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Holiday Magic
Holiday Magic
Wishing you joy and love this holiday season. The World Romance Writers presents a collection of heartwarming seasonal tales from far and wide, spanning the globe through history and our love of the season. This collection will warm your heart all year long. Please join us as we present to you our heartfelt tales of Holiday Magic.
This collection includes contemporary and historical romance, futuristic time travel romance, and romance touched by magic by Award-Winning and Multi-Published Rose Anderson, Lynn Crain, Gemma Juliana, Cara Marsi, and Jenny Twist.
Come enjoy the many flavors and flavours of our English language.
The Angel of the West Side
By Madeline Archer*
During the Great Depression, newspaper reporter, Jack Kennelly, went to the streets of Chicago hoping to find proof that good still existed in the world. What he discovered was the West Side had its own angel, and her name was Ruthie.
*Rose Anderson writing as Madeline Archer
Period Romance
Her Magical Vienna Christmas
By Lynn Crain
Cryptographer Elizabeth “Lizzie” Camden is more in tune with numbers, cyphers and puzzles than she is with the real world. When her job takes her back in time to 1874 Vienna, she’s more than surprised to find Michael Sondervan there as well. She hadn’t seen him since college when he broke her heart.
Michael has always regretted the way things turned out between him and Lizzie. When he needs someone to figure out the cryptic warning, he knows he needs the best. And Lizzie is the best. Giving her a magical Vienna Christmas in the bargain, he hopes will bring them together and prove his love to the only woman for him.
Time Travel Romance
To Kiss a Prince
By Gemma Juliana
Princess Isabelle de Lily knows no life beyond the seclusion of Chateau de Lily. The family castle was frozen in time, frosted over with ice and snow just before her birth. The witch who placed the 99 year curse on her family left only one loophole. The curse will fizzle and ‘melt’ if one from the royal enemy clan miraculously finds his way to her castle and professes his true love for her on Christmas Day. Citizens of Chateau de Lily hold little hope of that happening since everyone who tries to cross the ice floes dies. Only the resident, ever-loyal, royal wizard Zoltar, who has been in service to Isabelle’s family since long before the curse was cast, believes miracles of this magnitude are possible. Twenty-five years have passed, but as Zoltar continues experimenting in his dungeon laboratory, he believes this will be their final Christmas spent in icy isolation.
Fantasy-Time Travel Romance
A Very Vegas Christmas
By Cara Marsi
Can things get any worse for Las Vegas event planner Amanda Moreau? Her boyfriend dumped her for a stripper; she’s arranging a Christmas wedding for a Bridezilla; and her mother is playing matchmaker from 2000 miles away. When she meets hunky and ever-so-sweet Erik, who’s in town for a conference, she begins to hope her luck is changing. But Erik has a secret that threatens to split them apart.
Contemporary Romance
Marion
By Jenny Twist
Jim Durrant, university don at Oxford is trapped in the memory of his lost, beloved wife. When his family comes to stay with him for Christmas, he and his grandson write their letters to Santa Claus and Jim asks for the impossible – the return of his dead love.
Historical Romance
Wishing you joy and love this holiday season. The World Romance Writers presents a collection of heartwarming seasonal tales from far and wide, spanning the globe through history and our love of the season. This collection will warm your heart all year long. Please join us as we present to you our heartfelt tales of Holiday Magic.
This collection includes contemporary and historical romance, futuristic time travel romance, and romance touched by magic by Award-Winning and Multi-Published Rose Anderson, Lynn Crain, Gemma Juliana, Cara Marsi, and Jenny Twist.
Come enjoy the many flavors and flavours of our English language.
The Angel of the West Side
By Madeline Archer*
During the Great Depression, newspaper reporter, Jack Kennelly, went to the streets of Chicago hoping to find proof that good still existed in the world. What he discovered was the West Side had its own angel, and her name was Ruthie.
*Rose Anderson writing as Madeline Archer
Period Romance
Her Magical Vienna Christmas
By Lynn Crain
Cryptographer Elizabeth “Lizzie” Camden is more in tune with numbers, cyphers and puzzles than she is with the real world. When her job takes her back in time to 1874 Vienna, she’s more than surprised to find Michael Sondervan there as well. She hadn’t seen him since college when he broke her heart.
