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Happy Friday, everyone! I have one last final round of questions that folks have either posted here or sent to me, after which I will release my steely grip on the Penguin blog.

Let's start off this final day of Brain Picking 101 with some dragon talk!

Questions 1-3:

1)Are you going to feature the Black Dragons in their own books or will their story develop in the other dragon books?

2) Will we learn now more about the overall history of the dragons in the future books?

3) In the Dark One's books is Nicole the Guardian going to get her HEA and will she get her own book or will it be part of someone else's story.

Oh, how I love to talk about the dragons! The black dragon sept may or may not get their own series of books. It depends how things pan out in Me and My Shadow. However, I think it's safe to say that they have an integral part to play in future books, so they will be around.

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I really have to come up with a better title for Q&A sessions than brain-picking. Regardless of that, I'm back with a new round of questions, thoughtfully posted by readers. If you're aching and yearning to have an answer to a particular questions, please do post it-there will be one more day of pickage this week.

 And now, let's dive into the dark, murky depths that make up my brain!

Question 1: If a beloved's dark one dies, is she still immortal?

Yes, she is. However, if she's completed the whole Joining process, it's not terribly likely that she'd survive overly long without her vamp-not because she couldn't survive, but because she would be so bound to grief, it would be hard for her to go on.

Now, you may say, what if she had kids? Wouldn't she want to survive for them? The answer is that yes, love for her family would probably go far to making life tolerable. But she would still grieve her lost love.

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Since I haven't done a Pick Katie's Brain blog post in forever, I thought this week's stint on Penguin's blog would be the perfect opportunity to answer some of those pesky questions readers have for me. If you have a burning question you're dying to know, feel free to post it and I'll do my best to answer it later this week.

Question #1: Can I have a book with a crab fishing vampire...or dragon?

Normally, I'd giggle at this question (I happen to know the woman who asked this is smitten with the Deadliest Catch show) and move on, but what's behind the question itself is interesting-the desire for readers to have their favorite elements included in future books.

Believe it or not, I do actually listen to reader requests. I'm not always able to act on them, but I do listen, and when possible, incorporate reader desires into books. That's why Paen in Even Vampires Get the Blues was Scottish-and appeared in a kilt. I had received so many requests, both on my message forum and via e-mail, for a Scottish kilt-wearing vampire that I decided it was a story element I could work with, and included it into the storyline.

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Katie MacAlister is our guest blogger during the week of June 22nd. If you have any questions for Katie MacAlister, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information on Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Zen and the Art of Vampires

Pia Thomason is torn between two Dark Ones: her husband Kristoff (who doesn't trust her) and his best friend, Alec, who is MIA. So Pia goes back to her humdrum Seattle life, but fate has other plans. And she realizes that if she and Kristoff are going to be shackled together for better or worse, she may as well start to enjoy it.