The Black Dagger Brotherhood- The Insider's Guide by J.R. Ward

More than just a book about the series of novels she has written about the defenders of the vampire race, this book is also about the writing of the series, complete with a listing of every book released up to its time of writing (through Lover Unbound), with a dossier on each brother (supposedly questioned by J.R. Ward herself) and revealing of their responses to a set of questions such as "Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe?", as well as the usual "Boxers or briefs?".

The book includes a short story called "Father Mine", where Zsadist must come to terms with what his past means for his daughter Nalla and forces him to deal with issues regarding his own past, and the tattooed slave bands that he wears and cannot be rid of. It almost causes him to lose his shellan, Bella, because not only does he not touch or hold his daughter, but he no longer touches her, and she feels that the changes her body has gone through with pregnancy disgust him (of course, they don't- he's holding back for fucked-up mind reasons of his own).

This is backed up with the original proposal for "Dark Lover", as mentioned before, dossiers on each member of the Brotherhood who have appeared in a book so far, which includes an interview with them, and then a section for writers, where J.R. Ward introduces her eight rules for writers, one of them being "Write Out Loud", and another being, "Sweat Equity is the Best Investment". She talks about how to get published and reiterates that having an agent is a must if you don't want to go on the slush pile.

The Proposal for "Dark Lover" shows how she plotted out the book. When the time came to write it, the scenes didn't always have the same meaning that she originally wanted to have, but she listened to the voices within and it was better than what she originally came up with. There is also a quite different ending to the book. There is a set of deleted scenes, bits of dialogue and parts that really made her laugh when writing the books, and a series of bits reprinted from her Yahoo Group showing how the BDB Brothers show up and write on her Group, and how the Cellies (as the people who are part of her group are called) add to the madness and mayhem when the Brothers pull jokes on each other.

And other assorted bits and pieces: the old Language- showing what it looks like, and its correspondance to English, interviews with J.R. Ward herself (including one conducted by the Brotherhood itself), and who she's planned the series to include at this point.

This is an interesting book, and it will be the most interesting to those who are really fans of the series. I read it more for the writing parts than the parts to do with the BDB- I can take them or leave them. I don't particularly like the "Street" language she uses for them and writing to me, just... I'm not so into it.

But the writing parts are good, and she phrases the advice in immediate and usually easy to remember ways, like "Listen to your Rice Crispies". But all of this is short on the ground in a book primarily meant to shill the BDB to readers. I certainly don't despise her writing. She writes ALPHA males who aren't bastards who are constantly ordering their female love interest around, and all of them are psychologically damaged in some way that falling in love with the right women mitigates the effect of the damage on their psyches- and this is important not to make them dipshits or "Alpha" being a code word for controlling bastard.

An interesting book, but one meant more for the BDB faithful rather than someone just getting acquainted with the series. Yes, if you don't know much, you can get quite drawn in, but the writing stuff is rather thin and not much in terms of the size of the book. Recommended, but with caution.