I’m declaring 2015 my Year of Joy
I wasn’t going to call it that. I was going to name it my Year of Giving, but my husband pointed out to me how happy I am when I talk about what’s coming up in my life and how excited I am about my upcoming projects. Not just my writing projects, but the massive charitable giving project that I’ve had in the works for a few months. Here’s my plan…
Paying It Forward
You’ve heard me talk about how blessed I am to be making a living at my dream job, and after releasing 11 books in a little over two years [since October 2012], I’m eager to shift the spotlight to a bunch of very worthy charitable organizations and real-life heroes. It’s time for me to pay it forward.
I’m kicking off the Pay-It-Forward event this December with a charity that’s near and dear to my heart. Then, every month in 2015, I’ll be featuring a different charity that my assistant and I have carefully vetted. I’ll spotlight that charity on my Facebook page, on my website, on Twitter, and in my monthly newsletter. I’ll also donate a minimum of $20 to that month’s featured charity and increase that amount by $5 (up to $100) for every person who emails me a copy of their donation receipt to the spotlight charity at payitforward@melissacutler.net . This hopefully means I’ll be paying it forward to the tune of up to $1300 to charity by December 2015, a personal high for me. I absolutely can’t wait to get started!
One more thing: I’ve set aside the final month of 2015 to spotlight charities that are near and dear to my readers’ hearts. So in the spring, be on the lookout for more information on how to nominate your favorite charity to be featured that month.
A New Western Romance Series…
Briscoe Ranch Resort, here I come! My editor at St. Martin’s Press and I had so much fun working on my latest Christmas romance, THE MISTLETOE EFFECT, that we decided to turn the world of Briscoe Ranch Resort in Texas into a fun, sexy new series featuring behind-the-scenes stories about the romances that develop among the wedding planners, resort employees, and townsfolk who put on the lavish, over-the-top weddings at the resort.
The resort workers might earn a living making other couples’ dreams come true, but they’re about to discover that true love is more than a business and happily ever after isn’t a destiny reserved for their clients. At Briscoe Ranch Resort, love is always in the air and it’s high time these hard working employees feel the prick of Cupid’s arrow…
It’s my joy to announce that this new western romance series will kick off in March 2016, in both print and digital. Right now, the working title of Book 1 is ONE HOT TEXAS SUMMER. Here’s a first look at Remedy and Micah’s story…
When Briscoe Ranch Resort’s newest wedding planner Remedy Lane buys a one-way ticket out of Hollywood to Texas, she never expects to meet local bad boy and fire marshal Micah Garritty…or that they’re destined to clash over every extravagant wedding she plans at the resort. He might just kill her career before it’s off the ground, but neither of them can stop the sparks that fly between them. When Hollywood invades Ravel County so Remedy can plan the celebrity wedding of the year, she’s caught between the glamorous life she grew up in and the sleepy rural town that this jet-setting city girl could see herself being happy in…especially if she had a cowboy like Micah by her side…
And do you remember Emily, the resort’s catering chef, from THE MISTLETOE EFFECT? Oh, boy, do I have a story planned for her! Emily doesn’t know it yet, but she’s about to clash with Briscoe Ranch Resort’s new second-in-command: Chief Operating Officer Knox Briscoe—the wealthy nephew of the resort’s owner Ty Briscoe and the new heir apparent of the Briscoe family empire…
So, next year as I work on my Pay-It-Forward project, I’ll also be working on the Briscoe Ranch books, getting them all ready for their 2016 release dates (and y’all know how happy I am when I’m writing sexy cowboy romances). 2015 is going to be an amazing year!