M.J. Scott's Blog, page 28

One more week

This time next week, THE DEVIL IN DENIM will be out.

So time to meet our hero…Alex Winters, or at least the stand in for him in my head.

 

If you want some more glimpses of inspirations for the Saints world, check out my Pinterest board.

Feasting

Today I’m over at Cathryn Hein’s Friday Feast talking about some very delicious lemon and coconut brownies and offering up a signed copy of The Devil in Denim for grabs!

Cathryn writes fab rural romance and romantic adventure, is a lovely gal and specialises in tantalising us all every Friday by making authors dish on their favorite dishes, so come on over and chat to us.

(11 more days if anyone besides me is counting )

 

Curious?

If you want a taste of The Devil in Denim, there’s a excerpt up on Heroes and Heartbreakers. (Registration required).

Also I’m one of the authors in the huge St. Martins Press giveaway on Read a Romance Month! (That one is US only).

12 days to go!

State of the Mel # 2 (aka yikes, nearly 6 months went by FAST)

Every so often I do one of these posts, mostly for new followers at various places to catch folks up on who I am, what I do and an update for everyone on what I’m working on. So …

Who am I?

I’m Melanie Scott (most commonly answering to Mel). I write books. Specifically I write fantasy (dark and urban) as M.J. Scott and contemporary romance as Melanie Scott.

M.J’s two current series are the Half-Light City series (dark fantasy) published by Roc and The Wild Side series (published by moi).

Melanie’s current series is the New York Saints series (contemporary romance). Book 1 in that series THE DEVIL IN DENIM will be out on August 26. Publisher’s Weekly picked it as one of their Top 10 Fall 2014 romances, so that was pretty cool. Read more/pre-order etc here.

My agent is Miriam Kriss at the Irene Goodman Literary Agency.

More specifically I’m of the female persuasion, I have a day job that I don’t tend to talk about much online and I have so far survived all the deadly critters that my home country of Australia likes to strew in the path of its citizens. I live in Melbourne where there are few deadly critters and a lot of very changeable weather. So I am forced to whine about the weather. It’s a Melbournian pastime. I drink Coke Zero. Coffee makes me sick (sadface). I like geeky things, movies, tv, ballet, knitting, food, photography, naps, travel and books. I also have my girly moments (nails/make up/perfume/sparkly things/bags/shoes). I am an experienced cat butler. My two current feline employers are the Torti (a relatively sane for a calico/tortoiseshell girl who like rattly mice and glaring out windows at birds and other cats who have the temerity to wander into her line of vision) and the Fuzzy Girl (a slightly less sane, built like Garfield, tad un-coordinated, very chatty fluffy grey and white girl). The previous employers (if you go delving into the archives) were the Orange Cat (a very sweet but neurotic red burmese boy) and the Grey Cat (possibly the most sane of my cats, a fluffy smoke tabby moggy girl). I hang out with friends of the writer and non writer variety and I am slightly prone to klutziness (maybe that’s why the Fuzzy Girl appealed to me). I am not kidding, I broke my ankle getting up from my couch. I am currently attempting to garden though it’s winter here so not much can be done. My thumb may be a very pale green with black spots. I have also, over the last six months or so been playing with watercolour and drawing which is much fun. I am team Iron Man, team Buffy, team Thor, team Ollicity, team genre, team animation, team happy endings are the best, team chocolate (preferably dark), team margarita, team science, team musical, team music in general, team my heart belongs to Number 10, team reading is sexy, team thinking, team virgo, team don’t be a douche and team life is better with folks who make you laugh.

More about the books, please?

The Half-Light City series is an alt-world dark fantasy quadrology. It has fae and vampires and werewolves and magic and follows a bunch of characters through a particularly troublesome time in the Half-Light City which houses many races and many problems. All four books SHADOW KIN, BLOOD KIN, IRON KIN and FIRE KIN are available at all the usual places.

The Wild Side series is an urban fantasy trilogy which follows the adventures of Ashley Keenan who is trying very hard to be a normal boring human accountant but all the pesky werewolves and vampires in her world make that difficult. The first book, THE WOLF WITHIN, came out January in ebook. I suspect I will do a print version at some point. At this stage, the second book, THE DARK SIDE, is due to be released in September. I’m also working on a prequel short story that I also hope to get out in September.

The New York Saints series is a contemporary romance trilogy about three guys who buy the New York Saints (the worst team in MLB) and the women who complicate the process. As mentioned above, the first book, THE DEVIL IN DENIM, will be out on August 26. The second book, ANGEL IN ARMANI, will be out on 30 December and the third book LAWLESS IN LEATHER in May 2015 (unless that changes for some reason).

What are you working on?

Last year’s writing schedule was  a bit nutty. Which meant, naturally, that life decided to sideswipe me with other stuff.  Including a four month or so bout of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo which was very unpleasant. Which has meant six months of trying to WRITE ALL THE THINGS but I am almost caught up.

