Marissa's Bookish Doings: Past, Present, and Future

First, some award news: I’m delighted to report that Evergreen won first place in the Young Adult category of the 2020 International Digital Awards, sponsored by Oklahoma Romance Writers of America. Between Silk and Sand won the same category back in 2018, incidentally.

In other award news, Evergreen is a finalist in the Paranormal category of the 2020 Golden Leaf Award, sponsored by New Jersey Romance Writers…and yes, other books of mine have been honored in this contest, including Skin Deep winning the Paranormal category in 2017 and both Betraying Season and Courtship and Curses being finalists in the Young Adult category.

I’ve discovered that I really enjoy making “book trailers”—teaser videos for books, much like movie trailers. Whether they’re much good is another issue. 😜 Still, it’s exciting, as an author, to find images that resonate with my vision of my stories…and after all, it’s just another form of storytelling. All of which is a roundabout way to get to showing you the video I created for an older book of mine, By Jove:

What do you think?

And finally, some future bookish news. Between a family bereavement at the beginning of the year and the weight of the present pandemic, my writing has slowed to a snail’s pace. But even snails eventually reach their destinations: in 2021, look for a new young adult book from me as well as a new story in the Leland Sisters world featuring Persy and Pen (and Charles!)…and a new venture: I’ll be co-editing an anthology of ghost stories for Book View Café, due out in September. Stay tuned!

Book-ish News

Taking a pause on the discussion of the further past to focus on news from the more recent past...and the future.

First, the recent past: this past weekend I was thrilled and delighted and very, very honored to win the Best Paranormal Romance Award for Skin Deep in the 2016 Golden Leaf Contest, sponsored by the New Jersey Romance Writers chapter of RWA. Here’s my pretty award (and a gold leaf pin)...but the best part was how I found out that Skin Deep had won.

At the awards ceremony held at NJRW’s annual conference, it’s the tradition for the wonderfully talented NJRW member Anne Walradt to read aloud a sample from each category’s winning book before the title is announced—and wow, can that woman read. So when it came time for the Paranormal category winner to be announced, I was completely taken aback—then blown away to hear my words so beautifully read. So a sincere thank you, NJRW, not only for the award but for Anne’s wonderful reading.

And in future news, I’m very happy to announce that my adult contemporary fantasy By Jove will be coming out in a new edition on February 7, 2017 from Book View Café. Stay tuned for details (the new cover is in the works!) over the next few months.

Okay, back to the past!