Just heard that Witches of East End hit the New! York! Times! Hardcover! Fiction! List!
WOOHOOO!!!!
Thank you all for your support of the book… I feel very lucky and happy today… my family is taking me out for champagne and yummy Italian food so that is very happy-making as well!
xoxo
Mel
This was the view from our hotel room. That’s the Paris Opera—the fab building with the dome you can see from afar. I love the gray slate rooftops! It rained a few times while we were in Paris, which just made it MORE ROMANTIC. Heh! We stayed at the Ritz, which was like staying in a palace, it wasn’t so much a hotel as a castle.
And here is the team from Anna Jarota, who handles my French rights. (I have French rights!) That’s me holding Bloody Valentine in French, with Anna, Raphael and Sandrine. Anna told me how with the Internet, the teens want everything NOW and they don’t want to wait. They hear about a book published in the US and they want it in France too. Whereas, even ten years ago, that wasn’t the case. In fact, for foreign sales, usually if something “sold” in France, no other countries would want it because the French were very specific about what they liked and didn’t like, and they weren’t the same as the rest of the world. She said when she sold a book to France it was called “the French kiss” ie, the kiss of death, because it meant no other countries would buy it. Isn’t that interesting? But now all the teens are global and things have changed. It’s a borderless culture these days…
Here I am with my lovely editor Shaine Cassim (who is hugging me—love Shaine!) and my French translator, Valerie Le Plouhinec from Albin Michel! My publishers wanted to know how I found Paris, and I told them it was even better than the movies. But also that it reminded me a lot of New York, in that it was a modern, dynamic city, and so I felt very comfortable in the city. I felt very ‘at home’. My books do well in France, they said, because French people like the whole cosmopolitan, fabulous angle of my books. A match made in heaven! Shaine also publishes Neil Gaiman in France, so I was very flattered. And Valerie spent her senior year in Los Angeles! So she understood all the American slang. My French publishers are awesome! We had drinks at the Hotel Bristol, which is the hotel from the movie Midnight in Paris. It was tres fabuleux!
Albin Michel, my publisher, ran a contest and that’s our winner on the end, and here are some nice French bloggers! (Froggers?) 🙂 Thanks so much for the pretty picture and the bottle of champagne guys!
And when I got back, I had to do events for Witches of East End… and here’s the display from Borders in Canoga Park!
One of the great things about being “in public” is that sometimes old friends turn up! Here I am with my dear friend Molly, whom I last saw when we were fourteen years old! (She moved to LA and this was before e-mail.) Twenty-six years have passed!! Where did they go? When Molly and I were hanging out she was the coolest rocker chick I knew (and now she is the coolest rocker mom I know—I love when things never change!), before she left SF, she made me a Smiths mix tape (I still have it!). We were both Convent girls in San Francisco, but we spent a summer taking a nude figure drawing class in an art college in the city, which we skipped a lot to go shopping on Polk Street. Her daughter is a Blue Bloods reader. So cool! Molly, I promised I’d put it on the blog—here it is!
xoxo
Mel
Mike and I went to Paris for vacation! It was awesome.
Here we are at the Eiffel Tower. When we got to the Eiffel Tower I was exhausted from waking around all day. I was like “do we have to go up?” I was okay with just seeing it. But we went up.
Here I am in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. I’m not on the phone, I’m listening to the audio guide. The whole time I was in Paris I was thinking of my Art History teacher, who inspired so much of what ended up in Blue Bloods…Miss Murphy was one of those wonderful people who inspired her students…she had this enthusiastic, old-fashioned, girlish joie de vivre… she loved Paris and Florence and Versailles and Venice… and as a freshman in high school, I drank it all in… and put it in my books! Thanks Miss Murphy, RIP.
The incredible gardens of Versailles. No words.
Here we are in front of the palace. I am trying to look Parisian, with my scarf and my trench, but my husband insisted on dressing American, ie, in shorts.
We went to Centre Pompidou, and ate at the fancy schmancy Georges restaurant on the top floor, where they had these crazy architectural structures around the bar. It sort of reminded me of the old Conde Nast cafeteria designed by Frank Gehry. Now that Conde is moving down to One World Trade—are they taking the cafeteria with them?
A trip to Paris isn’t complete without the Da Vinci Code tour of course. Here I am at the Louvre where Mary Magdalene is buried. (Heh!)
xoxo
Mel
Hey!
Witches of East End is out TOMORROW, June 21st! The day has finally arrived! Check with your local bookstores and internet retail providers to obtain your copy! And don’t forget, if you pre-order before it’s released, it’s available for the amazing price of $12.99!
