Publisher: Harlequin Special Edition (HarperCollins)
Genre: Holiday Contemporary Romance
Formats: $6.50 mass market paperback | $4.99 ebook
Released: Oct. 24, 2023
Melissa Senate has written over 40 novels, including her 2001 debut, See Jane Date, which was made into a TV movie and still runs on Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. She has also written under the pen name Meg Maxwell and has ghostwritten for celebrities and New York Times bestsellers. As Maxwell, her novels have been published in 25 countries. From the late 1980s until 2000, she was a fiction editor in New York City, including at Harlequin Books and 17th Street Productions / Alloy Entertainment. Currently, she is a freelance editor for publishing houses, a copywriter, a ghostwriter, and an author.
In Triplets under the Tree, rancher Hutch Dawson is desperate for a nanny for his six-month-old triplets. His longtime rival, Savannah, has secretly always loved Hutch and offers to be his nanny in exchange for the chance to experience life with a family. It’s a Christmas miracle Hutch can’t refuse. Juggling diapers, feedings, and story time, Hutch and Savannah prove they’re better partners than rivals. And, maybe, the five of them can be a forever family for Christmas.
When asked what contributed to the book landing on the Publishers Marketplace bestseller list, Senate said: “I wish I knew! Triplets under the Tree is part of my long-running miniseries, Dawsons Family Ranch for Harlequin Special Edition. … There are definitely popular tropes and salable hooks for category romance in that, but all my novels for Harlequin Special Edition feature these—the Western setting, ranchers, babies, etc. The title and the cover and back cover blurb were definitely a winning package (those babies are adorable!), but I often have babies solo on the cover, and I write a holiday-themed romance every year.”
Senate advised other authors to “write the story that you want to tell, the one that wakes them up in the middle of the night to jot down ideas or work out a plot point. … I think that no matter what that story is about, whether there are popular tropes or hooks or not, a story always seems to have universal appeal because it comes straight out of an author’s heart.”
Senate added, “To be honest, it’s probably a good thing I don’t know [what made this novel a bestseller]. Because maybe I’d try a little too hard to include this or that instead of focusing on telling the story. All I know is that after 21 years as a published author and 40-plus books, this is the first time a novel of mine has appeared on a bestseller list, and boy did it make my day.”
Emily Wenstrom is a freelance writer and platforming expert and writes award-winning speculative fiction for teens and adults as E. J. Wenstrom.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
