I have to say I’m ever so slightly beside myself today. I have been so lucky to meet Milly Johnson on a couple of occasions (one of which you can read about here) and I’m thrilled that she will be one of the guest speakers next May at The Deepings Literary Festival where I live. I so enjoyed Milly’s book The Perfectly Imperfect Woman, reviewed here, that I am delighted and honoured to be starting the blog tour for her latest novel The Mother of all Christmases.

I have a smashing guest post from Milly all about three Christmas wishes.

Published by Simon and Schuster, The Mother of all Christmases is available for purchase through the links here.

The Mother of all Christmases

Eve Glace – co-owner of the theme park Winterworld – is having a baby and her due date is a perfectly timed 25th December. And she’s decided that she and her husband Jacquesshould renew their wedding vows with all the pomp that was missing the first time. But growing problems at Winterworld keep distracting them …

Annie Pandoro and her husband Joe own a small Christmas cracker factory, and are well set up and happy together despite life never blessing them with a much-wanted child. But when Annie finds that the changes happening to her body aren’t typical of the menopause but pregnancy, her joy is uncontainable.

Palma Collins has agreed to act as a surrogate, hoping the money will get her out of the gutter in which she finds herself. But when the couple she is helping split up, is she going to be left carrying a baby she never intended to keep?

Annie, Palma and Eve all meet at the ‘Christmas Pudding Club’, a new directive started by a forward-thinking young doctor to help mums-to-be mingle and share their pregnancy journeys. Will this group help each other to find love, contentment and peace as Christmas approaches?

Fairy Godmother Wishes

A Guest Post by Milly Johnson

If I were a Fairy Godmother these are the three wishes I’d grant.  (And you’ll excuse me from doing the obvious ‘world peace/curing disease’ ones – because they’d be top of all our lists but they’re a bit monotonous to read, so let’s pretend we have to ignore those.)

The first would be to grant my kids the love of reading.  They don’t read and it breaks my heart because I get SO much from books and I want them to have all the pleasure I’ve had from them too.  And you can forget all that rubbish the baby books tell you about exposing kids to literature when they are young to engender that love because there was no more ‘booky’ house than mine.  Books everywhere.  Even things that weren’t books were in the shape of books – fake-book tables, remote control holders, cupboards, tins… you name it.  And I read to them and they loved storytime… but pick up a book and read it themselves?  Nope.  And you can’t force them to do it because then you will REALLY put them off.  So one has to cajole gently and just hope that maybe one day they will turn to a book and fall into the pages.  And enjoy.

The second would be to wave my wand and get my mum and dad on a cruise.  I almost got my dad to book one once but at the 11^th hour, he threw down the brochure and said ‘I haven’t got a suit.’  ‘Dad, they sell black jackets in Asda for £30!’ I said.  But nope.  He won’t go.  And I think they’d love it.  So that’s my second wish – to make the amenable to the idea of a cruise.

Thirdly… I’d like to wave my wand over Steven Spielberg and make him think that he really should do a film about a place in England called York-Shire.  So then he would Google Yorkshire authors and lo and behold, my name would be right there at the top.  And he’d check me out, think ‘Hey, she looks like a likely candidate’, request my full catalogue, pore through them and realise that one of these books had wings.  Then he’d find my number, ring me up, ask me if I’d be up for trip to Hollywood to discuss terms, money and leading men (Liam Neeson – obviously) and would I like a bit part in this film in the same scene as the leading man (Er…what do you think, Steve?).  I couldn’t have all the powers of a flipping Fairy Godmother and not give myself a wish, come on!  Anyway.  Steven would make an absolute fortune out of the film so it would really be a worthwhile wish granted for him primarily.  Honest.

(All the very best with those three wishes Milly – though I think some might be easier to grant than others!)

About Milly Johnson

Milly Johnson was born, raised and still lives in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. As well as being a prolific author, she is also a copywriter for the greetings card industry, a joke-writer, a columnist, after dinner speaker, poet, BBC newspaper reviewer, and a sometimes BBC radio presenter.

She won the RoNA for Best Romantic Comedy Novel of 2014 and 2016 and the Yorkshire Society award for Arts and Culture 2015.

She writes about love, life, friendships and that little bit of the magic that sometimes crops up in real life. She likes owls, cats, meringues, handbags and literary gifts – but hates marzipan. She is very short.

You can follow Milly on Twitter @millyjohnson and Facebook. Milly has an excellent website too where you can sign up for her brilliant monthly newsletter with exclusive, news, offers and competitions.

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