"GOOD TIDINGS & TRIMMINGS" CHRISTMAS INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR LISA DARLING

Thank you again for donating a book for our 1st annual "Good Tidings & Trimmings" e-book Giveaway! What book or books did you donate, tell us more about them.

Today I want to giveaway one e-book set of my "OF WAR" series. Book #1 "The Heart of War" and Book #2 "Child of War-A God is Born". This series centers around Ares God of War and Alena MacLeod a half-fey half-human woman with whom he falls in love. It's full of romance, erotica, drama, action, adventure, Greek Gods. I should say that this series is not for the faint of heart as it contains several scenes of graphic sex and violence.

What is your favorite thing about the holiday season and what does Christmas mean to you?

I'm Pagan so I celebrate Yule along with Christmas. I'm not a fan of crowds or shopping but I do love setting up the Nativity Set my parents made back in 1955 and adding my own Pagan touches to it. The Nativity Set is showing its years, Balthazar has long been lost, the donkey's missing both ears, the camel's tale is gone, and almost all of the sheep seem to have disappeared. But the "important" elements are still there. Most people wonder why I both with it and why it's so special to me now that I'm no longer a Christian but when I look at it not only do I relive every Christmas I spent with my parents I also see a very Pagan theme in it. It's simply Mother, Father, and Child to me. Yule celebrates the birth of the Sun God so it's only natural the Sun God would be surrounded by his Mother and his Father on the day of his birth, just as Jesus Christ was.

What is your favorite holiday memory?

Picking out the Christmas tree with my parents. The weekend after Thanksgiving we would head out to our favorite tree farm and find the perfect tree. We'd walk around for an hour or more looking for a Blue Spruce. At every one, my Dad would reach up to the top to see if it would fit in the house and then measure the girth with his arms open. Once proclaimed the right height and width it was inspected for bare patches and finally for the three or four upright branches at the very top. If it passed all marks; it was ours. One year, we went to our favorite Christmas Tree Farm only to find it had *burned to the ground*! I so was sooo upset, I cried! It was years before we could go back there and for years we wandered town to town to town all over Connecticut looking for the perfect tree. Skip forward fifteen years; I met the man who would become my husband and, one day he was telling me a 'funny story' of how he and his brother accidentally burned down…my favorite tree farm! He's never lived it down, after 25 years of marriage, I still remind him of that. LOL

Do you still have any of the toys you got when you were a kid?

Toys? No. But I still have plenty of the LPs I received over the years.

How do you celebrate the holidays?

When our girls were little, we would take them out on Christmas Eve and drive all over the area looking at Christmas lights, we'd stop at one special pizza place—the only time we went there all year long—get dinner, drive around and look some more. They loved it. They were always screaming out; "My side!" or "No, look my side!" For us to look out the window at either side of the backseat they were sitting on. We'd drive around for hours like that until they were worn out and go home to let them open up one gift each. Always the same gift; new PJs which they put on right away for pictures in front of the tree (measured height and width as described above, of course) then leave milk & cookies for Santa. Off to bed. We'd wait and wait until they were asleep to drag out the gifts and put some toys together. I always loved seeing their bright shining faces on Christmas morning.

Now that they're older (25 and 20) we don't do that. My parents are gone and so are my husband's. It's just the four of us and my cousin at the holidays. We get up late, take our time opening small gifts—we never spend a lot of money or buy big lavish things—just spend the day together. We have a big dinner and burn the Yule Log sending off all of our wishes for the coming year to the Heavens.

Pretty simple I suppose but we like it.

Do you still believe in Santa Claus?

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!-- Francis Pharcellus Church, September 21, 1897


A lot of people get that warm, fuzzy feeling around this time of year, are you one of those people?

I used to be and I'm getting to be again. Christmas became very bittersweet for me when my father passed away December 17, 1987 and my mother passed December 9, 1994. They both loved Christmas and went to extremes to do everything 'right' and make it all bright and festive. I don't usually get in the "Christmas Spirit" until the week before or so and for many years I had to force it but, luckily, that's not the case any longer.

Have you ever gone caroling or wanted to?

I think we did it once when I was very little. No, I only sing in the shower, the car, and when making dinner.

If you had a choice of the perfect weather for Christmas would it be cold and snowy, or warm and sunny?

It would be a brilliantly sunny day with a foot of snow on the ground.

Give us your links! Tell us where to find your books and more information about you!

LINKS FOR THE "OF WAR" SERIES

Buy direct from Moon Mistress Publishing-http://www.moonsmusings.comand save on hard covers, paperbacks, and ebooks. Check out the fan gear; mugs, t-shirts, calendars, and more.

RETAILERS:

PAPERBACKS
http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-Beth-Darling/e/B002BMDA9I/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Amazon.com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/lisa-beth-darling?store=book

Barnes & Noble
http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Child-War....d=5200778515850

Books-a-Million

Through the publisher at 30% off the cover price

E-BOOKS

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/lisadarling
Smashwords

http://www.allromanceebooks.com/storeSea....sa+Beth+Darling
All Romance E-Books

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/lisa-beth-darling
Nook

http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-Beth-Darling/e/B002BMDA9I/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Kindle


Author Links:
Website:http://www.moonsmusings.com/lbdarling
Blog:http://lbdarling.wordpress.com
Facebook:http://facebook.com/lbdarling

Read more:http://www.greatmindsthinkaloud.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=interviews&thread=923&page=1#ixzz1giD3reH3



Leave a Reply.