Sheila Roberts | Every Christmas Cloud Has a Silver Lining

Christmas is my favorite holiday. You would think after about a million years on the planet (yes I’m well preserved for my age) I’d be ho-hum about the same old thing – baking cookies, decorating, parties, wrapping presents. But I’m not. Granted, I’ve gotten a little lazy when it comes to the decorating but boy I still go crazy with the baking and the partying. And, like my character Maddy Donaldson in CHRISTMAS ON CANDY CANE LANE, I do like things to be perfect.

That doesn’t always happen. Sometimes my holidays turn out a little more like that of Tilda the cop, who has just moved to Candy Cane Lane and is determined to do Christmas right. Tilda has her share of disasters but let me tell you, I can top them.

I still remember the year when, on leaving my big brother’s house on Christmas Eve, my husband discovered that our car had a slight problem with the gearshift. It decided to go on strike for Christmas. We wound up having to drive home in second gear. This meant taking the back roads home rather than the freeway so instead of a hop on the ferry and a half hour drive, we skirted our way around Puget Sound and drove to the far reaches of the earth. My other half tried to make it all fun. “Look kids, a stoplight.” I sat in my seat and fumed. We finally got home around 2 a.m. Needless to say, Santa was up late that night! It all worked out though. For once the kids didn’t wake us up at five in the morning. Every Christmas cloud has a silver lining.

Another year, unbeknownst to me, my little boy had fiddled with the lights on the car, probably when I was loading our handicapped daughter into her chair. So as we happily ferried our way from Seattle to beautiful Bainbridge Island for yet another family gathering, my battery drained faster than a punchbowl full of eggnog. We wound up having to get pushed off the ferry and had to wait for someone to come with a battery charger and rescue us. Ah, well.

A couple of Christmases ago I thought it would be fun to make red velvet cupcakes instead of the traditional cake. I put them on my pretty, pink cake stand and they looked adorable. Perfect. Until my husband decided to move them from the table to the counter. They all slid off and then we had red velvet carpet. Ah, well, these are the stories that make for great entertainment ... later. Much later. About five years later.

Who knows what adventures this coming holiday will bring, but as long as I remember the Reason for the season and get to be with those I love I know it will be perfect.

And I hope yours will, too!

About Sheila Roberts

Sheila Roberts lives on a lake in the Pacific Northwest. She’s happily married and has three children. She’s been writing since 1989, but she did lots of things before settling in to her writing career, including owning a singing telegram company and playing in a band. Her band days are over, but she still enjoys writing songs. Sheila's books are best sellers and often appear as Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Her novel ANGEL LANE was named one of Amazon's top ten romances in 2009. Her novel ON STRIKE FOR CHRISTMAS was a Lifetime Network movie and her novel THE NINE LIVES OF CHRISTMAS is now a Hallmark movie.

When she’s not speaking to women’s groups or at conferences or hanging out with her girlfriends she can be found writing about those things near and dear to women’s hearts: family, friends, and chocolate.

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About CHRISTMAS ON CANDY CANE LANE

Icicle Falls is the place to be at Christmas…

Everyone's getting ready for Christmas in Icicle Falls, especially on Candy Cane Lane, where holiday decorating is taken very seriously. Tilda Morrison, town cop, is looking forward to celebrating Christmas in her first house…until she discovers that she's expected to "keep up" with the neighbors, including Maddy Donaldson, the inspiration behind the whole extravaganza. But this year, someone's destroying Maddie's precious candy canes! Thank goodness for the cop in their neighborhood.

Tilda already has her hands full trying to sort out her love life and fix up her fixer-upper. Oh, and won't it be fun to have the family over for Christmas dinner? Not really… Then there's her neighbor, Ivy Bohn. As a newly single mom, Ivy can sum up the holiday in two words: Bah, humbug. But she's determined to give her kids a perfect Christmas.

Despite family disasters, irritating ex-husbands and kitchen catastrophes, these three women are going to find out that Christmas really is the most wonderful time of the year!