Author Ambush & Giveaway with Mary Janice Davidson

Book Monster Reviews and LITERAL ADDICTION are very pleased to welcome MaryJanice Davidson back to our sites today! 

MaryJanice is an award winning, bestselling author of an outrageous number of titles spread across 7 series, as well as many Anthologies and stand-alone books.  The series in her current library of literary success are - Wyndham Werewolves (DERIK’S BANE; A WOLF AT THE DOOR), Fred the Mermaid (SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES), Alaskan Royal Family (THE ROYAL PAIN), Gorgeous (DROP DEAD GORGEOUS), Jennifer Scales (THE SERAPH OF SORROW), Cadence Jones (ME MYSELF AND I) and Undead (UNDEAD AND UNDERMINED), and are all well known and well loved.   Her Undeadseries previously had 10 installments, through the most recent, “Undead and Undermined”. Book #11, "Undead and Unstable" is due out tomorrow, 6/5/12, and promises to be another amazing read!

MaryJanice is incredibly witty and that shines through in her writing EVERYWHERE.  Those of you who have read her books know what we’re talking about, but those of you who have checked out the bio on her web page can completely relate. Normally we would paraphrase, but her bio is way too funny to be hacked apart.  

 “MaryJanice Davidson Biography:

"MaryJanice Davidson invented a) her children, and b) the vampire chick lit genre.  Also the Internet.  She is kind to (some) children and (occasional) small animals, and enjoys referring to herself in the third person.  Appearing several times a year on the best-seller list, as well as occasional Federal “person of interest” sheets, she takes time from the living hell that is being paid to do what she loves best to seek out the nearest Cinnabon franchise.  Her goals include working for world peace, figuring out how to make pot stickers, and speaking at writer and reader conferences around the world. (Australia is still recovering.)”

For those of your not yet familiar with MJ's UNDEAD series, we thought we'd give you the rundown of the books to get you up to speed.

"Undead and Unwed", Book #1:

It'a been a helluva week for Betsy Taylor. First, she loses her job. Then, to top things off, she's killed in a car accident. But what really bites (besides waking up in the morgue dressed in a pink suit and cheap shoes courtesy of her stepmother) is that she can't seem to stay dead. Every night she rises with a horrible craving for blood. She's not taking too well to a liquid diet.

Worst of all, her new friends have the ridiculous idea that Betsy is the prophesied vampire queen, and they want her help in overthrowing the most obnoxious, power-hungry vampire in five centuries - a badly dressed Bela Lugosi wannabe, natch. Frankly, Betsy couldn't care less about vamp politics, but they have a powerful weapon of persuasion: designer shoes. How can any self-respecting girl say now? But a collection of Ferragamos isn't the only temptation for Betsy. It's just a lot safer than the scrumptious Sinclair - a seductive bloodsucker whose sexy gaze seems as dangerous as a stake through the heart...

"Undead and Unemployed", Book #2:

Nothing can make Betsy Taylor give up her shoe fetish - even dying and rising as the new Queen of the Vampires. Being royally undead isn't all it's cracked up to be - there are still bills to be paid. And Betsy is determined to live as normally as possible, even if it means getting a job. A "feet" she accomplishes with panache, landing her dream job selling designer shoes at Macy's.

Things couldn't be better - except for her new friends, who keep pestering her while she's on the clock. As if she has time to socialize when there are deliciously sinful shoes to try on - and buy at a discount. It seems that vampires are being murdered in St. Paul, and they're all clamoring for Betsy to do something about it. The worse part is she's going to have to enlist the help of the one vamp who makes her blood boil: the oh-so-sexy Sinclair. Now, she's really treading on dangerous ground - high heels and all...

"Undead and Unappreciated", Book #3:

Fans can't get enough of author MaryJanice Davidson and her topsy-turvy world of the undead with its newly-crowned queen, Betsy Taylor. Now, Betsy continues her reluctant reign while being bedeviled by family secrets...

Most women would love to live as royalty, but Betsy has found that being vampire queen has more problems than perks, except for always being awake for Midnight Madness sales. It may be easy to find blood (yuck) in the dark of night, but try finding a strawberry smoothie. And employees at her nightclub Scratch have been giving her nothing but grief since she killed their former boss. Some people...

