It’s a welcome return of lovely Julia Roberts to Linda’s Book Bag today to celebrate her latest release with an extract from her Christmas novella, Christmas at Carol’s.

Julia has previously described how she balances a day job in television with writing here, and has explored that axiom, ‘write what you know’ here. I’ve also been fortunate to read Julia’s writing and have reviewed Life’s A Beach And Then… here and Time for a Short Story here.

Published by Ripped Books on 18th December 2017, Christmas at Carol’s is available for purchase here.

Christmas at Carol’s

An uplifting tale of people’s desire to help each other in the season of goodwill – a romantic comedy with a twist in the tale.

Carol fell in love with Wisteria Cottage the moment she laid eyes on it and moved in two weeks before Christmas hoping it would be start of a new more positive period in her life.

On her first night in her new home she discovers an old Christmas card to someone called Annie with a heart-breaking message inside from Jake.

Although she doesn’t know them, and despite being on a self-imposed dating break herself, Carol begins planning how she can bring them together, while her new neighbour, Sally, is attempting a bit of matchmaking of her own.

An Extract from Christmas at Carol’s

Normally I love days like this – bright blue skies, fluffy white clouds and the pale winter sun catching an occasional touch of frost causing it to sparkle like diamonds – but that’s when I’m viewing it from inside somewhere warm and toasty. Right now, my feet are like blocks of ice and I can feel my nose starting to drip. Instead of downing my paintbrush to retrieve my crumpled paper hanky from its position stuffed up the sleeve of my ancient fleece, I lazily run my sleeve across my dripping nose as the postman, who I’ve already decided would be just my type if I wasn’t on a dating break, pushes through my front gate, his arms full of brightly coloured envelopes. Great. My cheeks heat up with embarrassment so they are now the warmest part of my entire being. Maybe he didn’t notice.

‘Nice colour,’ he says.

For a moment, I think he means my cheeks before I realise he means the door.

‘By that I guess you mean, better than the hideous purple?’

‘I’m no expert, but it was a bit full-on. Where do you want these?’ he asks, wafting several letters in my direction. ‘On the step, seeing as you’ve got your hands full?’

‘Would you mind squeezing past me and popping them on the shelf in the hall? It’d be just my luck for a gust of wind to blow them on to the wet paint and I can’t face painting this door for a fourth time.’

‘No problem.’ He eases behind me, causing just a slight fluttering in my heart.

Off limits, at least for the time being, I remind myself as he heads back down the path.

‘And by the way, you’ve got a smudge of paint on your face from when you wiped your nose on your sleeve.’

Or make that for ever, I think, unless he has very low standards when it comes to personal habits, in which case I’m not interested anyway.

About Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts’ passion for writing began when, at the age of ten, after winning second prize in a short story-writing competition, she announced that she wanted to write a book. After a small gap of forty-seven years, and a career in the entertainment industry, Julia finally fulfilled her dream in 2013 when her first book, a memoir entitled One Hundred Lengths of the Pool, was published by Preface Publishing. Two weeks later she had the idea for her first novel, Life’s a Beach and Then…, book one in the Liberty Sands Trilogy, which was released in May 2015.

Julia still works full-time as a Presenter for the TV channel QVC, where she has recently celebrated her twenty-third anniversary.

She now lives in Ascot with her partner and occasionally one or other of her adult children and their respective cats.

You can follow Julia on Twitter @JuliaRobertsTV and visit her website. You’ll also find her on Facebook.

There’s more with these other bloggers too: