Spotlight & Giveaway: Paradise for Christmas by Carolyn Brown

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Carolyn Brown to HJ!

Hi Carolyn and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Paradise for Christmas!

 
Thank you for inviting me back to HJ to visit for a spell!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

About twenty years ago I wrote Trouble in Paradise, a contemporary romance about a woman with seven daughters who bought an old brothel in what was a booming town back in days when ranchers ran cattle from Texas up to Dodge City, Kansas. Since then I’ve had multiple fan letters wanting to know what happened to those seven little girls when they grew up. You all asked. My publisher agreed, and now I’m very excited to announce that the first book in the series, Paradise for Christmas, is on the shelves. This one is about the oldest daughter and the two youngest–Luna and Endora. The oldest of seven sisters, Ursula Simmons has followed in her mother’s footsteps as a novelist. With a bad case of writer’s block, she brings her notebooks and computer home to the old brothel called Paradise where they all grew up, in the hope that being home for the holidays will inspire her—and since it’s Christmas, all her sisters will be there too.

The sisters take the holidays very seriously, and as soon as they’ve celebrated Thanksgiving, it’s on to decorating for Christmas. As all pitch in to make the spirits bright, younger sister Endora is dismayed to find some of the handsome men who’ve come to help doing more flirting than anything else. She’s determined to show her sisters that no relationship is worth the heartbreak. But it might be Ursula who reminds the family that Christmas is a magical time, and finding new love is always a gift.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

Aunt Bernie is one of my favorite characters in the book. She’s a retired bar owner who has a chihuahua named Pepper. She has brought her travel trailer to Spanish Fort and parked it behind the Paradise. Some of my favorite quotes from her are:
*“Don’t go getting your panties in a twist,” Bernie said as Ursula walked into her arms and bent down to hug her. “I didn’t take your room away from you, and I’m glad you have come home. It’s time for you to get married and have some grandbabies for your mother.”
*Turn them squirrels loose that’s runnin’ around in your head right now.”
*“I ain’t never had a regret in my whole life about the way I lived.
*“I’m going to miss decorating my bar,” Bernie said with another sigh. “I always put up a big tree over in the corner and decorated it with empty whiskey bottles.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Aunt Bernie was not in the first draft, but after my editor and I agreed that the book needed some extra sass, the old gal came to me and said she would sell her bar in Ratliff City, Oklahoma, if she could be a secondary character.
• Spanish Fort is a real community. Maybe it could even be listed as a Texas ghost town. It has a colorful history that I loved researching.
• The seven sisters’ names came from the original book.
• I love writing holiday books. There’s so much magic and miracles around Christmas that just begs to be written about.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

The hero and heroine had crushes on each other when they were in high school. When Ursula came home to concentrate on writing, they had both outgrown the shyness and insecurities they felt back then, and were ready for a relationship.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I love this scene where Ursula has already felt sparks when Remy is around, but she’s determined to fight them–in spite of Aunt Bernie’s constant meddling.

