New Release from Jo Huddleston

This week we welcome Jo Huddleston to the blog to share about her new release, Her Christmas Dream.

A Christmas romance sprinkled with suspense!

In this sweet romance set in north Georgia, all Marilyn dreams of for Christmas is a relationship with someone who cares for her. Someone who really knows her. A stranger volunteers at the rescue shelter where Marilyn and her best friend George volunteer. George has concerns about Marilyn’s safety if she dates the stranger. When George becomes overprotective of her, will Marilyn choose the bad-boy-stranger or her best friend to spend Christmas with this year?

Read this 20^th-century story to find out which one Marilyn chooses.

She has written a character interview for us. 🙂 I just love those!

JH: I’m at the home of the Wagners, parents of Marilyn Wagner. Mrs. Wagner has just opened the front door.

LW: Well, Good Morning, there. You must be the newspaper reporter.

JH: Yes, ma’am, I am. Thank you for giving me time to talk with you, Mrs. Wagner.

LW: Please, call me Lois. And do come inside out of the cold. Let me take your coat.

JH: Thanks. You have a lovely home.

LW: Thank you. Come on in, let’s sit in the den, near the fireplace.

JH: Such a comfortable sofa. So, Lois, you’re Marilyn’s mother.

LW: Yes, I’m the proud mama of Marilyn.

JH: When I spoke with Mabel Malcolm, director of the Promise House shelter, she spoke well of your daughter and her work there.

LW: Yes, Marilyn loves working down there. That place is a passion of hers. She has been volunteering at the shelter since she was in high school.

JH: That’s commendable.

LW: I suppose so. She and George—that’s a young man she’s very close to, they’re best friends—spend a lot of their free time helping out at the Promise House.

JH: Yes, Miss Malcolm mentioned George, as well.

LW: We love George like he was our son. You know, Marilyn is an only child. As the two of them grew up, George was in our home so much, you’d think he belonged here. And, Marilyn was over at the Ramseys’ a lot too.

JH: And they’re still best friends.

LW: Yes, but sometimes I see the way George looks at our daughter, and I wonder if maybe he’d like them to be more than friends. Marilyn’s daddy and I think those two would make a beautiful couple. We hoped, along with the rest of our small town, that they would marry each other.

JH: Does Marilyn know you feel that way about them?

LW: Oh, yes. I’m afraid Ben, that’s my husband, and I don’t keep our feelings to ourselves where Marilyn is concerned. But every time I try to discuss with her why they don’t get married, she always gives me the same answer: if they became romantic, it would ruin their amazing friendship.

JH: She’s emphatic about that, is she?

LW: Yes, she is. Marilyn and George both have accounting degrees from the University of Georgia and work at the carpet factory across town. Her daddy worries about her working out there at the factory. Ben’s president of the bank in White Pines, you know. When she got out of college, he expected her to come work with him at the bank. But, you know young people. She wanted to get a job on her own, she’s independent that way. He never fails to remind her there’s a better job waiting for her at the bank anytime she wants it.

JH: There’s something good to say for being independent at times.

LW: Maybe. Anyway, back to the Promise House shelter—I worry about her working with those vagrants that come and go down there. But Marilyn bows up her back every time I try to talk her out of working down there. Mabel, the director, assures me it’s a safe place. Why, recently, Marilyn told me she’d met a new man at the shelter. I nearly lost my breath, thinking she’d taken up with one of those hoboes hanging around there. But she said it was a new volunteer she’d met.

JH: I’m sure you were relieved to hear that.

LW: Maybe. We’ve met the new young man. Addison is his name. Ben—that’s my husband—doesn’t think he measures up to George. Well, Ben and I both think George should be our son-in-law. I guess one day we’ll have to just quit wishing for that. And now that Marilyn’s so taken with Addison, it appears her friendship with George will go by the wayside. I sure hope Addison doesn’t disappoint her like Bobby did.

JH: Who’s Bobby?

LW: Last year Marilyn and Bobby were going steady and he up and left town, just here one day and gone the next. It took Marilyn the longest time to get over that. We all pitched in to help her become her old self again after that breakup. Like I said, I hope that doesn’t happen again.

JH: Maybe this new guy is a better man than Bobby.

LW: I still want Marilyn to marry George.

JH: We really have no say so in the matter, do we?

LW: I suppose you’re right. Don’t know if I could ever convince my husband of that, though.

JH: Lois, thanks for talking with me today. I hope all turns out well for Marilyn. Merry Christmas.

LW: And Merry Christmas to you.

Buy link: https://amzn.to/2YGpKXs

Jo Huddleston is a multi-published author who writes novels inspired by her fascination with the 1950s and her love of her native American South. Novels in her endearing Caney Creek series, her West Virginia Mountains series, as well as her stand-alone release, Tidewater Summer, are sweet Southern historical romance novels. Visit Jo’S website (www.johuddleston.com), where you can sign up for her mailing list and read for free the first chapters of her novels and novellas.