Melissa Maygrove

My kids and my laptop are calling me. It's time to take a break. I'm on hiatus until further notice. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

*pulls name from hat* Carrie Butler!!! :D Congratulations, Carrie. You win the $15 Amazon gift card! Thanks for playing. :)

Pioneer Hearts , a Facebook group dedicated to western romance, is hosting a month-long Christmas event. Each day, a couple of us authors are posting an excerpt or custom-written scene, along with a recipe and a chance for commenters to win a prize. Not me. I'm going to be different. (C'mon. You could at least act surprised. :P) I couldn't come up with a by-the-seat-of-my-pants scene, and Christmas was not a good time for my characters, so I decided to post some real historical romance instead.

This is my Insecure Writers Support Group post for Dec ember. Alex's awesome co-hosts for Dec ember are: Heather Gardner,   T. Drecker from Kidbits,   Eva E. Solar at Lilicasplace,   and Patsy Collins! Please stop by their blogs and say thank you.  Trying to balance being an author with being a working wife and mom is tou gh. T hrow in a major holiday and, in just one week, my word count total went from 2,380 to 650. December 's not l ooking much better.  

I have a Kindle and I buy loads of e-books. Like many of you, I often download books to support fellow authors, even if said book is outside my area of interest. The backlog of e-books I own is, well, it's embarrassing. Amazon sometimes informs me that a new version of an e-book is available. "Significant editorial changes have been made," the notifications usually say. The frequency of these has been increasing, but I rarely take them up on it. The reason I don't is twofold. Partly, I don't want to lose the original version of the book, and the update is apparently an either-or proposition. If they'd give me the updated copy and also let me keep the first, I'd be more inclined to accept. The other reason I decline is on principle.

Yes, you read right--two $400 Amazon giveaways. If you enter both giveaways, you have a chance to win a total of $800 in Amazon gift cards just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday!  Enter now, and everyday until November 27th, to increase your chances of winning one or both $400 Amazon shopping sprees, compliments of The Kindle Book Review, Digital Book Today , and your favorite authors, including me. :) Here are the two links. (My book is included in the second one.)

Today I'm over at J Q Rose's blog , offering some writing tips and a prize.  I hope you'll pay us a visit. By the way, this is a series. The schedule for this month and next is... Nov. 6th - Joselyn Vaughn Nov. 13th - Me Nov. 20th - Conda Douglas Dec. 4th - Marsha R. West Dec. 11th - Kathy McIntosh Dec. 18th - Helena Fairfax Thanks for stopping by. :)