Holiday Quartet box set

Bells ring and choirs sing. People bustle with happiness and joy. Calories pile up while everyone gathers to chat with friends and relatives. What’s more exciting than all the holidays in December?

But sometimes we need a break from the expectations and the wonderment. A great way to revive our spirits is by reading a story to ground us in the true meaning of the season.

This collection features four stories infused with happiness, love, and joy. From a small business owner discovering his first fruitcake and a homeless man finding a permanent home to a blacksmith’s wish to propose to his childhood friend and a gay man relocating to a small town, each story is a journey of self-discovery leading to happily ever after.

Contains the stories:

Blame It on the Fruitcake: Motorcycle shop owner Sam McGuire falls for the fruitcake his loft neighbor’s grandma makes as well as the man himself. But will handsome, educated, personable Jay Merriweather be attracted to a grease jockey like Sam?

The Orpheum Miracle: The son of crack addicts who abandoned him as a child, Mick has found refuge in the historic Orpheum Theater. But when the new owner takes over, will Mick be pushed out on the street or taken into the owner’s heart?

Making the Holidays Happy Again: Butch has been manning the forge in Old Town and fantasizing over his best friend Jimmy since they were in high school. Does Jimmy feel the same way about Butch? Does Butch want to push their friendship and find out?

Heart of the Holidays: When Silicon Valley programmer Dan Lassiter moves to a small California town, he doesn’t expect to find love. After Rick Reardon opens his bakery across the street, Dan may change his mind.

Published:
Publisher: JMS Books (https://www.jms-books.com/)
Editors:
JM Snyder
Cover Artists:
Written Ink Designs
Genres:
contemporary, holiday, MM, romance
Tags:
apothecary, bakery, bicycle shop, blacksmith, contemporary, elderly companion, family, fruitcake, gay romance, grandmother, homeless, LGBTQ+, MM, motorcycle mechanic, movie scout, movie theater, Northern California, novella, second chance, second chance at love, second chance love, small town romance, software designer, Thanksgiving
Excerpt:

EXCERPT FROM "Blame It on the Fruitcake"

    • “Hi there. Did I hear you say you’re the neighbor from down the hall?” At my nod, the new guy added, “Let’s get you a drink and introduce you to a few people.”

 

    • Now here was my kinda man. Like me, on the street, nobody’d probably guess he was gay. Only not like me, since I looked like the bike mechanic I am, he looked like one of the bankers I’d talked to last week. He was a couple inches shorter than me, with conservative-cut hair, blue eyes, and a trustworthy face. He looked like he cared whether I was having a good time or not.

 

    • “Uh, sure. That’d be great.”

 

READ MORE
    • I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to act. If I wasn’t bullshitting with friends, my words usually dried up. Fortunately it hadn’t happened at the bank when I was presenting my case for a loan to a guy who looked like him, or I’d have been fucked.

 

    • So I let this guy lead me around, introducing me, telling me something about everyone, and letting them know I lived at the other end of the hall.

 

    • At one point he stared at me with a funny twinkle in his eyes and asked, “You’re not by any chance McGuire’s Bikes, are you?”

 

    • I managed to nod. I was stunned. It wasn’t like I was famous or anything.

 

    • He beamed. “No shit! Wow! I wanted to meet you after the Reno Roadshow. I loved your Loose and Wild Rainbow. Great bike.”

 

    • Ah, yes, L&WR, the winner of the Roadshow competition. I’d tricked out the bike for a buddy of mine who died of AIDS. He wanted the bike to be a memorial, but so far we couldn’t locate a cemetery or burial place where we could put his ashes and his machine. We were finding that burial laws by the ocean and in the mountains were pretty archaic and exclusive. If we wanted a bike cut into marble, no problem. But Harry hadn’t been a stone monument sorta guy.

 

    • “Uh, thanks. Yeah, it was a special kinda project,” I mumbled.

 

    • Even with the music, the shouting people, and the yelling when a couple were caught under the mistletoe, the guy still heard me.

 

    • He put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. “Yeah, I know. He’ll be missed.”

 

    • Now my head was reeling. What the fuck? He knew Big Harry?

 

    • “I met Harry when I was a kid hanging around my buddy’s dad’s garage,” he said.

 

    • “Where’d you grow up?” I asked. After I’d had a couple drinks, the pumping music, the blinking Christmas lights, and the strangers laughing and yelling were making the night surreal. This handsome, clean-cut guy had known Harry? I must be dreaming. He and Harry looked light years apart.

 

    • “Little town outside Denver in the foothills. Deer Creek. You probably heard Harry talk about it. Not the place you want to grow up gay.” His laugh was short and dismissive.

 

    • “Yeah, so Harry always said.” I shifted to my other foot and looked down at the red plastic cup of punch. This was the last one for me tonight. I still hadn’t found the fruitcake. “So you go to bike shows?”

 

    • “Yup. The best part of my job.” He shrugged with a happy grin.

 

    • “Yeah? What do you do?”

 

    • We were bumped and separated by an incoming group. They exclaimed over my new friend, one of the women smothering him with kisses. He glowed with embarrassment and shot me a rueful glance. As the sea parted us, I drifted away looking for the food table and hoped it held enough fruitcake that I could steal some and not out myself as a thief.

 

    • I’d eaten three pieces and was busy wrapping up a fourth in napkins to take with me when my new nameless friend walked up and stood next to me.

