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It wasn’t until after Lover Eternal came out in March of 2006 that I started to focus on what kind of Internet presence I wanted to have. I set up a Yahoo! Group and started a message board. Now, three years later, we have thousands and thousands of readers on both, and have established a good community of folks.

Naturally, the Brothers come out every once in a while on the message board, and one of the best things about their visits, to me, is how the readers get involved. As whatever rolls goes down, the Cellies (as the enthusiastic members of the message board call themselves) join in, adding their comments (and actions! ). I can’t tell you the number of times I’ll be rolling in hysterics, not just because of what the Brothers are doing, but because the readers are right along with them.

Here are just a few of my favorite frat-boy moments, and not surprisingly Rhage tends to be front and center in a lot of them. Bear in mind, when the Brothers come out on the board, they are in terms of their stories wherever I am in the process of writing, and I’m always at least one book ahead of where the readers are—so when V gets razzed for falling in love with Jane, the book that was out was actually Lover Revealed. Also, for the most part, as you follow the action, the Brothers are on their computers, but you’ll see when what transpires slips into action—and you’ll have to use your suspension of disbelief a little in these parts! Finally, I’ve edited out the Cellie comments and changed the content a little so it makes sense out of context, but you can enjoy the threads in all their glory on the BDB boards, which can be found at www.jrwardbdb.com/forum/index.php.

So, yeah, the Brothers definitely are just the way they are in the books when they come out on the boards—there’s a lot of fooling around. But it’s not all fun and games.

Lassiter, the fallen angel who is introduced in Lover Enshrined, actually made his first appearance on the boards. It was so odd. As is typical of the Brothers, I can be doing something totally unrelated to them when all of a sudden it’s WHAM!—download time. Lassiter was like that. I had him in the back of my mind for a long time, knowing only bits and pieces of what he was. And then one night I was just answering questions. . . .

I’ll let you see for yourself. Again, the Cellie comments have been largely edited out, and some changes have been so the content makes sense, but here’s Lassiter’s grand entrance:

Clearly, they didn’t listen to Wrath, however. . . .

Lassiter and V definitely share history, and the fallen angel has a lot of enemies. But he does return Tohrment to the fold after having taken a bullet for Wrath, so there are a lot of ties that bind him and the Brotherhood. Watching him with the Brothers over the next couple of books (and on the boards, if he chooses to appear) is going to be a wild ride, I promise you!

For the most part, when the Brothers show up on the boards, it’s totally unexpected. I’m the only one who goes on as them, and I usually have no idea who will come out or what will happen or when they’ll demand to be heard. In a few cases, though, I have known what was doing. The rollout of V going after Lassiter and saving him, for example, was one that I knew about, and accordingly, I gave notice to the Cellies that something was going to go down that night.

The below is another occasion when I was aware of the whole thing. I put out an invitation and said that the Brothers were going to be on the board, but what I didn’t tell folks was that it was going to be for Phury and Cormia’s mating ceremony. I had just finished their book and gotten it off to my editor, and I was feeling like I wanted to involve everyone in their joy.

What transpired, though, was absolutely incredible. There were so many people posting and so many refreshes to the board within every given moment that we killed the server. Which is traumatic, but kind of cool. Fortunately,