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May you see the wonder of Christmas through the eyes of a child. May the love of Christmas wrap your heart in peace and bring you joy. Wishing you and yours the many blessings of Christmas and a healthy, happy 2025. Enjoy! Kim

I’m very excited. My foray into a completely new genre comes out Monday Dec 2nd. I hope you’ll enjoy my Victorian Christmas romance.

Greyford Parker is eager to see his twin sister and her family, but is dreading the matchmaking marathon she has planned at the two week Christmas party at Castle Winterhaven. As the unexpected Duke of Wallingford he must find a bride. Preferably one with a large dowry to help bolster the estate’s finances his older brother dissipated before his death.

Lady Emmeline Spenser reluctantly agrees to attend the “husband hunting” party at Castle Winterhaven, but only if her dear cousin, Eleanor Brown, can also attend. Emmeline is worried suitors will love her large dowry more than they do her. Eleanor has a plan to ally her cousin’s fears. Do they dare try it?

The new book is available at your favorite e-tail location and for those of you in the Tuscaloosa, Alabama area I am having a book signing at the Midtown Barnes and Noble SATURDAY DECEMBER 14th from Noon to 4 PM. Hope you’ll stop buy to pick up an autographed copy and a hug from the author.

Universal Buy Link: https://mybook.to/MatchmakingMistletoe

At this time of year I am especially thankful for all the people who made this fourth book possible beginning with my sweet husband and my extraordinary editor. And I could not continue to find the right words to put on the page without some Divine inspiration guiding my fingers. I am thankful for all of the readers who follow me and ask for my next book. Your encouragement and support are a blessing to me. Wishing you and yours all the wonder and happiness of the season. Enjoy!

I have been watching in amazement as giant spiders weave their webs. It is art in the making. A spider’s creativity is a lot like an author’s. Only we weave with words instead of wispy-looking filaments.

The spider selects a place to start and leaps from the eave to a nearby post or branch hoping it is starting from a solid, sustainable place and that its single gossamer-like thread will hold. The author picks a place to begin and leaps forward with the thread of a plot she hopes will hold strong onto her characters to the end of her tale.

Once the all important first thread is securely anchored, the spider leaps to another nearby location forming the second side of its web. The author adds some secondary characters who travel intersecting paths to the main plot thread. The author must be careful. Strong characters may try to divert the main idea to be more about them masking the original story behind their overwhelming personalities.

The spider rests admiring its work. Suddenly the wind blows a stray leaf into the web destroying one side of it. Back to weaving for the arachnid. The author proudly gives the book to an early reader only to hear there are gaps in the timeline that must be corrected. The main character cannot be the criminal. They don’t even meet the victim until two chapters later.

The spider diligently rebuilds a complete circular web, then waits to be fed. And it waits. And waits. The author fixes the plot points, rereads it for the ninth time—this time out loud—trying to sand off all the rough edges and make the manuscript shine. Then she sends it to the editor. She picks up another work in progress to fiddle with until she hears about this one. And she waits. And waits.

The spider is rewarded when an insect becomes stuck in the sticky web. It rushes over to further encase it in more threads to savor later. The author gets the email. The one with a contract attached. She cries. It isn’t the first wonderful attachment she’s gotten. It doesn’t matter. Every single one is something special. She cries happy tears and prints out the contract to savor (and sign) sooner than later. 

The spider doesn’t have enough food to last the winter dormancy. It hopefully watches for more insects to come visiting. The author anxiously watches for the final galleys. It comes after rounds of tweaking and wordsmithing. Oh, the things the author learns in this complex process: tenses and persons; showing not telling; and punctuation rules you didn’t learn in school. After the final galleys are declared to be perfect, another wonderful email touting the worldwide release date for the new book baby. More happy tears as the author marks her calendar.

The spider’s web is filled with little packets of future feasts and more prey is captured every day. It is content. The author hopes the cover of the book and the all important blurb pull the discriminating reader closer and closer until they click the BUY NOW icon on the screen. They do! They even buy another of the author’s books listed on the same page. There is much rejoicing! The author smiles with tears in her eyes.

