Meljean Brook

If it helps, as soon as I read Magic Bites I thought, “I hate this author, her sparse prose, her tight plotting, her ridiculously amazing world-building, and the KATE SHE RODE IN ON!!” So, you know, we’re even.

P.S. That chick really did have Pantene hair. But, ahem — I can’t help but notice that your own cover girl has a sultry glower. And what’s more– Shh! Shhhh! Listen:

Do you hear that whisper? I think she’s saying, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”

(First — congrats to loonigrrl for winning the copy of Demon Night over at Nose in a Book! (And, um, there’s a little excerpt posted over there, with Ethan being … well, a little hungry.))

(Second, I’m still guest blogging over at The Book Binge. Today and tomorrow, it’s all about Q&As.)

(Third, Demon Night kinda-sorta hit a bestseller list last week. It was #41 on the Borders/Waldenbooks romance mass market list! My first list evah! *happy dance* (Also, go congratulate Nalini, who hit in the awesome numbers … also in the week before the official release.)

(Fourth, Borders Stores is running a promotion on Demon Night — $1 off (no coupon necessary.) So if you have a Borders bookstore near you, it’ll be less expensive than other options might be.)

Explore the seductive corners of the dark, as a forbidden attraction tempts danger under the canopy of the…

DEMON NIGHT

$7.99 Berkley Sensation
ISBN 0425219771

Charlie Newcomb worked hard to get her life back together. But all that is shaken when she’s set upon by three vampires desperate to transform her beauty into something evil. Because Charlie is the vital link to something they want—and need. It’s Charlie’s flesh and blood sister, a medical scientist whose knowledge could be invaluable to the predators.

But to get to her, they must first get to Charlie, now under the intimate protection of Ethan McCabe. As her Guardian, Ethan is attracted to her vulnerabilities—as well as her strengths. The closer he gets, the more protecting her becomes not just his duty, but his desire. But will it be enough to save Charlie when the demon night falls?

Read an excerpt.

Read a really long excerpt.

Reviews after the cut (and please let me know if you want me to add yours — I’m sure I forgot some). (more…)

Okay, breaking my head down rule (again, because I did yesterday at Dear Author) because this one popped up out of nowhere.

I had no idea Demon Night was reviewed by PW I have no idea when it was, either, because I just found the review when I went to Powell’s site to see if they had any in stock at their Beaverton store yet.

But, supercool. My first PW review:

“Brook crafts an entertaining, slow-building romance for her latest Guardian series entry. Charlie Newcomb is a recovering alcoholic working at a bar and just trying to keep her head above water when she comes across a group of vampires nesting on the establishment’s roof. Luckily, her enigmatic next-door neighbor Ethan McCabe is a Guardian, or angel, who is keeping an eye on her. The two get caught in a demonic plot that threatens Charlie’s sister, Jane, while Charlie must wrestle with not only the undead but with her growing attraction to Ethan. Charlie’s traumatic past has left her believably afraid of her own needs, and Ethan is a brave, sweet guy with old-fashioned ideas about chivalry. Brook gives them distinctive dialogue and paints a fascinating, erotic world full of angels, demons, vampires and ambiguity.” Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

*happy dance*

AAR’s Annual Poll is still ongoing (until mid-February). Apparently, voting is slowing down early — don’t forget to cast your vote for your favorite book of 2007 (but, uh, not just that favorite book, because you have to enter several categories, and straight-ticket ballots are deleted, I think.)

Okay, and this is interesting — it looks like angel/demon romances are no longer “paranormal” but “fantasy” according to their new genre guidelines. Does that make DEMON MOON, which is set in the world of angels/demons, but stars a vampire hero, a fantasy or a paranormal romance? I don’t know. I’m guessing it’s the SF/F category? (Okay, lol — yes — it’s there, even though DEMON ANGEL was apparently in the paranormal? I’m so confused.)

Anyway, don’t forget to vote!

Also, don’t forget about the DEMON NIGHT contest lisabea is having over at Nose In A Book. And she said some really wonderful things about Charlie that pretty much had me bawling.

There’s a special excerpt of DEMON NIGHT over at the Good, the Bad, and the Unread. And there might be another neat announcement going up at that site sometime today. I’m not sure what their posting schedule is, but as soon as it goes up, I’ll link and edit this post.

Holly from the Book Binge put up a review of DEMON NIGHT. Here’s what she said.

I hate this book.

Nah, I’m just kidding.

There were times whilst reading this when I truly felt like my heart would break. My palms got clammy and a knot formed in my stomach. Other times I was so emotionally overcome I felt tears welling in my eyes. It was…amazing.

I’m also Guest Authoring over at the Book Binge the first week of February.

Finally — the funniest, strangest, most WTFiest thing I’ve seen lately is at Gennita Low’s blog: probably NSFW.

You wrote in your review (that will show up at every online bookstore):

To keep her safe from the demons who want her for some unsavory reason, Ethan thinks Charlie should become a vampire.

Thank you for the review, but I thought I should point out that this is — in every way — wrong.

Ethan NEVER suggests to Charlie that she should become a vampire. His entire purpose is to protect her from the vampires and to prevent them from transforming her.

*headdesk*

But, you know, thanks for reading it — and for the story idea. Next book, it’ll be:

HEROINE: Help! I’m being attacked by vampires!

GUARDIAN HERO: Just let them bite you.

HEROINE: Okay. Hey, cool — fangs!

