Guest Post (and a Giveaway!): Janyre Tromp & It’s A Wonderful Christmas

I’m so excited to welcome Janyre Tromp to the blog today to talk about her new multi-author Christmas collection, It’s a Wonderful Christmas – which I’m also excited about!

IT’S A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS: Classics Reimagined
AUTHORS: Julie Cantrell, Lynne Gentry, Allison Pittman, Kelli Stuart, & Janyre Tromp
GENRE: Christmas Novella Collection
RELEASE DATE: October 12, 2021
PAGES: 495

If you love holiday movies—and who doesn’t?—I can’t think of a better read than this charming, inventive anthology by five of today’s most talented authors. Completely original and filled with heart, each story proves that Christmas really is the most wonderful time of the year! I savored every page and can’t wait to unwrap this gift of a book year after year! —Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times Bestselling Author of Christmas in Peachtree Bluff

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

To celebrate, five bestselling authors have joined together to create this enchanting set of holiday novellas.

Nothing jump-starts Christmas nostalgia quite like the movies. With stirring images of snow-covered hills, crackling fireplaces, and happy families gathered around the decorated tree, these silver-screen tales capture all the magic and wonder of the season. Inspired by some of their favorite holiday films, each of these novelists has paid homage to the classic stories we all love, crafting an eclectic collection that delivers something for everyone.

From small town romance to a Sugar Plum Fairy, this Christmas box set includes five stories sparked by National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, The Nutcracker, and Remember the Night.

Topped with a whole lot of cheer and sentimentality, It’s a Wonderful Christmas: Classics Reimagined will delight readers from the first page to the last.

So grab a cup of hot cocoa, nestle under your favorite cozy blanket, and enjoy these holiday stories in a whole new way!

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Pre-order now for only $2.99!

Christmas Music, Movies, and BOOKS!

by Janyre Tromp, author of It’s a Wonderful Christmas

Music and books have long been intertwined muses in my life. I was not only that kid who read under her blankets by the imperceptible glow of her nightlight, I was also an unrepentant, clarinet-playing band nerd.

(Yes, I have pictures. No, you may not see them.)

So it’s no surprise that my life has spun into a world of novels and music.

By day I’m a book editor who listens to instrumental folk music while I work on other people’s books. But at night, I fill my headphones with a variety of music and me banging out words of my own. Often my writing playlists contain movie scores—sometimes from the same historical era of whatever I’m working on, and sometimes just the feel I’m looking for in a certain scene.

When four of my author friends and I started talking about putting together a fun story collection for Christmas, I couldn’t help but suggest using classic movies and the scores behind them as the inspiration behind our stories.

Out of that idea we birthed It’s a Wonderful Christmas where Julie Cantrell, Lynne Gentry, Allison Pittman, Kelli Stuart, and I paid tribute to a favorite Christmas movie with a story.

For me, White Christmas is all about music and a stage show to help a veteran save his inn and love between musicians…with a little drama and humor thrown in for good measure. So I set my novella Lovely Life in a castle (that’s based on an actual castle here in Michigan) about a Vietnam war era folk singer who comes home to help her friend save his inn and restaurant after he returns from the jungle. It’s full of era music and the groove of the late 1960s.

USA Today bestselling author Lynne Gentry took on Miracle on 34^th Street, and says she loves the song “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas.” She says, “Some people associate ‘looking like Christmas’ with decorations and snow. In my story Miracle on Main Street, I tried to incorporate what I think of when the world begins to look like Christmas . . . friendship, forgiveness, love.”

Julie Cantrell, who is a New York Times bestselling author, says, “When I’m gearing up to write a new story, I listen to music from that era or season to inspire me. Because we wrote these novellas during the summer months, I found it especially helpful to listen to my ‘Holly Jolly Jingle Jangle Joy!’ holiday playlist. The music put me in a merry mood and sparked lots of special memories and details to be woven through my tribute to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”

Ever since Kelli Stuart visited the Ukraine, her heart is for all things Russian. So it’s no wonder that her story—a tribute to the Nutcracker—and her musical inspiration come from the Eastern Bloc. “The instrument used for ‘The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ is called the celesta, and Tchaikovsky specifically wrote the character of the Sugar Plum Fairy with that instrument in mind. It’s a celestial, ethereal sound like drops of water shooting from a fountain. It was this thought that drove my story—the idea that the sound of a simple instrument could create a character that withstands the test of time and becomes iconic.”

Allison Pittman rounds out the collection with 500 Miles to Home, a tribute to the 1940s film Remember the Night.

And there you have it folks—a lovely intersection of music, movies, and Christmas story. Isn’t a beautiful place to be?

Want to hear a few of our favorite Christmas songs? Here’s our list.

Let us know what you would add, and you’ll be entered to win a free eBook of It’s a Wonderful Christmas.

Janyre Tromp is a firm believer in the power of an entertaining story. As such, she’s a book editor by day. And at night, she is a historical novelist whose loves spinning tales that, at their core, hunt for beauty, even when it isn’t pretty. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her family, two crazy cats, and a slightly eccentric Shetland Sheepdog. She is the author of Shadows in the Mind’s Eye (releasing March 2022) and Wide Open as well as the co-author of It’s a Wonderful Christmas.

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Other Authors in the It’s a Wonderful Christmas Collection

Janyre Tromp is offering an ebook copy of It’s a Wonderful Christmas to one of my readers! (Void where prohibited by law or logistics.) This giveaway is subject to Reading Is My SuperPower’s giveaway policies which can be found here. Enter via the Rafflecopter form below.

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What about you? What song(s) would you add to the authors’ playlist? What makes you want to read It’s a Wonderful Christmas by Janyre Tromp & these other fabulous authors?