Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Ruby Winter to HJ!
Hi Ruby and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The 12 Dates of Christmas!
Well hello there! And hi to readers. It’s so fun to be back at Harlequin Junkie for the third time.
Please summarize the book for the readers here:
THE 12 DATES OF CHRISTMAS is a story about Evie McClane, an environmental journalist in NYC who’s been hit with some recent disappointments in both her love life and her professional life. To take her mind off things, her best friend whisks her off to London for most of December, even though she knows Evie is a big Scrooge when it comes to the festive season. Tired, cynical Evie is fully prepared to not enjoy herself, but fate has other plans as she keeps running into charming Londoner Jake Frost.
Unlike Evie, Jake loves the holiday season, and after multiple meetings, he challenges her to give him a chance to make her fall in love with Christmas over a series of twelve festive dates.
Of course, Christmas isn’t all Evie falls in love with, and Evie isn’t the only one doing the falling, either.
Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:
Most people realize when they’re experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime event. Logically, your brain knows it’s special, and temporary, and it should be savored. When I kiss Jake, I feel it. I’m also painfully aware that this isn’t going to be enough. It feels like the first hit of an addiction I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life.
Please share a few Fun facts about this book…
- Since I wrote this book during the very end of winter and throughout the spring, I left my Christmas decorations up in my house until late March and listened to instrumental holiday tunes on loop. It helped keep me focused and in the festive spirit on many warm spring days when I had to draft instead of getting outside in my garden.
- Writing this book couldn’t have been a more different experience than writing my first two books as Jen Devon — Bend Toward the Sun, and Right Where We Left Us. Those are lush, cinematic contemporary romances with big supporting casts, and I took a long, meandery decade to write them. 12 DATES is lighter, faster-paced, and a true romcom (though my existing readers will still get a taste of that signature Jen Devon angst and atmosphere!) I drafted it in four months, a pace I wasn’t sure I was even capable of. It was an exciting challenge to fit the story into exactly 24 chapters, *and* make the chapters the same number of pages long to fit in the binding, *and* do so much research about the incredibly rich festive season in London (I’m a Midwesterner!) 12 DATES is also single-POV, and written in a new-to-me tense. I was working on my debut YA romance at the time, too. But I had a great team behind me in my agent and the editors at evermore, and I couldn’t be more proud and pleased at how Evie and Jake’s story unfolded.
- This book is meant to be read advent calendar-style, opening a chapter a day starting on December 1, but I’m hoping that readers will have a very difficult time waiting until the next day to tear into a new chapter.
What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?
It’s not that deep for Evie at first. Jake is objectively hot — he’s tall, he smells incredible, he’s well-dressed, and he’s got a posh accent. But she quickly finds him to be funny and playful in an understated way. His sense of humor really clicks with hers. Plus, he pays attention. That’s the hottest thing about him.
As for what makes Jake initially attracted to Evie, it would be a bit of a spoiler to mention it here (it’s discussed in conversation later in the book), so I won’t go into detail about it. I’ll just say that it’s a physical attraction, but it’s unexpected, and it’s revealed to Evie with a totally swoony line from Jake.
Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?
It’s really hard to pick a single one, but let’s go with a blushy scene — those are fun. The chemistry between these two was the easiest part of this book for me to write! It’s my hope that readers find this story as hot as it is funny and festive. Enjoy this steamy snippet from a bit later in the book:
“Do you know what you taste like, Evie?” He kneels beside me, coasting the tip of his nose along my cheekbone. Then he hovers his lips just centimeters from mine. “You’re a rare vintage, darling.”
I can smell the salt and musk of my arousal on his mouth. It mingles with the deliciously familiar flavor of his breath, the heady essence of his skin, and the barely there trace of his cologne. Surging upwards, I fist a hand in his hair and collide my lips into his, tasting him, tasting me. It’s a furious, filthy kiss. Teeth meeting teeth. Unrelenting strokes of tongue against tongue. Jake makes an agonized noise deep in his throat when I break away. I push him back against the mattress, straddling his thighs.
Skimming both hands down his torso, I say, “What was it you said to me that night on the London Eye?” He shudders when I graze my fingertips along the ridges of his hipbones and the firm hollows beneath. “‘I’m going to edge you until you cry,’ was it?”
He swears under his breath and chokes out, “Fair play.”
Readers should read this book….
These advent-style books are one of the most exciting and innovative things to come out of publishing in recent years, and I think 12 DATES is the ideal introduction to them. This story is perfect for anyone who likes heat with their holiday reads, travel romance, swoony green-flag heroes with grumpy heroines who soften in the face of love, fun supporting casts, and atmospheric setpieces. It’s also a gorgeous gift for the romance-lovers in your life.
What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?
My debut YA romance THE PROMPOSAL comes out in 2027 on March 2, and ARCs are going out for that right now. It’s a sweet fake-dating story about finding first love and challenging stereotypes, featuring a D&D loving girl named Delilah and a lacrosse jock named Christopher. Aside from that, I have a contemporary romance, a speculative romance, and a fantasy romance all in varying draft stages, but nothing else under contract right now. I would also love to write another steamy holiday romance featuring secondary characters from 12 DATES!