GUARDIAN HERO: By George, your boobs are pretty.

HEROINE: w00t!

THE END.

…except my stupid internet. 2007 shall be remembered by me as the Year of the Shitty Connection! (the exclamation is important.) My computer would connect everywhere but at my house (where I resorted to using dial-up from my old university account (26.4 kbps!! WTF? Do they still make them that slow?) that couldn’t actually send OUT any e-mails or download (my SMTP server mocked that connection) and even bypassing wireless and plugging the DSL modem directly into my computer didn’t work. And I have no idea what my Wordpress password is, so I couldn’t access my blog from my husband’s computer. But I have fixed it, by god. I sent an e-mail to my agent, and it went through.

Everyone has probably already seen this at Dear Author, (and that’s how I found out about it), but DEMON ANGEL was in a The Courier Mail’s “Best of the Year” list.

Demon Angel, from new author Meljean Brooks, is the kind of novel you are lucky if you manage to come across maybe once a year: a thick, meaty, dig your feet in and hold on tight kind of novel with adventure, sex and an epic quality that’s rarely seen in this genre. Demon Angel is an astonishing debut, and a harbinger of great things to come. If you read one romance this year, make it this one.

As an aside, maybe I should have made my pseudonym “Brooks” instead of “Brook” (which is the last syllable of my maiden name.) It seems to flow off fingers more easily when people are typing it.

Anyway, I’m writing writing like mad, so I can’t promise daily updates, but I’ll be around a bit more now. And I can check my e-mail in a timely manner, too.

As part of a guest blogging post for the 2007 Love of Reading Book Fair, Jane from Dear Author had some really nice things to say about Demon Night. That early feedback is always the most frightening — after the book has been out a little while, you know what reactions have been so although the positives are still wonderful and the negatives still not-so-wonderful, a lot of the surprise is gone. But three months before the book is released is nail-biting time, and hearing that readers are enjoying it goes a long way toward easing the pre-release panic.

Don’t forget you have all of November to enter the contest for a Demon Night ARC! 

Every once in a while, you come across a concept that is so freaking cool, that you bang your head and wonder why you didn’t think of it. I ran across one of those today when I read an interview at Occasional Superheroine, regarding a new Zuda.com webcomic by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis called High Moon.

Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like, but here is a description from Ellis (the artist) on the High Moon blog:

It’s … a supernatural western/horror, involving six guns and werewolves … it starts out as a mystery and I think it will be a blast when we reveal the final twist.

I love Ellis’s art anyway, so of course I’m a shoo-in fan. They do one issue at a time (8 pages) and then if it gets enough votes it continues.

Other stuff: Kerry Allen has a fantastic review of Demon Moon over at her blog, but the fun news is that, apparently, Colin will be her HOTM on Nov 2. (Her blog’s a load of good times, anyway, so a visit (even without Colin) is well worth it.)

This is maybe a different kind of moon (and one I want to avoid), but to the gentleman at the Borders’ cafe, who sat in the chair next to me whilst I was writing, and proceeded to tear off the plastic wrapping on a Penthouse magazine: No. Just — no. You couldn’t wait until you got home? Until you got into your car? Or maybe on the bus, where everyone expects that kind of stuff? Gah. Do Not Want.

Thanks to HelenKay and Sybil, I found out that Demon Moon is being reviewed in the upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly. And it got an A-

Yeah, it rocks, really freaking hard.

But here’s the thing that gets me right in the gut — I haven’t seen too many romance reviews come out of EW (chick lit, but not romance, and a search for reviews in the romance genre pulls up a lot of reviews, but not many I’d consider part of the Romance romance genre (ya know, the HEA-part). Maybe I’m wrong about that, because I’m not a regular reader (I’m a cover-buyer, and now that Mulder and Scully are gone, pretty much only Batman and Superman get me to pick it up.) But still, not much romance, because I read HelenKay’s blog and she does often list the reviews, and they’re almost always chick lit. So, on top of it being really fantastic that the reviews might include romance now, somehow my book, which was released two months ago and written by a little nobody author, got reviewed in this issue alongside Johanna Lindsey and Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Which says to me that someone, somewhere down the line, said, “I really freaking believe in this book, you’ve got to read it,” and somehow it was included in EW’s review list. Maybe it was the reviewer who just happened to pick it up, maybe it was buzz online, or a bookseller, or the publicity department at Berkley, or my editor … I don’t know. It’s just completely freaking awesome. So, thank you to anyone and everyone who has ever said, “read this.”

Quite honestly, I don’t say it enough; it’s probably too bad that it takes something like this to remind me, but … yeah.

Does this call for a w00000000000000000000000000t?

Yes. Yes, it does.

…were the numbers that random.org generated randomly.

Dance Chica

LesleyW

Have both won my backlist! Thanks to everyone for playing and joining in the fun, and if you missed Colin’s answers to the Proust questionnaire, they’re still there.

Other stuff:

I’m the author of the month over at Vampireromancebooks.com! I have an interview up with them, and watch for a contest to win a copy of Demon Moon. I’ll post a link when we get it up. In the meantime, there’s a fantastic contest involving a stake and Colleen Gleason’s Rises the Night taking place!

DearAuthor.com has put up the story of my first sale.

Demon Moon is a DIK at AAR (which means I have to find a new goal in life).

And don’t forget that you can hitch a ride on the L.U.R.V.E. Train!

I’m missing stuff to link, I know, but gah! I’ll put up more later.