I had a discussion recently with a friend who likes to travel over Christmas break. This friend has a job where December is actually her slow season so it is easy for her to take several weeks off at this time of year. As I chatted with her I wasn’t sure whether to envy her or feel sorry for her.

On one hand she has been to a lot of really awesome places such as Paris, Italy, and Bali, but on the other hand, one has to wonder if she isn’t missing out on the Christmas magic that can be found in your own home, wrapped up with family, friends, and tradition.

I thought about it a lot that evening as I wrapped what seemed like my hundredth gift while my husband struggled with the lights on the tree that wouldn’t stay lit. I looked at my ‘to do’ list for the next couple or weeks and wondered if running away to an exotic location for the holiday wasn’t a genius idea after all.

I will admit that the movie Christmas with The Kranks popped into my head as I considered how much easier it would be to simply skip the shopping, baking, decorating, and million and one other holiday obligations. But once the wrapping was done, and I was able to settle into my living room with a glass of wine and an old Christmas photo album, while I watched it snow outside my window, I realized I wouldn’t trade the warmth and comfort of home, for all the exotic locations in the world.

Comment below and let me know if given the opportunity to travel to an exotic location or stay home for the holidays, which you would choose? I will pick one person to receive a $20 Amazon gift card.

Yes I have a book by that title, and no this blog is not about that book, although the two do share a similar theme. This blog is about the fact that, although Christmas is a magical time of year, no matter how hard I try, it seems that a year doesn’t go by where a little crazy doesn’t get mixed in with the magic. The problem isn’t Christmas, I’m afraid the problem is me. I have a tendency to overdo things, which usually seem like a good idea at the time, but then I end up totally overwhelmed when I run out of month and still have tasks to complete.

For example, pictured below is my village. The year I took the photos I had it set up on tables around the living area of the house, but some years I put it all in one location under the tree. Do you have any idea how long it takes to set this all up? Let’s just say I could build a real house in less time. Do I enjoy the village once it is set up? Sure. Does it end up adding a little crazy to my Christmas? Most definitely.

Which brings me to the tree. Again, we tend to make a production out of getting a tree. In spite of the fact that we live in the forest we still drive two hours to where the ‘good’ trees are, hike around for hours to find the perfect one, cut it down, haul it home, and decorate the fifteen foot monstrosity. Do I have fond memories of these trips into the woods? Absolutely. Does it add to the crazy? How could it not?

Add to that the shopping, wrapping, baking, and holiday parties and events, and you have a mental meltdown in the making. Today is December 1st. I have decided that this year I will cut back and try to keep the crazy out of Christmas. Will I succeed? Your guess is as good as mine. I do tend to be just a teeny bit of an overachiever (okay I’m a big ol’ type A.) Still I know that I don’t really have to make 20 different kinds of cookies so that everyone I ever met can have their favorite, and I don’t really have to buy everyone in the family the perfect gift, and I don’t really have to attend every holiday party or event I am invited to.  But knowing and doing aren’t always the same thing.  I am however off to a good start. Thanks mostly to some tight deadlines, I have only set up a fraction of my village and the tree is from the forest next to my house and not the next state. So stay tuned and see how I do.

Giveaway: comment below and be entered to win a Kindle or Paperback copy of Santa Sleuth and Christmas Crazy (Non US Kindle only.) I will choose a winner on Saturday 12/5.

In spite of the fact that Black Friday has morphed into a month long event in many cases, it has still become almost its own holiday. Some people love it. I know people who look forward to getting up at the crack of dawn, camping out in front of their favorite store, and shopping with several thousand of their closest friends and neighbors, even more than they look forward to Thanksgiving. They have battle plans, shopping lists, playlists, and regimented time lines to score the largest haul for the smallest price possible.

I guess in an abstract sort of way I can understand the thrill of the hunt for the ultimate discount, but overall I have to say that I fall on the nay side of things when it comes to this particular pastime. Let’s be honest. I live in a small town high upon a mountain way out in the county void of close neighbors because I like the quiet and am not a fan of crowds. Black Friday was most definitely not created for me.

I do however plan to participate in Black Friday this year, in a stay at home kind of way.  All of my Currently Published Christmas Books will be on sale for $.99 from Black Friday thru Cyber Monday. Santa Sleuth, which is not as of yet published, will not be part of this sale but you can win a copy below. These books will not be on sale again before Christmas so get ’em while the getting is good.

Win a signed copy of Santa Sleuth when it comes out on December 1 by answering the question yay or nay for Black Friday in the comments below.

