News about a Free Christmas Anthology & a monster giveaway to enter!

Good morning all. 

Now don’t be cross with me, mentioning Christmas so early. I know, I know, it’s awful, we’ve not even gotten out of August yet!

In case anyone is wondering, there are 126 days till the big man in red gets to work again! 

So why am I mentioning Christmas?  Well, some lovely news to share. HarperCollins will be publishing an eBook of Christmas short stories and I am one of the authors involved in the anthology.

Actually, it’s a really cool idea, because all fifteen authors have been given the same opening paragraph and been challenged to write their own story from that one piece. And the opening paragraph was written by Georgia Beyers, who won a competition my publisher ran. Cool right?

So today, I’m sharing a small tidbit from my short story. And tomorrow, I’ll share a tiny bit more. 

And, get this, just to because it’s 126 days till Christmas there is a great monster giveaway for you all to take part in – with the chance to win books, ebooks and a $70 Amazon gift card! 

Am I forgiven now? 

Hope you enjoy my little snippet….. Chat soon, 

Carmel x

FIFTEEN AUTHORS.

FIFTEEN SHORT STORIES.

ONE OPENING PARAGRAPH…

‘Charlotte sat at the bus stop wondering whether she would make the naughty or nice list this year. Last year she had rescued a stray kitten and therefore considered herself most definitely ‘nice’. This year she had broken Daniels heart into a million tiny pieces, so ‘naughty’ seemed to be the only answer. There’d be no Santa Claus coming down her chimney anytime soon…’ 

– Georgia Beyers

Don’t forget to enter the Rafflecopter giveaway for a bundle of eBooks and paperbacks as well as a $70 Amazon giftcard!

Charlotte sat at the bus stop wondering whether she would make the naughty or nice list this year. Last year she had rescued a stray kitten and therefore considered herself most definitely “nice.” This year she had broken Daniel’s heart into a million tiny pieces, so “naughty” seemed to be the only answer. There’d be no Santa Claus coming down her chimney anytime soon. 

The rescuing of the kitten, as far as she was concerned, most definitely negated any bad she may have accumulated on her part over ‘DanielGate.’ Because she didn’t even like kittens. In fact she would go as far as to say that they gave her the hee-bee-gee-bees. Blame it on Saturday afternoon cartoons when she was a kid and had gotten rightly traumatised by Tom and Jerry terrorising each other gleefully. She’d a proper fear of all things feline now and truth be told, mice weren’t on top of her must see list either! 

So now, should a cat happen to wander in her path, she’d find herself diving for cover, fully expecting a cartoon explosive to drop from the sky, with BOMB written all over it,  blowing her and the cat to smithereens. It could happen. 

Her neighbours little girl was lucky she was in such a good mood on that day, when she had begged her to help save ‘snowy’, her new pet. Ok, at first Charlotte may have seemed reluctant to help. But to be fair she had the mother of all hangovers, courtesy of the cocktails that seemed such a good idea the previous night. But this particular four year old was a tenacious little thing and it seemed the lesser of two evils to climb the stupid tree and rescue the cat, if nothing else but to stop her incessant pleading!

In a scene worthy of any made-for-tv movie, she risked her life not to mention her newly manicured nails and ungracefully stumbled up the tree saving the day. Or at least Snowy anyhow. Santa was obviously very happy with her too because less than twenty four hours later, he rewarded her with a hot new boyfriend – Daniel.