*Book Blitz* Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks by Amy Gettinger @AmyGettinger @lolasblogtours

This is my stop during the book blitz for Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks by Amy Gettinger. This book blitz is organized by Lola’s Blog Tours. The book blitz runs from 7 till 20 December. See the tour schedule here.

Get this book for free!
From 9 till 10 December and from 15 till 17 December the book will be free on Amazon!

Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks (Alice Chronicles #2)
By Amy Gettinger
Genre: Chick-lit/ Women’s Fiction/ Sweet Romance
Age category: Adult
Release Date: November 18, 2017

Blurb:
It’s Christmas in Orange County, California, and the mall is full of purple peacock decorations, large and small. Department store employee Aracely Martinez has a goofy Cuban friend, Quito (who’s awfully cute in his mall Santa suit), distracting her from her night-shift restocking job. But Aracely has a long-held secret, which her supervisor at the store, Jacob Thinnes, is holding over her head to make her do his bidding.

Which is too much bidding.

Enter Aracely’s oldest friends: Alice Chalmers, Georgette Jones and Julie Bowers. The group’s “Venus Warrior” bond from the 2003 production of The Venus Monologues at Garden Beach Community College is still very strong, and these women are ready, willing, and able to kick some butt to help Aracely out of her difficult bind. Join Aracely’s “Three Wise Women” plus her ever-present trickster hunk, Quito, in one adventure after another as they work against the odds to give Aracely a fabulous, nearly impossible Christmas gift: the life of her dreams.

You can find Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks on Goodreads

You can buy Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks here on Amazon
From 9 till 10 December and from 15 till 17 December the book will be free!

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About the Author:
Amy Gettinger, once a community college ESL instructor, now writes novels and reader’s theater plays and coaches Reader’s Theater for Seniors. She’s a member of the Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective. She lives in Orange County, California underneath a eucalyptus windrow full of parrots and crows. For fun, she walks the local beach cliff path with her husband and dogs–and thinks up perfectly ridiculous characters and crimes to write about.

You can find and contact Amy Gettinger here:
– Blog
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Goodreads
– Amazon

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Giveaway

There is a tour wide giveaway for the book blitz of Deck The Malls in Purple Peacocks. These are the prizes you can win:
– a peacock Christmas tree ornament (US Only)
– an e-copy of Roll with the Punches by Amy Gettinger (International)
– an e-copy of Alice in Monologue Land by Amy Gettinger (International)
– an e-copy of Pranks and Poodles by Amy Gettinger (International)

For a chance to win, enter the rafflecopter below:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Excerpt:

She sat on a bench in the middle of the crowded mall while Alice went to buy some drinks. Right across from the bench, there was a line a mile long of children waiting for a turn on Santa’s lap. The Santa setup was an extra-wide chair right in front of a little wooden house labeled NORTH POLE. Next to that sat a big, wooden sleigh, painted magenta, with a giant bag of wrapped “presents” in it. But instead of being pulled by eight reindeer, this year, the beast in front of the sleigh was a huge purple peacock, complete with sparkly magenta and purple feather plumes topping a giant tail fan.

Something about this did not quite mesh with the picture of Santa that Aracely had from her past few years in this country, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Then she heard it—the thing that changed her day completely. Cameras were flashing and children were whining, yet through all that, Aracely heard a voice she recognized.

“Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!” a young, skinny Santa with quite dark eyes, a baritone voice and a familiar Spanish accent said to a little girl on his lap. “What do snowmen eat for breakfast? Huh? Do you know? Hah. They eat Frosted Flakes. Funny, huh?”

With mixed feelings, Aracely got up and made her way through about a million shoppers, cutting through the line of mothers and strollers, heading for the velvet rope Santa sat behind. Was that him? The guy who’d quit working when she had, maybe in solidarity with her? The guy whose handsome face, crappy grammar and air of wannabe-Paco Rabanne she’d missed all month? The guy who had probably let slip the biggest secret of her life to the absolute worst person who had used the information to try to destroy her? She stopped in her trajectory towards Quito and froze at the thought. What was she thinking? Thank God she hadn’t gotten all the way to his lap.

His lap?

Why was she thinking about his lap? She, an adult, was considering sitting on a lap? Imagine, hard-working, adult Aracely Martinez sitting on anyone’s lap, even at Christmas. Even if he did call her Miss Awesome Socks and have a nice, smooth, sexy voice. Ack! Sexy? No way. No way. No … but his eyes were so mischievous.

Santa saw her and waved. She smiled, waved back, and then ran, well, slowly swam through a vast sea of screaming children, skinny teenagers, and over-spent mothers, back to the bench and Alice’s seated form.

“Let’s go, Alice.” Aracely tugged on Alice’s coat sleeve.

Alice handed Aracely a hot tea in a Starbucks cup. “Sit down, Miss Pneumonia. You need a drink before we head home. Well, I do.”

Aracely dropped onto the bench. “Please. I want to go home now. I don’t feel well.”

***

Alice Chalmers turned and examined Aracely’s face. “Uh-oh. Bright eyes, pink cheeks. You look feverish. Let me gather my stuff.”

They started off weaving their way through the shoppers down the mall toward the car, but suddenly a nearly-Paco Rabanne breeze and a lot of noise churned up behind them, and Santa himself clunked up in his too-big boots to park himself in front of them. Alice stopped in her tracks as she recognized Quito Barzaga under Santa’s fat tummy, which was askew and sagging over his belt. The long, fuzzy, red coat sleeves enveloped Quito’s hands completely.

Alice smothered a laugh.

“Señorita Awesome Socks!” he said to Aracely. Mumbling through his white beard, he tried to straighten his fur-trimmed cap. “And Ms. Chalmers! How are you?”

“Good.” Alice bit her lip, but gave up and laughed out loud.

Aracely narrowed her eyes at the baggy Santa. “How can you be Santa? You’re too young and too small.”

Quito looked wounded. “I’m not small! I have muscles.” He held up his arms to flex them, dropping the too-long Santa pant legs, which bagged in red mountains around his ankles.

The crowd of shoppers gathering around them laughed hysterically.

“Aracely. I gotta get back to work. Can I see you later?” he begged, grabbing his pants up again.

“You told everyone my secret,” she hissed, deathly aware of being the center of attention in a huge shopping mall and of having a conversation that could get her noticed by authorities and deported.

He puffed up taller. “I did not.”

“Like hell.” Aracely stalked away.

Alice quickly wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to Quito. “Quito. Nice to see you. This is my address. Come over soon, Quito. Today, if you have time. This girl has pneumonia, and she’s lost both her jobs. She needs a friend.” Then she turned and sprinted after Aracely.

Quito called to their retreating forms, “‘Pneumollia’? Is that bad? Cancer? Hey, Aracely, come back! You know I’m your number one Stan …