VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS BRIDES Release Party Celebrating Susanne Dietze and C.J.Chase!

Today we're celebrating a new Barbour release, THE VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS BRIDES collection! Congratulations C.J., and Susie!

While some of us are far from ready for Christmas... there's no reason not to relax with some holiday cheer today!

Grab the book and it will be there ready for you on a 'long winter's night'! Now, to get you in the mood...




LOOK AT THIS LINE UP OF AWESOME AUTHORS:

Experience a Dickens of a Christmas

Faced with the daily extremes of gluttony and want in the Victorian Era, nine women seek to create the perfect Christmas celebrations. But will expectations and pride cause them to overlook imperfect men who offer true love?

Paper Snowflake Christmas by Vanessa Riley
1837 Framlingham, England
How can widow Ophelia Hanover give her son a perfect Christmas when his guardian, the Earl of Litton, arrives early to take permeant custody of the boy?

One Golden Ring by C.J. Chase
1855 Devonshire, England
Wounded soldier Tristram Nowell returns home to indulge his mother's wish for a family Christmas--and encounters Marianna Granville. Can he forgive the former heiress who jilted him years before?

Love Brick by Brick by Kathleen L. Maher
1857 Elmira, New York
SarahAnn Winnifred overcomes orphanhood apprenticing with pioneering doctors. Rufus Sedgwick, relocating his English estate, seeks help for his ailing Mum. Christmas reveals the secret wish of both hearts--for love.

The Sugarplum Ladies by Carrie Fancett Pagels
1867 Windsor, Ontario, Canada and Detroit, Michigan
When Canadian barrister Percy Gladstone finds his aristocratic British family unexpectedly descending upon him for Christmas, he turns to American social reformer Eugenie Mott and her fledgling catering crew for help.

Star of Wonder by Susanne Dietze
1875 County Durham, England
This Yuletide, Bennet Hett, Viscount Harwood, offers Lady Celeste Sidwell matrimony and the Star of Wonder diamond necklace, as their fathers arranged. When the diamond disappears, will they find a greater treasure?

Father Christmas by Lorna Seilstad
Chicago, Christmas 1880
Widowed harpist Beatrix Kent believes love can only come once in a lifetime, but this Christmas, carpenter Hugo Sherman hopes to pull on the musician's heartstrings and prove her wrong.

The Perfect Christmas by Erica Vetsch
1880s London
Melisande Verity might be in over her head trying to create the perfect Christmas window display, but if she succeeds, will she finally attract the attention of her boss, Gray Garamond?

A Christmas Vow by Gabrielle Meyer
London, England, Christmas 1899

Lady Ashleigh Pendleton is hosting a houseful of guests for Christmas when railroad executive Christopher Campbell unexpectedly arrives from America with a mysterious agreement signed by their fathers before their birth.

The Holly and the Ivy by Rita Gerlach
1900. Small town along the Potomac near Washington DC
A glass ornament. Love letters tied in red Christmas ribbon. Lily Morningstar and British antiquities expert Andrew Stapleton are drawn into a family secret that binds their hearts together.










While you admire this gorgeous cover, please enjoy something sweet. Like plum pudding and someone who looks a lot like Viscount Harwood!













Deb's plum pudding!





Our waiter is carefully juggling lovely cups of creamy hot cocoa.




And we are carefully juggling our dropped jaws at the sight of the waiter. (Please let me know if I have a whipped cream mustache.)




Could this be our soldier Tristam?
Okay, now I'm completely confused about what I was doing, and there is a plate of plum pudding with warm nutmeg sauce dripping all over my taffeta!




Please join us in congratulating Susie and C.J. and enter the rafflecopter below for a chance to win a paperback!




And tell us what date each year are you;

1. ready for Christmas

2. ready for a Christmas story





More about C.J.:




Award-winning author C.J. Chase left the corporate world to stay home with her children and quickly learned she did not possess the housekeeping gene. She decided to make writing her excuse for letting the dust bunnies accumulate under the furniture. When she is not writing, you will find C.J. gardening, watching old movies, playing classical piano (badly), teaching a special needs Sunday school class, or pretty much anything else that will excuse her from cleaning house. Visit her dirt-free home-on-the-web at www.cjchasebooks.com.




Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/C-J-Chase-166112100084020/

Newsletter sign up: http://cjchasebooks.com/wordpress1/correspondence/





More about Susie:


Susanne Dietze began writing love stories in high school, casting her friends in the starring roles. Today, she's the award-winning author of over a dozen romances with Timeless Heart. A pastor's wife and mom of two, she loves fancy-schmancy tea parties, the beach, and curling up on the couch with a costume drama. You can visit her on her website, www.susannedietze.com, and sign up for her newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bRldfv

www.Facebook.com/SusanneDietzeBooks
Twitter: @SusanneDietze
Pinterest: Susanne Dietze
Amazon: www.bit.ly/SusanneDietze


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Visiting the Three (Mostly) Oldest English Settlements in North America

by C.J. Chase

Last month, my husband had to work in Boston for several weeks. It seemed like a good opportunity to take the younger Chase children sight-seeing, so I drove fourteen hours north and we spent Dad's last week there with him.  Okay, maybe an older Chase mama wanted to see a few sights too.

One attraction I got to cross off my bucket list was Plimoth Plantation, a recreation of the Pilgrims' initial settlement in the New World. I worried the kids would find it too similar to Jamestown Settlement (in Virginia) or Roanoke Island Festival Park (in North Carolina) -- both places Mom has taken them. However, my husband reminded me it was my vacation too, and I'm glad he did. Since we are probably one of the few families to have visited all three sites within the same year, I decided it might make for an interesting blog post.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the English attempted to establish a beachhead in North America to counter the mighty Spanish empire. These three settlements are their most famous. You've probably read about all of them in history books. 

Roanoke Island, NC -- 1584

In 1587, John White left more than 100 English settlers (including his daughter and newborn granddaughter Virginia Dare) on Roanoke Island (in present-day North Carolina) while he returned to England for supplies. Unfortunately, the Spanish Armada prevented his return for three years. When he finally got back, he found the fort abandoned with no trace of the settlers. The fate of the "Lost Colony" is one of America's great mysteries.

Middle son tries on the clothes of a 16th
gentleman at Roanoke Island

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site is operated by the National Park Service and marks the location of the settlement. The visitor center tells the story of the local tribes and English colonists. It's free to the public and park rangers offer regular talks, but as the settlement itself has been lost to time, there isn't much to see other than Civil War-era earthenworks.

Nearby Roanoke Island Festival Park is a recreation of life in sixteenth century America. It has an Adventure Museum with hands-on activities for children (and their parents), a model Algonquian village and English fort, and a replica of a sixteenth century ship. Costumed interpreters interact with visitors at each of the attractions. Festival Park is the cheapest of the three re-enactment sites, and the ticket is good for two consecutive days. I took our youngest two there in fall, and they had so much fun we went back the next day with the rest of the family. Because it was the off season, there were few tourists, and the re-enactors spent a lot of time answering my youngest son's many questions. My family's favorites: museum and blacksmith shop. We came home with several nails and an 'S' hook.

Jamestown, VA -- 1607

Twenty years after Roanoke disappeared into history, the English again endeavored to start a colony in the Americas. They tried a new site about 100 miles north of Fort Raleigh, just up the James River from the Chesapeake Bay. Mismanagement, hostile relations with their native neighbors, and natural disasters nearly sank the venture, but the timely marriage of Pocohantas and John Rolfe brought a period of peace that allowed the colony to flourish and become the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Re-enactor at Jamestown Settlement proves
men can do laundry. Who knew?

Historic Jamestowne (part of Colonial National Historic Park) is a cooperative effort between the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and the National Park Service to preserve the site of the original Jamestowne fort. (Founded in 1889, APVA bought part of the island for preservation before the creation of the National Park Service.) What makes the park special is the working archeological dig (Jamestown Rediscovery) that unearthed the location of the 1607 fort a couple decades ago. The Archaearium houses over 4,000 artifacts recovered by the excavations. Park rangers offer talks and guided hikes. The ticket for adults 16 and over is $14 and is good for seven days at both Historic Jamestown and nearby Yorktown Battlefield (site of the Revolutionary War's last battle). Mom loves the Archaearium -- yes, even the old bones of long-dead colonists. She's strange that way.

Jamestown Settlement was created in 1957 by the Commonwealth of Virginia to commemorate the 350th anniversary of Jamestown's founding. Like Roanoke Island Festival Park, it has a museum, a recreated Powhatan village and English fort, a glasshouse, and replicas of the three ships that brought the settlers to Virginia in 1607, with costumed re-enactors to demonstrate seventeenth century life. Because we live nearby, we have visited Jamestown Settlement numerous times. My youngest son's favorite place is the Powhatan village. Mom never misses a musket demonstration. While Jamestown is more expensive than Roanoke Island, you can get a combination pass that will also let you visit the Yorktown Victory Center. 