Michael has always regretted the way things turned out between him and Lizzie. When he needs someone to figure out the cryptic warning, he knows he needs the best. And Lizzie is the best. Giving her a magical Vienna Christmas in the bargain, he hopes will bring them together and prove his love to the only woman for him.
Time Travel Romance
To Kiss a Prince
By Gemma Juliana
Princess Isabelle de Lily knows no life beyond the seclusion of Chateau de Lily. The family castle was frozen in time, frosted over with ice and snow just before her birth. The witch who placed the 99 year curse on her family left only one loophole. The curse will fizzle and ‘melt’ if one from the royal enemy clan miraculously finds his way to her castle and professes his true love for her on Christmas Day. Citizens of Chateau de Lily hold little hope of that happening since everyone who tries to cross the ice floes dies. Only the resident, ever-loyal, royal wizard Zoltar, who has been in service to Isabelle’s family since long before the curse was cast, believes miracles of this magnitude are possible. Twenty-five years have passed, but as Zoltar continues experimenting in his dungeon laboratory, he believes this will be their final Christmas spent in icy isolation.
Fantasy-Time Travel Romance
A Very Vegas Christmas
By Cara Marsi
Can things get any worse for Las Vegas event planner Amanda Moreau? Her boyfriend dumped her for a stripper; she’s arranging a Christmas wedding for a Bridezilla; and her mother is playing matchmaker from 2000 miles away. When she meets hunky and ever-so-sweet Erik, who’s in town for a conference, she begins to hope her luck is changing. But Erik has a secret that threatens to split them apart.
Contemporary Romance
Marion
By Jenny Twist
Jim Durrant, university don at Oxford is trapped in the memory of his lost, beloved wife. When his family comes to stay with him for Christmas, he and his grandson write their letters to Santa Claus and Jim asks for the impossible – the return of his dead love.
Historical Romance
200 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 1, 2016
1 person is currently reading
3 people want to read
About the author
Rose Anderson
66 books31 followersThe short version:
About Rose -
Known for crafting characters that stay with you long after the last page has turned, Rose Anderson is an award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and delights in discovering interesting things to weave into stories. Rose also writes across genres under the pen name Madeline Archer. She lives with her family and small menagerie amid oak groves and prairie in the rolling glacial hills of the upper Midwest.
When not writing, Rose gathers with friends for drumming, poetry, Reiki, and great discussions.
The long version:
http://calliopeswritingtablet.com/
About Rose -
Known for crafting characters that stay with you long after the last page has turned, Rose Anderson is an award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and delights in discovering interesting things to weave into stories. Rose also writes across genres under the pen name Madeline Archer. She lives with her family and small menagerie amid oak groves and prairie in the rolling glacial hills of the upper Midwest.
When not writing, Rose gathers with friends for drumming, poetry, Reiki, and great discussions.
The long version:
http://calliopeswritingtablet.com/
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 12, 2016
Review: HOLIDAY MAGIC
The winter holidays, Christmas decorations, sparkling snow outside and a crackling fire within – all this and the warmth of true love? For fans of romance fiction, this might be perfection. (And there are a few surprises, too.)
Short stories are tricky to write, and this goes double for stories in the contemporary romance genre. In order for a love story to be convincing to readers, the relationship has to be given some time to brew, for the couple to become attracted to each other, face challenges, seem to be losing ground, and finally overcome their difficulties through surprising discoveries and personal growth. But time is exactly what a short story is… well, short of. With varying degrees of success, the five authors represented in this anthology attempt to deal with this problem in different ways.