But Betsy's "life" takes an interesting turn at a shower for her wicked stepmother, who lets it slip that Betsy has a long-lost half sister. Now twenty years old, this woman just so happens to be the devil's daughter - and destined to rule the world...

"Undead and Unreturnable", Book #4:

This time, Betsy's holiday cup runneth over. For starters, Betsy's mother has finally erected Betsy's tombstone in the local cemetery. A psycho nut job serial killer is targeting tall, thin blondes in the Twin Cities: women who look like Betsy. Her vampire mate, Eric Sinclair, is balking at wedding planning and at the modern notion of communication, while her hateful stepmother has just had a baby. Of course, it's time for the irrepressible Betsy to launch an advice column for vampires trying to cope and to team up with a freshly killed ghost to track down her murderer. But why does her sister, Laura, keep taking out that sword? As usual, Betsy floats triumphantly in a sea of chaos, helped and hindered by the usual madcap cast of vampires and humans. 

"Undead and Unpopular", Book #5:

In her fifth outing, Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor has a birthday coming up and she has a lot on her plate, including wedding plans. So when some birthday guests show up uninvited, she gets really cranky. RThink "Sex and the City"--only the city is Minneapolis and it's filled with demons and vampires.

"Undead and Uneasy", Book #6:

Weddings are never easy. But when you're Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor, they can become downright deadly...

In the days leading up to The Big Day, Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor seems to have a full house - and the wedding guests have yet to arrive. Along with her human buddies, there's a ghost, a werewolf, and a Fiend crashing at her place. And though her fiancé, Vampire King Eric Sinclair, conveniently disappears when the conversation turns to seating charts and flower arrangements, he does manage to make his oh-so-sexy presence known at other moments.  

Betsy knows the next few weeks won't be smooth sailing - but she never expects just what's in store for her. Cold feet are no surprise, especially with an undead groom. But when Sinclair truly goes missing - and not just to avoid wedding preparations - along with most of her friends and loved ones, Betsy is frantic. Alone and afraid for the fate of everyone she loves, Betsy can't trust anyone as she tries to find them and whoever is behind all the disappearances. And what happens next will shake the foundation of the vampire world forever.

"Undead and Unworthy", Book #7:

Betsy Taylor thought entering the world of the undead was a big adjustment. Being a new bride isn't much easier. The blush has only been on for two months, and Betsy has a lot to do: set up the new house, finish writing thank-you notes, and raise BabyJon, her half brother and legal ward. Just another happy American family adjusting to marital bliss.  

Betsy's husband, Sinclair, has been perusing the Book of the Dead, and Betsy's visited by a ghost who's even more insufferable, stubborn, and annoying in death than she was in life. She not only blames Betsy for her condition but insists she fix it. It's all just a prelude to the fun and games awaiting Betsy and Sinclair when a pack of formerly feral vampires, hungry for blood and power, pays a visit to the happy couple.

"Undead and Unwelcome", Book #8:

FIFTY THOUSAND ANGRY WEREWOLVES.

That's what Betsy is facing when she takes her werewolf friend Antonia's body to Cape Cod, where the Pack resides at Wyndham Manor. Because Antonia died in her service, Betsy is alive and well—and wracked with guilt. She has no idea if the Wyndham werewolves will greet her with fangs or friendship.  

While Betsy and her husband, Sinclair, try to make nice, their legal ward, BabyJon, freaks out every werewolf he meets. Meanwhile, Betsy's posse back at the St. Paul mansion is not LOLing. Increasingly frantic e-mails alert Betsy to her half sister's increasingly erratic behavior. Looks like the devil's daughter is coming into her own—and raising hell. All in the name of making Betsy's life easier, of course.

"Undead and Unfinished", Book #9:

There's only one thing Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor hates more than the threat of hosting a traditional Thanksgiving dinner (after all, how traditional is her family?), and that's trying to get through the Book of the Dead without going insane. Every time she's tried reading it, she just gets blindsided - until this time, when the devil strikes a bargain. She offers Betsy a chance to get through the cursed (literally!) thing cover to cover and finally discover all its mysteries. There's just one teensy little catch.

Betsy and her half sister, Laura, have to go to Hell. Just long enough for Laura to finally embrace her dark heritage (after a rebellious youth of charity work and teaching Sunday school) and make nice with her mother, aka Lucifer, by picking up such skills as slicing through time and the universe with a hellfire sword. While such things might sound fun, time travel is proving to be an alarming journey for Betsy and Laura. Not only are they interacting firsthand with their own family's past, but in doing so, they're dangerously impacting the future in ways they never anticipated.
Of course, that's what Mother wanted all along. Damn her.

