Melissa Maygrove

  This is my   Insecure Writers Support Group   post for August 2022. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month  are:  TaraTyler,   LisaBuie Collard,   LoniTownsend,   and  LeeLowery! Please stop by their blogs and say thank you .  💻💻💻💻💻 August 3rd question - When you set out to write a story, do you try to be more original or do you try to give readers what they want? Ooo. Good question! I do BOTH. I'm mindful of the expectations of the genre, but I don't limit myself to a narrow choice of plot scripts. I plan the basic story then I slide into panster-mode when it comes to writing the scenes.  As I draft, I pause to think things like 'what would she plausibly reply to that?' or 'what would he do if she did that?' I let the characters, their personalities, their backstories, and the social mores of the setting year guide me . Sometimes the scene goes in a different direction than I envisioned, and that can ripple into the overall plot. My books get good review

It always makes me smile when a friend launches a new book, especially someone who's as nice of a guy as Nick Wilford.  Reckoning, part 3 of the Black & White Trilogy, is set for release in September. We'll have to wait till then for the story, but we get to see the cover today! Cover design: germancreative The time has come for those who perpetrated wrongdoing and suffering on the land of Loretania to face their judgement. Lord Histender and the other members of the deposed Reformers’ Government are in jail awaiting trial for keeping that country in a state of disease-ridden deprivation, alongside other heinous crimes.   Wellesbury Noon and Ezmerelda Dontible, the kind and benevolent new rulers of Harmonia, are looking forward to seeing justice finally being done. But nothing is that simple. Lunkin, the psychotic former Chief Scientist, has one more trick up his sleeve and is wreaking havoc even from behind bars. Soon, Loretanians who have come to make a new life in Harmon

  This is my   Insecure Writers Support Group   post for July 2022. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month  are:  J Lenni Dorner,   Janet Alcorn,   PJ Colando,   Jenni Enzor,   and  Diane Burton! Please stop by their blogs and say thank you .  💻💻💻💻💻 July 6th Question: If you could live in any book world, which one would you choose. The first book that came to mind was Little House on the Prairie . I grew up watching that show, and I've always felt like I was born a century too late. Funny thing, though...I recently found the series on a free streaming channel and watched it again. Life back then wasn't as rosy as I remember. Books often romanticize times gone by. Regardless of what we tell ourselves, each setting and decade has its challenges. I would choose a simpler, farm-like life in the 1800s...i f I could take along some penicillin and my A/C. ### Small win last month... A couple of weeks after releasing Fool's Iron , I put my western series into KU. I had resi

Fellow author Caroline Clemmons is hosting me on her blog today and posting an  excerpt from  Fool's Iron . We'd love it if you'd stop by.

I am over at the  Cowboy Kisses blog  today.  I'd love it if you'd stop by!   @CowboyKisses1 on Twitter Cowboy Kisses on  Facebook  

Today is release day for book 3 in the Forging America series!  Fool's Iron  is a story of betrayal and redeeming love set in 1853. The way to a man’s heart is through his ego. The way to a woman’s heart is through her child. Debutante Magdalene Rose Meriwether’s fall from grace and banishment from Indianapolis society left her shocked and heartbroken—and hellbent on salvaging what was left of her life. Her problems can be solved if she finds a husband in time. But, most important of all, her unborn child won’t suffer the life of a bastard. Railroad construction worker Edgar Grimes spent his formative years raising his brother and holding a crumbling family together. He lost his mother to abuse, lost the only woman who’d ever favored him to another man, and lost his simple-minded brother to a life of crime. The same booze that washed his father into ruin is Edgar’s means of coping with a life not much worth living—until he fin