Melissa West

I am beyond excited to help share the cover for Lisa Burstein's second novel, DEAR CASSIE. I loved PRETTY AMY, her debut, but I must admit, I'm even more excited to read DEAR CASSIE. Cassie was one of my favorite characters is AMY, and I can't wait to see what Lisa does with her story. Cover time:     Blurb:   What if the last place you should fall in love is the first place that you do? You’d think getting sent to Turning Pines Wilderness Camp for a month-long rehabilitation “retreat” and being forced to re-live it in this journal would be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. You’d be wrong. There’s the reason I was sent to Turning Pines in the first place: I got arrested. On prom night. With my two best friends, who I haven’t talked to since and probably never will again. And then there’s the real reason I was sent here. The thing I can’t talk about with the guy I can’t even think about. What if the moment you’ve closed yourse...

I officially feel like Dr. Seuss with that blog title, but it's true all the same. :)   HOVER now has a cover, and I need your help spreading the word! The official reveal will be Monday, December 3rd, and signups for the reveal will stay open through Friday, November 30th.  Please leave your email address in the comments if you would like to participate in the reveal and be added to my list of super awesome people that I adore. The reveal will include a giveaway to add to the juicy fun!   Can't wait for ya'll to see it!

After combining all the results, there are three clear winners--two of which were VERY close. :)   Grand Prize: Madison Louise 2nd Place Prize: Viola (knitpearl) 3rd Place Prize: Mary I emailed the winners as well. Thank you to everyone who participated!!

      GRAVITY's launch party is November 30th from 6-8 PM at:   FoxTale Book Shoppe 105 East Main Street Woodstock, GA 30188   We'll have drinks and food, a reading, a signing, and a giveaway. I would love to see you there!

When I was little my dad used to always tell me that if nothing bad happened we would never have anything to compare the good and would then know no difference. As a kid, I'm sure I rolled my eyes at this or even questioned him, but as an adult--and now an author--I feel this is something we need to remind ourselves of again and again. See, I have officially been a published author for about a week now, which means I have received reviews. Some have been very, very good. And some have been vomit-inducing. At first I found myself focusing on the bad reviews, wondering how the reviewer saw THAT in my book. Did they not get it? Did I completely jack up all 300 pages? And then suddenly I realized I was focusing on the wrong thing. Here's the truth: If you write, plan on getting a bad review--or 50. Plan on getting a review so bad you want to curl up and hide. But do not focus on those reviews, because focusing on the bad is doing a massive disservice to the readers that LOVE yo...

For the next two weeks, I will be popping by a few different blogs to talk about GRAVITY, the characters, and provide some insight into HOVER, book 2 in The Taking Series. The tour stops are listed below, but just to make this fun, I decided to offer up a giveaway for those that follow along. On November 20th, I would love you all to join me for a Twitter party to celebrate the full release of GRAVITY. During the party I will ask a few questions pulled from the interviews. If you follow along then it shouldn't be a problem at all! The first person to answer each question correctly will win a prize! Prizes will include a signed copy of GRAVITY, swag, and an Amazon GC. Fun times! So here is the list and remember to follow along! :) 11/1/2012 Ms. Book Queen 11/5/2012 Carina Books 11/6/2012 K-Books 11/8/2012 The Book Goddess 11/9/2012 Two Chicks on Books 11/11/2012 Madison Louise 11/13/2012 The Page Turner 11/15/2012 The Bookshelf Sophisticate ...

Exciting news! GRAVITY did have a book birthday yesterday after all—well technically today. It is now available in both Kindle and Nook formats! And check out these amazing blurbs for the book:   "A thrilling debut packed with action and mystery. Aliens never looked so good." USA TODAY Bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout . "GRAVITY is a nonstop action thrill ride set in a richly imagined sci-fi version of earth, featuring a bold heroine who knows how to fight, just not who she should be fighting for. Start reading and you won't. Ever. Stop." Jennifer Bosworth, author of Struck (FSG/Macmillan) ~~~   The print version will be available online and in stores within a few weeks. But to celebrate the release of the e-book, I need your help to spread the word! And I have a few prizes available for participating. Ways to play: Tweet that the e-book is now available with links to GRAVITY’s Kindle and Nook e-books on Amazon and ...

