Megan Hart’s Magical (and Sexy!) Hanukkah Story

There are lots of Christmas romances on the shelves, but not many Hanukkah stories…let alone sexy tales with a fallen angel hero! But that’s just what bestselling author Megan Hart brings us in Newly Fallen, a new erotic short from Spice Briefs. Megan guest-blogs on Harlequin’s Paranormal Romance Blog to tell us more about why she wrote this magical holiday story…

by Megan Hart, author of Newly Fallen (Spice Briefs, December 2009)

Hi, everyone! Thanks for having me here today to talk about why I chose to write Newly Fallen with a Hanukkah holiday theme. The answer to that is pretty simple. Hanukkah’s my holiday. Christmas is lovely, don’t get me wrong, and I love to share it with friends and family who celebrate. But Hanukkah is what I celebrate, and although I know I’m far from the only person who does, you’d never know it by looking at the annual selection of holiday stories.

So, my decision was selfish, really. I wanted to write a holiday story that would please me. That’s the way it seems to work with me, most of the time. I write stories that I’d like to read, or that in some way fulfill a need within me. I think many writers create their stories for just that reason.

There’s another reason I set Newly Fallen at Hanukkah time rather than Christmas, and that’s because I had the phrase “entertaining angels” floating around in my head for a long time. I have an angel book I’ve been working on, but it’s on hold at the moment, and I wanted to somehow incorporate angels into a story. What better time than at Hanukkah, when we celebrate the miracle of light and miracles, in general?

For Lilly Gold, Zachariah is truly a miracle. When he shows up, naked in a circle of melted snow in her backyard during the worst blizzard in twenty years, she can see right away he’s special. She just doesn’t know how much. She knows it’s crazy to let him into her house – he could be a serial killer! But, remembering what her grandma always said about being kind to strangers, because you never know who you might be entertaining unawares, Lilly gives Zachariah her trust…and eventually, her heart. They only have eight nights, but that’s long enough for a miracle.

I enjoyed writing this story on so many levels – I got to write about Hanukkah, and angels, and love, and some steamy love scenes too! It was a lot of fun and utterly satisfying to use history and tradition in a modern story. I didn’t want to write a heavily religious story, but one thing many people don’t realize is that Hanukka is not “the Jewish Christmas.” Hanukkah is not, in fact, the major Jewish holiday, and isn’t really given the same religious or spiritual weight as Christmas. It has, however, become (much like Christmas!) more commercialized over the years, with an emphasis on gift giving and parties. I love gift giving! I love parties! But I wanted to focus on a story that wasn’t necessarily about those commercial aspects of the holiday, and more on the meaning behind it. Newly Fallen isn’t a parallel of the Hanukkah story about the Maccabees, but I did want to include some holiday traditions. Lilly and Zach eat latkes and spin the dreidel.

Newly Fallen’s not really a story about Hanukkah. It’s a story about trust and miracles and falling in love…but I thought Hanukkah was a nice background for all that to happen. I hope you do, too!

-M