Congratulations to Diane for winning Kathi Macias’s The Doctor’s Christmas Quilt and to Karen for winning Grace Fox’s Morning Moments with God.
This week I’m hosting Valerie Hansen with Cozy Christmas (2 books) and Lynette Sowell with Tempest’s Course: Quilt of Love Series (US only). If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (Dec. 15th) evening.
Valerie Hansen’s Bio:
Valerie Hansen’s basic nature is to enjoy every day to the fullest – and that includes her writing. She’s always loved stories about people who have successfully met and overcome life’s challenges, as has she.
Her personal life sounds a lot like a popular novel. She married her high school sweetheart and they raised two great kids before leaving California to pursue their dreams of a rural lifestyle in the Arkansas Ozarks. That relocation has also given her work a new focus and has opened her mind to embrace the adventurous pioneer culture that settled this country.
Valerie has always loved to write. The strong conviction that this is what she was meant to do led her to pursue a career as a novelist. Besides extensive research, she has plenty of interesting experiences to draw upon when creating stories. She’s been a veterinary assistant, teacher’s aide, volunteer fire department dispatcher, Emergency Medical Technician, bank worker, professional artist, store clerk, bookkeeper, 4-H leader, Sunday school teacher, gospel singer/songwriter, winning quiz show contestant, dog trainer, college extension-class instructor, and antique restorer. She’s built dulcimers and a psaltery, laid bricks and tile, designed stained-glass windows, roofed a house, decorated store windows for the holidays, helped pour cement, raised fancy guinea pigs and finches, driven a long-haul moving van, and was once the proud owner of twenty-three Newfoundland dogs at one time. Her advice? Don’t try that at home!
Valerie and her husband now live on an eighty acre farm in northern Arkansas. She loves to hike the rocky, wooded hills behind the picturesque old house they renovated, watch for the wildlife so abundant in the area, and think up new ideas for her many books.
Blurb for Cozy Christmas by Valerie Hansen:
Season Of Cheer
For the first time in years, Christmas brings hope to Bygones, Kansas. But for Josh Barton, Main Street’s coffee shop owner, it brings back sad memories he’d rather forget. He’s a new man, with a new life and faith now. Still, he hides a huge part of himself from his neighbors—and from one very inquisitive reporter. Whitney Leigh seems determined to uncover the mystery of the town’s recent windfall, and Josh could help her. But that would mean opening up his guarded heart. Can a man who thought family and Christmas were only for others find a forever home where he least expects?
The Heart of Main Street: They’re rebuilding the town one step—and heart—at a time.
Lynette Sowell’s Bio:
Lynette Sowell is the award-winning author of over one dozen titles for Barbour Publishing. In 2009, Lynette was voted one of the favorite new authors by Heartsong Presents book club readers. Her historical romance, All That Glitters, was a finalist in ACFW’s 2010 Carol Awards. When Lynette’s not writing, she divides her time between editing medical reports and chasing down news stories for the Copperas Cove Leader-Press. Lynette was born in Massachusetts, raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but makes her home on the doorstep of the Texas hill country with her husband and a herd of cats who have them well-trained. She loves reading, cooking, watching movies, and is always up for a Texas road trip.
You can find Lynette at her Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/lynettesowellauthor
Blurb for Tempest’s Course: Quilt of Love Series by Lynette Sowell:
Kelly Frost, a textiles conservator, is invited to the Massachusetts coastal city of New Bedford to restore a 150-year-old Mariner’s Compass quilt. But there is one stipulation: she must live and work in Gray House, a former whaling captain’s home, where the quilt is stored. There she meets Army veteran Tom Pereira, the caretaker of Gray House, whose heart seems as hard as the rocky Massachusetts coastline. Over the long-lit months as Kelly works to restore the quilt, she and Tom grow closer. And as she reads stories in a daily journal penned by Mary Gray, she learns the secrets of the quilt and Mary’s own sad tale of regret. Then Tom learns secrets of his own family’s past, and both Tom and Kelly learn they are tied to Gray House in ways they never imagined.
