Spotlight & Giveaway: Sing the Night by Megan Jauregui Eccles

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Megan Jauregui Eccles to HJ!

Hi Megan and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Sing the Night!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Sing the Night is a gothic fantasy inspired by the Phantom of the Opera about an ambitious soprano willing to do whatever it takes to win a magical singing competition and restore her dead father’s legacy–even make a Faustian bargain with a ghost.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

If he were a song, she would have sung him until the world was filled with his music. If he were magic, she would have opened her mind and let him flood her until all of the world was remade. If he were real, she could have loved him.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

I used my experience as a former soprano to form the magic system for this book and the characterization of the competitors. There’s no such thing as a wilting ingenue in the real world–every single performing artist knows the hunger it takes to audition and audition and make it through a live performance. Also, the sheet music used on the cover is a major spoiler for one of the big secrets in the book.
 

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Selene is very much attracted to the ghost’s power and otherworldly beauty. While she initially sees him as a means to an end, there’s a connection between them that transcends time. And since this is a love triangle with a second chance romance with her childhood sweetheart, all of that shared history and sense of being loved for who she is and not what she can do influences her relationship with Victor.
 

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

“Let’s give them something to talk about.”
He kiss her.
It was the barest brush of lips, barely a kiss at all.
No more than she’d given him below the opera house.
And somehow it was everything. It was a breath on a spark and a wind in sails and the magic in music. The world, still new to her, fell away.
The crowd cheered and the reality of what he’d just done struck Selene.
“You’ve made a grave error of judgement,” Selene said.
“Have I? Tomorrow the papers will write about what could have been mistaken for a kiss instead of you snubbing the ravenous crowd.”
“Was that not a kiss?”
“Victor’s smile was fox-sly. “When I kiss you, you’ll know.”

Readers should read this book….

if they love secret staircases and masquerade balls and ambitious girls and magic as music.
 

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m working on the sequel to Sing the Night as well as a cozy fantasy and a horror romance.
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 3 copies of SING THE NIGHT by Megan Jauregui Eccles -US only

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you were given a chance to learn magic but it came with a terrible price, would you do it?

Excerpt from Sing the NIght:

It was like falling into water. The absence of air, the loss of gravity, her limbs heavy and weak. It was like slipping into a dreamscape. There was shadow and movement and her sense of self but nothing else. She was dead or she was dying or she had never been alive at all.

All at once, up was up, and down was down, and dark was dark. The inky shadows were living, moving, all-consuming. They roiled at the edges of her vision like knots of snakes. It was a wonder she could see anything at all. The place she stood—not earth or stone but something flat and supple, like the stage—was a shade lighter. Like her mere presence brought in light. Not light exactly, something that had been light once and wasn’t anymore. An echo of light. A memory of what light should be.

But that wasn’t what felt so strange about this place. It wasn’t the colors or the shift of shadow. It was the absence of sound. No drip of water or whisper of breath. No wind or creak of wood. No swish of skirts or tap of boots. Not even the beating of her heart.

This place was wrong.

Just behind her, she could see the whirl of the bioluminescence before it stilled into watery dark. Tarnished, like she was seeing it through a dusty window, or from the inside of a mirror.

“Hello?” Selene said.

“Hello.”

There was a person at the edge of her vision. He was half in darkness, like he was being formed from it.

There and not.

The ghost stepped toward her. His movements were disjointed, like his limbs were a little too long. Like he’d forgotten how to be human.

Wake up, she begged herself.

Selene sang for light.

It was blinding, penetrating the darkness. The ghost threw up his hand to shield his eyes.

Selene was sure this was a dream. She’d fallen asleep below the opera house. There was no door, no underground lake, no secret mirror or creature trapped inside. Her subconscious had taken all her burdens and spun them into a vicious web. This was a culmination of the pressure of the competition, exhaustion, and Madame’s words ringing through her head.

Some stars burn bright, some stars burn out.

He came into the light. Not completely, not at first. Half of his face was still cloaked in shadow. But it was enough for her to see him. There was a wildness to him, an unchecked beauty and power that was too familiar to be made up. She’d seen artist renderings of faces like his, carved out angles and thick drawn lashes, like some monument of youth and pulchritude and the insatiable mystery of the unknown that must be discovered. His linen shirt was wrinkled and thin, torn in places. There were stains on the sleeves. If the colors had been right, she might have guessed it was blood. The trousers had been black, now a faded gray.

It was more than his unearthly beauty, more than the siren song of his voice, more than the impossibility of the moment. This was someone her soul knew.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

For as long as Selene remembers, she’s only wanted one thing: to sing the boldest, brightest magic into existence and win L′Opéra du Magician. To the winner goes the spoils of being declared King′s Mage, a position her father held years ago, before he lost control of his magic and spiraled into madness, leaving Selene an orphan. But when the competition turns cutthroat and a competitor steals Selene′s song, the chance to redeem her father’s legacy begins to slip through her fingers.

Until, in the depths of the opera house, she discovers a mysterious and beautiful man trapped within a mirror. He offers not only the magic of music, but a darker sorcery of shadow, blood, and want. He can help Selene if she helps him in return—but his forbidden magic may not be worth the cost.

As the competition continues and mages are driven to ruin competing for the king′s favor, Selene must navigate betrayal, the return of childhood love, and the price of ambition.
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Meet the Author:

Megan Jauregui Eccles, author of SING THE NIGHT (Grand Central Publishing, March 10 2026), writes dark, speculative fiction and is represented by Lauren Galit of LKG Agency Her writing has appeared in Kelp Journal, Coachella Review, Muleskinner Journal, Jarfly Magazine, Tiny Spoons, and Wild Greens. She is Chair of Creative Writing at John Paul the Great Catholic University where she gets to talk book and story with the next generation of writers. She holds a BA in Music from the University of San Diego and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside—Palm Desert. Megan lives in the foothills of San Diego with her husband, five sons, daughter, and various farm animals.
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