Category Archives: Her Dark Angel

Birthday, Books and More

Posted on 18th April 2010 by Felicity Heaton

Apologies for the lack of blog post last weekend but it was my birthday the week before so I was busy hosting a birthday BBQ on Saturday. What a nightmare they are! I spent the whole day getting everything ready for it, and then the whole evening running about after everyone. It’s a good job that I only have my immediate family come to them or I would be hiding behind the sofa wishing it was over before it had even begun. Koyo hid upstairs all night, glaring at anyone who dared to come up to use the toilet. My cat is rather scared of strangers, and since my family rarely comes over, that’s what they are to her. She particularly mistrusts small people (children). I ended the evening sitting on the floor of my living room, watching Cardcaptor Sakura movie 2 with my nieces and nephews. Normally we end up watching My Neighbour Totoro. Eldest niece did shout for Totoro but I showed her the pink box of Cardcaptor Sakura and she was sold. Good day in the end but so much hard work!

My actual birthday was during the week before. I had a great day courtesy of my hubby. He took the day off with me. I had pain au chocolat for breakfast (very bad), opened my presents, went shopping (but didn’t buy anything!), went to Starbucks for coffee, then we went to see Clash of the Titans (why is Perseus suddenly in love with Io? Utterly wrong. Just change mythology why don’t you? Also, pointless 3D alert!), and then shopped some more, and then we went back home and into Oxford for Yo!Sushi (I love Yo!) where I ate a lot of Pumpkin (Kabocha) Korroke and Edamame, Dorayaki, and Mochi. Totemo oishikatta da yo! (it was very tasty!) So all in all I had a great day.

Last week I spent most of my writing time working on the second draft of Ascension. It’s getting there now, and I’ve added the scenes in that I wanted to and fixed parts up. I have to polish a few more scenes to get some setting description in there, and tweak a bit, and then it’s ready for a check over for passives, making sentences more active, and generally neatening it up. I have another two weeks marked down for Ascension Second Draft in my calendar, so I think I have plenty of time to do the usual spit and polish on it.

It started out at the end of first draft at around 72,000 words, and it’s now nearly 86,000 words. I’m pleased that it’s grown because the story is more rounded now. I think there’s only a few bits that I need to watch for in my next stage of editing when I get back from holiday in June. Just stuff that I need to make sure sits right and makes sense, and that doesn’t leap out in a glaring way or doesn’t fit the characters.

The muse has been busy. A story that was going to be about vampires is now about angels. He’s really into angels at the moment and I was contemplating a particular plot when walking to work through London, and it struck me that it would work better as an angel story. I like the premise, so I’ll probably write it with angels instead. I’m not sure when I’ll get to write it. I’d really like to get Ascension finished, and Forbidden Blood finished too, and then perhaps I could write it. But then, I do need to do draft edits of Her Dark Angel and Her Fallen Angel, and also write Her Warrior Angel. I have far too many stories on the go! I really need to clean up house and get things into order. Maybe this new story will have to wait until then. I don’t want to, because I don’t like it when there is only editing work in my future, but I guess it’s my own fault for writing so many stories in one go! Of course, my Hades’ Boys are going to demand time at the end of the year as promised to them. I think I need to check my calendar!

I bought a couple new books on writing this week. I already have a stack of them and some are more useful than others, but it’s good to have them there as reference, and I’ve found some of them to be very insightful and helpful. I’m hoping these two will be the same and will give me some good pointers about writing, plotting, editing, etc. I think the thing I need pointers on most at the moment is securing an agent. No luck so far but I figured out the primary cause of the problem. The story was far too long.

The next story that I’ll send out to agents is Ascension, which is a demon/witch pairing for the hero/heroine so it’s a bit different, and it’s the perfect length for a first novel. Of course, I’ll mention my other complete novel in my query, and the ones I’m working on, because it looks better if I have several to offer.

I am absolutely shattered today, so that’s it from me. Have a great week everyone and I’ll keep you all posted on my progress with Ascension.

Posted in Ascension, forbidden blood, Hades' Boys, Her Dark Angel, Her Fallen Angel, Her Warrior Angel, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, vampire romance, vampires, witches | Comments Off

Her Fallen Angel – first draft angel romance

Posted on 28th March 2010 by Felicity Heaton

I’m writing this in advance of posting, so if anything sounds out of date or odd now, apologies. It’s Saturday, and I’ve spent the day meeting an old friend for a catch up over coffee, writing more of a new story in Starbucks (and exceeding my caffeine quota) and sitting here with my husband at his office waiting for him to finish work so we can go out with another friend.

It’s been a good day and I managed to get quite a lot written in Starbucks, which is noticeable because my arms are aching now as I type this and my fingers are tired and very unresponsive.

Last weekend, the muse decided that he enjoys me writing more than editing, and gave me two new stories to play with. Both of them are angel romance stories, and they fit with my other one, Her Dark Angel, so I’m writing them as a trilogy of sorts. They’ll be able to read as stand alone stories, but the characters will make appearances in the others. I had a rough plot idea for both of them at the time, and when I finished editing Her Dark Angel on Tuesday, I knocked together the plot for the next one, Her Fallen Angel. At first it wasn’t working but eventually we got there after a little thinking time.

