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Hello Best Ever You Community!
I had a lovely conversation with author Wade Rouse, who is also known as Viola Shipman. We'd like to invite you to the watch the free replay if you didn't catch the show when it aired live. I asked him about all of his books and his writing process and more! He's one of my favorite authors and I'm sure he will become on of yours too, if he isn't already!!
Love, Elizabeth
His latest book is A Wish for Winter.
“I love this book—funny, perfect and wonderfully good. A not-to-be-missed delight.” —New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery
With echoes of classic Hollywood love stories like Serendipity and An Affair to Remember, Viola Shipman’s latest winter charmer following the USA TODAY bestseller The Secret of Snow is sure to tug on heartstrings and delight readers who love books about books, missed connections and the magic of Christmas.
Despite losing her parents in a tragic accident just before her fourteenth Christmas, Susan Norcross has had it better than most, with loving grandparents to raise her and a gang of quirky, devoted friends to support her. Now a successful bookstore owner in a tight-knit Michigan lakeside community, Susan is facing down forty—the same age as her mother when she died—and she can’t help but see everything she hasn’t achieved, including finding a love match of her own. To add to the pressure, everyone in her small town believes it’s Susan’s destiny to meet and marry a man dressed as Santa, just like her mother and grandmother before her. So it seems cosmically unfair that the man she makes an instant connection with at an annual Santa Run is lost in the crowd before she can get his name.
What follows is Susan and her friends’ hilarious and heartwarming search for the mystery Santa—covering twelve months of social media snafus, authors behaving badly and dating fails—as well as a poignant look at family, friendship and what defines a well-lived and well-loved life.
“Viola Shipman has written a captivating story for anyone whose memories run deep… This book keeps faith and hope alive!” —New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods
A Country Living Magazine Best Christmas Book to Read This Holiday Season!
More About Wade:
Wade Rouse is the USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly and internationally bestselling author of 15 books, including five memoirs and ten novels.
Wade’s books have been translated into 21 languages and have been bestsellers across the world. He chose his grandmother’s name, Viola Shipman, as a pen name to honor the working poor Ozarks woman whose sacrifices changed his family’s life and whose memory inspires his fiction.
2022 has been a busy year for Wade, who published three new books. They include The Edge of Summer (July), inspired by his grandmother’s buttons and button jars, which was an instant national and indie bestseller; Magic Season (May), his first memoir in a decade, about how the love of baseball was the only thing to bond him and his Ozarks father, which was a Barnes & Noble Father’s Day selection, a USA Today summer reading sports book selection, and a Best Book of Summer by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
His latest book is the winter/Christmas novel, A Wish for Winter, which published November 15, and has already been selected as a “Best Christmas Book” by Country Living Magazine, the November Meijer Book Club Pick and hailed by New York Times bestselling authors Susan Mallery (“I love this book—funny, perfect and wonderfully good!”) and Sherryl Woods, Sweet Magnolias (“Once again, Viola Shipman has written a captivating story for anyone whose memories of the past run deep and whose dreams for holiday magic seem just out of reach. This book keeps faith and hope alive!” With echoes of classic Hollywood love stories like Serendipity and An Affair to Remember, Shipman’s latest winter charmer following the USA TODAY bestseller The Secret of Snow is sure to tug on heartstrings and delight readers who love books about books, missed connections and the magic of Christmas.
A noted humorist and memoirist, Wade was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Humor (he lost to Tina Fey) and was named by Writer’s Digest as “The #2 Writer, Dead or Alive, We’d Like to Have Drinks With” (Wade was sandwiched between Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson).
Wade’s previous novels include his first holiday/winter book, The Secret of Snow, an instant national and indie bestseller that was named a Best Book by Country Living Magazine and Good Housekeeping; The Summer Cottage (a USA TODAY bestseller); The Clover Girls (a USA TODAY and #1 Great Lakes & Midwest Indie Bestseller); The Charm Bracelet (a 2017 Michigan Notable Book of the Year); The Hope Chest; The Recipe Box; and The Heirloom Garden.
Wade’s books have been selected multiple times as Must-Reads by NBC’s Today Show, featured in the Washington Post, USA Today and on Chelsea Lately and chosen three times as Indie Next Picks by the nation’s independent booksellers.
His writing has appeared in a diverse range of publications and media, including Coastal Living, Time, All Things Considered, People, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Salon, Forbes, Writer’s Digest and Publisher’s Weekly.
Wade earned his B.A. from Drury University and his master’s in journalism from Northwestern University. He divides his time between Saugatuck, Michigan, and Palm Springs, California, and is also an acclaimed writing teacher who has mentored numerous students to become published authors.
Wade hosts the popular Facebook Live literary happy hour, “Wine & Words with Wade,” every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. EST on the Viola Shipman author page where he talks writing, inspiration and hope, takes readers on tours of the places that inspire his novels, throws costumed monthly office parties, and welcomes bestselling authors and publishing insiders.
For more, please visit www.violashipman.com or www.waderouse.com