12 Days of Christmas Guests day 9: Carmen DeSousa

If you've read me, you know that I believe in Happily Ever After. My guest today is Carmen DeSousa and she is living her happily ever after! Please join us as she tells us about her most memorable Christmas!  Don't forget to leave a comment for your chance to win at the end of my 12 Days of Christmas guests!  You might win one of Carmen's books! :)

A new man, a new life, and a gun for Christmas. Why not?

Like many kids, I come from a dysfunctional family. Unfortunately, my family is a tad bit more dysfunctional than other families. But since this is a Christmas story, I’ll save the tales of horror for Halloween. J

I did have a ray of light in my life, though. I had wonderful grandparents and an Uncle and Aunt who were wonderful role models. Still, many years sitting at my cousins’ Christmases, made me long for the family I never had.

So the weekend before Thanksgiving it wasn’t unusual for me to start feeling depressed. I was twenty-two, I’d been living on my own and dating the wrong men since I was seventeen, and my prospects weren’t looking good that I’d ever find my happily ever after. I’d prayed to God more nights than I could remember for Him to rescue me from the road I was travelling.

And then, a funny thing happened. My roommate wanted me to go out partying on Saturday night. I’d refused repeatedly. I had a final on Monday, and if I didn’t pull my grade up, I’d get kicked out of college. Needless to say, I crumbled under peer pressure and her comment that I might meet “Mr. Right.” Humph! At a bar? I don’t think so.

Well, we weren’t in the club two minutes when my friend ditched me—a normal occurrence. But as I’m standing in the doorway of the lounge, deciding whether to take my car and leave her, a man walks up. A man I’d met a couple of times since he was a friend of one of the losers I’d dated. In fact, I’d tried to hook him up with my friend.

The man says to me, “Hey, where’s your friend?” He’d taken her number a few weeks ago but never called her. LOL! I was secretly glad.

Ticked off at my friend, I planted my hands on my hips, allowed my mouth to fall in a subtle pout, and said as I pointed at my roommate, “Over there. What’s wrong with me?”

“Um, nothing,” he stuttered. “Wanna dance?”

On December 1^st, thirteen days later, this extremely interesting man, who was in the police academy to be a police officer, took me shopping to buy our first Christmas tree together. That night we went to a quaint Italian restaurant, and he asked me to marry him. Yes, you read correctly…thirteen days after our first “official” meeting.

The week before Christmas, this man started his new career as police officer, and for Christmas, he presented me with a Taurus .38 Special as a gift. Yes, I thought it was very romantic. And yes, he did get me other things, but that’s the gift I remember. He also bought me a diamond, but I made him take it back since we would need furniture for our new apartment he leased for us.

We moved into the new apartment on December 30^th and on December 31^st we eloped. We still kept the wedding plans for March 25^th and remarried in front of our friends and family, though.

This year on New Year’s Eve, we celebrate twenty-three years of marriage. Yes, I believe in fairytales and Christmas wishes, because I’m living one.

Merry Christmas, friends. Always remember to BELIEVE!

Carmen DeSousa

Carmen characterizes her stories as modern-day fairytales, as they overflow with romance, mystery, suspense, and of course, tragedy. After all, what would a fairytale be without a tragic event setting the stage? All of her novels are sensual, but not erotic, gripping but not graphic and will make you cry, gasp, laugh, love, and hope.

Her first two novels, She Belongs to Me and Land of the Noonday Sun, have reached bestseller status right alongside Nicholas Sparks, J.D. Robb, and other great authors. Her third novel, Entangled Dreams, just published September 2012.