A Mocha with Anita Higman & Giveaway!

UPDATE Saturday, 10/27/12, 8:40 pm WINNER

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Timestamp: 2012-10-28 01:35:30 UTC

Congrats to Elizabeth Byler Younts and Andrea! Email me your addresses ladies, and Anita Higman will mail a book to each of you.

* * * * *One of the blessings of reviewing books has been the opportunity to meet and interview a number of authors. Anita Higman is one of those authors whom I was delighted to meet in July when I was at ICRS in Orlando. She has been quite busy with three books coming out in close succession this fall. I'm dividing up the interview as I introduce each book. Today I'm happy to share about her Christmas novel, A Merry Little Christmas! Enjoy my chat with Anita, then keep reading to find out more about the book and a giveaway Anita has offered for my readers!

You have a Christmas book coming out. It's a full-length novel, right? A lot of the Christmas books are novellas, and I barely get into reading them before they're over!

Yes, novellas are very popular, and I did write a Christmas novella a couple of years ago for Guideposts/Summerside called Love Finds You Under the Mistletoe. It was actually two separate novellas combined; one was a historical by Irene Brand and mine was a contemporary, Once Upon a Christmas Eve, and we somewhat tied them together. That hit the CBA Bestseller list. They're finding that Christmas novels and novellas do very well. People love reading about Christmas!

A Merry Little Christmas, just to give you an idea--if people liked The Help, it's a little bit like The Help. Just a little. But there's quite a bit more romance. It's set in the early 1960's and there's a little bit about Jim Crow, a little bit about falling in love, a little bit about two people colliding from very different worlds. The heroine is a farmer's daughter and the hero is very, very wealthy. He comes from an ultra-wealthy family in Oklahoma City, and she's out on a farm about an hour and a half to two hours away.

I grew up in Oklahoma on a farm and I know about farming, so I was able to infuse many of the scenes with real-life farming activities. One of the scenes where they're starting to fall in love, they're birthing baby piglets! I haven't read any scenes like that before in romances. (She laughs.) It's sort of unexpected, I think. I wanted to do some really different scenes. It's so easy in romances to get stuck in a cafe, to get stuck drinking coffee or tea. I know I've been stuck in coffee shops too much in my writing, so I thought, "Let's do some really different things. What if you open the novel and she's slopping hogs?" That's how the scene opens. She falls in love with the music--because this is centered around music, also. As the book begins, she's listening to music on her transistor radio and slopping hogs, and that's how she meets the hero. He's coming to buy the farm away from her. She's desperate to get to the city to get to the music, and he's desperate to get to the farm and become a gentleman farmer. So they decide to trade lives. It's a lot of fun. I tried to put some humor in it. I have to leave that up to the reader. I can think something's funny, but it's the reader's decision to really laugh or not.

When does it come out?

It releases in October. And I'm happy to say they chose to make it really special. It's going to be a gift book trim size and it will be released in hardback first. I think it will be very pretty. It will have an embossed cover and pearlescent pages.

Thank you, Anita! I've loved getting to know you a bit, and I look forward to sharing more of this interview in the days to come!

A Merry Little Christmas
Anita Higman
(Summerside)
ISBN: 978-1609366889
October 2012/256 pages/Hardcover/$14.99
Fall in love with this cozy story about two people from different worlds.

Franny Martin is an Oklahoma farm girl who's preparing to spend the holidays alone...again. Then Charlie Landau shows up one day, all wealth and polish, and offers to buy Franny's farm. Franny has no money to speak of, but she is clever and spirited, and she's more than happy to sell the farm and move to the city.

As Sinatra croons from the radio and Christmas descends upon her charming farm, Franny teaches Charlie the curious and sometimes comical ways of country life. In the process, they unearth some discoveries of the heart-that sometimes love comes when you're least ready for it. Will the holidays bring their most impossible dreams within reach?

Link to buy the book: http://ow.ly/eyLJH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Best-selling and award-winning author, Anita Higman, has over thirty books published (several coauthored) for adults and children. She's been a Barnes & Noble "Author of the Month" for Houston and has a BA degree, combining speech communication, psychology, and art. Anita loves good movies, exotic teas, and brunch with her friends.

Find out more about Anita at http://www.anitahigman.com.

MY THOUGHTS

Anita Higman has penned a charming Christmas novel. While I'm a definite city girl, I enjoyed the farm setting and marveled just a bit at how quickly Charlie caught on to the many jobs that needed to be learned. More than a simple romance, this novel reflects the racial unease of the early 1960's as well as the age-old quest of a young man trying to find his own way while still longing to please his overbearing father. Joy & pain, laughter & tears, and faith & forgiveness are found within the pages of this book and perhaps, within the heart of the reader. Don't miss this tender novel. Have yourself A Merry Little Christmas!

See what other reviewers on the blog tour are saying here.

GIVEAWAY!

Anita Higman contacted me and generously offered to give a copy of this book to TWO of my readers. To enter, leave a comment on this post by 8:00 pm CDT Saturday (10/27/12) and I will randomly choose two names. US Residents only, please. You must include an email address if you do not have a blog, and winners will have 48 hours to respond when winners are announced or a new winner(s) will be chosen. Books will be mailed to the winner by Anita Higman.




Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Summerside via Litfuse Publicity as part of their Blogger Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”