Interview with Holly Day / Ofelia Grand

Today Holly Day is visiting to tell us all about her recent release. Holly is the second pen name of my friend Ofelia Grand. This post should have gone up on the 19th December; but because my head was full of cold I clean forgot. Please give her a warm welcome today instead!

Hi Hollyfelia! Thanks so much for coming to the blog today! Can you tell us a little bit about the split personality you’ve got going on and how that came about?

Thank you for having me! 🥰

It started about two and a half years ago. This was in the middle of the covid lockdowns, and while I’m in Sweden, where we never had a real lockdown, we were still encouraged to work from home if we could, not see people unless we had to, and keep our distance. At the time, I was working on a mushroom farm, and we mainly delivered to restaurants, and since people were supposed to stay at home and not eat in restaurants, we more or less stopped production. The result was that I didn’t have a job. Nell Iris didn’t have a job, and the lovely A.L. Lester 😘 didn’t have a job, so we met up in the mornings and wrote together.

One sunny summer day, I was writing a Christmas story, and I was in a flow. When you’re in a flow, you don’t want to step away from the story, but I’d promised my girls that we were gonna go to the playground, so I grudgingly did my duty as a mother 😆 and went to the playground.

While there I kept thinking about how I could write holiday stories all year round and not grow bored. My mind started spinning, and by the time the girls were ready to go home, I had this idea of a pen name who wrote stories for different holidays. I would call her Holly Day since she was meant for holidays LOL

The whole one-story-a-month idea came later. I finished the Christmas story I was writing as Ofelia and wrote a Valentine story as Holly. Then I wrote a story for Kiss a Ginger Day, which is in January. And then I saw Extraterrestrial Abductions Day which is in March. I wrote all three stories in 2020 and realised I had one story a month in the first quarter of 2021 before we’d reached 2021, and that’s what set off the whole one-story-a-month thing. We’ll see if I can keep it up, I’m a little behind at the moment 😊 but so far we’ve had 24 stories in 24 months.

Let’s have some seasonal questions. How do you and your family usually celebrate the midwinter season? Do you decorate the house?

Normally, we’re celebrating with my mother at her house, but she passed away a month ago (#FuckCancer), so this year, we’re a little lost. And hubby will be away working from the 23rd to the 26th, so this year, it’ll only be me and the kids.

We decorate. We have a tree, a real tree, stars in our windows and lots of candles and such. I think it’s pretty similar to the rest of the western world.

What we do that most outside of Scandinavia don’t is celebrate Saint Lucy’s Day on December 13th. It’s a bit weird, not the celebration as such – I love celebrating Lucia – but that we do it. Sweden is one of the most secular countries in the world, only about 9% go to church, so it’s a bit strange that we’re celebrating an Italian saint.

Lucia is beautiful, and the children dress up in the schools, and parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles get to come to see them sing.

Like this:

What’s your favourite food at this time of year?

Ah… I’m a problematic person. Swedish Christmas food is very meat-based. We have ham, meatballs, jellied meats, sausages, and on, and on the list goes, and I’m a vegetarian. I’m also lactose intolerant and gluten intolerant, so there go most other foods. People love to have me over, promise 😆

But traditionally, we also have a lot of kale and Brussels sprouts and such, so that’s mostly what I eat. And I make some vegetarian stuff like mustard grilled Quorn that mimics the traditional Christmas food as well as some things that aren’t normally included in the holiday foods.

Most importantly this time of year isn’t the food – though many people would disagree with me on that – but the glögg. It’s a Scandinavian type of mulled wine, and I can be without most of the traditional holiday food, but not that 😊

Have you asked for anything in particular as a present this year? If you could, what would you want wrapped under the tree for you on Christmas morning?

Eh… no. I’m not really big on things. All I need is my phone, my laptop, and an internet connection, and I already have that.

I would like a huge greenhouse, but I have no good place for it in the garden. If I’m just gonna dream though, I’ll say a greenhouse. I have a small one and it’s not in a good place, so the plants I have in the garden usually grow better than the ones in the greenhouse 🙄

And chickens. I want more chickens. Chickens aren’t as much fun this time of year though when it’s cold and snowy, and the water keeps freezing, and so on, but you can never go wrong with chickens LOL

Tell us about your current release?

It’s a gay paranormal romance novella called Willow Road and it celebrates Crossword Puzzle Day on the 21st December. I wrote it for JMS Books Advent Calendar.

It’s an interspecies fated mates story. Jeremiah hasn’t left his house in over a decade. He went to a shifter school where he was bullied for being the only human, and a group of shifters locked him up in the school basement. Life never went back to normal after that.

Zeeb is the chief of police. When he learns that someone is putting ads in the paper encouraging people to ring Jeremiah’s door right next to the crossword puzzle they know he’s solving every day, he’s furious, and goes to talk to Jeremiah. That’s when he realises Jeremiah is his mate. The problem is that as a human Jeremiah has no idea he has a mate, and he wants nothing to do with shifters, and Zeeb can’t have a human mate since the other shifters wouldn’t respect him if he did. So… best not to let Jeremiah know he’s Zeeb’s mate, right? Well, it was the initial plan, but as we established above, initial plans sometimes change.