I just handed in LAWLESS IN LEATHER last month before I jetted off to the Romance Writers of America conference in San Antonio. So I’ll be revising that soon. I’m currently doing the final stage (galleys) of ANGEL IN ARMANI and writing THE SHATTERED COURT, the first book of my new fantasy series for Roc, which will be out sometime next year. After that, well, that kind of depends. But I’m planning to write BRING ON THE NIGHT, book 3 of my Wild Side trilogy as soon as I can but that will be subject to commitments elsewhere. I’d like to do some Half-Light shorts at some point. Everything else under consideration currently falls under the heading of sekrit squirrel business which can’t be discussed publicly. But I still haven’t received either my clone army or my allocation of minions yet so projects to be completed as time allows. If you want to be updated about things as they happen, sign up for my newsletters. M.J here and Melanie here.

Tell me more…

Places I hang out include here on the blog (but hey, you knew that already). I love me some twitter and @melscott will find me there. I tend to be most active on twitter but you know, internet procrastination for the win, so I hang out elsewhere.

M.J’s facebook page is www.facebook.com/AuthorMJScott and Melanie’s is www.facebook.com/WriterMelanieScott. If you’re into Google+ I’m here

I like to take pictures, so if you like looking at pictures, my Instagram handle is melwrites. I also post various pics on FB and twitter. I use an iPhone 5 and a Canon DSLR mostly.

One month to go

It’s the 26th July here in San Antonio, where I’m currently at the Romance Writers of America conference.  Which means there’s only 1 month until this baby comes out!

 

Publisher’s Weekly included The Devil in Denim in their Top 10 Fall 2014 Romances, which is awesome and it’s been getting some lovely reviews around the place. So don’t forget to buy it. I’ll be doing one last ARC giveaway when I get back to Australia next week via my Melanie newsletter, so if you want to sign up, there’s a sign-up box in the side bar of my Melanie Scott website. I’ve just handed in Lawless in Leather so that completes the first three books of the series. It’s been great over here at RWA, I’ve met Jennifer Enderlin, my fabulous editor and caught up with my awesome agent and other US and New Zealand people that I only get to see at conferences. I’ve met lots of great writers and readers and signed many books. Tonight’s the big RITA and Golden Heart awards ceremony and then I start the long trek home again on Sunday.

Here’s a few pics of San Antonio…it’s a beautiful city but very hot and humid!

Memorial Pool at the Alamo

Longhorn

Prickly pear

The Alamo

The River Walk

More along the River Walk

New cover – Angel in Armani

Well, now that my cover has been launched over on Heroes and Heartbreakers, I can share it here too.

Check out this bad boy, coming to you December 30 2014, making this year officially the year of many books by moi.

Audio and titles and dates, oh my!

So, a few bits and pieces of news to report (which is better than lions and tigers and bears).

Thing, the first. The new fantasy book has a title. It’s called THE SHATTERED COURT and will be out sometime in 2015. This is the starts of a whole new series, with magic and demons and secrets and feats of derring do and romance. I’ll be finishing writing it over the next few months, so looking forward to finding out exactly how all that works out.

Thing, the second. The New York Saints series will be coming out in audiobook! Yay! I love audiobooks, so am very excited by this. As far as I know, this will be at the same time, or shortly after the books themselves are released but will update as I can.

Thing, the third. Speaking of dates, the schedule for the New York Saints books is currently:

THE DEVIL IN DENIM 26 August 2014
ANGEL IN ARMANI January 2015 (Amazon says December 30 2014…I’ll confirm the exact date when I can)
LAWLESS IN LEATHER May 2015 (Exact date TBD)

So there you have it. News. And a schedule which is the reason why this blog is a bit quiet lately! And to leave you, a gratuitous picture of the Fuzzy Girl being earnestly excited by all this news.

Ever wanted to ask me a question?

Well, here’s a chance to hang out online.

On Friday 16 May (starting 3PM Central, which is about 6am Saturday here in Australia), I’ll be hanging out at Bitten By Books, answering questions and talking about Fire Kin, the Half-Light City and whatever else takes our fancy. And I’ll be giving away $80 in Amazon gift cards. I’ll be there most of the day/evening (US time) so, Aussies you don’t have to get up quite so early.

It’s going to be fun, so check out the Bitten By Books post to get the details and RSVP.

Fire Kin for your reading pleasure

Fire Kin is out today! Available at all good bookstores etc etc. If you read it and like it, tell your friends (or you know, everyone!) : )

And to celebrate the unleashing of Fen and Saskia on the world, I’m giving away some books. Four lucky people can win their choice of Iron Kin, Shadow Kin or Blood Kin. Just email me mel @ mjscott.net and tell me who your favourite Half-Light character is to enter. And if anyone is intrepid enough to send me a pic of Fire Kin out in the wild, there may be some special bonus prizes.

The final Fire Kin snippet

Which is also the final Half-Light City snippet. Four books later and the story is done. At least for now (because you know, never say never).

So have a snippet from our hero.

Having gleaned what I could for now, I turned my attention from the Fae to my surroundings. I was still shielding my power, but despite that, I could feel the song of the court and the  Veiled World itself. Feel the slow, ancient pulse of the magic that ran beneath it. All that lazy power there to be used, ready to leap to my call.

It stood the hairs on the back of my neck on end and I was very glad that this was the second time I’d been to Summerdale rather than the first since my exile. This time, it wasn’t quite so seductive and I didn’t feel quite so drunk with it.

There was still a certain amount of temptation to let it run through me and wreak some old-fashioned havoc, but that would only lead to more trouble. The aim today was to stay alive.

One more sleep!