Tag Archives: must love christmas

MUST LOVE CHRISTMAS: Release day blog post featuring Kelly Hunter!

WRITE THE WORLD YOU WANT TO LIVE IN, THEY SAY

But for me this was bad writing advice.

I’d just bought and taken possession of a little cabin on the outskirts of a sweet country town. Not the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, but let’s just say it needed far more work than I thought it would. A five month wait on heating components and building materials. A twelve month wait for tradesmen.

Was it any wonder that my heroine stumbled across a God with a Hammer who was better than Thor? No story tension or conflict, mind—he simply did whatever my needy heroine told him to do at the end she got a very nice house out of it and he stayed on because he was handy to have around. My fantasy! Better than Thor.

But not a romance. At all.

So I put the story away, and fixed the cabin as best I could, and only once my real-life desire for competent tradesmen waned did I take to the story again. Because while I’m altogether on board with wrapping the end of a story up in a perfection covered bow, the journey to get to that point shouldn’t be a mellow stroll through a perfect world. If it’s too perfect, I’ll get bored writing it and you’ll fall asleep reading it and that won’t do at all.

Must Love Christmas isn’t boring anymore. It’s stuffed with hopes and dreams, and hearts that clamor for love, and a heroine taking her first wobbly steps toward confidence and self-respect. My Christmas gift to her. Merry Christmas, Madeline and Seth. Have a good one.

You can find the story here.

But if you know of any tradesmen looking for work, give me a call.

 

About the Author

Accidentally educated in the sciences, Kelly Hunter didn’t think to start writing romances until she was surrounded by the jungles of Malaysia for a year and didn’t have anything to read. Eventually she decided that writing romance suited her far better than throwing sterile screw-worm flies out of airplane windows, and changed careers. Kelly now lives in Australia, surrounded by lush farmland and family, 2 dogs, 3 miniature cows, a miniature pig, a 3-legged cat and a small flock of curious chickens. There are still flies, but their maggots don’t feed on flesh. Bargain. Kelly is a USA Today bestselling author, a three-time Romance Writers of America RITA finalist and loves writing to the short contemporary romance form.