"The Angel of the West Side," by Rose Anderson (writing as Madeline Archer), is a sweet love story featuring an especially sweet heroine. Since my personal tolerance for sweetness is pretty low, I have to confess I almost closed the book after only a few pages. But the tale's saving grace is the setting – a poor neighborhood in Chicago during the fifth winter of the Great Depression. The author doesn't paint this scene in sentimental pastels. Instead, she gives us a Dickensian picture of real poverty, near-starvation, and the ways its victims respond in their desperate attempts to survive. Readers who think being poor means having to cut back on Christmas shopping, fixing meals at home instead of eating out, and doing without luxuries like getting their hair and nails done at a beauty spa may think the conditions shown here are unbelievable… and they'll be wrong. It doesn't hurt, either, that Anderson/Archer has told her story in strong, very competent language.
"Her Magical Vienna Christmas," by Lynn Crain, is the most ambitious story in the anthology. It's a romance, a time-travel tale, science fiction (involving not only the time-travel feature but also history and cryptology, the science of secret codes), and a mystery. Sadly – and I mean this – it's in my opinion both the most interesting and the least successful of these stories. The romance seems superfluous, as it's so immediately predictable to the reader that it makes the characters look stupid for not seeing it themselves. The mystery is quickly solved without much trouble. And the science-fiction elements are difficult if not impossible to understand without gleaning explanations from other sources, which most readers, I fear, will not bother to undertake. All of these shortcomings are a result of crowding a complex plot, and complex characters, into too short a space. Moreover, the writing itself seems rushed. Although the setting, late nineteenth-century Vienna, reflects a solid knowledge on the author's part, even the characters native to that time reflect a kind of default twenty-first century sensibility, which makes them less than plausible. And although the story has apparently been carefully edited, word order and punctuation are such that many of the sentences require slow parsing over a couple of readings in order for the reader to make sense of them. However, I have to add this: the plot, the central character (Lizzie), and especially the science-fiction elements are basically fascinating, and there's not room in a short story to do any of them justice. It seems to me this is the skeleton of a tale that might be fleshed out into a really intriguing novel. I hope the writer thinks so too. It would take some time, but I think it would be worth the effort.
The third story, "To Kiss a Prince," by Gemma Juliana, is another time-travel romance, in this case not science-fiction but fantasy, as the time travel is accomplished by magic. It's a fairy-tale update of the Sleeping Beauty theme, with a few surprising twists and turns. Here the magical curse has been in effect for twenty-five years, only a year longer than the heroine's life, and the two main characters have undergone some changes: the handsome prince has only just found out that he is a prince, it's he who needs to be awakened by a kiss, and the princess is a young woman with a mind of her own – a beauty, yes, but far from sleeping. Their story is a bit of sparkling holiday fluff, charmingly told.
For a complete change of pace, the next story, by Cara Marsi, treats readers to "A Very Vegas Christmas." The central character is a busy and stressed-out event planner with, on one hand, the bride (and bride's mother) from hell demanding her attention, on the other hand the man she remembers from high school as a geeky guy she insulted (despite having a secret crush on him) when they were fourteen, and – on the third hand – a hot and hunky stranger whom she'd love to get to know better. A lot better. The setting for this one is the glittering, glimmering Strip, all decked out for the holidays.
With "Marion," by Jenny Twist, the anthology's editor saved the best for last. Set in the old British university city of Oxford, this is an unconventional romance, told in first person from a man's point of view. The narrator is a widowed university don who's still mourning the unexpected death of his wife, Marion, the love of his life. Past and present both grip his mind at intervals, as he remembers the beginnings of their love affair at the same time he's called upon to entertain his son, daughter-in-law, and young grandson, his visitors for the first Christmas he's had the heart to celebrate since Marion died. He does his best, staying as cheerful as he can… and then something surprising happens. There's magic involved (almost magic? Maybe magic?), as is often the case during this magical season. The author, writing in a sure and very readable style, handles this romance in an unexpected and entirely satisfying way.
The winter holidays, Christmas decorations, sparkling snow outside and a crackling fire within – all this and the warmth of true love? For fans of romance fiction, this might be perfection. (And there are a few surprises, too.)
Short stories are tricky to write, and this goes double for stories in the contemporary romance genre. In order for a love story to be convincing to readers, the relationship has to be given some time to brew, for the couple to become attracted to each other, face challenges, seem to be losing ground, and finally overcome their difficulties through surprising discoveries and personal growth. But time is exactly what a short story is… well, short of. With varying degrees of success, the five authors represented in this anthology attempt to deal with this problem in different ways.