Here is the clue and rafflecopter for the Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt for those of you who are doing it. Kathi is grateful for Snow. Simply enter the word snow into the rafflecopter in the appropriate space.

Here is the link to the rafflecopter: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/df645d05156/?

Now onto the Blog.

My family is big on tradition. We have traditions for every holiday, every season, every everything. I will admit that as my children and nieces and nephews have aged, and their children have increased in number, some of the whole family traditions have fallen by the wayside. My parents have 4 children, 4 children in-laws, 11 grandchildren, 7 grandchildren in-laws, and 22 great grandchildren. That’s a lot of people to gather together in one place at one time. Still we try and sometimes succeed.

Most Thanksgivings when my children were younger either my parents, my sisters, or my husband and I, would host a huge dinner for everyone that could make it. Some Thanksgivings we had close to 40 family members for dinner. It was always a good time with lots of love and lots of laughter. There were times, such as the year my grandson Xavier passed, that there was an overlying sadness to the event, but even in these less than perfect years we all tried to embrace that which we did have and were grateful for.

Another Thanksgiving Tradition was for the entire family to climb into our 4 wheel drive vehicles and head into the woods in search of the perfect Christmas tree. We usually did this on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We’d pack a lunch, usually chili dogs and hot cocoa, and trudge through the forest in small groups searching for the tree that would usher in the Christmas season. Some years we had nice weather, other years it rained or snowed, but it was always a memorable event.

I am going to give away a Paperback or Kindle copy of The Cat of Christmas Past and a Cat of Christmas Past Tote to a random winner. I am actually going to be flying on the day this blog publishes so I may not be able to respond to every comment, but I will take some time on Saturday morning to read every comment and select a winner.

To be entered to win comment below with a Thanksgiving tradition or memory.

You know how there are times when you have such good intentions but you get so overwhelmed by everything that you need to get done that your good intentions dissolve into weak substitutions. That is me this week. I intended to write an awesome blog about Thanksgiving memories complete with photos. But here it is Thursday night and I never did get around to writing my blog for the week. I’ve been writing all day and the only coherent thought I seem to be able to come up with is blah, blah, blah.

My hubby is sitting upstairs next to the fire in a cozy room lit with the white lights he strung today, and I’m pretty sure there is a bottle of wine with my name on it. Soooo, I’m going to take the lazy mans way out and instead of an awesome from the heart rendering Thanksgiving memories, I’m going to do a Thanksgiving Trivia contest instead.

If you’ve read The Trouble with Turkeys and Turkey’s Tuxes and Tabbies this will be a cinch. If you haven’t you are welcome to guess or read the books. There are 10 questions – 5 from each book. Since entering the answers in the comments won’t really work, I’ve set up a rafflecopter. There is an entry for each question. Go ahead and answer those you know if you don’t know them all since there will be a randomly chosen winner to receive a $25 Amazon gift card. (In other words it is possible to win with one correct answer.)

ADDITIONALLY

If anyone does get them ALL correct, I will add another $25 gift card to the pot for a perfect score. If more than one person gets a perfect score I will choose a winner from all of those with perfect scores.

The contest will run until Sunday so go ahead and look up the answers if you want to. This is an open book test.

Good luck everyone.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/df645d05160/?

The Trouble with Turkeys:

1. Who got Zoe the job at the turkey farm?
2. Why were the turkeys acting like they were drunk?
3. Who killed the turkey farmer?
4. What did Olivia hit Zoe with?
5. What gift did Zak give to Zoe at the end of the book?

Turkeys, Tuxes, and Tabbies

1. What group of women were Zoe and Ellie spying on at the beginning of the book?
2. What did the murder victim have a lot of?
3. What was Zoe’s moms engagement gift to Zoe?
4. When Zoe was taken captive which of her friends did she find captive as well?
5. What famous brothers were the three kittens who were staying with Zoe named for?

Feel free to comment below with a general comment but please do not list the answers here.

I am doing a contest this month titled The 30 Days of Thanks Giveaway. Every morning I am posting something I am grateful for and then asking everyone who sees the post to do the same. Each day I will choose one person from those who comment to receive a $5 Amazon gift card (that’s 30 gift card winners during the month.) I will announce the winner in the following days post and they will have until the end of the day they are announced to get back to me with an email address.

If you haven’t joined us yet there is still time as each day is a new giveaway.

So in order to catch you up here is what I have shared so far:

November 1 –  I am thankful for Facebook. I know that Facebook gets a lot of flack for being difficult, but the truth of the matter is that without them I would most likely not have had the opportunity to meet so many fantastic people.