So...GRAVITY officially releases in 27 days, which is so, so amazing. I could gush about how thankful I am, but I'll save that for later. :) I have a few fun dates coming up that I wanted to detail here: Thursday, 10/4: GRAVITY's trailer reveal is tonight at midnight. It goes live on some 50 blogs, plus a giveaway for 5 ARCs. Should be fun! Monday, 10/8: The Taking Series website goes live next. I'll post details here, on Twitter, and FB. Expect a giveaway, fun Ari/Jackson facts, and hopefully I can get a fun convo goin on Twitter about aliens. Join me for the fun! 10/16-10/29: Blog tour fun. You will likely get very tired of me by the end of this tour. :) Tuesday, 10/30/12: GRAVITY releases! We're having a Twitter party to celebrate. Friday, 11/2: My launch party for the book is on November 2nd from 6-8 PM at FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA. Definitely stop by if you are in the area. Saturday, 11/3: I'll be at Malaprops Bookstore with the ever awesome ...

For anyone that has not heard, GRAVITY’s release date has been pushed back to October 30 th . To celebrate, I’ve created a list of 5 reasons why the 30 th rocks the socks off the 16 th . Five reasons why October 30 th is WAY better than October 16 th : #5: October 16 th is National Boss Day, therefore it can never also be National GRAVITY day. #4: October 30 th feels more like fall than October 16 th , which in my mind means it is luckier. #3: There are no other Entangled Teen books releasing on October 30th. Yes, I'm bratty and want the day all to myself. Just kidding...sort of. :D #2: My launch party now falls on November 2 nd . A weird fact about me—I tend to prefer “2” over all the other numbers. It’s  just cooler.    And the #1 reason that October 30 th is better than October 16 th ? It’s the day before HALLOWEEN!!! Yay! I’m pretty sure this means everyone will be drunk off candy corn and generally happy. Happy people are more likely to buy bo...

I mentioned on Twitter that I wanted to do a post on actual rejections that GRAVITY received while querying, and let me tell you, this was painful. Painful! Some of the rejections were too personalized to post, but a few caused me to take pause and I hoped to share those with you. Just a little history... I wrote GRAVITY in roughly three months, revised for two months, and then began querying. My request rate was insane, so I thought I was onto something. Boy was I ever wrong. I queried too early. Way, way, way, way too early. I should have let the MS rest for a few months first. Well, after receiving valuable feedback from several agents, I rewrote GRAVITY from scratch. That was one of the best--and hardest--decisions I ever made. I began querying again a few months after finishing that draft and ended up with multiple agent offers and an offer from Entangled. Lesson learned. :) So...want to see some of the rejections that helped shape GRAVITY?  Here ya go! ____________...

It's interesting how tricky publishing can be. I've been asked from time to time, typically from people who are not writers, what makes a book take off? My answer = I have no idea. It can be a character, a new trend, a slogan in the book that becomes popular in everyday culture. Why did TWILIGHT take off? HUNGER GAMES? FIFTY SHADES? Who knows. One thing is for certain, when one of these books takes off, it starts a domino effect. Readers want more. So with TWILIGHT we had a surge of paranormal romance. HUNGER GAMES lit up the dystopian genre. And now with Fifty Shades you'll see that many of the top sellers are spicy women's fiction. But I think there is one commonality in all popular books--reader investment, and I'm not talking about the cost of the book. Readers like to get invested in the story--whatever that story may be. Which is why I think books with little to no marketing budget can do well. Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool and on...

