Winter Blogfest: Rachael Richey

This post is part of Long and Short Reviews’ Winter Blogfest. Leave a comment for a chance to win a digital copy of Practising for Christmas.

The Magic of Christmas by Rachael Richey

I think it’s very sad these days, just how commercialised Christmas has become.  I know, I’m only saying what everyone else says, but it seems to me that each year the shops start their Christmas promotions earlier and earlier.  For a long time now, even when I was a child, once Firework night was past, the Christmas decorations and gifts would appear in the shops.  I’d got used to that.  Then it crept a little earlier, starting before Halloween.  

But now – some shops have had Christmas themed items on the shelves since early September.  It’s far too early, and for me it takes away some of the magic of Christmas.  By the time December comes you’re fed up with it all and are ready to scream each time a Christmas song comes on.  

When I was a child, we didn’t get our Christmas tree until after I broke up from school, usually around the 21st of December.  Then on Christmas Eve we’d put up the rest of the decorations.  That made it exciting and magical – something to look forward to.  These days it’s considered normal to put up your decorations as soon as December starts.  To be honest ours have crept forward and we usually get the tree around the middle of the month, which is fine, but I know some people who put them up in November, and of course by then the shops are completely full of nothing else.  

I hope this doesn’t make me sound like a Grinch.  Far from it.  My grouse is that because it all starts so early, by the time Christmas Eve arrives (the most magical day of all), we are all weary and bored and beginning to wish it was all over.

But I do still have a little Christmas tradition that has hung on since childhood.  Even now, at my advanced age – my youngest child is twenty-two – when I go to bed on Christmas Eve I look up at the sky.  Just in case.  I hope I never lose that sense of magic.

Merry Magical Christmas everyone!

A remote coastal cottage; a group of old friends; the Christmas holidays. It’s just the break Olivia needs to help her relax and forget her worries. What could be more perfect? But that was before she found a handsome unconscious stranger on the beach. Add in a case of mistaken identity, a lot of kissing practice, and an inquisitive best friend, and things begin to get more than a little complicated. The large bump on Adam’s head hurts, but he refuses to go to the hospital—or back home—and eventually accepts Olivia’s offer of hospitality. When her friends arrive the following morning, a chance remark catapults them both into a bizarre and amusing situation that promises to make it a Christmas to remember.

Rachael Richey lives in Cornwall with her family. She writes Women’s Fiction and Romantic Comedy. She has been writing since she was a child, starting with stories about her teddy bears and dolls.

She lived in the Hebrides for nearly fourteen years, having originally gone there to work for the summer season. She met and married her husband David whilst there, and had two children, before moving to Cornwall at the end of 2000.

There are currently four titles in the NightHawk Series; Storm Rising, published in February 2015; Rhythm of Deceit, July 2015, Cobwebs in the Dark, February 2016, and The Girl in the Painting, July 2016.

Breaking All The Rules, a standalone romantic comedy, was released on 5th May, 2017, and Practising for Christmas, a seasonal romcom on 12th November, 2018.

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