November 2 – I am so grateful to have so many awesome fans who are willing to share their thoughts and their lives with me. I feel like I am part of this huge and wonderful family.

November 3 – I am grateful for the snow we received yesterday. Yes I know that I will be cursing it before long, but for now it is both welcomed and enjoyed.

November 4 – I am grateful for my grandson Xavier. He was only with us for three days but during his short life he taught me a lot about loving and letting go. It is his birthday today. He would have been 11 if he’d lived.

November 5 – I am grateful for my husband Ken. He has loved me and taken care of me every day since we first met when we were 16. He is my best friend and my soulmate and I couldn’t image even a single day without him in my life. He is the man I pattern all my hero’s after.

November 6 – this post is live on my Facebook page today so head on over to http://www.facebook.com/kathidaleybooks

Todays giveaway. Comment below with something you are grateful for and I will pick one winner to receive a $10 Amazon gift card. I will announce the winner here as well as on my main Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/kathidaleybooks.

I try not to use this blog to promo my books but I’m really excited about this one and I want to tell you about it since it publishes on Sunday.

As the name would hint at, The Cat of Christmas Past is sort of a takeoff of A Christmas Carol. The plot doesn’t actually follow the plot of A Christmas Carol, but you will see a similarity in the names used and the overall theme. I took a bit of a chance with this book since it does not actually feature a murder and I know there are mystery purists out there who will insist that you have to have a murder.

The book features a miserly old man named Balthazar Pottage who has issued eviction notices to the 12 families living in one of the apartment buildings he owns just weeks before Christmas. Cait makes it her mission to save the apartment building but Balthazar is known for being the meanest, most miserly, man in the area. Getting him to change his mind won’t be easy. In fact, she considers the task to be close to impossible, until a cat named Ebenezer comes calling and Cait knows that she has just received the Christmas miracle she is going to need.

Cait attempts to befriend the man in the hope of talking him into sparing the building, but the man, unfortunately isn’t all that interested in friendship. There is one thing however, that the old man is willing to trade for the apartments. The problem is that the thing that the man wants is most likely impossible to deliver.

This is an excerpt from the book:

“You’re asking me to do this huge thing for the tenants of that building, yet what have any of them ever done for me? What has anyone ever done for me?”

I frowned. “How about if I continue to read to you? I can come back every Monday.”

“I would enjoy that, but we’re talking about more than a hundred thousand dollars,” Pottage pointed out.

I guess the man had a point.

“Although, there is something else you can do for me that might be worth that amount of money.”

I smiled. “What? I’ll do anything.”

“You can help me find out what became of my son.”

I hesitated. Find his son? Was he kidding? He had a serious look on his face, so I had to assume he was serious in making his request.

“You want me to find your son?” I asked. “He’s been missing for a very long time. How am I supposed to find him?”

“I have no idea, but Ebenezer seems to think you’re the one to help us. In fact, he’s quite insistent on it. Will you do it?”

I looked at the cat and hesitated. It did seem that we were linked in some way, and cats had helped me solve mysteries equally as impossible as this in the past. “If I help you figure out what happened to your son you’ll let the tenants stay?”

To find out the answer to that question you will have to read the book.

Now for the giveaway. I am going to give away a Cat of Christmas Past Tote this week. To be entered to win simply comment below. I will pick a winner on Sunday. The winner will be announced my main Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/kathidaleybooks

This week’s blog is going to be short and sweet on my part. As most of you know by now the cozy mystery family lost one of our own this week. Not only was Joyce Lavene a talented and prolific author, but she was a kind and widely loved woman as well. I never had the privilege of meeting Joyce in person but we did message and email a few times about one thing or another and she seemed to be a sweet and gracious woman.

Joyce and her husband, Jim, wrote several series including the Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade series and the Biscuit Bowl Food Truck series.

This blog is my platform to honor this beautiful woman who meant so much to so many.

I was looking for a photo today to include with a post on my Facebook page and realized how many totally awesome traditions my family has surrounding fall and Halloween. Sure there are the usual ones such as dressing up, handing out candy, and trick-or-treating, but there are some unique if not totally traditional ones as well.

When I was fourteen my family moved from Southern California to Lake Tahoe. Our first fall in the area my mother wanted to take a picnic to an area near a river where the trees are exceptionally beautiful. The entire family gathered to pack a lunch and make the forty minute journey to this fairly isolated spot. It rained. Did that stop us? Heck no. My mom insisted that we have our lunch in the rain, and while I thought she was nuts at the time, we ended up having a really good time. After that first year we started a tradition of making the pilgrimage to that same spot every October. When I married and had children they, along with the children of my siblings, joined the event, and when my own children married and had children of their own I began bringing my grandchildren.

