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I tell my husband I love him; then I hang up. Phone goes back in my bag. I focus on the road ahead, thinking of the Brothers. . . .

There’s nothing new in that. I’m always thinking about them. I start to get stressed about Phury.

On a whim, praying to get my head to shut up, I lean forward and turn on the stereo. I start to laugh. “Dream Weaver” is on.

Cranking the music as loud as the Prius can bear, I turn the heater on full bore, put the windows down, and floor the accelerator. The Prius does what it can. It’s no GTO, but the effect for me is just as good. Suddenly I’m enjoying the night, just like Mary did when she needed to get away from herself.

Racing through the darkness, hugging the curves of Route 22, I am the bird that fly, fly, flies away. And I hope this stretch between Caldwell and real life lasts forever.

Question and Answer with J.R.

Q and A with the WARDen

If you come to one of my signings, the Q and As are the best part. I get pelted with questions about the Brothers, the books, what’s coming, what’s happened, Boo, the coffins, whether the shellans have girls’ night out, how in the hell Jane works. . . . The lawyer in me loves it, and man, the readers are SMART. They don’t miss a thing, and I have mad respect for them. When it comes to stuff that has already occurred in the books, I’m straightforward with my responses. When it pertains to the future of the series, though, lawyer that I am, I am careful with my words. Undoubtedly the “leaf,” as they say, slips and I’ll reveal a secret or two. But most of the time I give a KEEEEEEEEEEP READDDDING, or I answer exactly what they asked—and not one word more.

They know when I’m being a little shifty.

For this insider’s guide, I had to keep the Q and A tradition going, so I posted on my message board and my Yahoo! Group that I was looking for questions. I received over three thousand of them! After reading each one, I chose the following:

Have you ever had a character in the middle of the writing process commit mutiny and say, “Nope, we’re not going to do it that way”? Who was it and how did you get them back on track?

—Jillian

I have to admit that when I saw this question I had to laugh a little—I WISH! Jillian, you give me far too much credit. As I said in the dossier section, the way it works with the Brothers is . . . I have no control over them. They do what they do in my head, and the job for me is just trying to faithfully record what I see. I don’t know where they came from or why they picked me, but I know one thing for sure: If they leave, I got nothing. So I’m the one who needs to stay on track, not them, if that makes any sense! ?

Where did your inspiration come from for the names of the Brothers? Most vampire romances I have read seem to borrow old-fashioned or elegant names, while yours are hard-hitting, to the point, and leave no room for confusion with regard to the types of males these are.

—Amber

The Brothers named themselves, actually—and I was a little confused at the beginning. When Wrath came into my head and I started outlining Dark Lover, I kept hearing him referred to by others as Roth. Roth? I thought. What kind of name is that? Roth . . . Roth . . .

The Brothers and their stories are always on my mind, but there are two situations in which they really take over: when I run and when I’m falling asleep at night. So there I was, pounding out the miles, staring at the ceiling in the dark . . . and this Roth name was banging around in my head, along with a hundred other things that happened in Dark Lover. . . . Suddenly, I realized I’d gotten it wrong. It wasn’t Roth—it was Wrath. Wrath . . . As soon as I got it right, the rest of the Brothers’ names fell into place, and so did the spellings.

The story behind the names, as I’ve said before, is that they are traditional names of the Brotherhood and can be given only to descendants of the Brother lines. Over time the names were bastardized in the English language and came to be associated