.Christmas Miracles and Holiday Blues #RB4U

Christmas Miracles and Holiday Blues

Christmas is a time for miracles and many of the best holiday movies remind us about the meaning of the season! It's a Wonderful Life is one of my favorite holiday movies. The idea of how one person's choices can influence a whole town and bring about a miracle is just one reason I love this old classic. I'm sure you've seen the movie and probably can quote some of the more famous lines from it! If not, you really should check it out. I'm sure it's playing on many of the television channels throughout December. 

This movie's message is so important to me that I featured a small nod to it in my Christmas novella- A Christmas Accident. 

When a horrible blizzard causes an automobile accident that puts the lives of those Sherri loves on the line, can a Christmas miracle save them?

In A Christmas Accident, I use a real piece of my family history in the story. Just like the main character, my mom was in a coma. They thought she'd never make it...however, just like in the story, she does wake up. While my mom's miracle didn't happen during the Christmas holiday, I can't help but think of my mom during this time of year. She survived her coma and lived ten more years, seeing two more of her daughters married and meeting two of her grandchildren. 

The Christmas I got my baton!

However, it was two days before Christmas over fifteen years ago that I lost her. So Christmas and my mom's passing are forever connected. This brings about the holiday blues. My holiday season is bittersweet. I have so many wonderful memories of spending Christmas with my family, the times mom and I decorated cookies, made dinner and wrapped presents. I'm fortunate that she got to know my children and that they remember her fondly. Yet, each Christmas there's a hole in my heart, which is why I used a real-life event in my Christmas story. I wanted to pay tribute to her and the miracle which gave me ten more years with her.

If you want to read more about the miracle we experienced, check out A Christmas Accident, the third story of the Wilder Sisters (can be read as a stand alone). Only $0.99 and a perfect short holiday read! AMAZON

What is your holiday season like? What memories do you have of that time? 

Guest Blog: Marliss Melton: Dogs Can be Navy SEALs, Too

I love incorporating dogs into my stories, and my readers clearly enjoy the addition of a canine. My heroine in The Protector owns a golden-retriever/German Shepherd mix named Winston, who helps protect her from the bad guy. Milly, the black Labrador retriever in The Enforcer, went from a bomb-sniffing dog to a therapy dog for my heroine with PTSD. And recently, I’ve incorporated a service dog in my latest novella, “Look Again,” about an injured Navy SEAL. Readers can’t get enough of these dogs!

I write mainly about Navy SEAL heroes, and as luck would have it, dogs can be Navy SEALs, too. I’m not kidding! The only named member of the DEVGRU SEAL Team that killed Osama Bin Laden was Cairo, a Belgian Malinois—a breed of dog that resembles a compact German shepherd. Belgian Malinois dogs are “faithful, fearless and ferocious,” just like their human counterparts.

The Navy takes their dog warriors very seriously, fitting them with super-strong, flexible body armor and high-tech equipment that includes specially designed and fitted dog goggles, called “doggles,” complete with night-vision and infrared capability! These dog warriors are trained to do almost everything the SEALs do, with the obvious exception of underwater ops. They can parachute out of planes in tandem with their handlers or alone, if the jump is into water. One dog named Cara and his handler, Mike Forsythe, have set the world record for highest man-dog parachute deployment. They jumped from the same altitude as a transoceanic passenger jet, more than 30,100 feet up. Like their human counterparts, SEAL dogs are “highly trained, highly skilled, highly motivated special ops experts” (http://navyseals.com/2163/the-dogs-of-the-+navy-seals).

I haven’t incorporated a SEAL dog into any of my stories, yet, but I’m sure that’s in the works. My peer and fellow-author, J.M. Madden, touches on the bond between dog and a handler in her short story, “SEAL’s Lost Dream,” featured in the SEAL of my Dreams Anthology. The love relationship between a man and woman is essential to romance, but when stories are layered with that special bond between people and their dogs, that makes for a truly satisfying read, especially when the dog proves to be as valorous as the hero.

                                                   







BLURB:
Look Again, A Novella, is Marliss Melton’s most recent release and the prequel to her upcoming Echo Platoon Series. This is the story of an injured Navy SEAL, Tyler “T-Rex” Rexall, and the woman whose gift of a service dog gives him a life worth living.

BIO:
Marliss Melton is the author of a dozen counterterrorist/romantic suspense stories, including a 7-book Navy SEALs series, a counterterrorist Taskforce Trilogy, two novellas and two short stories. She relies on her experience as a military spouse and on her many contacts in the Spec Ops and Intelligence communities to pen realistic and heartfelt stories about America's elite warriors and fearless agency heroes. Daughter of a U.S. foreign officer, Melton grew up in various countries overseas. She has taught English, Spanish, ESL, and Linguistics at the College of William and Mary, her alma mater. She lives in Williamsburg, Virginia with her husband and their youngest daughter, one of six children. Be sure to “friend” Marliss on Facebook! Visit http://www.marlissmelton.com for more information.