BLOG TOUR
One Christmas Star – Mandy Baggot
About the book
Emily Parker is set to have the worst Christmas ever!
Her flatmate's moved out, she's closed her heart to love and she's been put in charge of the school original Christmas show – with zero musical ability.
Disgraced superstar, Ray Stone is in desperate need of a quick PR turnaround. Waking up from a drunken stupor to a class of ten-year-olds snapping pics and Emily looking at him was not what he had in mind.
Ray needs Emily's help to delete the photos, and she needs his with the show. As they learn to work together they may just open their hearts to more than a second chance...
About the author
Mandy Baggot is an international bestselling and award-winning romance writer. The winner of the Innovation in Romantic Fiction award at the UK's Festival of Romance, her romantic comedy novel, One Wish in Manhattan, was also shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists' Association Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year award in 2016. Mandy's books have so far been translated into German, Italian, Czech and Hungarian. Mandy loves the Greek island of Corfu, white wine, country music and handbags. Also a singer, she has taken part in ITV1's Who Dares Sings and The X-Factor. Mandy is a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association and the Society of Authors and lives near Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK with her husband and two daughters.
Follow Mandy:
Facebook: @mandybaggotauthor
Twitter: @mandybaggot
Pre-order links:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2YzheXp
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2Jw0zji
Google Play: https://bit.ly/2Ov8IZO
iBooks: https://apple.co/2JwJeqo
Follow Aria
Website: www.ariafiction.com
Twitter: @aria_fiction
Facebook: @ariafiction
Instagram: @ariafiction
EXTRACT
‘Miss Parker!’
Oh God, it was Susan’s voice at louder than Twickenham on match day level. She looked up from her phone to see the headteacher glaring at her from the platform at the front of the room. The front of the room was only ten rows of chairs away because it really wasn’t Twickenham.
‘Sorry, Susan… I mean, Mrs Clark.’
‘As I was saying… budgets.’ A breath was sucked in, the blouson briefly relaxed. ‘I’m afraid that budgets are at the very heart of a modern school. Gone are the times when we could just order a hundred rubbers because they were on offer… or extraordinarily pretty or… they smelled nice or…’ Susan took a breath. ‘Or they smelled nice.’
‘I’m glad we’re talking about erasers and not glue,’ Dennis commented under his breath. ‘Or Sharpies. I heard from my friend at the secondary school that permanent markers are the thing to sniff now.’
‘Gosh, really,’ Emily whispered with a shake of her head.
‘I, as your Head,’ Susan continued, ‘have to account for every single item we spend on. Not every ream of paper. Every sheet of paper. Even the toilet paper.’
‘God,’ Dennis gasped. ‘I should have brought more sweets. This is dire. This is like a good drama going a season too far… and changing the setting to Pluto.’
Emily couldn’t disagree. They were already working against such stringent budgets already. She had decided, after Halloween, that anything festive she bought for her class she would pay for herself. Jonah was always telling her what a soft touch she was. Her parents were always telling her she would get nowhere with compassion and everywhere with a confidence-building seminar. And Simon was no longer here to have her back…
Susan cleared her throat. ‘I am going to be doing a thorough inventory of your classrooms this week and, I’m afraid, I will have to start considering extremely carefully any requests for new supplies of anything until after…’ The pause seemed to elongate forever. ‘February.’
‘What?!’ Emily didn’t realise she had exclaimed so loudly or that she had got off her chair to do it either. Maybe she didn’t need those confidence-building classes after all…
‘Do you have something you wish to say, Miss Parker?’ Susan asked, clicking the pen she was holding on, then off, then on again.
She should stay quiet. She should toe the line. For all Dennis’s talk about a good TV show going bad, he hadn’t stood up and, in fact, was currently shrinking down into his adult chair, folding his body into his Parka coat like it was camouflage.
‘I just wanted to say,’ Emily began, before hesitating. What did she want to say? That counting every sheet of paper was madness? That no one could work properly if they were worried how fast they were running down the ink in the pens?
‘I just wanted to say,’ she pushed on, ‘that I know how hard it is to juggle everything you have to juggle, Susan… Mrs Clark. And I’m sure none of us envy your position… not the position of headmistress, I mean, I am positive almost all of us envy that.’ She swallowed. This wasn’t coming out right at all. ‘Well, perhaps envy isn’t quite the right word but… anyway… it’s Christmas coming. The children have worked really hard already this school year. I don’t think in my very humble opinion obviously, that we should cut any more corners… in this term in particular.’ Emily could practically hear the tension fizzing off the skin of her colleagues. A quick side-eye to Mrs Linda Rossiter (Year Three) gave her nothing but the sight of a tightly wound, greying bun. The woman’s face was trained on her lap, hands clasped together as if in prayer. No one was going to agree with her. They were all too good at sitting on the fence. Worried they could be stage-managed out of the school and back on the job market.
‘Why this term in particular?’ Susan queried sharply.
No comments:
Post a Comment