Christmas with Suzanne McLeod + Giveaway(INT)!

Posted by kara-karina@Nocturnal Book Reviews December 13, 2012

Christmas with Suzanne McLeod + Giveaway(INT)!

Genevieve's Christmas

Hello, and thank you to Karina for inviting me to tell you something about Genevieve’s Christmas!

Christmas is busy work-wise for Genny. There’s the perennial pixie problem which, with all the extra decorations about, reaches new highs. This year, the huge 32 foot topiary reindeer in Covent Garden, while not the pixies usual choice of material to animate (they prefer stone or metal) has presented a challenge they couldn’t resist.

Since the reindeer’s been up a gang of them has managed to animate and ride it around the market half-a-dozen times (all those sugary Christmas candies on offer, don’t help). Each time it’s taken Genny and three of her Spellcrackers witches the whole night to catch them all and put everything straight.

Then there are the gremlins – they love mechanical things, or rather love making mechanical things go wrong, so all the thousands of Christmas lights are like gremlin magnets.
This year Harrold’s windows have a Disney theme

which is proving as popular with the gremlins as the tourists and shoppers, so Genny and her witchy girls have been flying around on their broomsticks fixing all the little gremlin-inspired niggles.

Another magical creature that causes disruption around the holiday period is the fossegrim, the Norwegian water fae who lives in the fountains in Trafalgar Square. He gets a bit angsty around Christmas.

He was in love a dryad who died fighting with the resistance in World War II, and the Norwegians honoured her, and thanked Britain for their support, by gifting her tree to them after the war. So every new Christmas tree (this year is the 66th tree ) brings back sad memories for the fossegrim.

And once the carol singers start performing, he brings out his fiddle and, while he doesn’t mean to, he often ends up enchanting listeners into the fountains. Spellcrackers have the contract to make sure he doesn’t succeed or, if he does, that no one actually drowns.

But it’s not all work for Genny. She celebrates on three specific occasions over the holidays.

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The first is the Winter Solstice which is held by the witches, unsurprisingly enough on the Winter Solstice. There’s a communal feast of spit-roasted beef (and lots of other tasty noms), barrels of spiced wine, a spell creation contest and, at midnight, the ritual solstice ceremony to worship The Mother goddess. After which the Mid-Winter Fertility Rites are held for those witches who’ve won the golden ears of wheat in their Christmas crackers (which is Genny’s cue to make herself scarce!). The Solstice celebrations are held at Greenwich on the Meridian Line.

Genny’s second celebration is on Christmas Day when she has the full roast-turkey-with-all-the-trimmings lunch with Connie (Genny’s unofficial foster mum since Genny was fourteen, who is human), Katie (Genny’s sort of ‘little sister’), the rest of Katie’s family, a crowd of Connie’s other foster kids, past and present, and any homeless kids (and their families) at the Hartwell drop in centre that Connie runs.

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Her third ‘celebration’ is a more personal one. She attends the services at one of the Russian Orthodox Churches in London (held on the 6th – 7th January: the Russian Orthodox church celebrates Christmas according to the Julian Calendar, rather than the Gregorian Calendar, hence the January dates), in memory of her father and stepmother who arrived as Russian exiles in Britain in early 1917 after fleeing the Russian Revolution (they were hunted as vampires, and in danger as distant relatives of the Romanovs).

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And there is one other, secret visit that Genny makes at Dawn on Christmas morning. She visits Finsbury Park (which is a small public park not far from the Gherkin) to meet with her old friend, Moxy, and take her a huge box of what all unicorns love: chocolate covered cherries!

Moxy doesn’t usually give Genny anything in return, but then it’s not easy for unicorns to go gift buying. Getting mobbed by virgins or hounded by horn-hunters really takes the ‘merry’ out of Merry Christmas, so Moxy likes to keep a low profile. Not that Genny minds, after all, Moxy is the one who gave Genny the sword, Ascalon . *teases*

*What, you didn’t know unicorns go mad for choc covered cherries? *g*

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Thanks everyone for reading and I hope you all enjoyed Genevieve’s Christmas, and wishing you all a wonderful time over the holidays, however you celebrate.
And if you’d like to win one of my books (winner’s choice) leave a comment telling us what sweetie (candy, for all you in the US), or other food you go mad for at Christmas!

Suzanne has been a cocktail waitress, dance group roadie, and retail manager before becoming a writer. She was born in London (her favourite city and the home of Spellcrackers.com) and now lives on the (sometimes) sunny South Coast of England, about a mile away from the sea, with her husband, Mr Mc, and Bella the Hound.

Find Suzanne:

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