As with most blog hops, you’ve got a chance to win! Just leave a comment about your favorite holiday family tradition<\/strong> below to enter, and the winner gets your choice of e-book of either A Christmas Bonus<\/em><\/strong> or Bound with a Bow<\/em><\/strong>. **UPDATE** 12\/17 winner selected: Anne Brooke. **<\/p>\n Read an excerpt<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Skeptical and straight-laced Blake isn’t so sure about attending a BDSM club’s Christmas Eve Party. He’s never gone in for anything kinky, but he wants to humor\u00a0Jay as they spend their first Christmas together. Despite his initial aversion, he’s powerfully drawn to the scene and eager to experiment. After Jay reveals a surprising secret from his past, he’s willing to play, and in the end Jay receives a gift more precious than he ever expected.\u00a0 Read an excerpt<\/a><\/p>\n So this year I was determined to write a Hanukkah story at last. I teamed up with good friend Shira Anthony<\/a> and we wrote a lovely story called Lighting the Way Home<\/em><\/strong> about Josh, a chef coming home to help out at his family restaurant for Hanukkah who learns that his old flame is not only back in town, but also staying with Josh’s parents. What started as a novella soon grew to a full novel length and we missed all the deadlines for holiday stories, so we decided to have Dreamspinner publish it later. But it gave us the opportunity to layer and sculpt the story and characters, rather than cutting it to meet deadlines and word-count limits.<\/p>\n Don’t forget to comment about your favorite holiday tradition–Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or non-religious tradition, for your chance to win one of my two holiday stories.<\/p>\n Thanks for stopping by! Visit my website<\/a>, or check out more Blog Hop participants.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happy Holidays to everyone stopping by for the Hop! This time of year is always a mix of emotions for me. We celebrate Hanukkah, so I always feel an observer of all the holiday excitement, but thankfully I don’t have to stress over the gift-giving. I live in California, where the weather means we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":2155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52],"tags":[419,114,424,423,400,420,418,912,923,426,922,177,27,421,422,407,260,425],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-event","tag-a-christmas-bonus","tag-bdsm","tag-beaches","tag-billionaires","tag-blog-hop","tag-bound-with-a-bow","tag-christmas","tag-contest","tag-em-lynley","tag-gay-romance","tag-giveaway","tag-hanukkah","tag-holidays","tag-kink","tag-kinky-christmas","tag-lighting-the-way-home","tag-shira-anthony","tag-tahiti"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/PurrfectlyGiftasticCBH_200x300.jpg?fit=200%2C300","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pzLgx-yJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"PurrfectlyGiftasticCBH_200x300\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/PurrfectlyGiftasticCBH_200x300.jpg?resize=200%2C300\")
<\/a>This time of year is always a mix of emotions for me. We celebrate Hanukkah, so I always feel an observer of all the holiday excitement, but thankfully I don’t have to stress over the gift-giving. I live in California, where the weather means we don’t really get into a White Christmas mood anyway!\u00a0 Oddly, I’ve written Christmas stories every year, and it’s only in 2012 I vowed to write a Hanukkah story. But more on that later.<\/p>\nA Present for You!<\/span><\/h2>\n
Fantasy Island Christmas?<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/A-Christmas-Bonus_medium.jpg?resize=200%2C300\" "\\"A")
<\/a>For me, then writing Christmas stories is an extra layer of fun and challenge, and I’ve managed to carry that through to the themes I write about. Last year I released A Christmas Bonus<\/em>, a novella about a Alec Compton, a Wall Street guy who has to follow a billionaire to a tropical island to close a big deal–or lose his job. Soon business turns to pleasure and they both get a Christmas bonus no one will forget–including you. But of course, I’m not a billionaire, nor do I spend my holidays on an exclusive island near Tahiti. But you can!<\/p>\nLike a Little Kink in Your Christmas?<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Bound](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Bound-with-a-Bow-200x300.jpg?resize=200%2C300\")
<\/a>Then my story “New Tricks” in the EPPIE Finalist Bound with a Bow<\/em> Anthology might be just the thing for you! It was my first (and so far only) foray into BDSM\u00a0 in a story. Like me, my main character is intrigued with the scene when he and his partner head to a local BDSM club for a demonstration party at the holidays. It was a stretch for me to write this story since it was very far out of my comfort zone. I challenged myself–and even took a flogging class and learned how to use a singletail as part of my research! And trust me, like my character Blake, I learned how much fun it can be to get kinky at Christmas.<\/p>\nAnd What About Hanukkah?<\/span><\/h2>\n