Thanks for blogging at HJ!
Giveaway: A copy of THE 12 DATES OF CHRISTMAS
To enter Giveaway, please share this post on your Socials and Leave a comment below to this Q: Have you ever read an advent-style romance before? If so, were you able to resist reading more than a chapter a day?
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Excerpt from The 12 Dates of Christmas:
It’s eleven in the morning. It’s only six in New York City right now, but I don’t hesitate to call Maddie. The little chalkboard next to the paperwhite pot catches my eye as I wait for her to answer. It’s been days since I changed the countdown number. I tip it face-down.
The first thing Maddie says is, “You look sad.”
“Worse. I’m sad and horny.”
“Sigh.” Maddie says the word out loud instead of sighing. She yawns expansively. “Listen, you’re there to get un-sad, not end up with another guy to be sad about later.”
“Might be too late. And this was your idea, by the way.”
“Ev, my idea was for you to get smashed like a pinkie toe in a room full of table legs. And see pretty Christmas sights. And then come home, unburdened.”
My vagina is a one-way road to my heart. Or maybe my heart is the shortcut to my vagina. Who knows—the mapmaker is a pain in my ass. Regardless, I don’t think Jake Frost is the sort of man Maddie had in mind for me when she storyboarded my cheeky, mindless fling.
Maddie rubs her eye with the heel of her hand. “Whenever you might be having an emotion, try to think about all the ways he could fail the relationship tests. Like, have you even seen his feet yet? Have you sat in close proximity while he eats soup?”
I know she’s being funny, but I’m already so far gone about Jake Frost, he could slurp soup next to me, barefoot, and I’d think it was charming.
“Remember that strawberry farm we went to last spring? Imagine finishing a perfect, sun-warmed strawberry, and then you learn that for the rest of your life, you’ll only be able to get those sour half-white ones from a bodega that smells like burnt coffee and cat pee.”
“You need to find a different bodega, baby.” Maddie stretches.
“He does the thing,” I moan. “The fingers thing.”
“I need specifics. There are so many fingers things, Ev.”
“The fingertips on the small of my back thing.”
Maddie gasps and sits up. “He doesn’t.”
“I swear.”
Calvin used to open doors for me. On the surface, that seems like the gentlemanly thing, right? But he’d stand partially inside doorways and usher me through with a hand between my shoulder blades. Not tender. Not protective. It always made me feel off-balance, rushed. It’s such a minor thing, but it’s the minor things that compound like emotional debt, isn’t it? And debts always come due, sometimes with a heap of resentment and pain as interest.
Everywhere we’ve gone together, Jake has done the fingertip thing. No pressure, no nudging. Simply five tiny points of contact between my body and his. More symbolic than anything. It says, We’re doing this thing together. I’m here.
I tell Maddie about Jake’s other green flags. She sighs. “Disgusting. He’s perfect.”
“Well, you’re forgetting one very important thing.”
Maddie groans and throws her duvet over her face. “I swear to god, a literal angel could fly down from heaven, and say, Hello Evangeline, we’ve created a bespoke perfect man for you, and you’d look at the angel and be like”—she makes her voice nasally and obnoxiously high-pitched—’define perfect.’ But do go on, tell me what makes Jake Frost less than perfect after you’ve just spent five minutes telling me all the ways he is.”
“He’s in London.” I rub my forehead with my free hand. “Thousands of miles away from New York.”
“Evie,” Maddie says gently. “Right now, so are you.”
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Book Info:
A jaded New Yorker gives a Christmas-loving Brit twelve dates to change her mind about the holidays—and love—in this charming full-length romance in advent calendar form, featuring 24 sealed chapters for a celebratory seasonal countdown!
This stunning hardcover features:
• 24 sealed and perforated chapters
• A deluxe cover with gold foil
• Full-color designed endpapers
• An icy turquoise ribbon marker
A love story waiting to be unwrapped
When burnt-out New York journalist Evie McClane escapes to London for December, she’s determined to keep her heart and her expectations firmly guarded. Christmas is the last thing she wants to celebrate, especially after a breakup that’s left her cynical.
Then she meets Jake Frost: charming, teasingly confident, and dangerously good at getting under her skin. He makes her laugh. Looks far too good in a tailored coat. And is convinced he can change her mind about Christmas, one date at a time.
What begins as a chance encounter turns into a deal: twelve dates to prove that Christmas, and maybe love, are still worth believing in. Ice skating under fairy lights. Mulled wine in candlelit pubs. Late-night walks and lingering touches, each date tempting Evie to open up just a little more.
As the days tick by, the chemistry between them becomes impossible to ignore. But with Christmas ending and an ocean between their lives, Evie must decide whether this was just a holiday fling… or something worth risking her heart for.
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Meet the Author:
Ruby Winter is a pseudonym for Jen Devon, who writes sexy, sparkling romances about imperfect people finding their perfect match. A former ecology academic and university lecturer, she now works in tech and dreams of writing full-time. She’s an avid naturalist, photographer and gamer, and lives in the Midwest US with the loves of her life—one darling husband, three brilliant kids and two hilarious rescue mutts. Her favourite holiday tune is “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole, and she’s convinced the world would be a better place if everyone read romance novels.
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