Ursula took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She was tired from the drive from the northeastern part of the state, plus all the emotional pros and cons she’d gone through for a solid month about moving back to the Paradise—even though she dearly loved the old brothel that her mother had bought almost twenty years ago and had remodeled into a home to raise her seven daughters in. Plus, it didn’t help that her old crush was sitting right beside her, and she didn’t want to hear a bunch of teasing about him from her two youngest sisters.
“It’s a good thing you got here now, or we might have eaten every one of them,” Ursula joked. “I got to have mine right out of the oven because I’m the oldest, and that makes me special, but they’re still warm for you.”
“Keep thinking that,” Luna shot back at her. “Hello, Remy. Are you out of school for the whole week?”
“Yep, and then I go back for a couple of weeks, and I’m done until my new classes start after New Year’s,” he answered. “Y’all should think about teaching on a college level.”
“Not me,” Endora said. “Dealing with college students would be way too rough for me. I barely make it through the day trying to teach second graders.” She pushed her long, blonde hair over her shoulder. The sparkle and pure orneriness that she’d had in her blue eyes ever since she was a child had disappeared. Now, thanks to Kevin, her fiancé of only a few weeks, and Krystal, her best friend having an affair and breaking her heart, they were dull and sad.
How on earth could someone, with the spunk Endora had always had, let a man drag her down to this level was a complete mystery. She had always been a spitfire and at one time, she would have gone toe-to-toe with her best friend, Krystal, and then had plenty of red-hot anger left over to unleash on her fiancé Kevin. Being betrayed by both of them had put what seemed to be a never-melting icicle inside her heart and soul.
“Since the old sister is home to stay, and since she’s so special, does this mean we get after school treats every day, Mama?” Luna asked.
“Only if you make them,” Mary Jane answered. “I’m taking Thanksgiving week off from my writing, but my publisher is screaming at me to finish the book I’m working on now before Christmas. That means I’m in my office from right after breakfast until time to make supper. And,” she raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Luna and Endora, “your sister might be the first born in this family, but she’s not old, and she will be working the same hours on her new writing project.”
“What did I do?” Endora protested. “This is Luna and Ursula’s argument. I’monly sitting here eating my sweet roll and being nice.”
“Mama is still just as bossy as ever,” Luna whispered to Ursula.
“But not as bad as Bernie,” Ursula said out the corner of her mouth. “And remind me later to fuss at you for not telling me that she had moved to the Paradise.”
“Mama threatened me and Endora both,” Luna said.
“It’s bad manners to whisper at the table,” Bernie snapped.
“Yes, ma’am,” Luna said. “We were talking about what we’re going to get you for Christmas.”
Bernie waved a hand in their direction. “Then whisper away, my sweet girls.”
“I still have really good hearing, and I am bossy. It would bode all of you sisters well to never forget that,” Mary Jane said as she pushed back her chair.
“She got that from me,” Bernie announced proudly. “Her angel wings and halo came from my twin sister who was her grandmother, but the bossy stuff is what I passed down to her.”
“That’s right,” Mary Jane said with a smile. “And to live up to my name, Endora, you and Luna can clean up the kitchen when you are done. Remy and Joe Clay have more boxes of Christmas decorations to bring in, so the whole bunch of us will be ready to start decorating on Friday. Ursula has to get upstairs and get unpacked so that, come Monday morning, she’s ready to start writing.”

Readers should read this book….

to get ready for the holidays!!

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m working on a women’s fiction book that will be out in 2025. How did 2023 get past us so fast?
The horizon looks like this:
On the Way to Us (a rewritten version of An Old Loves Shadow), Dec. 12
Meadow Falls (women’s fiction), Jan. 9
Tiny Blessings (an anthology with Fern Michaels & Stacey Finz), April 30
Sisters in Paradise (second book in The Sisters of Paradise), May 7
The Sawmill Book Club (women’s fiction), July 9
Just a Cowboy and His Baby (a rewritten version of a book by the same title), August 6
Coming Home to Paradise (third book in The Sisters of Paradise), October 1
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

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Excerpt from Paradise for Christmas:

