Maggie Blackbird

December is I :::Heart::: the Holidays month at my blog. During these next twenty-two days, besides the usual blog posts, I’m featuring authors who write holiday romance. Today, I have Adriana Kraft in the interview chair. We’re discussing A Gift for Adam. Be sure to check out the excerpt.

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1. What draws you to writing holiday romance?

Adriana:  Winter holidays – Thanksgiving, the Solstice, Christmas, New Year – have formed some of my most precious memories, but I’m also aware they are sad times for many. Some have lost a loved one, some are alone, some are in toxic relationships, some are struggling with poverty. A happy romance in the holiday season can be a bright moment and offer hope for a different future. These holidays – in the dark of winter, before the light begins to return – are also a time for reflection, for identifying what matters, for making choices, for taking small steps that may lead to monumental change.

2. How many holiday romances have you written so far? And which one would you recommend for readers to try, besides the one you are featuring? Feel free to leave a link.

Adriana:  My husband and I write together — we’ve written a total of four holiday romances, all published by Extasy books. A Gift for Adam is an M/F romance; our other three are menage stories — if that’s appealing, we’d suggest The Gift Exchange as a fun starter. Here’s the tag line and a link: “It’s Christmas Eve—what gifts will Mack, Carol and Tara unwrap together?” https://www.amazon.com/ebook/dp/B01NAI0ITB/

3. What do you like most about writing holiday romance?

Adriana:  The process of writing them drops the two of us into our own holiday memories and sharpens our focus on both the deeper themes of the season and the playfulness of celebration. How many Holiday gift exchanges have you sat through, either dreading what you might receive, or excited for the potential of the gift you’ve brought? Some of my most hilarious memories are from the white elephant exchanges each Christmas where I used to work. Some gag gifts resurfaced every year and would get passed around as each new recipient claimed an already opened gift from an unlucky colleague and exchanged it for the dreaded present.

4. What do you like least about writing holiday romance?

Adriana:  The trouble with the winter holidays is the high expectations they create – it’s hard for any given Thanksgiving or Christmas celebration to live up to all the hype and high hopes driven by our culture. The same is true of writing a holiday story – will it live up to our hopes? Will it capture what we want to convey? Will it succeed in being upbeat and playful without demeaning the more serious holiday themes that are important to so many?

5. What inspired you to write your featured holiday story?

Adriana:  Short answer – the white elephant exchanges I mentioned above. Faculty and staff mingled freely, joked with one another, and gave in to uproarious laughter throughout the evening. Naturally those gift exchanges didn’t lead to any romantic liaisons (that we knew about, anyway), but we wanted to capture that spirit to set the stage for two improbable romantic partners to discover each other.

6. If a reader asked you why they should read your holiday romance, what would you tell them?

Adriana:  Because we love it? I’m going to cop to a reviewer’s comments:

“A GIFT FOR ADAM is a feel good sexy romance. I enjoyed Adam and Evie. They were regular people who except for the mistake with the grab bag gift would never have gone out. Adam is trying to make amendments for embarrassing Evie when he asks her out. She accepts because he is stubborn and persistent. Watching them develop a relationship is fun. I like that they were not wealthy or drop dead gorgeous. They were real and equals. I felt happy reading their story.

A GIFT FOR ADAM is a quick Christmas read that left a smile upon my lips.”

7. Lastly, how are you going to spend the holidays?

Adriana:  Our children are grown and scattered across the country, but we have a close group of friends we’ll join for Christmas dinner. And we’ll enjoy a New Year’s Eve dance, compete with a live band and champagne at midnight.

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Title: A Gift for Adam
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Length: 50 pages, 14,371 words
Heat Rating: 4 Flames
Publication Date: December 15, 2014
Publisher: eXtasy Books

Sensible Evie, devilish Adam and a Christmas package mix-up in a hilarious holiday romp!

Blurb:  Home and Garden assistant manager Evie Strand has painstakingly embroidered a set of seven thongs as a gag gift for her best friend—only she brought the wrong box to the store Christmas party, and now Adam Grant from Automotive is holding them up for everyone to see: Kiss my…, Tight Fit—could things get any worse? Adam may seem like a total rake, but he can tell Evie’s deeply embarrassed and he resolves to make it up to her. Who knew where a simple dinner date would lead?

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Mortified, Evie Strand looked on in horror at the office Christmas party careening out of control. Her fellow employees stared at her in amazement. Some snickered. Some couldn’t remain silent.

“What a hoot,” Leslie whispered from the seat next to her. “You put old Adam in his place.”

Evie shook her head and swallowed hard, willing herself to be anywhere but in this room. Adam Grant’s dark eyes snapped, mocking her. Did he really think she’d given him that package on purpose? It was meant for Christie, her closest friend. That package wasn’t even supposed to come to the office party. Christie didn’t work for the store.

How could she be such an idiot? She’d wrapped so many Christmas presents late last night. It had never occurred to her that the two packages looked so similar on the outside.

To her dismay, she’d drawn Adam Grant’s name for the annual gift exchange. She hadn’t given it much thought once she’d decided to give him a tie.

Evie blinked as he rummaged through his gift. “No,” she muttered softly, when he held up a second thong. This one, like the last, had hand-stitched lettering.

She should know. She’d painstakingly hand-lettered seven thongs for Christie. They were supposed to be a joke. She doubted Christie would actually wear any of them, but they’d each gone out of their way during the past six seasons to surprise each other with something that was outlandishly sexy. She had to admit she might’ve gone over the top this year.

Adam held high the pink Tuesday thong. He could hardly read it aloud for breaking up with laughter. “Tuesday: Wish you were…?” The question mark below the lettering left little room for confusion about the intent—it would nestle comfortably over the wearer’s mound.

More hoots and hollers followed. The powder blue Monday thong had been more shocking, probably because it was the first one Adam had held up, or maybe because it said “Don’t Dribble” across the front.

Evie pushed her chair back from the long banquet table where she sat with her fellow Grafton Department Store employees. Leslie grabbed her wrist. “Don’t let him get the best of you. Mistakes happen. At least half the people here think you did this on purpose to get the rake’s goat. If you leave, they’ll know you screwed up.”

Evie gulped and nodded at her department manager. She drew in a deep breath. “All right.”

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Winner of the 2014 Bisexual Book Award for erotic fiction, author Adriana Kraft is a married couple writing Sizzling Romantic Suspense and Erotic Romance for Two, Three, or More. With backgrounds in criminology and counseling, we combine our expertise in the criminal mind, trauma, healing, and human nature with a passion for robust sexuality and life-long vitality.

One man, one woman, danger and intrigue – always a happy ending, but oh, what a ride! Readers can count on our Romantic Suspense line for “warmth, blazing hot sex, and well-developed characters” (Romance Junkies Reviews) as our hero and heroine battle outer threats and inner demons to stay alive and fall in love.

A man, a woman (or two), or another man, threesomes, foursomes, what’s your fantasy? We write our Erotic Romance stories to entertain, of course, but most of all we write them because we believe in happy endings for all who fall in love, whatever their gender, sexual orientation or numerical combination. Here you’ll find multiple partners, three-way, four-way and more, swing lifestyle, lesbian, bisexual, ménage and polyamory, in both contemporary and paranormal settings: “scorching hot…refreshing…something to read when you want straight up hotness” (Long and Short Reviews)

Together we have published more than forty romance novels and novellas to outstanding reviews. We love hearing from readers at adrianakraft99@yahoo.com.