Plymouth, MA -- 1620

Thirteen years (and several failed ventures) after Jamestown, a group of religious separatists decided to found a settlement in America where they could worship according to their beliefs. Bad weather pushed their ship further north than they had intended, so they settled in Massachusetts, just south of present-day Boston. Plague (from interactions with Europeans) had wiped out many of the native peoples in the area, so the Pilgrims founded their settlement on an abandoned clearing. Like those early colonists at Jamestown, their mortality rate was high, but a year after their arrival, they celebrated their survival with a thanksgiving feast.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts manages Pilgrim Memorial State Park. You can see Plymouth Rock here. It looks like a rock. So many people chipped away at the rock, it is now protected by a granite-columned canopy. But you can look at it for free. (And in case you are wondering, it looks like...a rock.)

We tried to get Mils Standish to talk about
Pricilla Alden, but he wouldn't bite.

On the surface, Plimoth Plantation is a lot like Roanoke Island and Jamestown Settlement. It has a craft center, a recreated Wompanoag homesite and Pilgrim village, a grist mill, and a replica of the Mayflower (the ship that brought them to America). What makes Plimoth special is the calibre of their re-enactors. Each one plays the role of one of the original settlers (complete with an Elizabethan accent), and they do not break character. We "met" William Bradford, Miles Standish, and Stephen Hopkins among others the day we were there. The Wampanoag re-enactors are real Native Americans, although they seemed to hail from tribes other than Wampanoag. Plimoth is the priciest of the three. You can get tickets to just one of the three attractions or a combination good for the village, the grist mill, and waterfront exhibit. My husband asked if there was a special needs discount for middle son, and quite frankly, the amount they took off shocked us (in a pleasant sort of way, you understand). The Mayflower replica is being repaired for the quadricentennial of the Pilgrims crossing in 2020, so the waterfront exhibit was rather lacking. However, I loved the Pilgrim village, and the working, seventeenth century grist mill far exceeded our expectations.

If you get a chance, you should visit any of these. If you're really lucky, you should see all three.

Book vs. Movie

This post was originally intended to be about an author that my family has read for years. Her most famous work was made into a movie a few years ago, and I had intended to say, “Don’t judge her work by the movie. The book was better.”

The book was better. We hear that all the time when a novel is adapted for screen. It’s become such a truism in our culture, you can buy t-shirts, coffee mugs, and phone covers with the phrase emblazoned on them.

My youngest discovered the truth of that this past summer. He wanted to see the Harry Potter movies. Since some of them are rated PG-13, and he’s not yet 13, we told him he could only see them once he’d read the books. And that was when he learned—the books were better.

So, I thought it might be fun to turn this on its head and ask, Can you think of any instances where you liked the movie better than the book it was based on?

The only one that comes readily to my mind is North and South. If you’ve read the book by Elizabeth Gaskell, you probably noticed the script writers changed the ending. Personally, I think they tied up the lose ends better than Gaskell did.

The floor is now open for your nominations! 

The Man Who Invented Christmas

As soon as I saw the trailer for The Man Who Invented Christmas, I put the movie on my must-watch list. Just see for yourself:

Charles Dickens (played by Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens) was the most famous author of his day. By 1842, he was 19^th century rock star. And then, bad reviews and poor sales left him floundering. By October of 1843, he feared his career was over. And that was when he got the idea for a short Christmas book.

When his publisher balked at the prospect of getting a yet-unwritten book published and distributed in six weeks, Dickens borrowed enough money to self-publish the story. But could he get A Christmas Carol written, illustrated, printed, and in stores by Christmas?

Just how big a gamble Dickens took becomes more obvious when his friends and associates pointed out that Christmas wasn’t a major holiday at the time. Much of what we consider a “traditional” Christmas—decorated trees, cards, even many familiar carols—only came into vogue in the Victorian era. Dickens book (spoiler alert, he did get it done in time—but you knew that already) was one of the foremost contributors to the development of our modern notions of Christmas.

A Christmas Carol is an annual favorite at our house. We have several print copies (abridged and unabridged), the Patrick Stewart audio version, the musical Scrooge on video, and I think even the Muppets version on video. My husband and eldest son were in a community production of Scrooge some years back, as Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. The more familiar you are with that story, the more you will enjoy this movie since it is loaded with lines from the book.

A lot of the movie deals with Dickens’ creative process as a writer, particularly where he got his inspiration and how he developed his characters. He has entire conversations with his characters, and Scrooge (Christopher Plummer) practically steals the show.

Don’t be misled by the trailer for TMWIC. The movie itself has numerous darker moments and contains more depth that one would guess. Unlike other authors of the time, Dickens used his writing to bring attention to the problem of poverty in industrialized London. In addition to the 1843 setting, it includes several flashbacks to a pivotal event in Dickens’ own unhappy childhood. The two timelines converge at the end in a surprising way.

TMWIC is in a limited number of theaters. We had to drive about 40 minutes to see it. It was worth it though—my husband loved it so much, he analyzed it the entire way home. I give it 5 "God bless us, everyones" and 0 humbugs.