Blurb: Since the car crash that took her father’s life two years ago, Emma’s life has been a freaky—and unending—lesson in caution. Surviving "accidents" has taken priority over being a normal seventeen-year-old, so Emma spends her days taking pictures of life instead of living it. Falling in love with a boy was never part of the plan. Falling for a reaper who makes her chest ache and her head spin? Not an option. It’s not easy being dead; especially for a reaper in love with a girl fate has put on his list not once, but twice. Finn’s fellow reapers give him hell about spending time with Emma, but Finn couldn’t let her die before, and he’s not about to let her die now. He　 will 　protect the girl he loves from the evil he accidentally unleashed, even if it means sacrificing the only thing he has left. His soul. Publication Date:　 August, 2012 Imprint:　 Entangled Teen . Add Inbetween to: Goodreads Pre order: Amazon ~ Barnes and Noble ~ Book D...

  Lots of people give out advice on querying. Some of that advice is very good...and some is very bad. My take is just that--my take--but as I googled every form of query advice I could find when I queried, I thought I should put out my own little list. So here goes: You know that you can't query an unfinished manuscript. What you may not know is that your finished manuscript is nowhere near "finished." It's not even in the same ballpark as "finished." To try to get it closer to that sparkly word, I strongly suggest that when you finish your book you let it sit for no less than 2 weeks. Revise (I focus on plot/story first). Make sure there are no holes. Wait two weeks. Revise again (I focus on character with the 2nd revision). Wait 2 weeks. Read the entire book and make notes. Then clean up your prose. Send the MS to at least two readers. Wait until you receive their feedback to revise again, and when you do revise, pay attention to what they suggested....

Add it: GOODREADS Dante Walker is flippin’ awesome, and he knows it. His good looks, killer charm, and stellar confidence have made him one of hell’s best—a soul collector. His job is simple, weed through humanity and label those round rears with a big red good or bad stamp. Old Saint Nick gets the good guys, and he gets the fun ones. Bag-and-tag. .   ... Sealing souls is nothing personal. Dante’s an equal opportunity collector and doesn’t want it any other way. But he’ll have to adjust, because Boss Man has given him a new assignment: Collect Charlie Cooper’s soul within 10 days. . Dante doesn’t know why Boss Man wants Charlie, nor does he care. This assignment means only one thing to him, and that’s a permanent ticket out of hell. But after Dante meets the quirky, Nerd Alert chick he’s come to collect—he realizes this assignment will test his abilities as a collector, and uncover emotions deeply buried.​    ______________________________________...

I have a confession. When I was little, I had this strange obsession with horror movies. They freaked the hell out of me, but for some reason they were my favorite to watch. My parents would take me to the video store and let me pick out one horror movie to watch with my dad, while my sister stood cowering in the kitchen. Well one such outing, I chose the movie Fire in the Sky . The movie is based upon a man's claim to have been abducted. In the movie we witness the man being tortured, and by the end of that movie I had my first true fear--aliens. I remember staring out my bedroom window for weeks, unable to sleep, too afraid to sleep. This is the scene that scarred me for life: See, I was so afraid because I could reason why not only is it possible that aliens exist--it is probable. And that young experience led to continuous interest in aliens. I learned about the various theories, the likelihood of their existence, and etc. None of it amounted to anything ...

DIVINELY RUINED, from Entangled Publishing and the author who brought you ON ONE CONDITION, is hitting the virtual shelves on Thursday, April 26th, but you can get a sneak peek at the cover and blurb here! . _________________________________________________   . Cover:   . . Blurb:   . She finally meets a decent man--after she's oath-bound never to touch men again! . Rebecca's life sucked before she became an angel. Crappy apartment, awful jobs, abusive boyfriends--it was no wonder she jumped at the chance to escape it all and become a real live angel. The problem is Rebecca's not very angelic, and she'll have to do more to earn her wings than end her love affair with the word f--er, frick. . Especially when she's assigned to save single father Tony Weis, whose less-than-pure thoughts wreak hell on a telepathic angel's nerves. It's all Rebecca can do to keep her hands off him...but when she loses her memory injuring herself t...

