should have been addressed to this woman he’s just met. And what about the dreams of past battles he’s been having, that hint at promises and sacrifice?
Is it possible for two lovers parted a century ago to be reunited in time for Christmas? In the blossoming of a new love, will an old promise be kept?

Multi award-winning author Laura Strickland delights in time traveling to the past and searching out settings for her books, be they Historical Romance, Steampunk or something in between. Her first Scottish Historical hero, Devil Black, battled his way onto the publishing scene in 2013, and the author never looked back. Nor has she tapped the limits of her imagination. Venturing beyond Historical and Contemporary Romance, she created a new world with her ground-breaking Buffalo Steampunk Adventure series set in her native city, in Western New York. Married and the parent of one grown daughter, Laura has also been privileged to mother a number of very special rescue dogs, and is intensely interested in animal welfare. These days while she's writing, you can always find her latest rescue, Lacy, nearby. Her love of dogs, and her lifelong interest in Celtic history, magic and music, are all reflected in her writing. Laura's mantra is Lore, Legend, Love, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

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