right here. Also featuring Kat Richardson, Devon Monk, and editor Anne Sowards.

I haven’t watched it yet. Eek. Here’s my segment:

For those who have asked, I’ve added both a postcard mailing list and an e-mail newsletter. Note: These are separate mailing lists, so if you want to be added to both, you have to sign up for both.

• Postcard Mailing List
• E-mail Newsletter

If you sign up for the postcard mailing list, you will receive a postcard reminding you about an upcoming release. The Iron Duke postcard will be mailed in September, and Demon Marked in July 2011, and so on. The postcards will simply have the cover on the front and the book description on the back — and so you will receive steampunk mantitty in your mailbox. If that is a problem, you might want to opt for the newsletter instead.

The e-mail newsletter will probably only be sent out around the time of a release, or if I hold a big giveaway, or if there’s something that is Really Big News. I will never send it out more than once a month (and probably far, far less often than that.)

Privacy policy: I won’t use your information for any reason but to mail out these postcards or to send the newsletter. I will never sell or distribute your information. You can unsubscribe from either mailing list at any time.

Spam policy: I won’t spam you. I promise.

I’ve been slowly catching up on my promo item mailouts (if you’ve sent a request, it’s coming!) and am about to start the reading-group mailouts for the steampunk releases. These are rack cards again, but slightly different than my last ones — because one of the most frequently asked questions I’m still receiving about the Iron Seas series is: What is steampunk?

This is designed to hopefully help answer that question. It is not THE definition of steampunk, of course, and there’s always room for individual interpretation. But it’s still a relatively new subgenre, and I’m hoping to clear up that confusion a little (and to make the ‘punk’ part seem a little less off-putting, heh).

So if you have a reading group and you’d like to receive some of these, please contact me and tell me where to send them, and how many you’d like.

I’m back from RomCon! I had a fantastic time in Denver — the events I participated in were a blast, but the best part was having TONS of time to just sit around chatting with all of the attendees, and matching faces to the names of readers that I’ve met online.

I also have books from RomCon that I’ll probably be giving away here soon. Keep an eye out for those.

Today it’s catch up time. I have a lot of books to mail out (if you won a copy of Demon Blood at Odd Shots and haven’t e-mailed to me your address yet, please remember to do so!) and promo items, too — so if you’ve been waiting for those, they should be on their way soon.

In other news, Demon Blood’s cover is up for a vote against some stiff competition at the weekly Bitten by Books poll.

(Speaking of covers, I saw Nalini’s upcoming Guild Hunter cover at RomCon. Holy crap, it’s gorgeous. [/shameless tease])

And now I’m off to wade through the spam that accumulated in my inbox during my time away… *cowers*

I’ve ‘known’ Carolyn Jewel for a while now — I started lurking at her blog several years ago after finding her through Megan Frampton. I didn’t realize at the time that she’d had a few historicals published, but I knew there were several other books on the burner: a paranormal, which eventually became MY WICKED ENEMY, and a historical, which eventually became SCANDAL. And after reading her work, here’s what I learned about Carolyn Jewel — she writes some of the boldest, riskiest, emotionally affecting, and wonderful books out there. Her paranormal heroes are bad, beyond bad, and her worldbuilding complex and unique. And her historicals … god, they rip my heart out. Her latest is INDISCREET. She gets so deep into her characters and her writing is so subtle and clear, it’s breathtaking. As a reader, I love it. As an author, I envy her like crazy.

So I’m really pleased to interview her here — and had a blast answering the questions that she posed to me.

***

1. You write both historical and paranormal romances. What do you love most about writing the paranormals, and what do you love most about the historicals?

With the paranormals, I have to say I enjoy not having to watch my vocabulary and clothing so closely. Don’t go thinking this means I sit around in my jammies swearing at the computer . . . Oh. Well. Sometimes I do, actually. But with a paranormal story (so far mine are contemporary settings) I never have to ask myself whether a word was in use in the period before I use it. Of course I also love the creatures and their bad ass abilities. That’s a lot of fun to write. I’m also a history geek. Oh, how I love history! I really enjoy putting myself in the mind-set of someone who lived 200 or more years ago. What was their world outlook? What’s the same, what’s different? What constrains them that might not today? I just love the tension that brings to a story. Also, I like the clothes.

