SMP Romance Holiday Blitz

Favorite Holiday Food (share recipe if available)

Ruth Logan Herne

We've got a great eggnog pie recipe, it's positively decadent! Here's the link to our cooking with the authors website "The Yankee Belle Cafe".  http://yankeebellecafe.blogspot.com/search/label/Eggnog pie

Donna Alward

Savory or sweet? There's a Chocolate Chip Cheeseball recipe I got from Debbie Macomber's site that I've modified that I love (plus: cookies!), and for savory, I make sausage-stuffed mushrooms that are easy and so tasty!

Laura Trentham

Broccoli Salad
My go-to potluck take-along...plus I make it every holiday. Basically whenever I can get away with it, because it is SO good.

2 bunches of broccoli, chopped
1/2 lbs cooked bacon, crumbled (I use the pouches of bacon bit to avoid the mess of cooking bacon)
1/2 med red onion, diced
1/2 cup golden or brown raisins
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup Mozzarella cheese, grated
1 cup Mayo (Duke's, of course:)
2T white vinegar
1/4-1/2 cup white sugar

Mix together broccoli, onion, raisins, sunflower seeds. In a small bowl, whisk together mayo, vinegar, and sugar and pour over salad. Mix gently. Chill for several hours or overnight to blend flavors. (This isn't mandatory, but does improve the taste). Just before serving, add bacon and cheese.

Nancy Naigle

I did these videos last year while watching the Hallmark Movie~THE NOTE. Kelsey Browning and I co-author a fun southern cozy series called The Granny Series.   There is a clip of her and then one of me in each of these fine uncut - unedited raw videos.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBSJEi3ZQ3E  The recipe for FaLaLa-LaLa-La Bon Bons is available as a PDF on my website www.NancyNaigle.com.  I also have two recipe cards printed up for cookies from my book, CHRISTMAS JOY.  I can send those to you if you'd like! I'll be posting them on my website as a free download after the book releases.

Margaret Brownley

Our Christmas dinner is five star dining at its best. That's because my son-in-law is an executive chef and he treats us every year to prime rib with all the trimmings.  I never ask for recipes because then I might be tempted to try them. 

Tara Wyatt

My mom's shortbread. Hands down. It tastes like Christmas and home the way nothing else does.

Opal Carew

Turkey (dark meat) and stuffing. Mmm. Unfortunately, now that I’m following the Paleo diet, making a stuffing I can eat is a challenge!

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Emily March

I find a new favorite every year in the recipe exchange cookbook I put together from recipes sent in by my readers. Watch my Facebook page or join my mailing list for info on how to get your copy!

Melissa Cutler

My grandmother makes the best fruit cake from scratch, and that's no joke. I would share the recipe, but when I make it, it never turns out like Grandma's, because she must put some secret ingredients in hers.

Mandy Baxter

My all time favorite holiday food is stuffing at Thanksgiving. Carbs be damned!

If you want to learn more about these authors, click here

http://us.macmillan.com/static/smp/holidaystories2016/index.html

Filthy Rich by Raine Miller

Blurb

Billionaire Caleb Blackstone lives in the glamorous world of wealth and success, with every material luxury. But the moment he sees Brooke Casterley, none of that matters. Caleb is filled with a raw, undeniable need that he can’t ignore…for a girl who is so completely different from everything and everyone he’s ever known.

Only Brooke isn’t looking for love. She knows all too well just how much damage the wrong guy can do. Still, what sane, broke British girl can resist the charms of an incredibly sexy, chivalrous billionaire? What starts as flirtation quickly turns into all-consuming passion. Nothing could have prepared her for the searing heat of Caleb’s touch—or just how much she craves him.

Their whirlwind romance is the stuff of high-society fantasy—but for every moment of pleasure, there is a cost. Past mistakes and tragedy shadow them both…and falling for him might be the kind of trouble she can’t afford.

Are you ready for Caleb Blackstone?

Filthy Rich by Raine Miller releases on November 15th! #BlackstoneDynasty

Pre-order TODAY!

Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2e0dzek

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2e8kuXK

Paperback: http://amzn.to/2ejLSRM

PROLOGUE

CALEB

       MY father always said I would know when the right woman came along. He was such a wise man. When it happened, I didn’t even question it because the process was so effortless. I just fell into her . . .because my heart knew her right away.

Knew she was the one for me.

I’d known her for years actually. She came to Blackstone Island to live with her grandmother after her parents were killed in a car crash. A devastated fifteen-year-old trying to adapt to a new life in a new place, trying to find where she fit in to a world so different from where she’d come—a forty-square-mile resort island off the Massachusetts coast where her grandmother ran the household at Blackwater, the family ancestral home.

Should have known of her, that is.

Our paths didn’t cross that I am aware of, but it’s possible. I rarely visited the island in those days because I was a twenty-three-year-old junior executive fresh out of Harvard Business School, learning everything I could about the family business. I traveled the world, enjoying the excitement of international boardroom deals by day and socializing at off-hours business affairs by night. I worked hard at both. Affairs, liaisons, one-night stands had all come and gone without a backward glance. Nameless faces and unremarkable encounters filled my nights whenever I wanted them to. The hopping nightlife of the big cities with even bigger players vying for a piece of the pie became my normal. I embraced every aspect that came with the lifestyle. Wealth, sexual favors, a certain celebrity born out of my name, all collected with barely any effort. For the next eight years, I had the world in the palm of my hand as I went about amassing a personal fortune in addition to increasing the family coffers.

Or so I thought.

I didn’t yet know what was missing from my life. Until her. And then, when I realized exactly who she was, and how fate had gotten the last laugh on me, it was already far too late. She’d bewitched me utterly. And furthermore, I knew she had no idea who I was or what ties connected us.

Maybe that’s what made her so intoxicating?

I didn’t know and I didn’t care because it made absolutely no difference to me. I wanted her with a primal desire I could barely understand, yet I embraced that desire wholeheartedly because I was incapable of doing anything else with it. How could I not? She had enchanted me.

However, once my brain managed to catch up, it wasn’t quite so effortless to accept this new and unfamiliar reality of feeling something for a woman beyond the unquestioning curiosity of when and if we might fuck.

I struggled against the idea of her at first for a few reasons. She was too young. My mother would never approve of us together. Others in my world would probably chew her up and spit her out, destroying her sweetness. But I soon found out my heart didn’t give a flying fuck about any of those reasons. The heart wants what it wants, and I’d discovered that for my heart, “want” was all wrapped up in the package that was Brooke Ellen Casterley.

The death of my father from the evils of cancer was an eye-opener for my siblings and me. Money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t stop the grim reaper from calling on you if it’s your time to go. Death was called the great equalizer. And it truly was. Wealth is a trivial thing when it’s only extra fuckin’ zeros on a balance sheet that makes any difference between lives lived. Doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor when you die, because none of it counts at the end. You leave this life the same way you come into it. You go out alone and take nothing. “There has to be more to life than making money, son,” he told me at the end. He took hold of my hand and squeezed as hard as his frail strength could manage so as to make me understand the importance. He had regrets and wanted to share with me what he’d learned to prevent me from making the same mistakes. I understood him clearly.

The most essential value my father tried to teach me along with my brothers and sisters was the idea of family. Family took precedence over money. “Take care of the family first and the wealth will grow, Caleb,” he said.

A strong family moving forward was the only thing that truly meant anything at the end of the day.

The Blackstones had been here on the island since the days when the Mayflower made its treacherous journey to the untamed American shores. As the eldest son it was my duty to make sure the Blackstones would still be here a hundred years from now.

My plan to fulfill my duty included her. It wouldn’t work any other way for me. I knew it the first time I ever felt the heat of her eyes as they burned me from across the room.

I knew it down in my bones.

I was going to marry that lovely, beautiful girl from England, and she would be mine.

Raine Miller has been reading romance novels since she picked up that first Barbara Cartland book at the tender age of thirteen. And it's a safe bet she'll never stop, because now she writes them too! Granted Raine's stories are edgy enough to turn Ms. Cartland in her grave, but to her way of thinking, a hot, sexy hero never goes out of fashion. A former teacher, she's now writing sexy romance stories full time. She has a handsome prince of a husband, two brilliant sons, and two bouncy Italian Greyhounds to pull her back into the real world if the writing takes her too far away. Her sons know she likes to write stories, but gratefully have never asked to read any, thank God! Raine loves to hear from readers and to chat about the characters in her books. You can contact her at raine_miller@ymail.com or visit www.RaineMiller.com to sign up for updates and her newsletter with links to upcoming books. Join us on Facebook at the Raine Miller Romance Readers group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/raine_miller