I started writing Her Fallen Angel in earnest on Wednesday and it was a very slow start because I had been gearing down to have a break over Easter, so was coming out of writing and editing mode for the first time in a few months. Also, someone at my work is leaving so Friday lunchtime was spent out with them and the team, and Friday evening was a write off due to a couple of glasses of wine. Unless I want the characters to suddenly get together without reason, it’s not a good idea for me to write under the influence of alcohol.

I have caught up though as today I spent a few hours in Starbucks and managed to get 7,700 words written on and off (I was very distracted and procrastinated quite a bit or I could’ve reached 10,000 like a good girl). Still, I reached my target of 20,000 words total on this story, leaving the remaining 10,000 words to write next week.

Once I have Her Fallen Angel wrapped up in first draft, I’ll plot out the story for Her Warrior Angel, which will also be a 30,000 word novella. I’m looking forward to writing that one too, but these novellas are heavy on the love scenes which often means they take me a while to write as I’m never quite in the right mood or the right place for writing love scenes. It’s rather difficult to write one when someone is sitting next to you on the train for example. You sort of have to wait for a time when you’re alone or at least have more privacy, and that means I procrastinate and do other stuff instead. Say, watching anime when I should be working!

I’m still unsure about what to do with Her Dark Angel, and in turn these stories. I’m tossing about the idea of submitting them to e-publishers, but my past experiences with them haven’t been great, and sales were rather low. I’ve had amazing sales of my self-published romance ebooks, and it’s very tempting to self-publish these three novellas too. My Amazon Kindle sales at the moment are very good, and I’ve always sold a lot through Fictionwise, and I’m quite confident that I could make these three stories sell very well on those platforms, as well as directly… so it seems the only reason to approach an epublisher with them would be to have them on my writer’s CV for when I’m gunning for agents again with my next novel.

But then, I don’t think epublishers hold much weight with agents. Probably about as much as being self-published does, so I’m bound to end up selling them directly as I have done with all my previous stories.

I’ve also been debating trying to edit down Love Immortal to a more reasonable length, without losing any of the plot. I think that’s the trick and that’s what’s going to make it very difficult. I don’t want to sacrifice the plot for the sake of bringing the length down. I’m sure I could cut some fat off it, but it still might not be enough to make it appealing to agents. I’ve had zero luck with touting it so far and I think it’s because they see the word count (158,000 words) and basically flee. I wish I could say I think I could chop 40,000 words off it without causing problems, but I don’t think that I can. I’m sure I could do something though, if I had the time, which I don’t right now unless I put other things on hold and the backlog of stories that need editing time isn’t getting any shorter! I think it would probably take me 4 weeks to chop the story down and revise it, and then I’d have to proof and polish again. So probably 6 weeks total to get the work on it done. It might be worth it though. I’ll have a fiddle with my schedule and see what comes out. At the end of the second draft the story was 128,000 words but needed some plot stuff added as well as improved description. A lot of the description stuff I could probably chop back and hone, but the plot stuff was really necessary… I do like a challenge though. Maybe it’s worth it in this market of tight word counts for new authors. I’ll have more chance touting a 120,000 word and 110,000 word paranormal romances together than a 158,000 and 110,000 word ones.

Off to sort out my schedule. Poor Ascension is never going to get edited at this rate!

Posted in Ascension, Her Dark Angel, Her Fallen Angel, Her Warrior Angel, Love Immortal, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, vampire romance, vampires | Comments Off

Vampire romance and Angel / witch romance editing

Posted on 21st March 2010 by Felicity Heaton

It’s been a busy week all round for me. Work, writing and play have all been manic. Let’s start with writing first, as always…

I finished the second draft of Forbidden Blood this week. At this point, I’m quite happy with it but I’m too close to judge whether I need to improve certain scenes as I had noted previously so I’ve decided to put it to rest for a while and then read it again before the final polish and see if it needs improvements. I cut it down quite dramatically but I’m not sure whether it will be enough to entice agents into taking me on in such a strict market for word counts. It’s now 108,000 words but that’s probably still just long enough to put a lot of agents and publishers off. The economy of word count is all very good but I think publishers need to think more about what impact it has on the story and on readers. I for one feel cheated when I pay a lot of money for a 90,000 word story and it’s just not as good as a longer version might have been. There’s only so much fat you can trim from a story before you’re cutting away the good meat of it. I feel I’ve trimmed as much as possible with Forbidden Blood and people will just have to like it or lump it. There’s no point in my ruining the story just to bring it down by a few more thousand words. If it ends up around 110,000 words, I’ll be happy. I’ve always preferred to have plenty of plot in a story, which means it’s always going to be quite long. Nothing I can do about that without compromising my style and the story.

I’ve made a paperback version of the book now via Lulu and have shipped myself a copy. It’ll get put aside until I’m done with some other writing projects and it comes time to do the polish on it. I prefer to read it as a properly printed paperback at this stage as I notice a lot more mistakes then and I can carry it around with me far more easily. I did the same thing with Love Immortal and that worked fantastically. I took the polish copy of that (post third draft for that story) to Japan with me last November and read it on the trains and plane.

