Ann Acton lives with her husband and children in a tiny town in Washington state. She loves the feeling of Christmas and usually finishes her shopping on Christmas Eve. She is also the author of The Miracle Maker. 
Liz Adair, a native of New Mexico and mother of seven, lives in southern Utah with Derrill, her husband of 50 years.A late bloomer, Liz published her first mystery (The Lodger) just as AARP started sending invitations to join. After writing three in the Spider Latham series, Liz moved into romantic suspense. She feels writing in that genre doing so is a service project. "I remember when I was a young mother with all those kids and a slender budget," she says. "I was so grateful for books that let me go places and meet people who carried on adult conversations That's what I want to write--cheap vacations."
"Amy's Star" brings both Liz and her writing to Kanab, Utah. Look for new Spider Latham mysteries set in Kanab.
Terry Deighton lives in Washington, the state not D.C., with her husband, Al. Their six children are grown and gone, and pets tend to complicate life. When she is not visiting her children and grandchildren, writing and revising, again and again, she works as a substitute teacher. Mr. Goetz in the Tweaks series is wiser and cooler, but he's made up, so it doesn't count. Mrs. Deighton started out to be a high school English teacher, but raising kids turned into a full-time job. During those years, her dream of writing books for young people grew until she had to do something about it. Her Tweaks series is a fulfillment of that dream. Her love of Christmas naturally prompted her to write "Whit's End" in this book and "Just Say No-el," a companion novella to these three stories.Q & A With Author Ann Acton:
1. Describe
yourself in 50 words or less. I am a human tornado of crazy energy. I live to
be busy (with 5 kids and a daycare in my home, it’s never a problem.) I am a
little shy, a loyal friend, and emotional. I will probably grab you and hug
you, even if we have just met.
2. What do you love most in the world? I love
to laugh. It is my opinion, that if I can laugh at something, even a hard
thing, I can handle it. Luckily my family provides hours of free entertainment.
3. What do you fear most? I have an unnatural
fear of vomiting. I throw up continually with each of my pregnancies from
nearly conception to delivery, so when my kids get the stomach flu I become a
bleach-wielding germaphobe that could put crime scene clean-up crews to shame.
I am usually a very nice mommy, but the inner battle between compassion and
terror is a difficult tightrope for me when they vomit.
4. What is your largest unfulfilled dream,
and what are you doing to reach it? I am in the final few months of achieving
my Bachelor’s degree. I received my Associates 3 days before my youngest
daughter was born. She graduates from high school in the spring, so it has been
a long time coming.
5. What is the hardest thing you've ever
done? My daughter had to have surgery at two months old. Handing that baby over
to the doctors and walking away was horrible.
6. Now that we've gotten to know each other,
tell me a story. It can be long or short. From your childhood or last week.
Funny, sad, or somewhere in between. Just make sure it's yours. What's your
story?
Well, since we’re
close friends now I’ll tell you my most horrific mommy moment. When my youngest
son was four years old we had some visitors from our church over for dinner.
These young men were new to the area, and we had never met them before.
Somewhere between, “Pass the gravy,” and “Please have some dessert,” my son
decided that he should let our very religious guests know just what was going
on in our home.
“My mom won’t
let us say the F-word,” he blurts out, “but she says it all the time.”
I froze, a
scoop of potatoes midway to the nearest plate. My face blazed crimson. “I
don’t,” I said, desperately looking toward my traitor family to back me up.
Nothing but shocked looks. “I swear,” I told our new friends. “I don’t.”
“Uh huh,” my
son said.
Desperately I
scanned through my mommy database, trying to figure out what the heck this kid
was talking about while toying with the idea of discretely strangling him with
the tablecloth. Then salvation popped into my brain. “What do you think the
F-word is?” I asked, half afraid he would know and half hoping he had forgotten
every alphabet lesson from preschool.
My son looked
shocked by my question. Carefully, he leaned in and whispered, “friggin,” and
it clicked—stinking Napoleon Dynamite. My kids had rewatched the movie that
week and wouldn’t stop saying friggin in front of everything. After four days,
I banned even the mention of the word, and now my son had found a way, even if
he didn’t know it, to make me pay. It’s a funny story now, but I’ll tell you at
the time I was sweating.
Connect with the Authors here:
These three Christmas novellas will get you into the holiday spirit.
Christmas Gift - Christmas for Amanda Grover is usually a chaotic marathon in search of the perfect gifts. This year, she thinks she's got it all under control—until she's roped into doing service on Christmas Eve. What should be a simple night turns into a series of chaotic events and a gift she never expected.
Amy’s Star: A Spider Latham Christmas Story - A new star rises above the southern Utah town of Kanab and draws some surprising visitors on Christmas Eve.
At Whit’s End - When Whitney Saunders and her husband buy their first home, it jump starts her desire to make everything, especially Christmas, perfect. She soon finds out it’s more work than she thought, and she begins to wonder what perfect really is.
Snippet A Christmas Gift:
I couldn’t do anything but stare, first at the stranger and then my
son, waiting for a more rational explanation.
“Jeremy,” I began, trying to find a way out, “We don’t. . .”
“Come on Mom, he’s never been to Pizza Palace, and you already said I could bring someone.”
“Come on Mom, he’s never been to Pizza Palace, and you already said I could bring someone.”
I froze. This couldn’t happen. I could not drive around town with
some strange, dirty, homeless man. He looked and smelled like he hadn’t bathed
in months. And besides that, putting him in the car with my children definitely
didn’t feel safe. Who knew what he might do? It would be rude to tell Glen he
couldn’t come, but should I sacrifice our lives because I didn’t want to offend
a possible serial killer? I searched desperately for Ethan. He could fix this.
He had to fix this.
Ten fun
facts about Ann Acton
1.
I love to chew ice, especially
when I write. (It drives my family crazy)
2.
I once posed for a romance book
cover, and the artist drew me with Fabio.
3.
I once rode on a parade float in
a remote Alaskan village. We threw candy and the crowd, who had never seen this
done before, got angry and threw it back at us.
4.
My family wagon was a monster
truck for about a year.
5.
I sometimes pull faces when I am
writing. I make the facial expressions of my characters.
6.
The worst job I ever had was
baking pumpkins pies all night long.
7.
I clean when I am angry. My
family gets jumpy if I just clean for no reason.
8.
When I was in college I was in a
bag pipe band.
9.
When I was young, my family owned
a western themed restaurant where we performed scripted shoot-outs as a family.
10.One
of my books, The Miracle Maker, was
made into a movie.
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