www.marilynbrant.com

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Seven Years...and a Time for Change

Coming Summer 2014! Design by E.M. Tippetts
(http://www.emtippetts.com)
It's nearly impossible for me to believe that seven years (to the day!) has gone by since I began this blog. I remember exactly when and why I started it: I'd gotten the very exciting call two weeks prior that I was a 2007 RWA Golden Heart finalist for According to Jane and, with that, the thrilling launch of my online professional life, along with my very first author website ;).

A lot has happened in the years since. I won that Golden Heart award, sold several novels (eventually!) to a traditional New York publisher, indie published several others, hit the USA Today bestseller list and the #1 spot on both the Amazon and the B&N Top 100 lists...and, best of all, made some WONDERFUL friends in the writing world, online and off. I'm incredibly grateful to you all.

Many more professional publishing-related tasks have been added to my workday in the past few years, though, and not much has been taken away, so I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone who's been a regular visitor to Brant Flakes that I'm not blogging with the frequency that I used to. Most of my readers and fellow writers have told me that if I needed to make a choice between writing blog posts and writing novels...that I should choose the novels. And so I shall.

However, while there will be longer periods between posts, I'm not completely closing down this site. The archives have seven years worth of fun conversations, book info, guest visits, recipes and hot guy pics, after all! And I still intend to pop back on this page occasionally -- to share a new book cover or a release date or a piece of particularly exciting news -- but, for the most part, you'll probably find me more often on Facebook, where I'll post the majority of my updates (I hope you'll join me there -- if we're not FB friends already, please send me a request!) and on Austen Variations (their FB page & the blog), too. Less frequently, I'll be on Twitter, Goodreads, Magical Musings and the Girlfriends Book Club. And, of course, there will always be updates/events/release info on my website.

In that spirit, I'll share the first of these updates here with the latest book news -- the official cover reveal for PRIDE, PREJUDICE AND THE PERFECT BET -- coming out this summer!! What do you think?!

This is Bingley McNamara and Jane Henderson's love story, the cousin and the best friend respectively of Dr. Will Darcy and Beth Ann Bennet from Pride, Prejudice and the Perfect Match. Jane is a school psychologist and a woman who wears an angelic mask, but she's not as sweet tempered as she'd like the world to believe. At Beth and Will's wedding, Jane crosses paths with the one person who unnerves her enough to get her to reveal her true self. As for Bingley, he's a wealthy, flirtatious, compulsively social guru of finance, who likes to wager on stocks and on just about anything that strikes his fancy. But this dedicated ladies' man may have just met the woman to finally challenge his bachelor ways...

I'm so excited about this story and can't wait to share it with you all soon!!