Today I have a very special guest! Madison Louise is a young teen who has chosen to pursue her dream of writing. I envy her willingness to put herself out there at such a young age, and so I asked her to tell us a little bit about what inspired her to begin writing. ____________________________________________   ~ Title: Shadow Future Release date: April 11 th 2012 Author: Madison Louise Add it: Goodreads Buy it: Amazon ~ How old are you? I’m a teen, writing out the stresses of life. lol . What/who inspired you to begin writing? Hmm…I guess, just watching other people come up with great things inspired me. I wanted to write something of my own so that other people could enjoy it, as much as I enjoy other people’s creations. . What genres do you prefer to write and why? Romance/adventure/paranormal/mystery etc… I kind of put all of them together to create my own genre. I like writing in that because it has the romance, which is the part I li...

Today I'm excited to participate in the reveal for Chloe Jacobs' upcoming YA debut, GRETA AND THE GOBLIN KING. Chloe is amazing, so definitely follow her on Twitter @Jacobs_Chloe  for continuous updates about her book and fun teasers. Now for the reveal! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PRE-ORDER IT: Amazon ~ Barnes and Noble ADD IT: Goodreads BLURB: . While trying to save her brother four years ago, Greta was thrown into the witch’s fire herself, falling through a portal to a dangerous world where humans are the enemy, and every ogre, goblin, and ghoul has a dark side that comes out with the full moon. . To survive, seventeen-year-old Greta has hidden her humanity and taken the job of bounty hunter—and she’s good at what she does. So good, she’s caught the attention of Mylena’s young Goblin King, the darkly enticing Isaac, who invades her dreams and undermines her determination to escape.   . But Greta’s not the only one looking to get out of Mylena. The full moon...

_______________________________________________ Author Name: Victoria Scott  . Title: THE COLLECTOR: A DANTE WALKER NOVEL . Release Date: spring 2013 . Blurb: . Dante Walker is flippin' awesome, and he knows it. His good looks, killer charm, and stellar confidence has made him one of Hell's best--a soul collector. His job is simple, weed through humanity and label those round rears with a big red good or bad stamp. Old Saint Nick gets the good guys, and he gets the fun ones. Bag-and-tag. Stealing souls is nothing personal. Dante's an equal opportunity collector and doesn't want it any other way. But he'll have to adjust, because Boss Man has given him a new assignment: Collect Charlie Cooper's soul within 10 days. Dante doesn't know why Boss Man wants Charlie, nor does he care. This assignment means only one thing to him, and that's a permanent ticket out of Hell. But after Dante meets the quirky, Nerd Alert chick he...

I haven't participated in a WoW in quite some time, but the cover and description for this book have skyrocketed it to the very top of my wishlist for 2012. LOOK AT THIS COVER!!!: _________________________________________________ Details: Title: BREATHE Author: Sarah Crossan Type: YA dystopian (my fav) Release date: October 2, 2012 Blurb: Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe . . . The world is dead. The survivors live under the protection of Breathe, the corporation that found a way to manufacture oxygen-rich air. ALINA has been stealing for a long time. She’s a little jittery, but not terrified. All she knows is that she’s never been caught before. If she’s careful, it’ll be easy. If she’s careful. QUINN should be worried about Alina and a bit afraid for himself, too, but even though this is dangerous, it’s also the most interesting thing to happen to him in ages. It isn’t every day that the girl of your dreams asks you to rescue her. BEA wants to tel...

_______________________________________________ Author Name: Cindi Madsen . Title: ALL THE BROKEN PIECES . Release Date: December 2012 . Blurb: What if your life wasn't your own? Liv comes out of a coma with no memory of her past and two distinct, warring voices inside her head. Nothing, not even her refection, seems familiar. As she stumbles through her junior year, the voices get louder, insisting she please the popular group while simultaneously despising them. But when Liv starts hanging around with Spencer, whose own mysterious past also has him on the fringe, life feels complete for the first time in, well, as long as she can remember. Liv knows the details of the car accident that put her in the coma, but as the voices invade her dreams, and her dreams start feeling like memories, she and Spencer seek out answers. Yet the deeper they dig, the less things make sense. Can Liv rebuild the pieces of her broken past, when it means questio...