 

    • “You like the fruitcake, huh?” He was smiling like I’d really pleased him.

 

    • “Yeah. I’d never tasted it until I got some with the invitation.”

 

    He gave me a tiny smile and shook his head, his eyes twinkling as if laughing at some cosmic joke.

 

COLLAPSE

Making the Holidays Happy Again

Blacksmith Butch has secretly loved his best friend, science nerd Jimmy, since grade school. Now their shops in Old Town Seven Winds, California, are only doors from each other.

They’re about to turn thirty, and Butch refuses to wait another day to make a decision: propose to Jimmy and start the family he’s always wanted or forget his dream to avoid risking their friendship. Why can’t the choice be as easy as creating decorative ironwork in his forge?

Published:
Publisher: JMS Books (https://www.jms-books.com/)
Editors:
JM Snyder
Cover Artists:
Written Ink Designs
Genres:
contemporary, holiday, MM, romance
Tags:
apothecary, blacksmith, college graduate, contemporary, gay romance, MM, non-series title, novella, Sierra Nevada foothills
Excerpt:

“OKAY, WHAT’S up?” I sat on the bench with my back against the bricks at Joe’s Pub. “You’ve been pissed since last week.”

My best friend and secret love of my life, Jimmy, glared but didn’t answer. We’d known each other for so long that I waited him out like usual. I crossed my pumped arms and sat back, smelling my sweat-soaked T-shirt in the AC blowing around us.

The past summer in Seven Winds, once a gold rush town in California’s northern Sierra Nevada mountains and now a tourist trap, had been brutal. A record number of days over one hundred degrees had turned a lot of the shop owners into snarling dogs.

As the resident blacksmith, I took the heat as business as usual. So I was hot and sweaty? I was always hot and sweaty. The day I ain’t I’m either sick or dead.

I figured Jimmy’s problem was more than the heat, though. He’d been acting funny lately. Like he had something caught in his craw but he couldn’t spit it out.

Reviews:Sammie on Joyfully Jay wrote:

Butch has known he’s loved his best friend, Jimmy, since he was twelve years old. As the years have passed and now with them both on the cusp of thirty, Butch may still be in love, but he also knows he will never be good enough for his pal. First off, Jimmy is brilliant—college educated whereas Butch never even graduated high school. Secondly, Jimmy is gorgeous and deserves someone just as beautiful as he is and Butch thinks he’s not much to look at since he’s often covered in dirt and sweat as a byproduct of the forge he runs in his shop. Still, Butch dreams of telling Jimmy that he loves him, but is so afraid that the news may end their friendship, particularly since Butch can’t be sure Jimmy feels the same. So with Christmas approaching Butch must decide—stay silent and try to find someone who is more like him to make a life with or tell Jimmy everything and pray it doesn’t ruin the one good thing in his life.

Pat Henshaw delivers up a sweet love from afar holiday story in Making the Holidays Happy Again. With some definite lack of communication preventing our two main characters from realizing they both feel exactly the same, the story focuses on more of the business aspect of their relationship. Butch is so torn about whether to confess to Jimmy he loves him. And since Butch is just about the sweetest guy one could ever meet, that meant my heart really went out to him as he grapples with the idea of never having Jimmy for his own or, even worse, watching him fall in love with someone else. From the tender way Butch treats a young shy boy who comes into his shop, to the declaration that he will always be there to protect Jimmy no matter what, it is so easy to fall in love with this guy.

Making the Holidays Happy Again is a simple story and one that made me smile. The end is surprising, but lovely, and I definitely could stand to read more about these two and the people they interact with in their small town. It’s a great little holiday story sure to make the romantic in us all give a happy sigh.

Jessie on Jessie G Books wrote:

As Butch and Jimmy stare down the dreaded 3-0 they are both thinking the same thing: time to settle down, pitch that picket fence, and build a family. Both are successful businessmen, have a good group of friends, and only want each other to be happy. Between Butch’s belief that he’s not good enough for the more cerebral Jimmy and a possible romance between Jimmy and Butch’s new employee, it just doesn’t seem that they’ll find it together.

I do love a good friends-to-lovers romance, especially long-time friends who are oblivious to each other’s unrequited feelings. As a novella, I needed a little more focus on Butch and Jimmy together and less on the hectic holiday sales season which had taken over both their lives and this book. Also, the set up of the little boy who visits the forge had me thinking in one direction and while his outcome was adorable, I was kind of disappointed that he wasn’t rounding out that family picture.

Overall, another cute story from an author who never fails to bring the sweet feels.

Dan on Love Bytes wrote:

I’m a huge fan of anything ‘Henshaw’, and this short story continued that fandom.

My only complaint, as with all the stories I read every December in these Advent Calendars, is the length. I wanted more! Fitting the story into this short of a format seemed to rush the events just a little. I would have loved more filler in the middle!

The story had some interesting side characters going on that I would love to see in a future story. There is a young gay boy and his first boyfriend, there is the boy’s gay uncle and mean old homophobic grandmother for example. And don’t forget the new hot blacksmith that Butch hired. Story lines pop into my head with all of them. Let’s hope Ms. Henshaw gives them to us!

I recommend the story. If you’re a fan of Ms. Henshaw, or even if you don’t know her writing, give it a shot. Then immediately head on over to her Foothills Pride books. I’ll be waiting for more stories Henshaw.