I’ve been busy this week working on the plot for Masquerade and Hunter’s Moon, which are the next two stories in the Vampires Realm series. They’re both novellas and will probably be around 30,000 to 40,000 words when complete.
I have to say that planning Hunter’s Moon was much easier, as there are only new characters in that one as it’s set quite a distance from the seven pure bloodlines of Europe. It’s about an ex-slave ex-alpha werewolf (escaped from the compounds) and a female vampire of the Nocens bloodline. I haven’t done much with the Nocens line before. They made a brief appearance in the Prophecy Trilogy, but nothing more than that really. All I’ve said about them is that they’re the most technologically advanced bloodline, but you won’t get a feel for that so much in this story as it’s set far away from their home. I do, however, have a novel that I’ll be writing about them, and some of the characters in that are introduced in… Masquerade.
See that neat cut to next story insert there? Good, wasn’t it?
Masquerade is a headache to plan because it not only introduces some new characters, but we also get cameos by some older ones. Fans of Hyperion, Prophecy, and the gang we’ve already met will be pleased. Hyperion will definitely feature, and Prophecy is going to have a part to play too. Quite a few others get short parts, or cameos. It’s exciting to catch up with them again. The downside is that I have to remember what they’re like, what they look like, and also what the palace of the Venia bloodline looks like too… which is a lot of remembering! I’ve got my work cut out for me, that’s for sure. I’ll be going back over older stories like Reunion (my free novella in the Vampires Realm series) and the Prophecy stories, picking out important pieces as reference material. I’ll also be hitting my own website to recap what the characters look like!
You’d think it would be easy to remember all these things, but I’ll probably be bringing in at least nine characters we’ve met before, and then introducing five new characters, plus the hero and heroine. Ouch!
I had wanted to get Masquerade written soon, but I need to keep planning it, so I might have to dedicate next week to the second draft of Her Warrior Angel instead, and the proof of Her Fallen Angel (as that’s out soon!)