Willow Road

Jeremiah Pace hasn’t left his house in thirteen years. He doesn’t trust anyone, least of all shifters. School was a nightmare, and despite never interacting with anyone in the village, the bullying continues in his adult life. Someone is putting ads in the paper, encouraging people to drop by his house for one service or other, but Jeremiah never opens his door.

Zeeb Hemming is a lone wolf and the new chief of police. He’s only been in Stoneshade for six weeks when he learns about the ads and goes to knock on Jeremiah’s door. Not because of what today’s ad said, but to get to the bottom of what’s going on. Human or not, Jeremiah deserves to live life in peace. The moment Zeeb nears Jeremiah’s house, he knows he’s his mate. But he can’t have a human mate.

Jeremiah pleads with Zeeb not to stir anything up. Yes, the ads are bad, but things can always get worse. Zeeb is furious someone is mistreating his mate and is willing to skin anyone who has any connection to the ads alive. But how is he to convince Jeremiah to trust him when he talks to Zeeb through a gap in the window instead of opening the door to his house?

Buy links

Gay Paranormal Romance: 19,909 words

JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/WillowRoad

Excerpt:

The next day, Dolph and Boris were both missing when Zeeb walked through the door into the police station. Rica was sipping on a cup of coffee while leafing through a stack of papers.

“Morning.”

“Morning.” She gave him a quick smile before focusing on the stack of paper again.

“Where’s Dolph and Boris?”

She put down the paper she’d been reading and studied him. “They had to go out.”

“Had to go out?” Had to? It was seldom anyone had to in Stoneshade.

She tilted her head. “They were laughing about something in the paper, and then two minutes ago they had to go talk to someone.”

Zeeb gritted his teeth. “They were laughing.”

She pursed her lips. “They’re always laughing at things in the paper, aren’t they?”

Scanning the table, he spotted a folded paper underneath another stack of paper—almost as if they didn’t want him to see it. He grabbed it and quickly turned the pages.

“Jesus, what did the paper ever do to you?”

“It’s the ads. If there’s another ad, heads will roll.”

Rica gave him a confused look. “The ads?”

“They’re harassing that poor soul on Willow Road.”

The confusion deepened. “Which soul? Who is living on Willow Road?”

“Jeremiah Pace.”

She shook her head. “Never heard of.”

Zeeb sighed. Would the entire village play oblivious? “The human who went to school with Dolph.”

Her eyes widened. “They put a human in a school for shifters?”

Zeeb growled at her. “Thirteen years ago, there was some sort of attack on him, and he hasn’t left his house since. Don’t tell me you don’t know this.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t live here thirteen years ago.”

Freezing in mid-turn of a page, he looked at her. “You didn’t live here?”

She shook her head. “I’m not from here. I met Samuel while backpacking in Italy. I got to Venice on a train, one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions, and I knew the minute I set foot on the platform my mate was there. You know the spark?”

Zeeb shook his head. He hadn’t met his mate, so he didn’t know, but he’d heard enough stories to guess, and the dreamy look on her face made him smile.

“Anyway, his grandfather had a farm a few miles from here, and when he passed away, Samuel wanted to take over. It’ll be six years in April.”

Nodding, Zeeb turned another leaf of the paper. He’d been told Samuel had his cows in the pasture beyond the row houses during the summer months. “So, you don’t know anything about the ads?”

“This is the first I’ve ever heard of any ads.”

“And you never read the personal ads in the paper?”

She shook her head. “Can’t say I do.”

“You didn’t see the ad yesterday about full-service massages?”

Rica burst out laughing. “Full service? Don’t tell me we have a bordello in Stoneshade.” Then she sobered. “Shit, we don’t, do we? I worked a trafficking case while living in Phine. I couldn’t sleep for weeks.”

“No, not that I know of. It’s some idiot putting ads in the paper saying people can come to Willow Road 1 for full-service massages, but an agoraphobic guy named Jeremiah Pace lives on Willow Road 1.”

Rica’s eyes bled into the icy blue of her wolf, and Zeeb took a deep breath. Finally, someone who reacted the way they should. He found the page with the crossword and scanned the ads. “For fuck’s sake.”

“What?” Rica came to stand next to him, and he pointed at an ad. Committed sub looking for Dom. Loves role play. Please, be my carpenter and ring my doorbell. Willow Road 1. I’m waiting for you.

“Oh, God.”

“Was it what Dolph and Boris were laughing about?”

She breathed in deep and pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I didn’t look. They’re always laughing at something, and I needed to check some facts for the…” She gestured at the pile of papers next to her cup, and Zeeb nodded.

“Where is the newspaper office?”

“In town, I think.”

In Alderdon? It was a thirty-minute drive one way. “I’m going to talk to them. I’ll swing by Jeremiah’s first to make sure he’s okay, then I’ll go into town. I have my cell.”