Behind the Scenes: My Secret Snowflake

I’m excited to take you behind the scenes of My Secret Snowflake. When I write a book, I like to write in the season in which it is set, and I really enjoyed doing all the holiday activities when writing My Secret Snowflake in December 2023.

Here’s the blurb:

Burned by love, Sebastian has sworn to remain single, but he may have just met his match.
Sebastian: I admit I’m attracted to my co-worker Iris—and not just because she was wearing glowing cat paw underwear. But even though she’s breached my first line of defense, I’m set in my Grinch ways. I need to prove myself—and dating my co-worker is definitely forbidden.

Iris is the Secret Snowflake for her perfect man—who is definitely not Sebastian.
Iris: No more naughty heartthrobs for me. Catching my rock star ex cheating cured me. All I’m asking Santa for is my work bonus and a nice—dare I say boring?—guy. And that’s my Secret Snowflake recipient: Ernest. My plan: Befriend Sebastian, Ernest’s colleague, to figure out the perfect gift for Ernest to spark his interest. But now our company has been hacked, and secrets abound. I’m working around the clock to figure out who and why—with our aloof, but oh-so-attractive company counsel, Sebastian—before I get a stocking filled with coal for the holidays. The last thing I should also be trying to decipher is him. But then I get blamed.

When things are definitely not what they seem, sometimes it takes the light of the holidays to reveal the clues to love.

Take a behind the scenes tour of New York City during the holiday season

Of course, I visited the Rockefeller tree, where Iris and Sebastian go ice skating as part of a company holiday party.

Thank you to Kat Paige for this photo from 2025.

But I also went with a friend to see all the decorations in Dyker Heights. I highly recommend checking that neighborhood out if you’re in New York City for the holidays. Here are some photos from Dyker Heights in 2023:

This is the house of the woman who started it all:

Here are some other houses:

And me:

One house created a green wonderland, which you can see live in this YouTube video.

But of course, there’s also hot chocolate at a cafe:

Sebastian and Iris also shop for Secret Snowflake gifts for their colleagues and then end the day with Iris’s sister’s party at her family’s bar in the Lower East Side. Iris organizes a scavenger hunt for her sister’s guests, and one of the clue answers is this metal stag. Here’s a photo of the one in real life: