Hello, Stranger!

And that stranger...would be me! I truly can't believe it's been so long since my last post. To think that I was wearing flip-flops when I wrote about Dark Water and have gone through fun fall boots, less-fun snow boots, and fleece-lined slippers since then, and that flip-flop season's coming around again, is crazy. My apologies for the blog silence!

I've been working on a few different projects over the past few months, including the third book in the Merits of Mischief series. It's always fun to revisit characters, and since Seamus, Lemon, Abe, Gabby, Elinor, Annika, Houdini, Mystery and Ms. Marla, Kilter Academy's Hoodlum Hotline operator, are some of my all-time favorites, this has been especially enjoyable! When you catch yourself chuckling while writing, as I did just this morning, you know you're having a good work day.

On that note, I thought I'd kick off my blog return with some fun covers! Bad Apple, the first in the Merits of Mischief series, has a new look for its paperback. And A World of Trouble, the second book in the series (out this August), follows in its (sticky!) footsteps. I love, love, love the original Merits cover, but I love these just as much. And in case you're wondering why the new look, the original, super-talented artist came up with a few designs for World of Trouble, but the wonderful folks at Simon & Schuster didn't know if those quite captured the story the way they'd hoped. So they tried a different approach, and voila! The covers below were born.

I hope you've had a great few months! And I promise to write again before the snow returns!