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Friday, December 23, 2011

Twas the Night BEFORE the night before Christmas

Twas the night before the night before Christmas
and all through JD Watts' house you could find
 little signs of the holiday just waiting
to come out and bring smiles divine

The dressing bread was all broken
waiting for tomorrow when
veggies and herbs and oysters
would serve to make it heaven.

In her closet were tons of small trinkets
to go in the stocking the next night
for two little angels to find
when they wake from their slumbering night.

Oh JD Watts was excited
for giving was something she loved
and so before the festivities begin
she wanted to make sure you were all hugged!



Have a wonderful Christmas full of love and joy! Savor these moment because they are precious and few and once past can never be recaptured again. Don't stress or get distracted and miss it all in the fervor. Thank you my awesome readers and friends for your words, your time, and your care! Merry Christmas from me and mine!

Love
J.D. Watts

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Let's Go to the Hop! (The TWCS Christmas Blog Hop that is)

Welcome to the third day of the TWCS Christmas Author Blog Hop! I’m J.D Watts, author of the Children of Creation Series. So glad you could stop by and check out my blog and I’d love it if you clicked the follow button on the Left right under the ABOUT ME section. If this is your first stop on the Blog Hop, then be sure to read the information below the asterisks to find out how to catch up and gather the clues for your chance to win one of several paperback books or some great TWCS swag! Below that beside the *!* is another note you might want to take time to check out if you’re at all interested in special exclusive content and sneak peeks!




When planning all of this, we decided to all speak of our own traditions. Mine are unoriginal, but it really doesn’t take a lot of pomp and circumstance to make the season worthwhile. Church, my children’s plays, and family gatherings, and decorating the house with my kids more or less encompass what my Christmas week consists of and I am more than content with that. I love it. Thinking about all of these family gathering and traditions that I take part in every year, I found myself pondering my Children of Creation series characters. The way I spaced Convergence and Induction, Christmas sort of disappears in the space between the two books, never being broached or mentioned, so I thought as a special little treat, I might discuss how Ana, Nate, and Dani would have handled that first holiday together in their Rocky Mountain safe house. (Fair warning, there may be spoilers if you haven’t read Convergence or Induction yet.)

While one might think that there would be little Nate, Dani, and Ana could do to celebrate while trapped in the mountains as they were at the end of Convergence, Ana always found ways to recreate Dani’s childhood traditions to try to bring a sense of normalcy into her life even in the worst of situations. The same would be true in this case, and she would also have elves, ahem, sorry, I mean angel conspirators to help her. I am quite positive that Dani would go to sleep the night before Christmas Eve, while Ana was on guard duty, only to wake up to find a tree in the living room ready for them to decorate together with the myriad of supplies Ana had ordered up or requested to be brought from storage. They would work together while sipping on Ana’s famous hot chocolate. There would have undoubtedly been some smuggled in presents and a meal, and even though things at this point still would have been awkward between Nate and Dani, both she and Ana would have made a major effort to make Nate’s first ‘family’ Christmas a happy and memorable one.

Most important of all, however, considering the undercurrent of this story, they would have taken part in some sort of ceremony to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I envision singing songs by candlelight and reading the Christmas story, all typical traditions that were always a part of my own family’s celebrations and that sometimes became wrote with repetition and some seasons lost some of its impact. For this group, however, I believe that act would be so much powerful for them with all they knew and had seen first-hand, and especially for Dani having stood face to face with Jesus at the end of Convergence. Can you imagine how much more meaningful the entire celebration would be for her? I certainly can’t truly wrap my head around it, but I believe it would have been magnificent and humbling, making all of the other traditions we take part in seem so trivial in comparison.

I know that there are many people in the world who don’t celebrate Christmas as I do, or don’t celebrate it at all, but in my mind, Christmas is first and foremost about LOVE. Love for one another, love for the world, and love beyond all understanding. It makes me sad to know that love is sometimes clouded by people who don’t show that love as I feel it was intended. In my mind, Christians are supposed to be striving to be more like Jesus, and that means showing love to the world, even when you might not like what is happening, or feel that it is right. It is my belief that the whole purpose of sending Jesus was about LOVE, love for us, forgiveness for us, and we should be putting that out into the world instead of hate.
I end this post by sending hugs and positive thoughts your way this Christmas Season. Whether you believe in the same things as me or not, I hope you feel LOVED!

********
Dec. 12 Veronica Breville
Dec. 13 Kathryn Gayle
Dec. 14 JD Watts
Dec. 15 Michele Richard
Dec. 16 Jennifer Schmidt
Dec. 17 Sophia Duane
Dec. 19 Sherri Hayes
Dec. 20 Michelle Birbeck
Dec. 21 Lindsey Gray
Dec. 22 C. M. Smith
Dec. 23 E. L. James

TWCS Author Blog Hop - Our authors are sharing holiday traditions Dec. 12 - 23. Each day an author will post on their blog a personal holiday tradition or a holiday tradition of their characters. They will also post the blog hop icon. You will notice in the bottom right hand corner of the icon a holiday/winter object. You will need to write these objects down and keep the list handy. In addition to great giveaways happening each day on the authors' blogs, we will have a grand prize drawing on TWCS's website. To enter the grand prize drawing you will need to have collected all 11 objects.

What is the grand prize? An ebook of Season of Love, your choice of paperback (Connected, Take This Regret, Slave, or Fourteen), TWCS coffee mug, bookmarks (many are signed by the author). TWCS pen and notepad.

Sounds like fun? Then get out a notepad, note that today's item is Candy Canes, then click on the links for Veronica and Kathryn to get caught up and you're ready to join in the fun and have the chance to win some great stuff!

*!* Additional side note…if you haven’t done so already, now is a perfect time to join my fan club on Facebook as I will be releasing an exclusive first peek as a Christmas present to those members months before the rest of the world sees it!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (to pull your hair out)

Okay, I'm only half teasing here. I LOVE this time of the year. Christmas is my absolute most favoritest holiday ever! (Yes, I know that's not a real word, but I'm attempting to relay my enthusiasm here so let's just pretend.) I've had my house decorated for weeks, have purchased all of the presents and have them wrapped under the tree, etc, etc,and yet, no matter how organized or prepared I am, there's always more to do. My latest project for the past two days is making Angel's wings for my daughter for the Christmas Pageant at church in two weeks. She doesn't even have a speaking role, but she was so excited that I just had to get my hands on a halo (which had to be fluffy because that was what the kids at the other church she visited recently was going to have)and somehow create a set of Angel's wings for her to wear. I'm actually just grateful that I didn't have to somehow come up with a gown, but they had some in storage from years past. Some poster board, white ribbon, a little hot glue, one wooden heart hidden in my old crafting supplies, and some gold glitter glue later and I am now watching my 'masterpiece' dry. While my mom marvels at my creativity, I find myself looking at it thinking, my sister-in-law the artist probably would have come up with something much better, but it's decent, considering I have the small motor skills God gave a toddler. Oh well, at least when the day comes that my kids need to come up with some kind of creative writing project, I'll be able to really help them knock it out of the park. In the meantime, I hope they're happy with slightly wavering glitter glue lines!

As far as writing, I did get another 2,000 words of Maelstrom done the other night. I'm attending an online Social Media training seminar tonight and hope to get some time between all of the shuttling kids back and forth to school, musical practice, etc to get a little more done. In the same breath though, I'm going to savor these next few weeks with my kids, going on drives to see the Christmas lights, singing Christmas songs before bedtime, and in the midst of the ever mounting obligations and expectations reminding myself and my kids of the real reason for the season.