Meljean Brook

Welcome to the Seven Sins and de-lurking week! It’s a seven-day contest, with a chance each day to win a copy of DEMON ANGEL. Here’s how it works: comment on any one of the seven sins, or confess your own weakness, lurker or regular or first-time-visitor — and at the end of the day on January 1st (at 11:59 pm exactly) I’ll choose seven winners by random drawing: one commenter from each post.

The sixth sin is PRIDE.

So, of course this is originally about excessive pride, and in a religious sense not giving You Know Who his due. If you believe in that kind of stuff.

I don’t think a writer can really write without some kind of pride attached — or at least, not send anything out. You have to believe in what you’re writing, be proud of it, think it’s worthy of reading. I don’t think that’s excessive pride … but then, I’m a writer, so I may have a skewed vision of it, anyway.

I don’t know if I have an excessive amount of pride in anything. I have a freaking brilliant and beautiful daughter, but I’m only partially responsible for any of that. Genes, the in-laws, family, and a good husband have contributed a lot to it.

I’m proud of Bobby, or maybe proud of myself for choosing a guy like Bobby, because he’s the one who, when I’m suffering suburbian blues, body-image blues, writing blues, any kind of blues, is the one who helps make it okay again.

I’m proud of my family because they’re awesome … but I really didn’t have anything to do with that either.

I’m proud of all of these. And the two more I’m about to add:

The complex and compelling nature of the relationship between Hugh and Lilith is what makes Demon Angel such a fabulous story. These two are so realistic in their strengths, weaknesses and motivations, even as they are transformed into something more than human. It was fascinating watching their journey of discovery through the many centuries and battles. The other creatures are just as engaging and make for an engrossing story of good and evil and all the nuances in between. Demon Angel is the beginning of an action-packed series full of creatures of dark and light. I look forward to many more tales from Ms. Brook. (Georgia, Joyfully Reviewed)

This is not a traditional love story, but it is Hugh and Lilith’s story of love. Can a demon and a Guardian ever really find happiness together? Who will win in this battle between good and evil?

…

With plenty of action, a plot that doesn’t quit, and characters who leap off the pages, DEMON ANGEL is a surefire winner. This book will captivate you and leave you yearning for more. Luckily for us, the next two stories in the Guardian series are on their way: Paradise, Book 3, is part of the WILD THING anthology (May 2007), and DEMON MOON, Book 4 (June 2007). Don’t miss Meljean Brook’s DEMON ANGEL; this is one book you won’t regret spending your hard earned money on. (Lori Ann, Romance Reviews Today)

And that I have completed four stories in this series that I really love, and are the kind of stories I want to read.

That I’ve made quite a few friends and met some fascinating people because of a mutual love of the stories we read, and that I’ve tricked a lot of people into thinking I’m funny.

That I went into my local B&N today, because I wanted to see if my book was out — and it was sold out. (Of course, maybe they only had one copy to sell — I didn’t ask, and either way, I was very happy. Oh, and yay!-me-proud.)

Finished the Extras page, and the Demon Angel behind-the-story. There’s more that I can and will add, with more time and if questions start to come in — but not yet. ‘Cause I’m tired, and not sure yet what people are interested in.

Demon Angel has been showing up at bookstores — I’ve received several reports of it at B&N and Borders. I sincerely hope that everyone enjoys it. I’ve got two days left in the Seven Sins contest, so if you haven’t picked it up yet or it isn’t yet available at a store near you, have still have a chance to win one of seven copies.

Welcome to the Seven Sins and de-lurking week! It’s a seven-day contest, with a chance each day to win a copy of DEMON ANGEL. Here’s how it works: comment on any one of the seven sins, or confess your own weakness, lurker or regular or first-time-visitor — and at the end of the day on January 1st (at 11:59 pm exactly) I’ll choose seven winners by random drawing: one commenter from each post.

The fifth sin is ENVY.

People I envy: (more…)

Welcome to the Seven Sins and de-lurking week! It’s a seven-day contest, with a chance each day to win a copy of DEMON ANGEL. Here’s how it works: comment on any one of the seven sins, or confess your own weakness, lurker or regular or first-time-visitor — and at the end of the day on January 1st (at 11:59 pm exactly) I’ll choose seven winners by random drawing: one commenter from each post.

The fourth sin is GREED.

I think that greed gets a bad rap. I mean, it’s like the pursuit of happiness…taken to an extreme, okay, but STILL!

Here are things I want:

PILES AND PILES OF MONEY (it’s okay if the piles are coins, because I’ve seen those neat coin-converting-to-bills machines in my local supermarket) so that I can:

BUY OODLES AND OODLES OF BOOKS (oodles)

HIRE A HOUSEKEEPER (I really need one, and I won’t pay her much)

TRAVEL MORE OFTEN (with my entourage of masseuses)

And I want it all to come to me without any work, so I plan to win the lottery sometime soon. Er, but you have to buy a ticket for that, right? Dammit! I’m way too cheap for that.

