** TERRY H. WATKINS celebrates the holidays with us **

~ Cindy Roesel

darling

Buy Darling Girl

Last month we fell in love with Terry Watkins and her novel, DARLING GIRL! Now we want to know what her favorite Holidays are.

christmas

1.       What is your favorite Holiday?

it is so hard to choose! My mother loved holidays and birthdays and I have so many wonderful memories associated with each holiday. They all begin with finally being deemed old enough to stay up and help prepare for the holiday. I can never choose between Christmas and Easter as my favorite.
easterhead

2.       What do you love about the Holidays?

i love the togetherness; family crowding in together and enjoying it. Little kids piled on a bed or couch like kittens snuggling together. The way the house smells- fireplace and cooking and candles. The excitement of kids of all ages – all that frenetic energy packed into a small space.
Christmas Stocking Fireplace Decoration Ideas 53 - Robinsuites.co with regard to Christmas Stockings Fireplace

3.       What is your fondest Holiday memory?

i can’t choose between counting jellybeans and Christmas socks so I’ll share both. When I finally passed the age threshold to stay up and help my mother make Easter baskets for me and my four brothers, I was stunned to learn exactly how complex the task would be. I was assigned jelly bean duty and installed at the end of our long dining room table. My mother then placed five or six Tupperware bowls in front of me along with several large bags of mixed flavor jellybeans. (Remember, this was long before single flavor gourmet choices.) I was instructed to open a bag, pour it into one bowl and begin sorting into flavors that we all liked (red, white, green, yellow) into the other bowls.
Once I completed the initial sort, I then had to sort the sorted jellybeans into baskets making sure that each child got exactly the same number of jellybeans in each color. My reward for this time consuming task was a clutch of black beans (my favorite) which my brothers wouldn’t eat. My mother was engaged in similar sorting tasks to ensure equity amongst the Easter baskets. It took us all night long!
jellybeans
My Christmas memory is my mother’s tradition of Christmas socks. Every Christmas Eve, I was mustered in for the task of Christmas sock wrapping. Sometimes this meant just freshening up bows on a package left from the previous years. Others it meant wrapping a selection of plain white one-size-fits-all tube socks in festive paper and stashing them under the tree in time to distribute them with other gifts. Then, if we had any unexpected guests (and we always did. My father and brothers were always bringing home strays who had nowhere else to go.), there were presents under the tree for them on Christmas Eve or morning. I’ve seen middle-aged men far from their families and teen-aged boys break into tears at a package placed in their hands. I’ve seen them marvel at how special a pair of socks can seem when you’re not expecting anything. And they way they hugged my mother’s neck – worth way more than a pair of socks. I still place Christmas socks under the tree just in case and in memory of Mother.
2-tree

4.       What are your wishes for 2019?

My wishes for next year are both big and small. I love to see a change in our country that returned us to time more civil and more civilized. I wish for peace of mind for those who have been so traumatized by recent events. I hope that families everywhere can be reunited. I wish for the continued health and safety of my family and friends. Selfishly, I wish for my book to be a success.
christmas-2
We’re giving away a signed copy of DARLING GIRL to one lucky reader. Just tell us the most recent novel you’ve read about families. We’ll announce a winner soon. Good luck.
GIVEAWAY: USA only please.
Posted in Uncategorized

30 thoughts on “** TERRY H. WATKINS celebrates the holidays with us **”

  3. My favorite novel about family probably has to be Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kroger. There are so many great books about family, though, that I may give a different answer every time I’m asked.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  27. This book looks so interesting! I haven’t read anything by this author before so look forward to reading it! I recently finished The Christmas Sisters by Sarah Morgan

    Like

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.