2. You’re stuck on a desert island. Which one of your characters would you want to have with you?

Hmm. Are there any amenities on the island? A steady supply of chocolate, for example? Assuming that I could do some kind of temporal story displacement such that my choice would still have his HEA in another dimension I would pick… Um… All of them? Sure! I’d use my Temporal Displacement Apparatus to bring over a new character every day or so, depending totally on my mood and maybe there would be some kind of equipment malfunction and I’d end up with one person who is all of my heroes (because I am totally thinking of heroes)… Or, wait, wait! One person who could be any character I choose. When I need girl talk, I’d bring over Sophie from Scandal to talk about books and writing and then Sabine from Indiscreet to talk about history. And then other times . . . Do I need to keep this G-rated? I do? Rats. I leave it to your imagination then.

3. On your blog, you’ve mentioned several writing workshops that you’ve attended in person and listened to as recordings. What do you consider the single best piece of writing advice you’ve heard? What’s the worst?

I bought the RWA workshop DVD this year at the 2009 conference and I’ve been listening to all the workshops. As of this writing, I’ve just finished the last one. I’ve attended many RWA workshops, too, both this year and in the past. There are two “best advice” that come to mind, both of which have been said by a more than one person.

The first applies to all writers, regardless of where they are in their career; Protect the writing. Even as you admit and learn about the things you need to improve in your writing, you also need to believe in your writing. Discard any advice or process that weakens you as a writer or weakens the result of your writing.

The other has to do with making a story bigger. Donald Maass is the best known proponent of this advice, and I highly recommend listening to his workshop. There’s a point in his RWA 2009 workshop when he’s telling a personal story and the room falls dead silent. He had everyone hooked — and he wasn’t, ostensibly, illustrating a point. His story was (again, ostensibly) set-up for the point he was about about to make. But the real lesson was in the details he used in that story and how personal he made it with very very little.

There hasn’t been any “worst” advice per se but rather advice that’s delivered as if it’s chiseled in stone: Do.This.Or.You.Will.Fail. The creative process isn’t a one-size-fits all thing. Just because a certain process or approach works for me doesn’t mean it’s something that will work for everyone else. And just because some other way seems impenetrable and impossible for me doesn’t mean no one else should do that. Not all methods are valid for all writers at all times. They’re just not. The trick is finding out what does work for me.

For a writer who’s starting out or is insecure about her abilities (for whatever reason) handing out a set of immutable rules can be incredibly damaging, particularly if it happens to be a set of rules that is contrary to that person’s internal wiring.

4. In INDISCREET, your characters travel through historical Turkey. Was there anything surprising or fascinating that you unearthed in your research?

Everything I learned while I was researching INDISCREET was fascinating. If I hadn’t been on deadline, I’d still be researching. What really ended up catching my fancy was learning about the abandoned Roman cities, particularly Serijillo. There are many such cities throughout Syria and Turkey (which was my area of concentration for my research), but Serjillo was smack in the middle of where my characters are traveling. It’s as though one day the Romans woke up and said, “Hey, we’re done here. Let’s go home. Right now.” And then they did. High Fantasy novels often have cities like that – abandoned at a point in time and that seem as if only the people are missing. There’s just something fundamentally spooky about that, and it always enthralls me.

5. In both your historicals and your paranormals, your characters often have difficult and/or tortured pasts – and their journeys in your books aren’t so easy, either. Why are you so mean to them? Are you just sadistic?

Yeah, I’m just a sadistic b*itch. Comes in handy.

6. What are you working on right now, and what is your next release? When are we going to get Kynan’s book? Because Xia from MY FORBIDDEN DESIRE is scary, but man … Kynan is like crazy scary.

Right now, I’m finishing up what will be the third book in my desperately-needs-to-be-named paranormal series. The third and fourth books are scheduled as back-to-back releases in June and July of 2011. The heroes will be Durian (the warlord’s assassin) and Iskander (former blood-twin) respectively. Beyond that, I can’t make any promises. I do hope to have the chance to write about Harsh (what, exactly, is he?) and then Kynan (the bad, bad boy).

