Santa Watching Grows Up with Trish Milburn–Win a Kindle copy of A Cowboy in Her Stocking

Last year, my sister sent me a link to Reindeer Cam, where you can watch Santa feed his reindeer. Really, there’s a dude who dresses as Santa Claus, and he comes out to feed the reindeer at certain times of the day. My little niece loved watching this. Be sure to check it out here: http://reindeercam.com/

It made me realize how different interactions with Santa and all things Christmas are now from when I was a kid. And it really doesn’t feel like all that long ago that I was a little kid anxiously awaiting Santa’s arrival. Still, it was the pre-Internet age when if you wanted to communicate your wishes to Santa, you had to write an actual letter and stick it in the mail or wait until he made an appearance at a local store.

And while today’s weather forecasters on Christmas Eve still show radar images of Santa flying by to encourage children to go to bed or risk Santa not stopping by their houses, the images are much better. When I think about the image of Santa on the radar when I was a kid, it was comical. Now, you can watch as NORAD tracks Santa’s journey around the world on Christmas Eve: http://www.noradsanta.org/. Such a thing was beyond my imagination when I still believed in Santa. Even prior to Santa’s journey, the site has a lot of fun things for kids (and even adults who love Christmas) to do such as games, Christmas music, and learning about holiday traditions from around the world. You can even click a link to see what the current world population is. As I write this, it’s 7.1-plus billion. You can actually see the ticker rolling as the world’s population goes up before your eyes.

Though Santa doesn’t officially make an appearance, I do have two Christmas stories out now, novellas that make for easy reading during this busy time of year. Swept Away for Christmas, a Starfish Shores Holiday is a collection of three novellas by MJ Fredrick, Tanya Michaels and me. And A Cowboy in Her Stocking is an e-novella from Harlequin American Romance and part of my ongoing Blue Falls, Texas series.

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