I’d like to start off by thanking the Authors Lounge for considering my book as part of your highlighted items on your platform. I appreciate it and feel honored to have my work chosen. My name is Maricela Rodriguez and here is a little bit about me. I hold a Bachelor of Science in Technology from the University of Houston and an Executive MBA from Texas Woman’s University. I’ve worked in the IT industry for over 17 years.

My background includes software quality assurance testing, IT Project Coordinating and most recently Technical Writing. I write technical/non-technical manuals, quick reference guides, maintain the departments main information technology website and create instructional videos on new application systems. While working on my MBA I became obsessed with Hallmark Christmas movies. I worked full time and held a full course load. The stress and pressure of all of that made me anxious.

I needed an outlet to forget about my hectic work and school schedule. I turned to YouTube and searched for movies that could help me relax. In my quest I found Hallmark Christmas movies. I watched hours of Hallmark Christmas movies and loved them. Even after my graduate program ended, I continued to watch them religiously.

After watching countless hours of YouTube movies, I started to rehearse a few different scenarios of Christmas movies I would like to watch in my head. The mental pictures of my own story lines began to slowly unfold into a novel. Then one day as I was sitting at my desk at work, I thought about how a Hallmark Christmas movie would look like if it played out like a Spanish telenovela. Then it hit me. What if I combined both genres?

I could add spicy characters to a small town warm and cozy scene. Four years later “Small Town Reporter: A Christmas Miracle” was birthed. The book is about a female reporter who lives in Lubbock Texas, a small city near migrant working communities. She’s driven, ambitious, and ready to take on a story that will land her a dream job on CNN, NBC, or CBS. The story begins with Mariclari reporting on two children who were abandoned at a train station.

Her journey takes her back to a small city known as Floydada Texas. Her once beloved hometown she and her family lived at during her cotton-picking working years. She becomes obsessed with finding the parents of those two children and realizes that not everything is what it looks like.

As luck would have it Mariclari stumbles upon answers while doing her investigation. In all of this she also finds herself in a whirlwind romance. The fact-finding mission takes a turn when the parents of the two abandoned children reach out to Mariclari. She does all of this while trying to keep her family and work drama under control. You’d have to get the book on Amazon to find out about all the juicy details.

Readers who love comedy, romance, and Christmas will love my book. Women, children, and I would gather to say some men (but not all) will get a good laugh. If anything, I want readers to get a good laugh at the exaggerated characters personalities and setting layouts.

Hollywood has categorized the typical Hallmark Christmas movie to look and feel a certain way. My main goal in writing this book is to get people to think outside the box. Eventually I hope to someday get my book animated as a YouTube movie. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about my book and why I wrote it.