Narrator Reveal, a Giveaway, and a Preorder Campaign

Am I allowed to share this news yet? I don't know, but I am!

Dear Reader,

I’m going to do my best to keep this short because I just heard that humans have officially, collectively gone from an average attention span of 12 seconds to less than 9 in the last two decades, which puts us behind goldfish.

(Okay, actually, I had to look this up to verify it, and this may be a myth, but I’m guessing you all feel more easily distracted in general, so.)

Giveaway!

First up: Meredith Schorr and I both have romances with librarian female main characters coming out this summer. Hers is called Roommating, and it’s about a young woman who moves in with a septuagenarian, which goes swimmingly until the roommate’s grandson also moves in. It’s cozy, sweet, and surprisingly sexy! It comes out so soon on June 10th. Meredith and I really enjoyed each other’s library-themed books, so we’ve teamed up to offer print copies of both our books over on Instagram. You can enter until Sunday, June 1st.

Get thee to Instagram!

Narrator Reveal!

As you may know already if you’ve followed me for a bit, I’m a huge fan of audiobooks. Although as an author I now read a lot of ARCs, which require eyeballs, I mostly consume books via audio. Selecting narrators for my books and then getting to hear the finished audio for the first time is one of my favorite parts of the entire publishing process. I totally lucked out with my debut and got exactly the incredible talent I dreamed of, Brittany Pressley and Zachary Webber. And readers have really connected with their performances. They even won an Audiofile Earphones Award for Take Me Home.

I am absolutely ecstatic about who will be narrating Where You’re Planted. I’m not sure that I’m officially allowed to tell you just yet, but the information is beginning to appear on online retail sites like Libro.fm, where you can preorder now, and honestly, you don’t know what keeping this secret has being doing to me! So…

Brittany Pressley will be returning to voice my children’s librarian/single mom, Tansy. She did such a beautiful job as Hazel in Take Me Home, I just knew I had to have her back on this one. She’s also narrated books like Heather McBreen’s recent debut, Wedding Dashers, and a personal comfort re-read of mine, Rosie Danan’s The Roommate. She strikes the perfect balance of snark and vulnerability, and I still think all the time about her delivery, as Ash in Take Me Home, of the line, “Don’t go quiet on me now, Hazel.” It was hot.

And for Jack, grumpy gardens director/plant daddy, we have the legend himself, Christian Fox. Y’all!!! My favorite series to re-listen to and just an all-around masterpiece in audio is Kate Canterbary’s Walsh series, and that’s where I fell in love with Christian’s work. (My personal faves are The Cornerstone and The Spire.) He can do such an incredible range of voices — including a Texas accent, which is very important to me — and he will make, I think, I hope, a perfect Jack. You might also know his voice from Elle Kennedy’s The Deal.

I have not yet heard any of the audiobook, but it can’t be bad with these two on board, so I’m gonna go ahead and recommend that you preorder it now!

Preorder Campaign!

And speaking of preordering, one more goodie: I’m doing a preorder campaign with my local indie, Blue Willow Bookshop. If you preorder Where You’re Planted from them, I’ll sign and personalize your copy and send you a beautiful art print of Tansy and Jack made by polarts_iv. I think she did a stunning job depicting this greenhouse scene. Look at that light! Look at their beautiful faces!

Okay, that’s all for now!

Keeping swooning,

Melanie