Title: FIXING CHRISTMAS
Author: Peggy Jaeger
Genre: Holiday romance, Dickens Romance, Later in life romance, Military Widower, Small town
Book Blurb:
Christmas has never filled writer Abra Charles with undiluted pleasure.
If you’d been left on a doorstep on Christmas Eve morning, you might have a few issues with the holiday as well.
Abra’s avoided her hometown of Dickens for the past twenty Christmas seasons, but now she’s returned in an attempt to get her writing mojo back. Twice-divorced and with her third engagement ending in heartbreak, anger, and blackmail, Abra is now six months behind on submitting her current book. She hopes renting Copperfield House and immersing herself in solitude will cure her writer’s block and get her life back on track. The house she rents isn’t helping her achieve her goal, though, as one thing after another breaks, collapses, or floods.
Colton Bree, Dickens’ very own Mr. Fix It, can’t help but wonder if the new resident of Copperfield House is cursed. After being called to repair a broken window, he’s then needed to fix an exploding coffeepot, an overrunning toilet, and a washing machine that has a mind of its own. Bree doesn’t mind all the unexpected repair jobs, though, because the sexy renter is something to look at despite being a little neurotic and a whole lot of snarky.
Can Abra get her book done with all the distractions and craziness of her life, the biggest distraction being the flannelled hunk with the bedroom eyes and scowling yet oh-so-kissable mouth? Or will Dickens’ Mr. Fix It have to step in and save the day and in so doing, fix Christmas for Abra forever?
Excerpt:
Okay, there was someone else in the house.
Every scene she’d ever written about a heroine trapped in an empty, secluded house, flashed across the front of her mind. With it, every deathly scenario she’d conjured from her imagination.
Not good. Not good at all.
Her purse sat on the kitchen table. She carefully made her way to it, hoping the floors wouldn’t creak and give her away. A house this old was bound to squeak and moan with the slightest provocation. When she had her phone, she swiped it to the screen saver page. Nothing happened.
“Damn.”
She’d forgotten to charge it before falling into bed and now it was dead.
Was there a landline anywhere in the house?
The banging stopped for a second and she cocked her head to listen. A clamor of glass shattering split the air.
What to do, what to do?
Here she was, alone at God only knew what hour, out in the most secluded part of town. The notion she should have paid more attention to those self-defense classes she’d sat in on as research for her last book blew through her head.
Think, Abra, think.
A butcher block of knives rested on the kitchen counter.
Armed is always better than unarmed.
She pulled one out, held it against her thigh.
Opening the basement door as if she was trying to disarm a live bomb, she slid through it and took a step downward. When the stair didn’t give her away by groaning, she stepped down another, then an- other until she could crouch down a bit and see into the basement proper.
A man, large and tall—exceptionally so—swept glass from a windowpane with the head of a hammer. The window looked too small for him to have crawled through, so how had he gotten into the house?
Abra took another step down and, in the next second, lost her balance as her foot miscalculated the depth of the step. She flailed out but wasn’t quick enough to grab onto the handrail before she tumbled straight down to the concrete basement floor, her butt bumping on each riser until she landed, once again, flat on her ass at the bottom. Still sore from last night’s tumble on the ice, she couldn’t prevent the ear-piercing scream of pain she let out.
“What the hell?” The man turned, surprise covering his face. He moved toward her.
“Don’t come any closer,” Abra shouted. She shot her free hand up in a halt stance. “I’m armed.” She pointed the knife at him, which by some miracle hadn’t dropped from her hand when she’d fallen.
The man stopped in his tracks, glanced down at it, then fisted his hands on his hips, his brows tugging together across his forehead. “What are you gonna do? Butter me to death?”
Abra took a good look at the knife for the first time. It wasn’t the steel edged stiletto she thought she’d chosen, but had a flat, wide head, perfect for spreading jam and not skewering an intruder. She had to give him praise-points because most men in her experience didn’t know the differences among everyday cutlery. Ask them about a hunting or pocketknife, and you’d get a different response entirely.
The man shook his head. “Who are you?”
“Since this is my house shouldn’t I be asking you that? How did you get in here, because I know for a fact I locked the door last night.” A slight fib, but he didn’t need to know it.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
What I love most about the holiday season:
Hands down, it’s the decorating. I go all out every single year. Typically, I have 4-6 trees, fully decorated, all throughout my house. I have over 2000 ornaments, all bought over the years from specialty stores, and from every place I’ve traveled.
Why is your featured book a must-read to get you in the holiday mood?
If you like small town, later in life romances with snarky heroines with soft hearts, this is your book! And the double plus: if’ you’re a fan of the Dickens anthology this is a story that fell out of one the original stories.
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $75 Amazon gift card.
Open internationally. You must have a valid Amazon US or Amazon Canada account to win.
Runs July 1 – 31
Drawing will be held on August 1.
Author Biography:
Peggy Jaeger writes contemporary romances and rom coms about strong women, the families who support them, and the men who can’t live without them.
Family and food play huge roles in Peggy’s stories because she believes there is nothing that holds a family structure together like sharing a meal…or two…or ten. Dotted with humor and characters that are as real as they are loving, Peggy brings all aspects of life into her stories: life, death, sibling rivalry, illness, and the desire for everyone to find their own happily ever after. Growing up the only child of divorced parents she longed for sisters, brothers and a family that vowed to stick together no matter what came their way. Through her books, she has created the families she wanted as that lonely child.
As a lifelong diarist, she caught the blogging bug early on, and you can visit her at peggyjaeger.com where she blogs daily about life, writing, and stuff that makes her go "What??!"
Social Media Links:
Website/Blog: http://peggyjaeger.com/
Twitter:https://twitter.com/peggy_jaeger
Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00T8E5LN0
Pinterest:https://www.pinterest.com/peggyjaeger/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peggyjaeger_author/