"Undead and Undermined", Book #10:

So this is what being dead feels like. Vampire queen Betsy Taylor has awoken in a Chicago morgue, naked as a corpse. Her last memory is reconciling with her husband, Eric Sinclair, after a time-traveling field trip, including an indirect route to hell (literally), with her sister, Laura. Now she’s Jane Doe #291, wrapped in plastic with a toe tag. Betsy can’t help but wonder, what in hell happened?

Grabbing clean scrubs, Betsy hits the pavement and heads back to her St. Paul mansion to find that her family and friends have been frantically searching for her. And not one of them can explain how she ended up dead and naked - not to mention, in Chicago - until Betsy realizes that she and Laura didn't time-travel alone. What followed them had a wicked agenda: to kill Betsy in a time when she was still young and vulnerable and end her future reign as queen.

But it's not just Betsy's future that's taken an unexpected detour. Everyone in her circle, alive or undead, is feeling the chill. Betsy can't let the unthinkable happen. It would be a day in hell if she did.

"Undead and Unstable", Book #11:

RELEASING 6/5/12!

Betsy Taylor is determined to change the future for herself and her loved ones, but her actions could have life-shattering repercussions. That’s to be expected when a friend returns from the dead, when your dear sister just happens to be the Antichrist, and when your mother is the devil.

O.K, now that we’ve got you up to speed, let's see what MJ had to say when we let her take over the site for the day...

Mary Janice Davidson Guest Post:

Charlaine Harris, author of the Southern Vampire series (which led to cable’s current smash, True Blood) gave me some terrific advice a few years ago.  “Go to the romance section,” she began.  And I paid careful attention.  Because I am her Grasshopper.  Okay, careful might be an exaggeration.  I sort of paid attention.  To most of what she said.  A third of what she said, for sure.

Okay, I’ll back up.  She probably said stuff before ‘go to the romance section’.  I doubt Charlaine Harris just walked up to me and told me to drop everything and get my bad self to a bookstore.  But she’s so charming and funny, and she has this wonderful Southern accent which makes me think of Paula Deen and comfort food.  There she was giving me terrific writing advice and all I could think was, Oh Charlaine, will you please make me some mashed potatoes?  And grits?  And pork chops?  And...also maybe adopt me?  You make a pretty good living.  You could keep me in the manner to which I would love to become accustomed.  Also, I’m gonna need to be fed at least six times a day.  Don’t worry about walking me, though.  Also, I’m already housetrained!  So there’s that.

Eventually I gagged my inner voice(s) enough so I could hear the advice:  “Go to the romance section...”  (She knew I was too lazy to write True Crime: all that research?  Pass.  Ditto Historical Romance, Cookbooks, and Travel Guides.  Research, recipe testing, research + jet lag = pass.  Pass.  Pass.)  “...and take a look around and see what’s not there.  Then go home and write that.”

Eight years ago, there were no books about a sarcastic, vain, recently-fired office assistant with a serious jones for designer shoes, and a degree of self-involvement that made Kanye West seem like Taylor Swift, and who, among other things, never seemed to learn from her mistakes or be redeemed by love.

Weird, huh?  You’d think book shelves would be crammed with characters like that.  Anyway:  Betsy wasn’t in the bookstore when I went looking.  So I went home and wrote about her.  Fast forward:  the eleventh Betsy book, Undead and Unstable, is hitting shelves this month, the Undead series has been published in fifteen countries, and Germany keeps threatening (I mean, promising) to do The Betsy Show on TV.  

And all because Charlaine Harris wanted to feed me mashed potatoes!  (I love happy endings.)  But Charlaine’s advice is good for anyone who wants to write.  Figure out what you’d like to write, poke around the bookstore, make me grits, and then go home and write what wasn’t in the bookstore.  It might take years to find your niche and/or your audience—it took me a decade of rejection slips before Undead and Unwed finally sold.

And you know what?  I’m not complaining.  Sure, I could’ve wallpapered my entire house in rejection slips—and I still might.  But it was a small price to pay to end up on best-seller lists all over the world.  And all because Charlaine reminds me of Paula Deen!  There’s a lesson there somewhere, but damned if I know what it is.

