Thanks to Dani and the Love Bytes team for having me during this holiday season!

As an author, one of the challenges of writing romance is that eventually, for promotional reasons or sentimental reasons, or because sometimes it’s the best or easiest way to break into the genre, you end up writing romances based around the holidays. Many an author has had their break from an anthology like the Dreamspinner Press Advent Calendar collection… and many a reader got their first real mix of authors from reading those anthologies.

My start was a little different, and yet the same. I started with Dreamspinner’s Daily Dose, a summer anthology done in the same style that they no longer produce, and failed to ever get into the advent calendar, though that failure led to one of my favorite holiday stories. It was a story I salvaged from failure, a story I loved and still love—still, my husband’s favorite thing that I’ve written. We’ll get to that and my thoughts on stories leading toward holidays later. First a few holiday favorites. I’m an atheist, but we grew up celebrating Christmas in my household, and I still do. My husband wakes to a determined grown man declaring that “Santa came!” every Christmas morning.

Favorite holiday song: Morris the Moose

I know that’s obscure, but it was on an old record we had as kids, and I just love this song. Carol of the Bells is a close second.

Favorite holiday special: This is a tie, really, between The Juggler of Notre Dame and A Wish for Wings That Work.

I grew up with the Juggler of Notre Dame… it was on every Christmas when I was a kid. It’s not the best movie but it hits me hard in the feels. It’s angsty and sad. A lot like my novels, really. Maybe that I like it shouldn’t be so surprising. As for A Wish for Wings That Work, I’m a die hard Opus and Bill fan, a fact celebrated with many ornaments for the Christmas tree. It’s another story of someone giving up on something inside that turns out to be crucial and valuable, which makes it much like the non-Christmas holiday movie that almost made the list: Rise of the Guardians.

Favorite holiday treat: Reeses peanut butter trees

No one who knows me should be surprised.

Favorite holiday tradition: A number of years ago my husband and I started having eggs Benedict every year on Christmas day, and it became part of our celebration.

I like traditions that are personal and start between a family or couple as just something they do. This is one of ours.

Most disastrous Christmas: The year without a car.

When I was growing up we lived in a very rural area, and the family car died just before Christmas. There was no money to fix it at the time. My parents decorated a coat rack with garland, and our presents were what my dad could carry and bring home on his motorcycle. While there were a few gifts for my brother and I, that Christmas didn’t really feel like Christmas because most of us couldn’t get gifts for each other, and except for the snow, which was deep, there wasn’t much Christmas-y about it.

 

Andrew’s Prayer is book 3 of my College Rose romances. Drew is a hard character to love. He’s supposed to be. The run down miserable little poor neighborhood he lives in? I lived on that street growing up. Cinder-block house. Cars racing by because it was a short cut across town. I remember going from feeling the joy of being a kid to feeling trapped, and it was while I lived in that house. Grant is sort of a tarnished knight in shining armor. Putting my suave and a little slimy betrayer from book 1 as the hero? I might have done better with the bully (Oh, don’t worry… that story is coming soon).

It’s not a traditional Christmas story. It doesn’t focus on that at all. But Christmas is about reunions and family and faith. Things Drew really doesn’t have in abundance. So that the story wraps up there, that it finds its happy ending there, is, I think, appropriate for the story.

There’s a grand tradition of Christmas as a romantic time, and I hope Andrew’s Prayer, while it doesn’t focus on that, does end up there in a way that’s satisfying. Certainly it’s sexy!

Until the end of 2018 as a special promotion for the holiday season, you can find Andrew’s Prayer on sale (ebook only) for $2 at the Purple Horn Press store.

 

Andrew’s Prayer (College Rose Romances Book 3)

For Andrew Tuttleman, sex is a means to an end. With a mother too sick to pay the bills on her own and college bills to pay, Drew has spent years resorting to sex with strangers to keep a roof over his mother’s head and keep himself at school, far away from the hell where he grew up. This summer, his usual tricks are still paying the bills. But there’s a new one, Grant, who never got the memo that a trick is a no-strings deal. Convinced that Drew is the answer to a hopeless prayer, Grant seems ready to pursue Drew to the ends of the earth.

Drew, on the other hand, isn’t so convinced. Grant comes with trouble in the form of a wife and three kids, not to mention a single and unwavering requirement: that Drew give up his livelihood. Grant’s kiss makes Drew ache for more, a romance that he never dreamed possible. He finds himself unexpectedly willing to try. Can Drew weather Grant’s angry father, wife, and a daughter determined to kick him in the shins so hard that he’ll leave Grant’s life forever? It all relies on Grant’s faith in an impossible prayer.

 

 

Gerry’s Lion is a bit more traditional of a Christmas story. Certainly it started as one, originating as a story for the Dreamspinner Advent Calendar. It didn’t make it in, but I felt like the story wasn’t done. So I kept telling Gerry and Leo’s story in interludes around holidays… not just Christmas, but also Valentine’s Day, Easter, the 4th of July, and then Thanksgiving, bringing the story nearly a full year.

Gerry’s Lion is a story of loss. But it’s also a story of hope, a story that says that just maybe you can let go of the past and move forward. It’s a story that reminds us that life can be hard, and that family can be cruel, but that sometimes those connections can be saved. And sometimes maybe they can’t. Losing love doesn’t have to be forever, and maybe finding it can be hard, but it can also be special in ways that are hard to imagine.

For the holiday, Dreamspinner Press has Gerry’s Lion on sale for only 99 cents (but the sale ends TODAY folks, Friday December 28)

 

Gerry’s Lion

Gerald Tanner lost the piece of his life he loved most, his husband Adam. When faced with the prospect of another Christmas with a family who thinks he’s better off now that Adam is gone, Gerry decides instead to revisit the memory of when they met, and boards a Christmas cruise on the Sunrise. He’s not expecting to meet Leo Ystrabov. He certainly never imagined the courageous young man would challenge him into feelings of desire and the possibility of a love that isn’t his precious Adam.

Leo Ystrabov doesn’t quite know how to handle the shattered heart Gerry presents so hesitantly. But the offer is precious, and Leo can’t resist. However, with two families none too eager to accept them and a lot of baggage on both sides, their relationship faces an uphill battle. Leo will have to find his courage to be the lion Gerry sees in him.

 

About Ashavan Doyon

Ashavan Doyon spends his days working with students as part of the student affairs staff at a liberal arts college. During lunch, evenings, and when he can escape the grasp of his husband on weekends, he writes, pounding out words day after day in hopes that his ancient typewriter-trained fingers won’t break the glass on his tablet computer. Ashavan is an avid science fiction and fantasy fan and prefers to write while listening to music that fits the mood of his current story. He has no children, having opted instead for the companionship of two beautiful and thoroughly spoiled pugs. A Texan by birth, he currently lives in New England, and frequently complains of the weather.

Ashavan went to school at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, getting his degree in Russian and East European Studies, with a focus in language and literature. He has two incomplete manuscripts from college that he goes back compulsively to fiddle with every so often, but is still not happy with either of them. He still loves fantasy and science fiction and reads constantly in the moments between writing stories.

You can find Ashavan at his website: www.ashavandoyon.com