The spider is sated and the author is blessed. Thank you for all the smiles and tears you have given this author!

God, The world needs you now more than ever. Please be with the victims of Helene’s fury. Comfort those who have lost loved ones and give them peace in their mourning. Give those who survived the wind and water to be faced with overwhelming damage the strength and resilience to tackle the job of restoring their lives to some level of normalcy.

To the people who put their children to bed at night under skies lit up by missiles flying overhead give them the courage necessary to face another day and the passion to persevere until there can be peace.

Please, Lord, restore this nation to follow you in prayerful righteousness. I know we have shamefully and foolishly squandered what we have been given. Please grant us another chance and the conviction to follow the narrow path that leads to the truth and restores our country’s hope.

Lord, there are many sick of body, heart, and mind. Please ease their pain. Please bless new marriages and take special loving care of the new souls who enter this often dangerous and frightening world.

Thank you. AMEN!

My husband is a romantic to the core. Many years ago he surprised me with a three week trip to Europe on Valentine’s day. My first trip abroad. He celebrates with me every year the anniversary of our first impromptu date. (For details on that date check out my blog from August 2018 . https://www.spinningromance.com/2018/08/

He is wonderful to celebrate occasions large and small. But the most romantic thing he does almost daily. He always holds my hand when we’re walking together through parking lots, into offices, everyday while running errands. One day we were walking into the bank branch in our area at the same time as the manager and she came up behind us and said “I just love to see…people loving on one another.” I’ve always believed she kindly thought better of adding the adjective ‘old’ in front of people.

Once while headed to the Gulf coast we stopped for lunch at a taco place and were holding hands walking toward the building. A man in a utility uniform said, “Oh, look at the lovebirds.”

When we walk across the university campus where he used to work, our handholding invokes smiles from the coeds and some nudges for their male companions to pay attention.

Here’s our first official stroll together holding hands. I was glad he was holding tight because my new shoes were slick and he was moving fast. I was afraid I might fall.

This year we celebrate the fifth decade anniversary of that first date. It’s been a whole lot of handholding since then. It still makes me tingle with happiness and makes me feel truly loved.

Here’s wishing you someone to hold your hand through this sometimes dangerous world we live in!

The church in the tiny Wisconsin town where my nephew grew up was packed with people who loved him and he loved. Most of them were wearing purple—Adam’s favorite color. After the opening prayer and “Amazing Grace”, his brother-in-law honored Adam with words from Psalms and John. He was eulogized with an outpouring of love from his older brother, his two best friends, and his wife of thirteen years. They spoke of Adam’s enigmatic characteristics, his special smile, and not waiting to act on the love you feel. His twelve year old son shared the Viking Funeral Prayer and his eight year old daughter shared how much they both loved cats. Two of his former Sunday School teachers sang “On Eagle’s Wings.” The minister’s message paled in comparison to what went before him. 

My memories of Adam are predominantly from his childhood through to his high school graduation where he was the student speaker sporting an impressive Mohawk. He was a fearless child from the moment he began toddling. He didn’t walk. He ran—usually with something clutched in each hand so he didn’t have to hold yours. He scaled all the furniture to get to a higher place to see what the world looked like from there. I believe they now sell bookshelves with braces to hold them to the wall in honor of Adam. 

He was always curious, a constant thoughtful question asker. And he listened carefully to the answers. He pronounced he liked that “Valdi guy” after hearing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. He sent adults scrambling for the dictionary when he correctly identified reptiles as being oviparous. After wandering around Jefferson Davis’s White House of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama, he asked his Uncle Jim if that David guy was a friend of his? Why else could they just wander through his house? He was a voracious reader. Catcher in the Rye was his favorite book. He was a deep at heart Trekkie—like his father was. He had a wicked sense of humor that showed itself even when he was a very small child.  

