Who needs a quick read during this holiday season?
*****
Holiday Hijinks
Halliday Theater #1
by Katherine Moore
Genre: Cozy Holiday Romance
Blurb:
Itโs Christmas, and this year Emily Halliday is trying something new at the struggling revival movie theater she runs for her great-grandmother. After all, how many times can you show Itโs a Wonderful Life?
Emily was hoping to make a little profit on โHoliday Hijinks,โ her โcounter-programming Christmasโ event. What she never expectedโplot twistโis that an unexpected guest will turn her own life into a romantic comedy.
Holiday Hijinks is the first in a new series of cozy romances set in the small Pacific Northwest town of Silver Birch, Washington. A short read (15K) for a busy time, Holiday Hijinks introduces a whole new cast of characters while bringing back โcameosโ from the โMeredith Manor Hotelโ books, which are also set in Silver Birch.
If you love movies and food and romance as cozy as flannel jammies, Holiday Hijinks is the Christmas read for you.
**Only .99 cents!!**
*****
Excerpt:
Chapter 1: Christmas is Coming
โChristmas counter-programming,โ Nella said slowly, and I could tell she wasnโt buying it.
โI know itโs something different,โ I said, โbut how many times can we show Itโs a Wonderful Life?โ
โEverybody loves Itโs a Wonderful Life,โ she said. โExcept you.โ
Itโs true. I hate that movie. I watched it once when I was a little kid and thought it was so sad I turned it off before the end and have never watched it again. I know my dislike of the beloved classic is a minority opinion, but I stand firm in my belief that the best Christmas movie ever is The Muppet Christmas Carol. BecauseโฆMuppets! And Michael Caine!!
โThe Halliday holiday showing of Itโs a Wonderful Life has been a Christmas tradition for decades,โ Nella said in her โItโs-always-been-done-this-wayโ voice. Which to be fair, she hardly ever uses. For a woman in her late nineties, sheโs surprisingly open to trying new things. She even booked The Brown Bunny into the Halliday Theatre back when the only person willing to stand up for the film was the late Roger Ebertโand even he wasnโt onboard until he saw the directorโs cut.
Still, my great-grandmother can be stubborn about some things and the Halliday Theater belongs to her, so if I want to do anything too radical, I have to run it past her first. Hence my sales pitch.
โExactly my point.โ I said. โWe always screen the movie, but so does every single basic cable channel. I think we had a grand total of ten people show up last year, and most of them just came for the Christmas stockings we handed out.โ
Actually, two of our patrons had been teenagers who just needed a place where they could have some privacy to make out. I sympathized. It isnโt easy getting alone time during the holidays with all those family members around, so Iโd steered them to the seldom-used second floor balcony and told them to clean up after themselves and gave them a stern warning that if I found any empty beer cans, smoked-up joints, or used condoms on the floor theyโd be banned from the Halliday for life.
Not only that, Iโd threatened, but Iโd sic Nella on them.
Silver Birch is a small town and my great-grandmother knows everybody. Everybody and their grandmother. If you get on Nella Hallidayโs bad side, you might as well leave town. Even then you might not be beyond her reach. She has more than four thousand friends on Facebook and around thirty thousand people following her Instagram account (@nellathefilmgranny). Not that Iโm competitive or anything, but thatโs about twenty-nine thousand seven hundred more followers than I have.
โOnly ten patrons? Surely it wasnโt that bad,โ Nella said.
Oh yes, it was.
The thing is, getting people out of the house to see a movie during the holidays when they can stay at home in their flannel jammie pants and binge-watch Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel is a challenge. Everybodyโs seen all the Bing Crosby films. Everybody owns their own DVD copy of A Christmas Story thatโs collecting dust because everyone streams movies these days. Everyone knows all the words to the songs from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Whether your taste is for edgy movies like Bad Santa or more traditional animated fare like Rudolph, chances are youโve seen them all. Some of them twice. Some of them every single year since they came out. (And who didnโt love Peter Dinklageโs turn in Elf long before he swaggered across Westeros as Tyrion Lannister or crack up at the hilarious bit where Lee Majors saves Santa Claus in Scrooged?)
And then there are all the movie-goers who donโt celebrate Christmas. By the time the actual holiday rolls around, theyโre usually pretty sick of the whole Christmas-centric-ness of the winter celebrations. Itโs even harder to coax them out of their houses. If youโve spent a week stuffing yourself with latkesโbecause latkes are the bestโand rugelach, you probably donโt feel like suiting up and heading out into the cold to celebrate a holiday that isnโt even your own by watching a movie thatโs already in heavy rotation on Netflix and Hulu and the ABC Family Channel.
If youโre like my friend Roz, youโd rather stay in and watch a marathon of Homicide Hunter and Forensic Files episodes. (Donโt judge. Baking shows arenโt for everyone.)
All to say that showing Itโs a Wonderful Life was not going to put butts in seats any more.
*****
Author Info:
Born in Washington, D.C., Katherine Moore now lives in a small Pacific Northwest town very much like Silver Birch. She has worked as a food writer, a caterer, and a movie extra as well as a freelance lifestyle reporter and staff writer for magazines in Honolulu, Los Angeles, and Richmond, Virginia.
Facebook * Twitter * Amazon * Goodreads
*****
Giveaway:
3x swag packs with 1 pair Christmas socks, 1 pair film reel earrings, 1 tin of haute cocoa mix, Packets of popcorn, Movie theatre candy, 1 $25 Fandango gift card, 1 $15 Powell indie bookstore gift card
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/23d974a91090/
*****
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