I obviously am not very good at being greedy, because I’m an author. And the things that I really want — to write great books, crap like that … I have to keep working for. GODDAMN YOU CRUEL, CRUEL WORLD!! I WANT MY HOUSEKEEPER AND MONEY AND MASSEUSES!

Link of the Day: This guy from Nigeria has a bunch of money sitting in an account that you can have, if you’ll just send him a little bit to help him transfer it to your account…

Okay, maybe it’s dumb to put an exclamation mark after that, but … WOOT! My book just got reviewed at AAR!!

It means a ridiculous amount to me — only in the last two years have I been active in a romance reading community, lurking for a long, long time at sites like AAR, TRR, and Mrs. Giggles … but mostly AAR. And I’ve gotten lots of recommendations, but the most important thing? Having people articulate what did and didn’t work for them in a romance novel. Because I’m not very good at it.

And as a writer, I think it’s invaluable to have some way of articulating where a story is going wrong — a lot of it is instinct: you get stuck, and you realize your character did something out of character, or your plot has gone off the wall or it stalled — and NAMING those problems, really being able to SAY what they are instead of just going by instinct is something I should have picked up in the thousands of books I’ve read (I didn’t, though) and a freaking degree in literature … those books let me recognize it, not really name it.

And it’s easier to kill what’s wrong if I know exactly what it is.

Anyway, for a girl in 1997 who was pretty lonely in Anchorage, AK, who used to sneak in to work at Deloitte & Touche at midnight to use the Internet and read X-Files and X-Men fanfic, and didn’t know anyone else who read romance, but one day happened to stumble across AAR while looking up more books by Katherine Kingsley, whose NO GREATER LOVE I’d just fallen in absolute love with … it was the best thing ever.

And my goal in life is getting a DIK there, dammit. (Okay, not really, I’d like that a lot, sure, but my real goal in life is just writing books that I love, forever and ever. Oh, and one day, to stop after eating Just One Potato Chip.)

(Demon Angel got a B-, but I think it was a good review.)**

—-

**And I’m laughing like crazy because the part that I thought had the most problems, the reviewer liked best. Hee, I’ll never be able to predict people.

But still, the best part was going to the message boards and reading that a reader had really liked it. And I’m still giggling because she liked best the same part, too.

….and now I’ve got to stop doing that.

So, I finished the Doyen Scrolls page (although I’ll update it with additional info and subjects later, and also a timeline and links to make navigation through the page easier). Initially, I was just going to have a long, boring-ass explanation of the background, what a Gift was, why free will is important, things like that … but I was boring myself, so instead of doing it in my “serious” voice, I let my characters explain it for me by taking excerpts from their stories. It’s a page that is going to be a work-in-progress, and eventually taken over by the demon-slayer.com site (but that won’t be for another six months or so while I develop that).

I also finished the printable lists, which isn’t much to be happy about, because it was easy.

I have yet to finish the “behind the scenes” stuff, and probably won’t until the weekend, which makes me a loser. But! I have everything mailed out, e-mailed out, etc — so this weekend I’ll be haunting a few local bookstores, and by Jan 2nd I can stick my head in the sand if I need to.

I’ve also begun revisions for DEMON MOON. These are revisions that I suggested to my editor, instead of the other way around. There aren’t any massive changes — I’m changing the pacing a little bit through the second quarter of the novel, and cutting out most of one scene and adding in another scene that will hopefully a) bring the external demon conflict in much sooner, b) make the BIG relationship conflict apparent sooner, and c) add a sense of urgency that it didn’t have enough of in the original version. The original wasn’t BAD, I think … it just could be better.

But I have a really important restriction to abide by: I can’t add any pages. Right now, I’m going through and cutting and tightening as much as absolutely possible, so that I can make sure the shifts in the scenes and the added scene will be a wash, word-count-wise.

The reason? I was already at 156K. That sound you hear is Berkley’s production department screaming.

So I’m being ruthless. I actually did a BWAHAHAHAHA! laugh today in the middle of Starbucks when I found a whole paragraph to cut. Then I’ll write the new scene, make the other small changes, and go through and be ruthless again. I think it’ll come out just right.

And I love revisiting these guys. I have a hard time working on two projects at once (I could never write two books at once) and I’m just coming off the new proposal and falling hard for those characters — and it is difficult to stop in the middle and switch voices — but Colin and Savi are so freaking fun, and I know them so well, it’s not that hard. And I have to admit I had a little, “Oh my god, I’ve missed you guys!” moment when I put their pictures back up on my desktop — and sticking their soundtrack back in my car was good, too. Which maybe sounds stupid, but perhaps not so much when I think about how I lived and breathed their characters for six intense months. And I’m glad I’ll be working on something so comfortable and familiar when DEMON ANGEL comes out, because I don’t have to worry about the pressure of my debut release (whether it does well or tanks) getting in the way of the writing, or distracting me away from characters that I’m just getting to know.

And my agent sent me an e-mail today that she loved the proposal. So things are good going into next week — as good as they could possibly be, I think.

Okay, maybe a gazillion dollar contract would be better … but that’s for my GREED post, later this week.

