We’re getting festive
here with some special peeps and today we get
Christmassy with
Liz Taylorson
Liz Taylorson
Hello Liz
Please tell us a
little about you and if you are a reader, Blogger or author.
I’m a debut author, my first novel The Little Church by the Sea is a
Christmas-set romantic women’s fiction novel and has just been published. Of
course, I’m a reader too and Christmas novels have a special place in my heart
– which is why I wrote one!
What is your
favourite Christmas memory?
I remember one frosty Christmas Eve as a child
walking home from church by the light of my Christingle candle (this was in the
1970s not the 1870s I should point out, though my children may attempt to
convince you otherwise …) and seeing what my Mum told me was the Christmas star
shining brightly above us in the sky. Magical. And then only a couple of years
ago walking the same path on Christmas Eve with my husband and children, seeing
a shooting star and remembering how I had watched the stars there with my own
parents forty years before.
And then there was the year I cooked my first
Christmas dinner and I let the sprout pan boil dry … I’ll never forget that
smell!
What is your
favourite Christmas food?
Not sprouts [shudder!].
Cinnamon toast is my favourite, another special
childhood memory. I must have been about 11 or 12 and I remember my parents
taking me to Nunnington Hall, a National Trust property, for an afternoon of
carols with hot chocolate and cinnamon toast in front of a blazing fire. You
can keep your mince pies and Christmas pudding – nothing tastes like Christmas
as much as cinnamon toast does. As soon as December arrives I’m warming up the
grill!
What is your
favourite Christmas song?
Sweet
Chiming Bells. It’s one of the traditional Sheffield Carols, the
verses have the same words as the carol While
Shepherds watched, but it has a cracking chorus to join in with (“Sweet
bells, sweet chiming Christmas bells … they cheer us on our heavenly way, sweet
chiming bells”.) If you’ve never heard it, I would recommend Kate Rusby’s
version (on her album Sweet Bells). It
appears in my novel too, it’s sung in the pub with mulled wine and mince pies,
as all the best Christmas songs should be.
What is your
favourite Christmas photo? Please tell us why
Well, I’ve got lots of lovely pictures of my
children when they were little opening and playing with Christmas presents …
but they didn’t want me to share them. It makes them cringe, apparently. So I’m going with a photograph that my
sister-in-law Angela Harrison took, which is part of the ideal Christmas in my
imagination. It’s taken at Robin Hood’s Bay a seaside village in Yorkshire not
entirely unlike the one where The Little
Church by the Sea is set. Robin Hood’s Bay has an annual Victorian
Christmas festival, and this little cottage, beautifully but simply decorated
for Christmas, is just like the one lived in by my heroine, Cass.
You can Liz at all these places...
Website/blog: https://www.liztaylorson.wordpress.com
Twitter:
@taylorson_liz
Facebook:
@TaylorsonLiz
And you can buy
The Little Church by the Sea at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Church-Sea-heart-warming-friendship-ebook/dp/B076B1DMB3
Please come back tomorrow to find out what makes Vivien Hampshire Christmas Christmassy
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