Melissa Maygrove

Last month, I posted about reformatting my debut novel, Come Back .  As part of the glow-up, I added a series link in the back matter, plus a QR code for the paperback, and a couple of sentences that told the reader which books contained stories of supporting characters (books 2 & 4). My goal was to improve series read-through. The e-book interior was updated September 12th and the paperback September 16th, so, the backmatter changed roughly half way through the month. I compared both Kindle e-book sales and Kindle Unlimited page reads by looking at total sales and page reads for each of books 2-4 and calculating what percentage they each were of the sales/reads of book 1. Ex: If I sold twenty copies of book 1 for the month and ten copies of book 2, read-through for book 2 would be 50%.  Of course, I have no way of knowing whether the same reader bought all four books - or in the case of KU, whether customers were reading the entire series or even the entire book - but th...

  This is my   Insecure Writers Support Group   post for September 2025. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month  are:  Kim Lajevardi,   Natalie Aguirre, Nancy Gideon,   & Diedre Knight! Please stop by their blogs and say thank you .  💻💻💻💻💻 The  scare Amazon gave me  in July was a huge motivator. I've been a very busy bee. 🐝 There's a progress report after this month's question.  I've included pictures for your enjoyment, but it's long.  Feel free to read on the diagonal. LOL September question - What are your thoughts on using AI, such as GPChat, Raptor, and others with your writing? Would you use it for research, storybible, or creating outlines/beats? I'm still deciding how I feel about AI and where the boundaries should be. I might use it in the planning stages (ex: to brainstorm or turn my synopsis into outline form), but sinking into fictional worlds and crafting stories is my therapy. I won't give that over to a com...

  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...

This is my Insecure Writers Support Group post for July. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month are:    Charity Bradford , S.A. Larsen ,   AJ , Tamara Narayan ,  Allison Gammons and Tanya Miranda Please stop by their blogs and say thank you .  First, some IWSG news from our fearless leader...

Below are links to articles I've come across lately that I thought you might enjoy. Craft Tips Do you struggle to avoid head-hopping in your work, or find it difficult to smoothly switch POVs? Jami Gold can help.  7 Methods for Handling Point-of-view Changes Ava Jae at Writability posted about tackling the overwhelming job of editing. How to Edit in Passes Multi-published author Sylvia Rochester also has a good post on editing. Taking Out The Trash Author Politics