We had the pleasure of chatting with USA Today bestselling author Jenny Holiday about her latest novel, A Princess For Christmas, which is a modern fairy tale just in time for Christmas about a tough New Yorker from the other side of the tracks who falls for a princess from the other side of the world.
Jenny talks about her new release, writing, book recommendations, what she’s working on next, and more!
Hi, Jenny! Tell us a bit about yourself!
I live in London, Ontario, Canada, which is about halfway between Detroit and Toronto. When I’m not working, I seem to spend most of my time with my neighbours (which is handy now that we’re in a pandemic) and tracking down middle-grade spy novels to feed my kid’s apparently insatiable appetite for them. I also enjoy trolling said child, who is an upstanding and earnest Griffyndor, with my Slytherin-ness. (He’s the one who made me take the sorting quiz—three times 🐍)
With the current state of the world, what are you doing to cope with the changes we’ve had to make with our day-to-day?
I’m lucky that I live in a place where cases have been low and, for the most part, the response to the virus has not been politicized. But of course it has been a tough year. My household, like a lot of others, has been extremely stressed as we’ve tried to juggle home schooling and careers against a backdrop of generalized anxiety and worry for fragile family members. As for how I’m coping, I don’t really have any magic strategies other than to try to remember that we are all doing the best we can and that there are better days ahead.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I think it was always in me. I’ve been making up stories in my head as long as I can remember. But I think it was formalized in fourth grade. I had a great teacher that year, and she gave us notebooks and started us writing stories. (Strangely, mine were all horror stories back then!)
Your new novel, A Princess For Christmas, is out on October 13th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Hallmark Christmas movie plus sexytimes.
Now tell us a little more! What can readers expect?
This book is a steamy romantic comedy that unapologetically plays with the tropes we know and love from Christmas movies: a fictional European monarchy, a Christmas ball, a kindly butler figure. But it also twists them: the Cinderella character in this story is the guy, aka Leo Ricci, a New York City cab driver struggling to make ends meet and to raise his little sister after the death of his parents. He runs into the Princess of Eldovia (as one does) after she’s done making a speech at the UN, is having some royal car trouble (as one does), and finds herself urgently in need of a ride.
What inspired you to write this novel?
Believe it or not, my dad. He’s a big fan of Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies. (I am too, but he loves them way more than I do.) We traditionally watch them together when I visit him for the holidays, and three years ago, after a marathon, I thought, “Hmm, I wonder if I could write one of these.” It turned out I could, but in keeping with the kinds of books I tend to write, mine is not as G-rated as those movies!
What challenges did you face while writing and how did you overcome them?
A Princess for Christmas is my twenty-third book, and not to sound like the grizzled Jedi master of romance novels, but some books just come a lot easier than others. This was an easy one, probably because it started almost as a whim. I gave myself permission to just let it be what it was, to lean into the soapy tropey-ness of it, and honestly it was so much fun to write. It wasn’t that I didn’t have challenges; I just think they were fewer and more easily solved than usual. The biggest one was probably trying to figure out how to let the book be soapy and tropey but still have it be an honest, emotional story, which is always important to me. So yes, she’s a princess; there’s a Christmas ball. But she’s also figuring out some serious stuff about her life, like who she is underneath the princess-ness and whether and how to balance what she really wants with the duty she has inherited.
A Princess For Christmas features so much cocoa, which we love! Do you have a recipe you can share with us?
The elaborate cocoa creations in A Princess for Christmas are pure fiction. My secret is I don’t like sweet drinks, so I’m not really a fan of cocoa! But if I did have a cocoa recipe, this would be it…
- Scoop some cocoa mix into a mug.
- Add hot water (or milk if you want to be fancy!)
- Look at the clock. Is it after noon? If yes, add a shot of whiskey to your mug. If no, too bad for you. (But also: no judgements here!)
- Enjoy.
With A Princess For Christmas obviously being set during the holidays, do you have any favourite holiday-themed books or movies?
My all-time favorite is Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. We watched this every year when I was growing up, and I’ve continued the tradition with my family. If you can get over the grainy picture and old-school production values, it has everything! That Muppet humor, a Bert and Ernie twist on The Gift of the Magi, great songs, and a gentle lesson on the power of belief over cynicism. But in the more traditional realm, I’m a fan of White Christmas, mostly for the Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen duet “Sisters,” which my sister and I are fond of parodying (and which, of course, is not a Christmas song!).
What is your writing process like?
Well, pre-pandemic, I used to work pretty solidly from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm when my son was at school. My process was always just “butt in chair.” I’m a big believer in the idea that creativity is not a mystical process so much as a habit. (Or at least that habit can make room for the mystical process to unfold.) I have a sign over my desk that says, “Motivation will die; let discipline take its place.” That said, I have learned over the past seven months that my process takes a big hit when I don’t have enough butt-in-chair hours, which I no longer do thanks to the constant presence of my beloved family!
What’s next for you?
I have a different rom-com series in progress that is set in a beach town on Lake Huron in Canada. The third book in that series, Sandcastle Beach, comes out in March and it’s about a theatre director and a bar owner whose buildings are next to each other and who have a longstanding rivalry. I also have another book set in the Princess for Christmas universe coming out fall 2021. Title TBA, but it’s about Max, Princess Marie’s abandoned fiancé.
Lastly, are you currently reading anything, and do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
My two favorite books of the year have been Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade and Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall. Spoiler Alert gives us a fanfic-writing heroine who doesn’t know that her online fandom bestie is actually the actor who plays the character she writes about. But at the same time, it’s about acceptance and finding a place to belong. Boyfriend Material is a rom-com about two men in a fake relationship for work reasons, so it has “we’re just pretending to be in love!” hijinks, but it’s also kind of a quietly devastating story about self-doubt and belonging. (Are you sensing a theme here? I guess 2020 has been my “rom-coms about belonging” year.)
