"Pretty Enough to Catch Her" Coming August 1st

A beautiful widow. Rich. Unhinged. A scheming ex-con convinced he’s found his ticket to the good life. The sexy and dangerous young woman who stands between them. A Southern Gothic cat-and-mouse game where the line between predator and prey is redrawn with each turn of the cards. “Pretty Enough to Catch Her”—a short story from the author of the best-selling Witching Savannah series.

COMING AUGUST 1st TO KINDLE AND KINDLE UNLIMITED

Cover Reveal SHIVAREE

As the Korean War ends, practical and well-mannered army nurse Corinne Ford returns stateside to live in the Mississippi town of Conroy with her new fiancé, Private First Class Elijah Dunne. She wonders if their love is strong enough to overshadow their differences, but upon her arrival to Elijah's backwoods stomping grounds, she understands that culture shock is the least of her worries.

After four good ol’ boys are attacked in the night while seeking to terrorize a local black family, decades of buried secrets begin to rise. From Conroy’s most powerful citizen—known as “the Judge”—to the man Corinne intends to marry, no one is innocent. Yet the deepest secret of all involves the beautiful, cruel, and dead Miss Ruby. The former belle of Conroy, and Elijah’s lost love, is neither forgotten nor truly gone. But her death is only the beginning of a slow vengeance that won’t stop until its hunger is satisfied.

PHANTASMA STORIES Coming Soon

Find my Southern Gothic Paranormal short story "Pitch" in the Phantasma anthology coming fall 2015. This compact anthology will also feature short fiction by

• Phillip K. Dick Award nominee Anne Charnock (author of A CALCULATED LIFE), 
• Poet Jason Kirk (author of REVERB: POEMS),
• Kate Maruyama (author of HARROWGATE),
• Jodi McIsaac (author of the THIN VEIL series),
• And Roberta Trahan (author of THE DREAM STEWARDS series).

Shivaree, coming November 3rd

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER SHIVAREE

At the close of the Korean War, sturdy army nurse Corinne Ford turns her back on a troubled past to travel to rural Mississippi and marry her battlefield sweetheart. Corinne soon learns she was not the first woman in her fiancé's life. The once exquisite Ruby, failed actress and dabbler in dark magic, had been brought back from Hollywood to her father's house, sick, broken, changed. Her death cleared the way for many who had wished that she had never returned. Soon, Corinne is confronted with evidence that her fiancé's first love is neither forgotten nor truly gone. Backlit by the Klan's burning crosses and scored by the cacophony of shivaree, the traditional wedding night abduction of the groom, SHIVAREE looks into a world where the monsters of folklore confront the monsters of history.

Guest Post: Melissa Olson, Release Day Giveaway

Thank you so much to J.D. for being part of this multi-webpage blog blast. If you’ve already heard of me and my books, you can scroll down to go straight to the contest entry. Otherwise, please let me introduce myself. 

My name is Melissa F.Olson, and I mostly write urban fantasy novels, which are stories about the intersection of two worlds: the real one that we live in and a world that involves something supernatural: fairies, vampires, werewolves, mutant killer hedgehogs, or all of the above. My new novel Boundary Crossed is about a young woman, Lex, trying to protect her baby niece from bad guys who have discovered that the baby has serious value on the supernatural black market. Lex is determined to keep her safe, but unfortunately she dies at the end of the first chapter.

No, seriously. She dies. But then she gets better, because it turns out that there’s more to Lex than she ever knew. She needs to figure out why she’s still alive and what the bad guys want with her niece, and she’s going to need a lot of help to do it.

The book has been available all month as a Kindle First deal on Amazon, but it comes out in paperback and audiobook for the first time today. To celebrate this release, I’m giving away signed books, a $20 Amazon gift card, and some killer swag. (That’s a metaphor; the swag will not hurt you.)

For giveaway details visit my blog here. 

Thanks for reading!

Bio:

Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and studied film and literature at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After graduation, and a brief stint bouncing around the Hollywood studio system, Melissa landed in Madison, WI, where she eventually acquired a master's degree from UW-Milwaukee, a husband, a mortgage, a teaching gig, two kids, and two comically oversized dogs, not at all in that order. She loves Madison, but still dreams of the food in LA. Literally. There are dreams. Learn more about Melissa, her work, and her dog at www.MelissaFOlson.com.

Rejection Dejection Resurrection

So, it's happened. THE ESSENCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, a book I truly believe in, has been rejected by the last publisher in the English-speaking world. Am I feeling sorry for myself? Not really, at least not as much as the first 6,972 times the book was turned down.

I know what you're thinking. Maybe if it's been rejected that many times, it just isn't any good. And you know what? You may very well be right. 

But I still believe in it. 

So what am I going to do about it? I'm going to join the ranks of "hybrid" authors by self-publishing this oft declined little book. I've got a few projects going on at once, including a major move and two other books that have a publisher, so it will be later in the year before I can get it pulled together. But dangnabbit, I am going to get this book out there. 

So what does the picture of my dog Duke have to do with any of this? Absolutely nothing. Just a bit of gratuitous canine pulchritude. Dog lovers, you're welcome. 

The Southern Tour

(Cover of the Polish edition of THE LINE, coming soon from Feeria Young publishers.)

So as any of you who follow me on FB or Twitter know, I have been kicking around the South for a month now doing research for JILO, the prequel to the Witching Savannah series scheduled to come out early next year. I visited Beaufort, SC, where I had been considering setting part of the book, but--even though Beaufort and its islands are beautiful--I've decided most of the action still needs to center on Savannah. The hard part for me has been stopping seeing Savannah as the city is now, and trying to see her as she was back when Lady Waldorf Astor called her "a beautiful woman with a dirty face."

Jilo alludes to the way things where socially in THE SOURCE when she insists on entering the Taylor's home through the front door.  I've managed to find a few resources shedding light on what it must have been like to be an intelligent and ambitious woman of color in Savannah at that time. JILO is going to show us a different side of Savannah, and a different side of the Taylor family, too.  The Wills and the Taylors do indeed have "real history."

On a couple of different notes, I'm writing this post from the stately Hotel Monteleone, where I'm staying for the "Saints and Sinners" conference. (I'd like to pretend I'm one of the sinners, but as we all know, by 8PM I like being home with a book in my hands and my dog Duke by my feet.) I got some writing done yesterday, not wanting to miss the chance to write in the same building where Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Anne Rice have all written.

Finally--that second note--at the top of this post is the cover for the Polish edition of THE LINE. I am blown away to see Mercy's story being shared in yet another language, along with German, Italian, Turkish, and Russian. A big "Thank You" to everyone who has helped make this possible, most importantly, those of you who have read and enjoyed THE LINE in its original version.