7. I haven’t seen True Blood yet (no HBO = Meljean has a sad) but I hear there’s a certain vampire on the show who gets all your lovin’. So, tell me – why Eric? Why not Bill?

After all the talk I was seeing about True Blood, I broke down and bought Season 1 on DVD. Watching Season 1 convinced me to sign up for HBO for the duration of Season 2. I’ll re-up for Season 3. I’ve also read all the books, but not until after I’d seen Season 1. I was initially (briefly) a bit baffled about why I didn’t love Bill as much as I love Eric. After all, Vampire Bill is dark, moody and handsome. And he’s fiercely protective of Sookie. Oooh. Usually, that’s all I need to fall madly in love.

But Eric is just so freaking bad! In fact, he’s so bad that I have no issues with the blond hair which normally (and in an extremely shallow way) doesn’t work as well for me. Alexander Skarsgard (the actor who plays Eric Northman) is an insanely beautiful man (in my opinion) AND he can act. Combine that with Eric Northman’s I’m bad and I don’t care attitude and I’m a goner.

Readers of the books know that Bill has told Sookie a significant lie. There are excellent reasons to believe this element of the books will appear in the series, too.

8. If you could cut one bad habit from your daily routine, what would it be? What’s one habit (good or bad) that you couldn’t live without?

What bad habits would those be, Meljean? Oh. Yeah. Well, I bundle them all under “Advanced Procrastination Techniques” and yes, I’m willing to share them with you. Email me.

Hokey as it sounds, and trust, me I seriously considered my chocolate addiction, the habit I couldn’t live without is exercise. When I do skip the work out, my body makes me pay in hideous and horrible ways. I work through a lot of writing issues while I’m too busy working up a sweat to obsess about plot problems. Then my subconscious is free to solve the problem for me.

9. Do you have any defining moments as a writer? (First sale, first completed manuscript?) Any moment, over all the others, that you wouldn’t give up for the world?

This is an easy one. After I published my first two books (1989 and 1991) I spent the rest of the 1990′s writing crap (mostly the same book, I’m sorry to say) and getting rejected and not knowing what I was doing wrong. Except for the blurry form rejections, most of them went like this, “you’re a talented writer but…” So there I was with a book that was really pretty good but with boring parts I didn’t know how to fix. I asked myself what I would do if I knew I would never get published ever again. And the answer was, I’d keep writing. For myself.

That moment affirmed for me that I would get something back from the effort no matter what. Since I was going to be writing anyway, I might as well keep trying to publish. After that I dumped all my writing advice books, went back to writing the way I used to (which is now called seat of the pants writing) got myself into a critique group and made sure I internalized all the things I learned.

It’s really not an accident that I sold about six months after that.

My writer’s workshop, by the way, is predominantly the result of that personal discovery. If I thought I’d learned something, I wrote it up and posted it on my website. For me, the act of explaining the lesson to myself, crystalized it in my brain.

10. What is your favorite scene in INDISCREET (if you can tell us without massive spoilers)? What do you think your readers will love best about the romance?

Well. This is a hard one. I think it might be the scene when the hero, Lord Foye, realizes he’s fallen for Sabine and there’s really nothing he can do about it. He can’t help the way he feels and he accepts that. No denials. Unfortunately, in real life just because you love someone doesn’t mean you’ll be loved in return, and it also doesn’t mean it’s the right time or the right place. And at that point in the story, it’s neither.

What I hope people will love is seeing what Foye does with the hand he’s been dealt.

***

So…who wants to read that scene? You can win a signed copy of INDISCREET — all you have to do is … hold on. What’s this? Carolyn sent over a special present:

…where were we? Is it January? Do we care? Ahem, no we don’t. SO! all you have to do to enter to win a signed copy of INDISCREET is answer one of the following questions:

1) Who would you take to a desert island?

2) Bill or Eric?

3) Is ‘seeing is beliving’ a joke about being undead or just a typo? Support your answer with evidence from the calendar page, please

4) What’s your favorite Carolyn Jewel novel?

5) What bad habit would you get rid of? What’s one habit you couldn’t live without?