Welcome to the Seven Sins and de-lurking week! It’s a seven-day contest, with a chance each day to win a copy of DEMON ANGEL. Here’s how it works: comment on any one of the seven sins, or confess your own weakness, lurker or regular or first-time-visitor — and at the end of the day on January 1st (at 11:59 pm exactly) I’ll choose seven winners by random drawing: one commenter from each post.

The third sin is WRATH.

I don’t get mad very often, and it takes a lot to piss me off. Like, I don’t get any sleep for a day. Or, I don’t have caffeine for a day. Or no electricity and internet. Or my hair doesn’t look right after being stuck for three days in a stocking cap. Or the driver in front of me doesn’t use their blinker. Or talking about certain things — like politics — that I won’t get into here but suffice to say THEY MAKE ME WANT TO SCREAM KHAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!

Or my husband is home for the week, because school’s out, and he wants to do this and he wants to do that, and why don’t we do this AND CAN’T YOU SEE I’M WORKING HERE, BOBBY!! HUH???

Or, this.

(more…)

Dear Author has chosen Demon Angel as the inaugural book in their DearAuthor Book Club!

There will be a video review by Jane and a book review by Jayne. During January, come and chat about what you liked; what you didn’t like; or why you couldn’t be arsed to read it.

So whether you like it, hate it, or are deciding whether to buy it — be sure to check out the discussion! One thing I’m certain of: you’ll get honest responses to the book at that site, from the Ja(y)nes and other readers. *chews nails* I’ll put up a link to the page as soon as it’s up.

Robin, the winner of the “name that series!” contest and an ARC (which I mailed out today, Robin!) will be writing her review by mid-January … which I will host here. *chews nails again*

Fresh Fiction has a review of Demon Angel up, and the verdict? “Intensely detailed paranormal plot and wonderful characters in this first-rate debut.” Woot!

Angie (Nice Mommy, Evil Editor) also read and reviewed Demon Angel. And she liked it! Not everything worked for her, but this is bit of what she did like:

I enjoyed both Lilith and Hugh very much. Meljean spent a lot of time (centuries, in fact) helping us get to know both of them, their strengths and their flaws. It makes it easy to keep reading, to want to know what happens and more importantly, how the author writes them out of their problems. I love the worldbuilding Meljean did with Hell and Lucifer as well as the other demons and angels. It’s completely unique and I thought, fun, giving them such great characterizations and making the reader believe it’s all possible.

Finally, I’ve added the FAQ page to my site, including an answer to the all-important question: how do you pronounce Caelum? I hope to have the Guardian history/mission, printable book list, and the “behind the scenes of Demon Angel” pages up by tomorrow.

If you have any questions you think I should add, feel free to put them in the comments. One I just considered was: Are these books inspirational novels? … because the angel on the front might give that impression, I guess.

Welcome to the Seven Sins and de-lurking week! It’s a seven-day contest, with a chance each day to win a copy of DEMON ANGEL. Here’s how it works: comment on any one of the seven sins, or confess your own weakness, lurker or regular or first-time-visitor — and at the end of the day on January 1st (at 11:59 pm exactly) I’ll choose seven winners by random drawing: one commenter from each post.

The second sin is GLUTTONY.

Ah, yes. Sweet sweet gluttony. This time of year, I think we all succumb to it just a little. Bobby and I were discussing yesterday whether it was possible to eat fifty of Nicholas’ Restaurant’s falafel in one day … after realizing that, in a twenty-four hour period, that meant only a little more than two falafel an hour, we decided that we could do it. Especially since they sit the falafel in this yummy yogurt sauce that I could eat all on its own … okay, I have. *shame*

The one thing that saves me from gluttony too often? I can’t cook worth a damn. Believe me … no one wants to eat a lot of what I make. The reason I’m not a walking skeleton? My mother-in-law. I can be quite gluttonous over at her house, because the Indian food that she makes is like a little piece of heaven. When food tastes that good, there’s no way it can be bad … or bad for you.

Right?

Link of the Day: The Food Whore.
Link of the Day #2: Chocolate & Zucchini.

Here are a few things that I could eat until I popped (I know, I’m posting this just around lunchtime. I guess I’m not a very nice person.): (more…)

Welcome to the Seven Sins and de-lurking week! It’s a seven-day contest, with a chance each day to win a copy of DEMON ANGEL. Here’s how it works: comment on any one of the seven sins, or confess your own weakness, lurker or regular or first-time-visitor — and at the end of the day on January 1st (at 11:59 pm exactly) I’ll choose seven winners by random drawing: one commenter from each post.

Sorry about the lateness of this post. I can’t think of why I didn’t put it up sooner. I wasn’t doing anything. Writing a little, I guess. Kind of lazing around. No matter, on to the contest!

The first sin is SLOTH.

Although I should probably define it with ANOTHER BOOK, this comes from dictionary.com:

sloth /slɔθ or, esp. for 2, sloʊθ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[slawth or, esp. for 2, slohth]

1.	habitual disinclination to exertion; indolence; laziness.

…I guess I’m guilty of it. I just can’t make the effort to think of the ways I am.

Link of the Day: blackeri’s deviantART gallery, including fantastic digital paintings of … The Seven Sins.