I don't know about you but I am seriously miffed when I see Christmas items appearing in the stores at the end of August (the moment the back to school sale is over). Isn't this overkill? How can Christmas have any magic at all if we're bombarded with Silent Night and leaping reindeer all through the fall? I remember my childhood Christmases as magic because they just appeared in the middle of dreary winter. Suddenly there were toys and crackers in the stores, turkeys at the butcher shop, children singing carols on street corners. We bought the Christmas tree on Christmas eve and took it home to decorate that evening. Dark evenings suddenly twinkled with lights. There were good smells in the kitchens. A wonderful sense of hope and anticipation grew inside me. It couldn't be long now! This makes me sound as if I'm a contemporary of Dickens but this was really how it was in an Engish village until recently.
However, now I find I'm joining the enemy and talking about Christmas in October. Actually I'm talking about a book, called THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS, by a fabulous, outstandingly marvelous author called Rhys Bowen (known to be modest as well as a great writer :) and it will be in stores on November 6. Not that anybody will notice because November 6 is election day!
I hope on November 7 that people will feel like celebrating with a good book or licking their wounds by curling up with a good book and will then rush out to buy it.
So I thought I'd start my own little countdown to the launch of the book by posting some sneak previews from the book. The first one is tomorrow. Let me know what you think.
I agree with you about Christmas-hype starting much too early and even earlier every year. I tried to buy some Halloween decoration in the first week of October and had to find out that most of the shops had already changed their supplies into full Christmas-mode. Not a single pumpkin or scarecrow in sight. But I surely look forward to Lady Georgie's Christmas-adventure. And I will NOT wait until Christmas to buy the book :-)
ReplyDeleteI saw Christmas stuff in a store today and thought "Oh no, not already." But on the other hand, I'm very much looking forward to Christmas with Georgie on Nov. 6th, and I see you'll be signing at Murder by the Book that weekend - hooray!
ReplyDeleteHi, nice to meet you. I am one of your newest members to your blog and I noticed that we share a love of historical fiction. I will be keeping up with your blog and hope you will join me at mine:
ReplyDeletegirllostinabook.blogspot.com
Hope to see you there. Happy reading.
Kimberlee
PS...I've read all your books and they are awesome..keep up the great work.