Happy Holidays from Claire

By Claire Hastings, from Sheila Connolly's romantic suspense, Once She Knew

 

I like the Christmas season.  I teach at Sophia College in western Massachusetts, and December always brings the mass exodus of students, which is great.  Not that I don't love them all—they're smart and they ask a lot of challenging questions, and they usually even do the work I ask for, more or less on time.  But that means it takes a lot of energy on my part to keep ahead of them, so when they leave for winter break, I can relax, just for a while.

 

Winter in this part of the world is post-card pretty—lots of snow.  The campus is lovely, with old buildings and softly rolling hills, and a river running through it, that sometimes freezes hard enough for skating.  Snow is a pain to drive in, but I can walk into town for just about anything I need:  interesting shops, great restaurants of all kinds, and terrific bookstores.  If I had to choose only one of the three, it would be bookstores!

 

I'm not going anywhere this year.  Normally I would go see my folks, but they're not exactly happy with me about what happened earlier this year when—sorry, I can't tell you, for reasons of national security.  Or that's what the FBI said, and I really want to stay under their radar for a while. But my folks are mad because I didn't tell them what was happening while I was in the middle of it, but waited until it was all over. They haven't forgiven me yet.

 

Jonathan Daulton said he might drop by.  I'm not holding my breath.  Ever since that thing I can't talk about, he's been very busy.  I don't even know whether he's in this country at the moment.  Overall I'm not sure how I feel about seeing him again.  I mean, things were kind of hot and heavy when That Thing was happening, but now that I'm back where I belong, I've regained my perspective. Still, I wouldn't mind getting together, if he happens to be around. And he did send me that package and told me not to open it until Christmas…

 

So it will be a peaceful holiday for me.  There's a faculty party or two, and I can catch up on my reading, and I've got a great idea for a new research paper, about the impact of younger women recently elected to governments in struggling countries.  If they're anything like my students here, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they changed the world.

 

Happy Holidays to you all!  May the coming year bring everything you wish for.

 

 

Leave a comment (by Friday—I hope you're not reading this on Christmas Day!) and I'll choose one person at random to receive your choice of (a) a copy of Once She Knew (ebook), or (b) a copy of my new Penguin e-special, An Open Book (to be released 12/31), or (c) if you don't have an e-reader, an Advanced Reader Copy of the first book in my new County Cork Mysteries, Buried in a Bog (to be released 2/5—but the ARC is available now!).