You might have noticed the audio version of Angels of Darkness is up at Audible.com, and it’s missing a name on the cover — mine! This is a heads-up for that audiobook:

“Ascension” is not included in this audiobook.

Penguin Audio has the rights to the novella and will be releasing it later. I don’t have a date for it yet, sorry! I just don’t want anyone to be surprised that it’s not in there, because you probably wouldn’t expect it to only have three of the four stories in the text version.

…breaking my hiatus for a quick post.

Formerly Falling Angels, this anthology will feature a Guardian novella (“Ascension”) and stories by the amazing Ilona Andrews, Nalini Singh, and Sharon Shinn, and will be out in October. What do you think?

I’ve had the title for Michael’s book in mind since my editor and I first settled on “Demon Angel” for Book 1. Obviously, all of the books in the series have carried on the same format, “Demon Something” — but for Michael’s book, I planned to change that up and let “demon” be the second word in the title.

My question is: As a reader of the series looking for books that are “Demon Something,” is it going to totally throw you off-stride if the title is “Something Demon” instead?

(Ignore the picture. I’m not trying to suggest he’s the archangel. I just like pretty colors on my site.)

This is part of an interview I did with Project Paranormal — the extra stuff, I think, that didn’t fit in the Project Paranormal cut. I can barely look, but here’s the video!

I think the announcement was made in PW today, so I’ll put it here, too: I’ve sold the final two books in the Guardian series, which will be DEMON MARKED, coming in August 2011, and Michael’s book, scheduled for 2012 (date and title TBA).

I’m super-pleased to be working with Cindy Hwang at Berkley again, and to be perfectly frank, it’s a minor miracle that I’ve been offered the opportunity to complete the series — so I want to say a huge THANK YOU! to everyone who has supported the series along the way, who has read the books and said a kind word to other readers about them. I’ll do my damn best to make sure it ends as it should, with two fabulous books (and one novella!) to rock your socks off.

Meljean

(Also, I have two different feeds coming off my blog, and one is delayed for some reason by about 1-2 days. Please update your feed reader to http://meljeanbrook.com/feed and it should post timely.)

…and my inner control freak. (Er, not that there is an outer control freak, is there?)

And I usually don’t post these, but one search term that brought someone to my site was

fuck against wall: romance novels

Dear searcher, you might like these:

Just click on a cover! Although, okay — DEMON ANGEL was against a closet door, DEMON NIGHT was while standing in the middle of a room, and DEMON BOUND was against a tree. Still. They were upright.

As Nalini noted on her blog, and as was reported in PW today, we’re in a fallen-angel-themed anthology together (with two other amazing writers who haven’t announced it yet so I am ::zipped lips:: here), and it’ll probably be scheduled for 2011. So that’s awesome.

It’ll be a Guardian novella, set after Demon Blood, and although I have an idea who and what it’ll be about — no, you haven’t met them yet

(Unless I totally change my mind, and choose someone you have met. Because, you know, I’m all mercurial and arty and a diva like that.)

::flicks Flickering-Candle-on-a-Winter’s-Day hair, makes pouty-lips::

my advice is to skip to Demon Night* (and catch up on everything that happened in Demon Angel and Demon Moon here). There’s a couple of reasons for this, but the big ones are:

1) My pacing improved and the writing became more straightforward, IMO. I wrote Demon Night after receiving a lot of feedback on Demon Angel — and many readers who enjoyed that book still had some trouble following exactly what was going on. So I wrote Demon Night with that in mind.

2) Charlie, the heroine, is a newbie to the Guardian world. I know the worldbuilding can be complicated and dense, but Charlie’s outsider status means that everything is explained to her (and the reader) as the book goes along. Now, there’s still a LOT happening and a lot to take in, but compared to Demon Angel/Moon, I think the presentation of that information is easier to swallow, and there’s not as much reading-between-the-lines.

3) Demon Night opens up the second story arc in the series and follows a minor arc resolution in Demon Moon, so it’s a good jumping-on point.

*Don’t get me wrong, I love Demon Angel and Demon Moon. But I know some readers have had trouble getting into the series because of the writing in those books, and recent comments in various locations have made me realize that maybe it’s just easier to skip those two for now (and maybe they’ll be easier to take in after the reader already has some familiarity with the series and the characters).

When I wrote my web page for the Guardian series, I set up the numbering to include the novellas as well as the novels, to make the series order clear. But I’ve been 1) deliberately writing the last three novellas so that they aren’t part of the main story arc and 2) have been reading a few comments online from readers starting with Demon Angel that they didn’t need to read Hot Spell first (and in fact, the storyline worked better for them if they went back and read Falling for Anthony after Demon Angel.)

So, here’s my question: Do you prefer the novellas to be included in the number ordering for a series, or just the single titles?

Because I’ll leave my Guardian page as it is — with Hot Spell first, then followed by Demon Angel, then Wild Thing — but I’d number the single titles, and not the novellas. Or, number them to indicate that the novellas come between stories. Like so:

Hot Spell (a Guardian novella)
Demon Angel (the Guardians, #1)
Wild Thing (the Guardians #1.5)
Demon Moon (the Guardians, #2)

With Demon Forged as Book #5. Whatever changes I made I’d also put in at Amazon, and so on.

Thoughts? What is more helpful to you, as a reader of a series?

This is a big picture file, so I’m putting it under the cut. Spoilers abound, but they are marked. It’s going into the primer section of the website, but I thought I’d pop it in here, too — if there’s anything you want added, let me know (but you should also know that there are a few things I’m not sharing yet. I have to leave a few things for Michael’s book, after all ) Right now it’s just a (big) JPG, but I should have it as a text-to-speech readable PDF soon.