--MaryJanice

Excerpt from Undead and Unstable

In which Betsy and her husband, Sinclair, haven’t been able to have sex for days, and it’s not doing a thing for either of their tempers.  It contains a spoiler which readers find out in the first 30 pages of Unstable.

“It’s here, okay? Turn left here, that’s what her directions say.”

“Her directions do not say anything; they read.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Oh, you’re channeling Alec Baldwin in Malice now?”

“I do not know what that means.”

“Means you’re being a jerk.”

“Is that more or less desirable than being a bitch?”

“God God God God God God God.”

“Stop that at once!” My husband shuddered all over and we nearly went into the ditch. Served him right for taking the Volkswagen. He had a garage full of really cool cars and he picked the Jetta? The romance was dead. “Really, Elizabeth. That is beneath you.”

“Ha! Shows what you know. There’s not much that’s beneath me.” Wait. Did I just insult myself?

“Indeed,” he muttered, finally turning left. We were in the boonies somewhere south of Mendota Heights, and the farm my sister wanted to meet us at looked deserted.

And it wasn’t much of a farm, either. There were no barns, no outbuildings of any kind except a big cream-colored garage, no livestock, no hay sheds, no corn cribs, no bores (except the one I was married to—hee!). Just a garage, a driveway, a short sidewalk leading to the house, and the house: two stories, cream siding with dark blue shutters. The place was dark except for what I assumed was the living room.

“Why’d Laura want to meet us here?”

“I dare not guess.”

“Well, dare not to park crooked again, too.”

“I have never once parked ‘crooked.’”

“Except for last week.”

“I was following the lines! That was a forty-five-degree parking spot!”

“Crooked. Very very crooked is what it was, Sink Lair, crooked beyond belief, as crooked as your dark dark heart and you just can’t admit it, can you, how crooked it was?”

“Darling, do shut up.” I could actually see his teeth in a snarl as he stomped on the brake and jerked the parking brake so hard I heard the metal groan.

“We should probably have sex pretty soon.”

“Agreed. Just not with each other.” He flung himself out of the car and slammed the door so hard, the entire Jetta rocked.

“Oh, real mature!” I shouted at his back. I considered sticking my tongue out at him, then figured one of us ought to act like a grown-up. Proof! Proof things had gone from bad to terrible: when I was the one left to set the example of adult behavior.

Marc being a zombie was ruining my life. Also my sex life. I unbuckled my seat belt (old habits died, etc.) and followed my bitchy husband up the driveway. “This isn’t a farm, this is just a house and a big smelly garage out in the country,” I whined. “With dogs . . . I can hear yelping. Gross. Stupid farm dogs.”

“Perhaps the Antichrist does not understand what a farm is.”

“Oh, that makes a lot of sense,” I snapped. “She might be the AC, but she grew up on Planet Earth just like you and me. She grew up in Minnesota! Gah, all I can smell is poop.”

Sink Lair muttered something I couldn’t quite catch . . . luckily for him.

“Her car is here,” he said, eyeing the modest black Ford Fusion. “And there’s a light on in the house.”

“Great job, Nancy Drew!”

He ignored me. “Curious . . . why such a large garage for such a small house?”

“Yeah, that’s the question that’s burning me up inside, too . . . come on, we don’t want to be late.”

He was standing stock-still, sniffing like . . . well, like Antonia did when she was scoping out Zombie Marc.

“Are you going to stand in the yard all damn night?” I could hear how shrill and bitchy I was, but couldn’t seem to stop. Who would have thought that not banging my husband would be so bad for our sex life? “Laura’s waiting and we’ve got mysteries to solve and bad shit to stop so c’mon already.”

“Ah,” he said, then flipped the latch on the garage door, and slid it open. The smell of poop got much worse, much quicker.

“Wait!” I cried.

“See?” he said with the first happy smile I’d seen all night. He gestured and—what the?—bowed a little.

“Don’t!” Seconds too late, I figured it out. “Sinclair, you crumb! It’s not a farm farm, it’s a puppy farm, do not open that door any—”

Too late.

MaryJanice is giving away a copy of "Undead & Unstable" to a winner from Book Monster and another winner over at the LITERAL ADDICTION Website.

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