“Holy…” Ursula was struck so speechless that she couldn’t remember what to say next, but she was sure it had to be one of those four-letter words and had nothing to do with angels.
There was Great Aunt Bernie sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee in one hand, and the leash to her yappy little Chihuahua dog, Pepper, in the other. “What…” Ursula muttered, “…the…”
There was no mistaking her elderly aunt with all that curly hair the color of a fire engine. Even just sitting there, she seemed to exude sass and opinions. Ursula was frozen in the driver’s seat, and her hands seemed to be glued to the steering wheel. Bernie was supposed to be in Ratliff City, Oklahoma minding her own little dive bar. She only closed it on Christmas and Easter—never on Thanksgiving—so what was she doing in Spanish Fort, Texas at the Paradise?
Aunt Bernie waved at her, and Pepper started barking. Ursula raised her hand and waved back, then opened the vehicle door. The Thanksgiving holiday had just taken a hard left turn. The old gal did not have a filter on her mouth, and she was always, always ready to give advice—whether Ursula or any of her six sisters wanted it or not.
“It’s about dang time you got here. I been sittin’ out here on this porch all morning waitin’ on you,” Bernie yelled as she pushed herself up from one of half-dozen rocking chairs lined up across the front porch.
“Dang?” Ursula asked and managed a weak smile.
“Mary Jane says if I’m going to live here, I have to give up swearing, smoking cigars and drinking bourbon before breakfast,” Bernie said with a sigh. “But I figure it’s a small price to pay. I eat chocolates instead of smokin’ my Swisher Sweets, and I have a little kick of Jameson in my coffee in the afternoon.”
She was barely five feet tall and had blue eyes set in a bed of wrinkles, bright red hair—straight out of a bottle. , and Ursula could still smell a faint whiff of Swisher Sweet cigars on her jacket which meant she hadn’t been in Spanish Fort for long. Bernie’s Place, the name of her bar, was embroidered on her T-shirt, and her cowboy boots looked like they’d spent a good many years drawing up beer and pouring double shots of whiskey behind the bar.
“Live here!” Ursula muttered.
Bernie looped the end of Pepper’s leash on the back of the rocking chair and with her arms open, she met Ursula at the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch that wrapped around three sides of the house.
“Don’t go getting your panties in a twist,” Bernie said as Ursula walked into her arms and bent down to hug her. “I didn’t take your room away from you, and I’m glad you have come home. It’s time for you to get married and have some grandbabies for your mother.”
Thoughts were running through Ursula’s mind like screaming kids on a merry-go-round. Did that mean that Bernie had moved into one of the other sisters’ rooms and Ursula would have to share her bedroom with one of them? Why did Bernie decide to move to Spanish Fort? And the biggest one was why did Ursula’s mother Mary Jane consent to such a crazy idea?
“Speak up girl!” Bernie demanded. “You are more like me than any of your other sisters, and we speak our minds. Turn them squirrels loose that’s runnin’ around in your head right now.”
Ursula chuckled. “Whose room did you take, and why are you living here?”
Before Bernie could answer, Ursula’s stepfather Joe Clay and their long-time neighbor Remy Baxter came from around the house, each with a couple of boxes in their hands. Neither of them could wave, but Joe Clay’s bright smile told Ursula that he was welcoming her home. Her heart skipped a beat and then raced ahead. Ursula had heard that Remy had come back to Spanish Fort to live on the small ranch next door to the Paradise, but she hadn’t seen him in years.
Joe Clay wrapped her up in a fierce hug. “Glad you made it home, and that you don’t have to leave again. I hope the rest of your sisters do the same thing before long.” He was looking sixty right in the eye, but he was still strong as an ox, as the old adage went. His dark hair had a few gray streaks and was a little longer than it had been when he first came around to remodel the Paradise, the old brothel, but back then, he’d just gotten out of the service.
She looked up into his blue eyes and smiled. “Me, too, Daddy.”
“Ursula, you remember Remy Baxter, don’t you?” Joe Clay smiled upon them both. “He and Shane O’Toole have agreed to help me with the decorations this year. Remy was our next-door neighbor until he went off to college in Gainesville and then got himself a job at his college. Smart boy here. Shane has taken over his grandparents’ fishing business down on the river.”
“Remy and I graduated together,” she said and then glanced over at Remy. “I remember you, very well.” She felt a bit of heat traveling from her neck to her cheeks. Evidently, the crush she had had on Remy when she was in high school was still there. Surely, though, he was married by now, or at the very least had a girlfriend.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Book Info:

Southern sass and spirit make every Christmas bright!

The oldest of seven sisters, Ursula Simmons has followed in her mother’s footsteps as a novelist. With a bad case of writer’s block, she brings her notebooks and computer home to the old brothel called Paradise where they all grew up, in the hope that being home for the holidays will inspire her—and since it’s Christmas, all her sisters will be there too.

The sisters take the holidays very seriously, and as soon as they’ve celebrated Thanksgiving, it’s on to decorating for Christmas. As all pitch in to make the spirits bright, younger sister Endora is dismayed to find some of the handsome men who’ve come to help doing more flirting than anything else. She’s determined to show her sisters that no relationship is worth the heartbreak. But it might be Ursula who reminds the family that Christmas is a magical time, and finding new love is always a gift.
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Meet the Author:

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly and #1 Amazon and #1 Washington Post bestselling author. She is the author of more than 100 novels and several novellas. Brown has been published for more than 25 years, and her books have been translated 21 foreign languages, and have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
Visit her at www.carolynbrownbooks.com
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