About the Book
Book: Lovelight Gleams: The Christmas Lights Collection 2025
Authors: Laina Turner, Cathe Swanson, Jaycee Weaver, Chautona Havig
Genre: Christian Christmas Romance
Release Date: October 7, 2025
Being selected to enter into The Christmas Lights Showcase is an honor—and a commitment! Entrants pay a hefty fee and spend months designing and executing a Christmas display to knock all others out of the running. With only four competitors selected out of thousands of entrants, competition is stiff! Cozy up and join us as one judge, four locales, a few million lights, and more than a little Christmas romance bring it all together.
A Christmas Glow-Up by Cathe Swanson
One small town, two big dreams… and a spark that could change everything.
When determined conference center manager Gwen Smith enters a national Christmas decorating contest, she’s betting her career on turning Golden Valley into a holiday showstopper—complete with a ghost town glow-up and a Wild West reenactment. But her carefully laid plans are upended by Seth Morgan, a sharp but skeptical marketing consultant who’s just inherited a stake in the center—and isn’t afraid to challenge Gwen every step of the way.
Faith, Food, and Festive Lights by Laina Turner
Mariah Butters is determined to put her beloved Cottontail Junction on the culinary map—even if it’s just a tiny Montana town. When a Christmas lights contest offers a shot at a national ad campaign, Pearl rallies the local restaurant owners for a festive showdown that could change everything. Enter Tom Roarke—a steady, kind-hearted rancher who offers his time, his tools, and maybe even his heart. As they string lights and spark ideas, Pearl and Tom find their friendship heating up. Can they light up the town, win the contest, and discover that the best kind of love is the one that shines brightest at Christmas?
Just One More Christmas by Jaycee Weaver
Who says insta-love never lasts?
When Cole and Amy met forty-one years ago and married a month later, who could have imagined the beautiful life that would follow? This Christmas obsessed Christian couple has made it their life’s mission to spread the love of Christ and all Christmas represents to others who need it most. And this year, the lights contest that brought them together has the potential to share their love of Christmas with even more people if they can only take their Christmas décor to the next level.
The Sparkle of New Cheltenham by Chautona Havig
Her dream job just became her worst nightmare.
Kindra Hatheway walked off her graduation platform and into the perfect position with the perfect advertising company. That’s where her perfect life ended. Now one of her supervisors has put her in for a fluff job (a Christmas decorating contest? Really?) to get her out of the way. Add to that all the travel, the pressure from one of her colleagues to pick New Cheltenham as the winner, and the fact that she keeps flirting with her supervisor, and this Christmas is looking… complicated.
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About the Author
Laina Turner: Laina Turner writes sweet, feel-good romances that always have a HEA. When she’s not writing she’s a college professor teaching business and English. Through all her career choices, she has continued to have a passion for writing stemming from childhood, where, as an only child, she developed a vivid imagination.
Cathe Swanson: Cathe writes books with creative plots and engaging characters of all ages, to glorify God and entertain and bless readers. Her heartwarming stories will make you laugh and make you cry—and then make you laugh again.
Jaycee Weaver: When New Mexico resident and USA Today bestselling author Jaycee Weaver isn’t reading or writing, she enjoys dates with her brainiac hubby, crafting, pretending she’s a nature photographer, and making her daughters cringe. She appreciates humorous books with banter, characters who overcome adversity, and guaranteed happy endings, so that’s what she writes.
Chautona Havig: Chautona Havig lives in an oxymoron, escapes into imaginary worlds that look startlingly similar to ours, and writes the stories that emerge. An irrepressible optimist, Chautona sees everything through a kaleidoscope of It’s a Wonderful Life sprinkled with fairy tales. Find her at chautona.com and say howdy—if you can remember how to spell her name.
More from Chautona
Ten years ago, Cathe Swanson and I started chatting about maybe doing a “Christmas collection” with a couple of other authors. Never did we imagine that this Christmas Lights Collection would still be going strong! Over the years we’ve had many authors as part of our collection—Sarah Monzon, Kari Trumbo, Vikki Kestell (year one!), Toni Shiloh, Teresa Tysinger, and… well, you get the gist! Lots of authors. Jaycee Weaver has been a part of the collection for… five now? Where has the time gone and all those cliches?
For the tenth annual collection, we decided to mix things up a bit. In this year’s collection, one character is going to visit all the locations in the other books for a semi-interconnected experience. The idea I for each book to stand alone as usual, but if you read them in the order they appear in the collection, your experience will be a bit like our “judge,” Kindra Hatheway.
Kindra is the “judge” (shocker, right?) for a Christmas lights & decorating contest that four towns/businesses are entering. She’s young, out of her depth, and has a lot of pressure on her for something she thinks of as a “fluff job.” Follow her from Rockland to Hawaii (or… well, that’d be spoilers), to Montana, over to New Mexico… and more!
This year’s authors bring their unique perspectives to the story. You’ll get more of Jaycee Weaver’s Sinclair family, but this time we get to see the parents’ romance unfold both in past and present. Insta-love sometimes lasts a lifetime! Cathe Swanson always brings quirky characters, humor, and all in a delightful community. Meet Pearl and Tom as Laina Turner brings faith and love into the lights of Cottontail Junction. And yep. Chautona (that’s me!) is taking you back to see the sparkle the residents of New Cheltenham has added to their town just for the contest.
In each book, you’ll find characters full of faith, hope, and of course, love. Thank you from all of the Lovelight Gleams authors. We wish you a very merry and peace-filled Christmas.
Interview with the Author
- What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?
That’s a tough one. I’m going to go with Christmas novel just to help narrow it down. Even that is tough, but I’m going to go with one from Cathe Swanson, who is one of our collection authors. Her book, Snow Angels, is a hilarious, multi-generational novel set in Chicago at a community center helping disadvantaged people. Between the elderly folks and their quirks, Lisa the “know it all” who learns all she doesn’t know, and Pete the “not-so-homeless” guy, well… it’s a riot. I was reading it as she wrote it, and one night while working at a friend’s house, I had to go into their garage to finish a scene because I was laughing so hard I feared waking them up!
- How do you select the names of your characters?
I have a few guidelines for myself. I stick to them pretty well, but sometimes you need to mix it up, too.
- I try to use names that are familiar to people and usually with normal spelling variants. I mix that up occasionally (Lewsi, anyone?) but usually there’s a strong reason for that.
- I work from Social Security top 100 names for the year they were born, although I don’t limit myself completely.
- Unless I’m working with a family who uses all Bible names or family names passed down etc.
However, this is getting harder and harder. I have so many books and characters (and my characters show up in other books all the time) that I have used most common names.
- What was your hardest scene to write?
There’s a “birth scene” in this book that isn’t from the mother’s or the father’s perspective. I thought that would make things easier. It did not. Not at all. Additionally, I had a really hard time making conflict reasonable in this one. I tended to either lean way too intense or not intense enough. So annoying.
- If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?
Write short stories. Great, heaping gobs of them. Like one or two a week from the day I realized I wanted to be a writer. They could be burned for all I care. But writing them would’ve been good practice for me.
- What comes first, the plot or characters?
That depends on the book. For example, The Sparkle of New Cheltenham definitely began with the plot. I knew that we had the contest and that I’d have to come up with someone who would judge it. So 100% plot there. But on the other hand, the first book in the series, The Ghosts of New Cheltenham, it’s a toss up between both. I kind of got the idea for them at the same time. It’s nearly a chicken/egg situation. I knew I wanted to write about a plasmaphobe—a guy afraid of ghosts. But ghost stuff isn’t my cup of tea, and it doesn’t really fit with Christian fiction. But then I thought of New Cheltenham… and the Dickensian feel of the village. And what if there was one of those Dickensian ghost stories—a storytelling contest! And… from there it just flowed. Pretty sure Mitchell came first, but the plot was right on his heels if he did.
In completely different books, such as Past Forward, the characters definitely came first. I created Willow, and when I got to her backstory, created her mother (who really is a lot like my father). Once I had them and that backstory, the plot unfolded nicely.
Then there’s Operation Posthaste where the plot 100% came first. I read about someone finding a bag of undelivered mail from the early 1940s in their attic, and the plot just erupted!
Blog Stops
Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, October 22
Texas Book-aholic, October 23
Vicky Sluiter, October 24
For Him and My Family, October 25
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, October 26
Where Crisis & Christ Collide, October 27
She Lives to Read, October 28
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, October 29
Stories By Gina, October 30 (Author Interview)
The Mommies Reviews, October 30
Blossoms and Blessings, October 31
Simple Harvest Reads, November 1 (Author Interview)
Holly’s Book Corner, November 2
Artistic Nobody, November 3 (Author Interview)
Mary Hake, November 3
Fiction Book Lover, November 4 (Author Interview)
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Chautona is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon Gift Card and a copy of the book!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
https://promosimple.com/ps/3d282/lovelight-gleams-celebration-tour-giveaway