Week Three of the tour - Welcome WRP author, Amy Corwin!!

Welcome, Amy! So glad to welcome yet another fellow Wild Rose Press author to my site for the week. The tour is going so well, isn't it? I am building up a nice pot of names to pick for a prize! This week is about Christmas movies - looking forward to discovering yours. Take it away...

Favorite Holiday Movie
There are so many wonderful holiday movies and books that it's really hard to make a choice. My favorite movies, however, are the ones that make you laugh, so it's no surprise that I'd pick ones that make you chuckle and leave you with a smile on your lips.
Sadly, I can't make up my mind between two old favorites that I can't seem to stop watching around this time of year. So here they are, the two best holiday movies for making you laugh and enjoy the lighter side of the season.

Holiday Inn (1942)

Every year, I have to watch this movie if for no other reason than to hear Bing Crosby sing, "White Christmas". Holiday Inn stars Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, and Marjorie Reynolds in a charming movie about two fellows courting the same gal. Jim Hardy (Bing Crosby) is in love with Linda Mason (Marjorie Reynolds), but Ted Hanover (Fred Astaire) wants her for his dance partner after his previous partner steps out on him. Jim has a supper club called Holiday Inn, which serves as the magical holiday location for the dynamic duo to chase poor little Linda.
The plot will delight romance lovers, but the music is really what this film is all about. Irving Berlin wrote many of the songs and lyrics and that alone make the move worth watching, not to mention Astaire's great dancing. Sometimes I wish folks would take up ballroom dancing again—there's nothing like it and old & young alike can do it without looking like plucked chickens flapping their bony wings the way modern dances do. Sigh.
Songs include:
White Christmas, sung by Bing Crosby
You're Easy to Dance With
Happy Holiday
I'll Capture Your Heart Singing
Come To Holiday Inn, and more…

You can't go wrong with this movie.

A Christmas Story (1983)

How can you not adore this movie? It is based on the short stories of Jean Shepherd and never fails to bring back my own memories of childhood and Christmas. And since our labs have figured out how to open both the back door and front door, and frequently go galloping through the house to escape out the front door, the scene with the Bumpus dogs run through the house and snatch the turkey never fails to make me laugh. And wince. So far, our dogs haven't grabbed anything off the counters, but you never know.
Shepherd brilliantly captures the fervent longings and challenges of childhood. There's the school bully, the challenge of getting our parents to understand what we really have to have for Christmas, and the family holiday dynamics as dad tries to outdo everyone else in the neighborhood on the Christmas decorations without blowing all the circuit breakers. Of course, since my childhood was a little later than Ralphie's, we had a silver tinsel tree and one of those color disks that rotated to change it blue, red, and green, but we blew a fuse or two with the holiday decorations. And I can so empathize with Ralphie when he first discovers that advertisers don't always play fair with things like secret decoder rings. (LOL)

I love this movie. It reminds me so much of my own childhood—nothing captures it better.

TWRP Blog Tour Contest

Don't forget to leave comments about your favorite holiday movies or books. Folks who leave comments will be entered into our contest to get a de-stressing gift just in time for the holidays.

Night Owl Reviews Contest

Nigh Owl Reviews is holding a Winter Web Hunt contest and as a participating author, I'm going away a lovely heart necklace! Don't miss your opportunity to win the necklace or dozens of other fabulous prizes. Here is the link, so be sure to check it out!

Excerpt from my latest book

Book: Vampire Protector
 Author: Amy Corwin
Author's website: http://www.amycorwin.com
Published: Nov 12, 2010
Publisher Line: Black Rose
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press

Memories may help her survive, but will they help her resist her vampire protector?
Exploring Gwen's long abandoned childhood home in the company of her neighbor, John, sounds like an intriguing evening. However, she soon realizes her mistake. John is a vampire and her house is not exactly empty. Secrets—and the dead—don't always stay buried, and John's extraordinary strength and determination may be all that can withstand what awaits them in the darkness.
-----
In the following excerpt, Gwen has asked her neighbor, John Wright, to accompany her to her abandoned family home. She knows he's a vampire, but despite this, she's attracted to him and wants his company on this adventure.
But when the two of them get to the house, she's not so sure it's a good idea to enter…

Excerpt from Vampire Protector

John stopped and waited on the stoop. He glanced over his shoulder. When she didn't move, he held out his hand in a peremptory gesture. Gwen stared at it, thinking how human his hand looked with a sprinkling of dark hairs on the back of his wrists and strong, blunt-tipped fingers.

He must have been working outdoors the day he died, for there was still a tinge of sunburned red deepening the tan. The sun-kissed color reinforced the false sensation of heat radiating from him. He felt warm and alive to all her senses, despite the knowledge that he was not.

Her heart twisted with loneliness. It had been so long since she had felt arms around her. But she hadn't met a man she felt she could trust, and a vampire was out of the question.

She had lost her way and did not know how to find the path back to a real life.

"Hold my hand if you're afraid of ghosts," he offered with a twisted smile. A flicker of sympathy grew in the depths of his eyes, revealing a sad recognition of the gulf between them: vampire and human.

With a sense of surprise, she felt his warm gaze tug her even closer to him. As if his awareness of the differences between them meant they shared similar core beliefs and that she could trust him because of that.

She shivered and thrust her thoughts away.

"Hanging onto your cold, dead fingers is not going to make me feel any better."

"I'll warm them for you." His dark eyes flickered. The corners crinkled with silent laughter.

"You can make me think they're warm. But they'll still be cold, dead fingers." The hairs rose along her neck and arms. She glanced over her shoulder toward the graveyard across the street.

"The remnants of the dead—those tatters—have probably drifted over from the graveyard. They'll collect here. It's not that I'm afraid of them. It's not like they'd consciously attack me or anything, but they'll be attracted to the body heat of anything living. Like me."

She gestured toward one of the drifts of leaves in the farthest corner of the porch.

A few pitiful gray, black, and white feathers lay amidst the debris. At some point in the past, a mockingbird had tried to nest in the shelter of the porch. The bird had been sucked dry of energy and warmth before it realized what was happening and flew away. All that remained was a dry handful of feathers and bones.

The sight did not bode well for anything alive that entered the house.

Great post, Amy! I must admit, I have never seen any of your favorite Christmas movies but plan to watch every movie the ladies on this Wild Rose Press tour have mentioned! This is so great that we are discovering new books and movies along the way and I hope the readers are enjoying it too!

Remember, as well as Amy and myself, there are eight other authors doing the rounds so be sure to click on the Roses Tour logo to see where they are appearing - I will be with the lovely Maya Blake all week so please stop by and leave a comment.

http://mayabauthor.blogspot.com/

You'll be in with the chance to win a pashmina and a signed paperback of The Arrival of Lily Curtis.

Amy is waiting to hear from you!!