Why Raine English Wrote TIN ANGEL

I’m so excited to welcome Raine English to my blog today to share why she wrote her Christmas fairy tale, Tin Angel:

For many people, Christmas is a joyous time of year. They spend it with family and friends. They share recipes and traditions. My family hangs one new ornament on the tree each Christmas Eve, then each of us picks out an ornament from the past and shares a memory.

For others, though, without family, the holidays can be lonely and depressing, especially for the elderly. It’s that way for my mom. Even though she’s not alone—she has her two daughters and a granddaughter—she hasn’t been able to move on since my dad’s death. And that was over twenty years ago. She never remarried or even dated. It was as if her life ended along with his. I often wonder how different things would have been if she’d allowed herself to love again.

That thought triggered Tin Angel, a Christmas fairy tale about second chances. It’s the story of a lonely old woman whose wish to relive her life is granted by a magical angel tree topper, but she’s given just ten days to find love or her Christmas miracle will end.

The idea for the tree topper came from a beautiful tin angel my parents purchased right after they married. The angel was wrapped with gold foil, and its wings were a delicate wire mesh. As a child, placing that angel on top of the Christmas tree was my favorite part of trimming the tree.

We had that angel up until a few years ago, when it fell apart due to old age. We tried to fix it, but the more we handled it, the more damage was done. We tried to replace it but weren’t able to find anything even close to it, so we went settled on a star.

Last year, while working on the book, my daughter gave me a handmade angel she’d found in a specialty shop. It’s not a tree topper, but it resembles the one I loved so much. I have it on the desk in my office where I look at it every day. I believe it helped me work through the rough spot I’d hit while writing Tin Angel. To me, it was a symbol to cherish the past but live in the present, and that, after all, is the theme of the book.

About Tin Angel:

Alice Hart is a lonely old woman who believes true love happens only once in a lifetime. When the angel Christmas tree topper given to her by the fiancé she lost sixty years ago comes to life, Alice’s wish to be young again is granted, but she’s given only ten days to find true love or die unfulfilled. So she concocts a story that she’s Alice’s long lost niece, hoping to attract the attention of the handsome tenant renting her upstairs apartment.

Disillusioned by his experiences with high maintenance women, Jack Billings yearns to find an old-fashioned girl who is more interested in his heart than in material things. When his elderly landlady vanishes, her newly arrived niece, Ally, seems to hold the clues to her disappearance. Jack at first dismisses Ally as another material girl, but as he digs deeper into Alice’s mystery, he learns that Ally is more than what she seems and worries that the girl he’s coming to love might be a scam artist or worse.

I want to thank Raine for sharing her lovely story about why she wrote Tin Angel. And to thank her for visiting my blog today during the busy holiday season. Okay, peeps, do you have any special Christmas or your holiday of choice memorabilia that takes you back to a special moment? When you open the ornament boxes after a year, what do you rediscover? Remember, all comments are entered into my monthly drawing for an AnaBanana gift card ($25 value). Winner is announced first blog post of the new month!

Raine English is a bestselling author of contemporary and historical romances infused with magic and the paranormal. Her books have won many awards, including the Daphne du Maurier Award, and Tin Angel was a Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart® Finalist. She lives in New England with her family, two dogs, and a mischievous cat. She can be found on the web at www.RaineEnglish.com.

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