Countdown to Christmas by Dianna Houx @dollycas

Countdown to Christmas: A Sweet Romance Christmas Book
(Holiday Countdown Series)
by Dianna Houx

About Countdown to Christmas

Countdown to Christmas: A Sweet Romance Christmas Book (Holiday Countdown Series)
Holiday Romance
1st in Series
Setting – Small Rural Town
Independently Published (December 23, 2022)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 226 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8371024350
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BR4PDW72

Welcome to Winterwood… a small town with more heart than people!

When Grace is told it’s unlikely Granny will live to see another Christmas, she comes up with a unique plan to transform her home into a festive inn for the holidays, offering an authentic, old-fashioned Christmas experience to her guests. To make her plan a reality, Grace must convince her small-town community to get on board and help her bring her vision to life. Along the way, she meets a diverse group of people who all have their own issues and struggles, but they come together at the inn to celebrate the holiday season and find hope and joy in the midst of their challenges.

If you love, small-town, holiday romances, you’ll love Countdown to Christmas. A story about love, family traditions, and memories that last a lifetime.

About Dianna Houx

Dianna Houx is a wife, mother, reader, writer, and small-town girl at heart. She resides in a rural Missouri town of less than twenty-five hundred people with her husband and three boys in a late 1800s home they’ve been lovingly restoring when she isn’t busy working on her next book.

A romantic at heart, she believes in happily-ever-afters rooted in realism and, most importantly, humor!

She is the author of Forsaking the Dark, a paranormal romance, The Queen’s Revenge, a historical romance, and the Holiday Countdown Series, a sweet, small-town romance series.

Author Links

Website – diannahoux.com,
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/diannahoux,
GoodReads – Dianna Houx (Author of Countdown to Christmas) (goodreads.com)

Purchase Link – Amazon

Guest Post

The Life of an Innkeeper

by: Grace Parker from Countdown to Christmas

It was never my intention to become an innkeeper. Some people dream about running a bed and breakfast. I needed a house full of people; that was the easiest and least creepy way to accomplish that goal. Should I have given more thought to what I was signing up for before I set this plan into motion? Oh yeah, but if I’d done that, I probably would have talked myself out of it.

So how does one go about opening an inn in the middle of nowhere? Well, first, I had to solve the food problem. Since our town has a serious lack of restaurant options, and for some crazy reason I still don’t understand, what restaurants we do have are always closed on Sundays and Mondays; I needed a way to feed my guests. I mean, I wasn’t going to cook for them. One time, I managed to set a bowl of cereal on fire! And I’m not talking about a ‘hot cereal’ like oatmeal or cream of wheat. No, this was a bowl of regular cereal and milk. Let’s just say, that was an embarrassing way to meet the new fire chief. Which sadly did not lead to me meeting my future husband like it does in the romance books.

Anyway, I worked out a deal with the ladies who own the local diner and bakery, respectively, and I was in business. Next, I had to decorate the place. Since this was the biggest holiday of the year, people would have expectations, and the last thing I wanted to do was let people down. Which meant, my home had to be transformed into a winter wonderland. Now, this part, while stressful, was also the most fun. With a little help from some students from the local high school and a couple of guests who checked in early, it wasn’t long before the house looked like it belonged in a Thomas Kinkade painting. Or maybe on the cover of Christmas Monthly. Is that a thing? If it’s not, it totally should be.

Then came the least fun activity: the dreaded cleaning. Now, I’m no slouch in the cleaning department, but those bedrooms have sat empty for decades. Honestly, if it had been Halloween, instead of Christmas, I could have opened up a haunted house and led people through the dust-covered, spiderweb-infested, dark and dreary rooms, without hanging up a single decoration. Could have charged a pretty penny for it, too. Hmm, if only I had thought of that a couple of months ago…

Luckily, these old houses are extremely drafty, so it wasn’t too difficult to air out the rooms and get rid of that ‘musty’ smell. The spiderwebs, on the other hand, were scary; I mean, there were a lot of spiderwebs. An embarrassing amount of spiderwebs. And where there are spiderwebs, there are spiders. Did I mention I’m afraid of spiders? Removing them was a slow and tedious process. The slightest breeze from the open windows convinced me a spider had dropped down on me, intent on exacting revenge for ruining its home. I spent a lot of time running in circles, screaming, “Get it off,” before the rooms were finally clear.

Once the deep cleaning was done, I added freshly cleaned linens, firewood for the fireplaces (yes, I realize that’s probably not a good idea, but who can resist a fire on a cold, snowy day?), and gift baskets full of goodies from local businesses. I then stocked the bathrooms with clean towels and toiletries, gave the hallway a good cleaning, and considered that part done.

I was fortunate enough to have a couple of the guests come early, so I had time for a trial run before the rest of my guests arrived. I can honestly say I was in no way prepared for getting up at six thirty in the morning, preparing meals, or the sheer amount of cleaning I had to do in the common areas each day. Even though the meals were delivered, I still had to get them ‘plate ready,’ set out on the buffet, and clean up the mess afterward. It was a lot and something I had not accounted for in the price of the packages the guests booked and paid for.

When the guests arrived, it was chaotic. Before opening this inn, I was practically a recluse, so I had minimal experience dealing with people. I soon discovered that part of being a good host included playing the role of marriage counselor, referee for sibling spats, family bonding expert, and estranged family locator. To be fair, I took that last job on myself, and it could have backfired spectacularly, but everything worked out in the end.

The last part of this experience was finding ways to entertain everyone. As I mentioned, I live in the middle of nowhere, so entertainment was up to me. Since it was Christmas time, this was exponentially easier than it would have been at any other time of the year. I planned numerous Christmas-themed activities, including breakfast with Santa, Santa’s Village in the park, a parade, a small craft fair with carnival-style games, food vendors, and a live band, as well as the Christmas tree lighting ceremony, ice skating, and snowman building competitions, just to name a few!

Obviously, I had the advantage of my whole town working together to help me out. Most bed and breakfast owners probably don’t have that, so that’s another way my experience differs from theirs. All in all, I would say this was a successful endeavor. Would I recommend it? If the above sounds more fun than stressful, then sure!

If you’d like to learn more about my experience as a first-time innkeeper, you can find my story in Countdown to Christmas. You’ll meet me, my exciting guests, the townspeople who rode to my rescue, and my grandmother Josephine, the inspiration behind this endeavor. Thanks for reading!