Another of our traditions is to take the family to a place known as Apple Hill. It is basically a place where you can walk through a maze made from hay bails, pick pumpkins from a patch, buy local crafts, feed farm animals, and of course eat everything apple. You can also ride a pony, take a trip on a train, and pick your own fruit to bring home. There have been years when as many as thirty family members made the trip together.

In addition to our outdoor activities we also gather together every year for a Halloween party. Or at least we did when the kids were younger. I make my famous nachos and we watch The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown together as a group. One year I even got a piñata for the kids. I mean it’s not like they were going to get enough candy trick-or-treating. And let’s not forget the annual harvest festival at the local elementary school. We still attend that event.

So tell me about your Halloween and/or fall traditions. Comment below to be entered to win a $15 Amazon Gift Card. I will announce the winner on my Facebook page Saturday morning.

I recently went to Alaska to do research for a new series I am developing. It was a quick trip but we managed to pack quite a bit of sightseeing into one short week.

Day 1 – drive from Lake Tahoe to Reno and then fly from Reno to Anchorage. We spent the night at the Alyeska resort in Girdwood Alaska. The Alyeska resort is a ski resort in the winter, and while it did snow on the mountain during our stay, it didn’t snow nearly enough to open the slopes.  We did however manage to see our first moose of the trip on the side of the road in Girdwood which was all kinds of fun.

Day 2 – On our first full day in Alaska we decided to make the 250 mile roundtrip journey to Seward. Seward is located on the Gulf of Alaska and is known for its fishing. It is a small town with good food and a wonderful view. While we were in Seward we stopped off at Kenai Fjords National Park, which is really best enjoyed during the summer, but we did manage to get a photo of the sign. My husband Ken and I are trying to get photos of the signs of all of the national parks. So far we have 45 parks out of 52. After this trip we still need one in Florida: Dry Tortugas, five in Alaska: Lake Clark, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Katmai, Kobuk Valley, and the one in the Virgin Islands.

Day 3 – we drove from Anchorage to Valdez, about 300 miles over the Glenn Highway to the Richardson Highway. We saw a lot of really beautiful country along the way although it rained for the entire trip.

Day 4: We hung out in Valdez which is the approximate location where I imagine my fictional town of Moosehead Alaska to be located. The town in nestled on the gulf but it is also surrounded by tall majestic mountains. In a word it is breathtaking. The food was excellent, the locals friendly and very helpful in answering my questions, and best off all, there are hundreds of bunnies running around everywhere. The story is that about 20 years ago one of the locals got each of their four children a bunny for Easter. The rabbits didn’t work out as pets so they let them go. Of course they did what bunnies do best – multiply, and now they are everywhere.

Day 5: We drove from Valdez to Fairbanks via the Richardson Highway. We managed to not only see a mama and baby moose, but we came across two different groups of Caribou on the side of the road. I got a photo of the moose but not the caribou. The little buggers were too quick and headed for the trees before I could get my camera out. This trip is about 365 miles a very, very, beautiful.

We also visited the town of North Pole Alaska on day 5. It is Christmas everyday in North Pole. I’m not sure I’d want to have Christmas every day but it was an adorable town. I especially liked the red and white stripped candy cane lampposts.

Another highlight of day 5 was that I got a chance to see the northern lights. I tried to take a photo but it just came out dark. It was an awesome experience that I would never have had if one of my awesome fans who lives in the area didn’t message me to go outside and look up. Thank you Amy.

Day 6: We made the 358 mile journey from Fairbanks to Anchorage. By the time we arrived in Anchorage we had driven over a twelve hundred miles and seen some of the most beautiful country anywhere. It was truly an awesome trip and I can’t wait to have time to get a start on my Alaska series. It was rainy and foggy for the first part of the trip on day 6 but the sun did come out in time for us to have a cold one outdoors at the Denali Brewing Company  in Talkeetna.

Day 7: We flew to Reno and then drove home to Tahoe where a very happy Echo was at the door to greet me. Next up for us is a trip back to the San Juan Islands in November to do some follow up research for the Whales and Tails series. I will of course post photos along the way.

Now for the giveaway. Comment below to be entered to win a Kindle or Paperback copy of any Kathi Daley book. (Non US Kindle only)