Melissa Maygrove

  This is my   Insecure Writers Support Group   post for February 2025. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month  are:  Joylene Nowell Butler, Louise Barbour, & Tyrean Martinson! Please stop by their blogs and say thank you .  💻💻💻💻💻 February 5 question - Is there a story or book you've written you wish you could go back and change? The short answer is no. Nothing significant about them, anyway. The first two novels I ever wrote got put aside for years. I debuted with #3 and published #4 as my second. By the time I went back to publish the first two (under a different pen name), they had gone through countless edits, and I hadn't seen them in years. I had become a better writer by then, and thanks to them being shelved for so long, I was able to be much more objective and polish them up quite a bit.  They don't get rave reviews like my westerns, but they are wayyy better than their original versions.  I'm lucky I had the self-awareness - and th...

  This is my   Insecure Writers Support Group   post for January 2025. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month  are:  Natalie Aguirre , Rebecca Douglass , Liza , & Beth Camp Please stop by their blogs and say thank you .  💻💻💻💻💻 I decided to skip the question of the month and give an update on my progress. I've done a dismal job of keeping up with my author planner. It's a good planner; I just need to make using it a habit.  Resolution #1 for 2025 is sit down at least once per month and make goal progress notes . From my 5-year Plan I only accomplished one goal from this list in 2024 -  change my work hours from full time to part time  - but I set myself up to meet another.  I've master-planned a new 16-book series. Whether I'll meet the goal of publishing 4+ books per year remains to be seen, but the groundwork has been laid, and all the books are set in and around the same fictional town (which will  reduce the amount of resear...

Today is STUFF YOUR KINDLE day, a one-day event with over 2,200 free romance books! It's the 10th anniversary of STUFF YOUR KINDLE. For one day only, Dec 26th, you can choose from over 2K romance titles and download them for FREE. These e-books are free to buy & keep , not just free for KU subscribers (so be sure to click the correct buy button. But check the price first - glitches happen). Books are grouped by e-reader type (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc.) and by genre, with a list of keywords under each title to help you choose. This year, the books are also grouped by 'vibe,' which bypasses genre and lets you search by the overall feel of the story. I included my latest book, Battered Pride , this time. If you or someone you know has it on their wish list, now's the time to grab it. To see the list, go to www.romancebookworms.com .  If the categories aren't specific enough, and you wish to narrow your search further, you can type Ctrl+F once you get on the page to ...

  This is my   Insecure Writers Support Group   post for December 2024. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month  are:  Ronel, Deniz,   Pat Garcia,   Olga Godim,   &  Cathrina Constantine! Please stop by their blogs and say thank you .  💻💻💻💻💻 Can you believe it's December already? Where did the year go! December 4 question: Do you write cliffhangers at the end of your stories?  Are they a turn-off to you as a writer and/or a reader? I write romance, so, no, I do not end my books on a cliffhanger. My readers expect a happily ever after. Reader-me enjoyed a series of short works many years ago that ended with hooks and formed a complete story as a set, but they were appropriately priced for the page count, and the author rapid-released them (one every week or two?), so I didn't have to wait long for the next.  As a rule, however, I prefer full-length novels with happy or, at least, satisfying endings. I hope 2024 has a happy...

November turned out to be a busy month for me, so I'm skipping IWSG. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I'm over at L. Diane Wolfe's blog, celebrating the release of Battered Pride with a guest post on doing research for novels set in the 1800s.  Please visit and give Diane some blog love.