Winter round up.

Hello all!

Well, it’s December and I hope you’re all starting to feel festive. But if you’re looking for a bit of summer sunshine, The Honey Farm on the Hill is still sitting on the shelves in Tesco’s or can be ordered from Amazon or ask your independent book shop to order it in for you. There’s more sunshine to come in my new book, Spanish sunshine this time. Sunset over the Cherry Orchard which is ready to go and I absolutely love the cover for it, as much as I love the book itself. It’s my favourite so far! That’ll be out in the summer 2018 and you can pre-order it now.

Having finished writing Sunset Over The Cherry Orchard, it was time for me to start a new book and in November I set off on my next adventure. This time I wanted to write about something wintery and so my favourite travelling companion, Katie Fforde, and me set off for snowy Lapland.

We flew to Stockholm and then on to Kiruna in the north of Sweden where we were greeted by snow, lots of snow! We had the most fantastic few days up there in a place called Reindeer Lodge. We stayed in one of five cabins in the middle of the snowy woods. There was a corral of reindeer that we helped feed, a wood fired sauna, a cabin where we ate our meals and two outside loos! Trips to the loo in the night as the snow fell like glitter, covering over any tracks we’d made earlier were an adventure all on their own and one I will remember forever!

We went out on a photography safari, built a fire and had fika (coffee and cake) by a river. We rode across the ice road, over a frozen lake, pulled on a reindeer hide covered sleigh by a snow mobile. I rode a sleigh, towed by a reindeer, at speed! And we learnt all about the Sami way of life, the traditions of the reindeer herders. We also travelled through the woods pulled by huskies and ate lunch in a lavu, a wigwam like tent, with a fire in the middle and smoke curling up and escaping through the roof. We visited the Ice Hotel and drank cold gins from ice carved glasses. In the evenings, we ate slow cooked moose, arctic char, a bit like brown trout and salted and smoked reindeer. And at the end of the day, after dinner, our lovely hosts would light the sauna for us and then leave and we would be alone, in the woods, with the reindeer, knowing that the moose were roaming in the woods round and about. And still the snow fell like glitter. It was magical. On our final day, the snow plough came and dug us out and it was with real sadness that we left reindeer lodge. I could have stayed forever!

So now, I’m writing my winter Swedish Lapland book and preparing for Christmas with the family. Yesterday we went on the great Thomas Family Christmas tree hunt to the local Christmas tree farm and if you want to see how we got on, pop over to my facebook author page https://www.facebook.com/JoThomasAuthor/

In the meantime, here’s a few pictures from snowy Lapland to give a little taste of what’s to come! And remember at this busy old time of year to give yourself the gift of time, time to take a break and read a really good book! I’m going to be diving into The Christmas Stocking and other stories by @KatieFforde.

Merry Christmas!

xxx