Pre-order from Amazon
Pre-order from B&N
Pre-order from Books-a-Million
Pre-order from Indiebound
And if you haven’t already, make sure to grab your Free copy of Witches 101: A Witches of East End Primer. It has the FIRST THREE CHAPTERS of the novel, and you’ll meet the three Beauchamp women — Joanna, Ingrid, and Freya — learn a little bit about their special powers, and even get some tips so you can cast a few spells of your own!
Order from Amazon
Order from B&N
Melissa has also been doing some great interviews about the book, as well as getting some stellar reviews!
Interview with Fresh Fiction
Interview with Jennifer Vido
Romance Reviews WoEE!
Philly Blurbs WoEE!
Two Ends of the Pen reviews WoEE!
Don’t forget to check out Melissa on tour this week signing copies of Witches! She will be in Santa Monica tomorrow night, and Canoga Park Wednesday night! Come say hi and get your copy signed by Mel!
Happy reading!
-Kady, Mel’s assistant
Hey, all!
While Mel is getting ready for her FABULOUS Paris vacay, she asked me (Kady, her new assistant) to keep you all up to date on what’s going on in the Witches of East End world!
Melissa wrote an original essay exclusively for BarnesandNoble.com on her upcoming novel, Witches of East End! They’ve posted the essay on the book detail page (the essay is in the NOTES section, halfway down): WoEE Essay.
In more exciting news, the price of Witches has gone down to $12.99 for those who pre-order the book before it’s release date on June 21st! That’s an $11 dollar savings, so make sure you pre-order your copy today!
Mel is also releasing “Witches 101: A Witches of East End Primer” on June 14th, which will offer the FIRST THREE CHAPTERS of the novel, as well as new exclusive content. You can order it here.
If you haven’t already, make sure to follow Mel on Twitter and her author Facebook page, where you can enter the WoEE giveaway contest and win an advanced, SIGNED copy of Witches of East End!
Happy reading!
-Kady
Hey there! I know, I haven’t blogged in a while, but with four books due a year it’s been hard to do off-the-cuff writing…
I just got back from BEA, the big Book Expo, which is like Fashion Week for books, (we even have celebrities now, which is a shame, they take over everything, even BEA. I’m looking at you Julianne Moore, whom I’m sure is a lovely person, but with so many GREAT FABULOUS kids writers out there—do we really need a CELEBRITY to talk about children’s books? Sigh. I guess we do.)
Anyway, every time I go to New York I see old friends and acquaintances, and I love the city because it is a competitive city, and when you do well, your friends and acquaintances will let you know how proud/impressed they are of you. I didn’t mention jealous, because I’ve finally come to the age where I DON’T have toxic people in my life anymore, and when good things happen to me or to my friends, we are all truly happy for each other and celebrate with champagne and hugs.
But what I am always struck by, when I talk to people I know, or who’ve known me for so long, is how most of the world truly does not understand what the writer’s life, the creative life, is all about. Everyone always wants to talk about the movie deals, or the big advances, or how many people follow you on Facebook or Twitter or how long was your line at BEA, and it’s not really what it’s about. And that’s fine, because mostly people understand NUMBERS and BUSINESS and those sorts of things, that apply to the big bad outside world. And it’s nice to be at the place where all the outside things the shiny things of my life are nice and shiny and I can point to Bestseller Lists and all that to say yes, ahem, we are doing well, thank you.
But what I always want to say is—it’s really not about that. It’s NICE of course. It’s very nice and ego-stroking. But it’s NOT EVERYTHING. And it’s not why I became a writer. I had been writing books for many years before I got invited to BEA, my sixteenth novel was the one that hit the “lists”, and if you asked me if I’m happier now than when I was writing two books a year, and those books were doing OK but not gangbusters, but were able to afford us a nice living, I don’t know if I’m that much happier now really. It was enough to be able to make a living from the writing, everything else is gravy. And am I happier? Yes, but because I have a happy marriage and a great kid and wonderful family and friends, but also I’m sad, because my dad isn’t around anymore, and it’s a sadness I will carry with me for the rest of my life, so in that way, life is richer, but also none of those things that make me truly happy has anything to do with my career.
Because it’s the writing that’s the most fun, that’s the secret joy to it all. Yes sometimes it is a slog and yes sometimes a grind and like pulling teeth and so stressful you get a mouth of canker sores for a month before deadline. But mostly it’s FUN to live someone else’s life for those hours spent in front of the computer. The work is fun, and having a life that allows me to have this fun, it’s amazing. That is the best thing about being a writer. It’s joy and fun and naps and EUREKA! moments and living the emotions, the stories, that spark imaginations and move our hearts. It’s also a lot of tearing-hair-out and gnashing teeth and hating everything you’ve written, and gaining weight because you’re sitting around so much, or stress-eating, but the not-fun moments make the fun moments even sweeter.
Go out there, and live a creative life, an artist’s life, a writer’s life. And read this blog too, which has so many great, insightful truths about writers, and jealousy and book deals.
xoxo
Mel