"The Angel of the West Side," by Rose Anderson (writing as Madeline Archer), is a sweet love story featuring an especially sweet heroine. Since my personal tolerance for sweetness is pretty low, I have to confess I almost closed the book after only a few pages. But the tale's saving grace is the setting – a poor neighborhood in Chicago during the fifth winter of the Great Depression. The author doesn't paint this scene in sentimental pastels. Instead, she gives us a Dickensian picture of real poverty, near-starvation, and the ways its victims respond in their desperate attempts to survive. Readers who think being poor means having to cut back on Christmas shopping, fixing meals at home instead of eating out, and doing without luxuries like getting their hair and nails done at a beauty spa may think the conditions shown here are unbelievable… and they'll be wrong. It doesn't hurt, either, that Anderson/Archer has told her story in strong, very competent language.
"Her Magical Vienna Christmas," by Lynn Crain, is the most ambitious story in the anthology. It's a romance, a time-travel tale, science fiction (involving not only the time-travel feature but also history and cryptology, the science of secret codes), and a mystery. Sadly – and I mean this – it's in my opinion both the most interesting and the least successful of these stories. The romance seems superfluous, as it's so immediately predictable to the reader that it makes the characters look stupid for not seeing it themselves. The mystery is quickly solved without much trouble. And the science-fiction elements are difficult if not impossible to understand without gleaning explanations from other sources, which most readers, I fear, will not bother to undertake. All of these shortcomings are a result of crowding a complex plot, and complex characters, into too short a space. Moreover, the writing itself seems rushed. Although the setting, late nineteenth-century Vienna, reflects a solid knowledge on the author's part, even the characters native to that time reflect a kind of default twenty-first century sensibility, which makes them less than plausible. And although the story has apparently been carefully edited, word order and punctuation are such that many of the sentences require slow parsing over a couple of readings in order for the reader to make sense of them. However, I have to add this: the plot, the central character (Lizzie), and especially the science-fiction elements are basically fascinating, and there's not room in a short story to do any of them justice. It seems to me this is the skeleton of a tale that might be fleshed out into a really intriguing novel. I hope the writer thinks so too. It would take some time, but I think it would be worth the effort.
The third story, "To Kiss a Prince," by Gemma Juliana, is another time-travel romance, in this case not science-fiction but fantasy, as the time travel is accomplished by magic. It's a fairy-tale update of the Sleeping Beauty theme, with a few surprising twists and turns. Here the magical curse has been in effect for twenty-five years, only a year longer than the heroine's life, and the two main characters have undergone some changes: the handsome prince has only just found out that he is a prince, it's he who needs to be awakened by a kiss, and the princess is a young woman with a mind of her own – a beauty, yes, but far from sleeping. Their story is a bit of sparkling holiday fluff, charmingly told.
For a complete change of pace, the next story, by Cara Marsi, treats readers to "A Very Vegas Christmas." The central character is a busy and stressed-out event planner with, on one hand, the bride (and bride's mother) from hell demanding her attention, on the other hand the man she remembers from high school as a geeky guy she insulted (despite having a secret crush on him) when they were fourteen, and – on the third hand – a hot and hunky stranger whom she'd love to get to know better. A lot better. The setting for this one is the glittering, glimmering Strip, all decked out for the holidays.
With "Marion," by Jenny Twist, the anthology's editor saved the best for last. Set in the old British university city of Oxford, this is an unconventional romance, told in first person from a man's point of view. The narrator is a widowed university don who's still mourning the unexpected death of his wife, Marion, the love of his life. Past and present both grip his mind at intervals, as he remembers the beginnings of their love affair at the same time he's called upon to entertain his son, daughter-in-law, and young grandson, his visitors for the first Christmas he's had the heart to celebrate since Marion died. He does his best, staying as cheerful as he can… and then something surprising happens. There's magic involved (almost magic? Maybe magic?), as is often the case during this magical season. The author, writing in a sure and very readable style, handles this romance in an unexpected and entirely satisfying way.
Displaying 1 of 1 review