'Twas the Night Before New Year (Nights Before #1)

By Leigh Verrill-Rhys

New Year's Eve is a time for reflection and change. Jocelyn has more changes coming at her from all directions on this Portland, Maine winter day than she's faced since her mother's death. None of it bodes well for the junior editor's fledgling career when her fiancé abandons her to spend this holiday alone. If not for three unwise princes, a Viking warrior and a sinkhole...a short story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eres Books
• Release date: Dec 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301129393

Leigh Verrill-Rhys

A native of Paris Hill, Maine, Leigh spent most of her childhood and early adult years in San Francisco before emigrating to Wales to marry and raise three sons. She has been a writer, editor and lecturer for most of her life, intermingled with career portfolios in marketing, finance and community arts projects. Leigh's debut novel, WAIT A LONELY LIFETIME, was released in April 2012, published by Avalon Books. She is a member of the Authors Guild, a former member of the Welsh Academy and the Arts Forum and admits to running with scissors and leaping before she looks.Leigh also publishes as an entrepreneurial author with Eres (eresbooks.com). In 2012 and 2013, she released the romantic comedy novel by installment, NIGHTS BEFORE, in six episodes set in Portland Maine, beginning with TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE NEW YEAR, followed by stories set during celebrations and commemorations during the year, ending with TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS EVE. These six stories are available individually as ebooks. A print edition, NIGHTS BEFORE: THE NOVEL, is now available.For Leigh's third novel, SALSA DANCING WITH PTERODACTYLS, released in March 2014, she first had to learn how to spell ‘pterodactyl’! THIS CAN'T BE LOVE, her fourth novel and the second in the ‘Americans in Love’ in foreign places, is set in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival.An award-winning editor, she has published three volumes of women's autobiographical writing about their lives in Wales and during World War II: ON MY LIFE; PARACHUTES & PETTICOATS; and IANCS, CONSHIS a SPAM (all published by Honno Welsh Women's Press). She has released a collection of her mother's adventures on her travels during the Second World War, FOLLOWING THE TROOPS.Leigh’s first American history novel: PAVANE FOR MISS MARCHER, set in post-civil war Maine, inspired by her brother’s, Thomas, passion for American history, many historians, including Shelby Foote, Thomas A. Desjardin, Lochlainn Seabrook, Michael Shaara, her family’s part in the Battle for Little Round Top as well as authors Louisa May Alcott and Elswyth Thane.More about all of Leigh’s independently published novels are available through her website, leighverrillrhys.com and eresbooks.com, Smashwords, as well as KDP: Amazon and most independent online booksellers.

Book preview

‘Twas the Night Before New Year

A Short Story by

#1 in the Serial Novel

Nights Before

Leigh Verrill-Rhys

‘Twas the Night Before New Year

A short story by

Leigh Verrill-Rhys

#1 in the Serial Novel

Nights Before

Eres Logo

EresBooks.com

Published by Eres @ Smashwords

December 2012

1st Reprint December 2015

with minor corrections

Copyright 2012 & 2015 Leigh Verrill-Rhys

All Rights Reserved

Cover Design: Gwion Dulais

Cover Photography: Leigh Verrill-Rhys

snowflakes

Eres Books, License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Downloading this book from a 'free books' or pirate site is in breach of copyright law and the moral rights of the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

‘Twas the Night Before New Year is a work of fiction. The characters, descriptions, events and dialogues in this book are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, either living or dead, is coincidental.

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One

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‘Twas the night before New Year when all through the apartment, not a sound could be heard, not even the ice-maker. Jason had left on the red-eye flight and Jocelyn was lying all tumbled and weary, hardly slept a wink. Her flannel jammies were tangled around her knees and Jason’s ski cap hung on the footboard.

Good. He’s forgotten that as well as me. One big, no fun, New Year’s Eve for her. Nothing new about that.

Knowing her boyfriend didn’t want last year’s ski cap any more than he wanted last year’s girlfriend didn’t help her growing requirement for comfort eating. Sugar plums be damned, Jocelyn wanted marshmallow whip, chocolate fudge and brownies with whipped cream and sprinkles.

All the Christmas decorations were draped from one end of the apartment to the other, including the faux staircase that ended at the ceiling, with just enough room on the top step to secret away her stash of sinful. Right there, in plain view, where even Jason, though he had prided himself on discovering and confiscating all her treats and treasures for himself, no longer bothered to look, she kept an inconsequential cardboard box, the size and shape of an ordinary book mailer, with her name and address on one side and the logo of the publishing company on the other.

Within a week of their start-up relationship, Jason was impressed by the box, took it down, fondled it, rattled it, looked inside, laughed his head off at the tissue-wrapped contents and handed it back to her.

Jocelyn hugged the treasure, secreted away in the first outward sign of her career progress as an editor, kissed the painted face and put it back in the mailer where she kept whatever else made