Adam liked to stay in touch with his immediate family. He had text “debates” with his brothers about all kinds of random things including who was the best Starship Enterprise captain although I’m certain Adam’s was James Tiberius Kirk since he named his younger son after him. He would challenge his brothers, Luke and Matthew, to online video game contests even while he was hospitalized. The Wenzel boys were an unstoppable trio of mischief makers who loved each other dearly.  

He was good about checking in with his mom, Lisa, and regularly updating her on his family’s activities every week or ten days. While Adam was hospitalized, she practically lived at his bedside, but even then he would text her ‘good morning’ before she arrived. They maintained the affectionate mother-son bond throughout his life. 

I learned from his celebration speakers that while alcohol may have stolen Adam from us much too soon—he was so much more than a party guy. If you met him and were quick to judge him by his Star Trek tattoos, shaved head, beard with Salvador Dali-esque mustache, and piercings you would have missed the opportunity to know a fascinating man who loved his family and his friends with steadfast loyalty. He had amazing personal fortitude and drew from a well of strength deep within him. Adam had unsuspected compassion and empathy beneath his rough exterior. He wasn’t concerned about what people thought of how he looked. He wanted to connect on a deeper level. If you did make that connection, he didn’t hesitate to tell his friends how much he loved them and would stand by their side if they were in peril. Ever supportive. 

Adam was blessed to marry the love of his life, Lawrell, a soul mate who always knew she was loved. His children were his treasures. He loved being a father. His children knew he loved and believed in them. Early during his hospitalization, his wife wrote that he loved playing games with his kids, arbitrating their arguments over Monopoly, fixing their boo-boos, introducing them to Star Trek, was their favorite chef, the fixer of all broken things, and he acted as primary caregiver for their younger son with special needs. 

He was a competitive, skilled video gamer who played even in the hospital ICU to the amazement of the medical staff who had believed only a week earlier that he was in his last day of life. He recognized when medical interventions on his weaken body were finally exhausted and wrote on his communication board “Game Over.” 

I hope Adam has joined his father, Michael, and they are exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life, and new civilizations boldly going where no man has gone on a journey not limited by Playstation programming or the boundaries of this universe. I believe that would fit Adam’s definition of heavenly bliss. Rest in peace. Love Aunt Kim.

Nephew Update: Back in the ICU and still requiring lots of prayerful support. It has been, and will continue to be, a very roller coaster type healing process. It is a miracle he is still with us regardless of what happens next.

As you know, if you have been following me, my husband is a model railroad enthusiast and I am the primary kit construction engineer to bring the towns on his railroad to life. When I’m off being Kim Janine Ligon, Author of Suspenseful romances with happy-ever-afters, I don’t have as much time to devote to the growing HO layout in our basement. This year though I have focused on building for several reasons. First, I’m feeling guilty although the scenery is more for everyone else. My husband has them all laid out in his head. Second, I’m not getting younger and those tiny pieces that need to be painted, glued and decorated require good eyesight and a steady hand.

What you may not know if you’re not a model railroader is that you have to have all the buildings created for an area before you can add grass, streets, and trees. You have to be able to sit them down into the plaster just like the foundation of a real building is in the dirt. So I have focused on completing a whole section of buildings which are those in the picture above.

Then I went around the corner to the middle section of the layout and did a few of those buildings as seen here.

And I’m no where close to done yet. There are dozens of kits needing paint, construction, interiors, and signage before all three sections of the layout is complete. I’m having fun creating interiors and making my own decals for the signs throughout our towns.

If you saw a closeup of the building in the first section with the white turret the sign says ‘Whistler’s’. It was never in Southern Illinois as my readers know. It’s on the square in Lansdale, Wisconsin. My husband said I got to create it twice, once in print and once in 3D. I enjoyed doing both!

In the world outside there is so much that is ugly, unkind, and basically unexplainable it is nice to retreat to the basement where our world has no graffiti, no litter, no nasty attitudes, and no political intrigue. It only has the very best of everything you can imagine and you can hear a train headed down the track ready to take you somewhere exciting and wonderful. All aboard!