Comments will be open until midnight on Friday, October 23rd. The winner will be picked using a random number generator.

More about INDISCREET:

Marrying for love can be a challenge. . .

Edward, Marquess of Foye, would have been happy to continue his life as an unmarried gentleman rake. His brother’s death changed everything. As the last of his line, Edward must now marry. Heart already broken by a capricious young girl, he vows to find an older woman-seasoned, mature. . .and no threat to his feelings.

Falling in love can be dangerous. . .

Sabine Godard was educated by an Oxford don beyond what was proper. Her studies became her salvation after her past left her unwilling to accept the touch of any man. Though she never intended to fall in love, when she and Edward meet, passion defies logic. Together they explore temptation and sensuality, healing old wounds. . .until events require them to risk everything for their love.

Read Chapter 1 of Indiscreet

Berkley Sensation
October 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0425230992

Eek. This kind of makes me feel like a tool (and I promise I will never, ever send you out an invitation to be a fan of me), but I realized that I’m supposed to have a professional page to put the news through, rather than my personal Facebook account. So, here is a link: Meljean Brook’s Fan Page.

It has a handy-dandy discussion board (if you want to discuss DEMON FORGED), and I’ll be using the wall to post all of the links to interviews, giveaways, new excerpts, covers, and other items as they show up.

Right now there is one fan: me. Pathetic, much?

Good Idea:

Promoting your work.

Bad Idea:

Promoting your work by pretending that you are a reader who is commenting like any other person on a blog, pimping your book, and having your fake reader name link to your author website.

There are plenty of stupid people on the internet. But people who spend a lot of time on book blogs — and reading — are generally a lot less stupid than in other internet locales.

God.

I’m about to send my order in to the printer for promo items I’ll be mailing out this spring (I don’t have any releases, so I’ll just be promo-ing the series as a whole and mailing my little heart out). I always hate this part, when I finally close Photoshop and start making the order**. It’s the, “is there anything else I can do to make the series look more attractive?” moment, and the “is there any more info that I can cram onto the bookmark?” second and the “oh, god, did I check for typos enough times?” freak-out, and will soon be joined by the “oh, crap, should I go for glossy or matte?” hour of indecision.

(I prefer matte for bookmarks, because they are easier to sign (even with a permanent marker, the glossy coating can make the ink bead) but the rest of the items will be shiny, shiny, shiny, Cap’n!)

*I had to go check that this was right. Racking brains, but it can be nerve-racking or nerve-wracking.

**It’d probably be better if I just hired someone to design my items instead of making them all myself, but I have control issues. See also: only 90% finished website.

I have an interview and a giveaway up at Marta Acosta’s Vampire Wire, so I’ll be popping online to answer any questions over there, and today is the start of The Italian Gourmet Baby Food Baron’s Ironically Pregnant Virgin Mistress. Catch it over at The Thrillionth Page!

I’ve got two online ad campaigns running. One is based on cost-per-clicks (how many times someone clicks on it and goes to my site) the other is a cost-per-impression (how many times it appears on computer screens across the US). Both are targeted to specific demographics. 

The cost-per-click ad is getting a higher click-rate-per-impression than the impression ad, and my first response was: “Awesome! They’re going to my site!” And my first instinct was — that when I suspend one of the campaigns, because I can’t afford to keep them both running indefinitely — to keep going with the cost-per-click model.

But then I realized the other ad is getting almost triple the number of impressions for the same price, and so I’m going to go with that one, instead. 

Clicks are awesome, but I’ve realized that my book-buying patterns aren’t really all that impulsive (and will probably become less so as my belt tightens in this economy). Instead, I’m worn down by repeated mentions of a series or an author’s name, so that when I’m at an online bookstore or a brick-and-mortar, I’ll pick up a copy and look it over because, “Oh, yeah, there’s the one I’ve been hearing about.”

And all other things being equal (covers, titles) I will pick up the book that is familiar in some way, even if I’ve never read the author before. 

But maybe I’m not a typical buying model? Of the past ten books by new-to-you authors that you bought, did you buy more books impulsively (not knowing anything about them, but liking either the description of the books or the cover) or did you buy it after hearing/seeing the author’s name at least a few times?