Not sure when I’ll do the polish for Forbidden Blood yet as it’s all up in the air somewhat. I need to figure out my schedule. I spent a lunch time this week going through my calendar and what needs to be done, but then I’ve changed it all again in my head and need to update my calendar now. Typical.

After finishing Forbidden Blood‘s second draft, I printed out Her Dark Angel, my witch/angel romance novella, and started the second draft on that. It’s written in my other style. I seem to a more fun upbeat style, a bit naughty and racy, and then my more serious side. Mostly I write in my serious side, but stories like In Heat and In Heat: Mating Call are my funner side shining through. This is like that, and so is Ascension.

I had a gig to go to on Friday in London, so having to do a read through / edits on paper was a good bit of timing as I didn’t want to have my netbook with me that day. I managed to do the read through, finishing it while waiting for my husband to meet me in the Starbucks near my office in London, and today I wrote all the corrections and notes up into the word document. I should have the second draft on Her Dark Angel done by Friday this week, which means I really need to figure out what I’m doing next!

I’m tempted to write another story, but I have a collection of them that need editing now and I have to do a little clearing of the backlog before I can write a new story. Reading the angel romance has the muse fired up (since he’s an angel) to write another story in the same genre, so maybe I’ll swerve away from writing the werewolf romance and vampire romance novellas I intended to get done and write another angel romance instead. I could even tie it in to Her Dark Angel… oh, the muse loves the sound of that. Cue frantic note writing! An idea has just burst into my head in a flurry of feathers!

In other news, I’ve been battling with work recently and having a massive project to suddenly do because the people who were supposed to be doing it weren’t good enough in the end. Life has been busy too. I’ve had another infection in my dodgy left ear and now have a side-effect of the Amoxicillin I was given (little red dotty rash) so I’ve given that up. I’ve been busy in the garden too. It’s that time of year now, isn’t it? It’s getting warmer and the garden needs attention. I’ve cleaned borders and sown lots of seeds this year. I love wild flowers so it’s all poppies, cornflowers, and night scented stock going out there, plus daisies and things.

Koyo, my cat, has brought the same baby mouse in alive twice last week but not once this week. All of the seed I put on the lawn has been eaten *sigh* by the little sod and the birds, but I still keep a watchful eye on Koyo in case she’s trying to catch the poor little thing again. I’m such a pansy when it comes to animals. I can’t kill them or let them be hurt or anything like that. I have to help them, even when it’s something like a spider or snail. Everything deserves a shot at life and I feel so sorry when snails get squished by people.

It’ll be time to tackle the front garden soon. Not looking forward to that. I want to get it cleaned up before my birthday party in three weeks’ time. My seedlings in the back garden will be the perfect height for small niece/nephew feet to trample at that point! lol.

In 10 weeks I’m off on a much needed holiday to Shanghai, Australia and Tokyo (yes, Japan again!). I cannot wait… and cannot stress that word enough. I CANNOT wait! I’m bound to be reading some of my books and editing them during the flights (there are a lot of them!) but will do my best to relax too.

Right… off to plan that new story. I have a title too now… sometimes I love my hyperactive muse!

Posted in forbidden blood, Her Angel Series, Her Dark Angel, Love Immortal, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, vampire romance, vampires, witches | Comments Off

Her Dark Angel – angel / witch romance novella

Posted on 27th February 2010 by Felicity Heaton

Well, I finished writing Her Dark Angel in first draft this week. In the end, it turned out to be 28000 words, which is a pretty respectable length for a good quick read. It was nice writing something that was pretty much unplanned and which I hadn’t even thought of before last week. Funny when that happens. I have novels waiting to be written, and there’s always something that jumps the queue.

Speaking of queue jumpers. Forbidden Blood second draft is underway. I had Wednesday-Friday off this week to use up some remaining holiday and managed to not only get sick on Tuesday afternoon, as though in preparation for time off, but have managed to completely work through my holiday days too. I’m not sure what that says about me. I take time off work to do my other job. Lol. Hubby says that I need to remember how to have fun. There was a time when I was happy to spend a whole day playing PlayStation and was happy at the end of it. I’ve completely forgotten how to do nothing and be happy with it. If I spend a day like that now, I feel as though I’ve wasted it. Enough of life stuff, back to Forbidden Blood.

I read it on paper, as a reader, as I always do when starting an edit, on Wednesday and Thursday morning, and it’s actually in better nick than I had expected it to be. There’s a few things to address, but nothing major, not like I sometimes get with stories (Love Immortal, you know I’m talking about you… and you Winter’s Kiss… and Cabin Fever!).

I don’t think it will take me too long to do the second draft on it. I need to do my usual process but that shouldn’t take me more than a few weeks, and then I can get on with my other stories, and then decide what to do with them!

Her Dark Angel is probably going to be released through Alinar Publishing. It has been a while since I had a paid for release there, and I really need to keep my name out there. Everyone has come back with very nice comments about the cover that I’ve made. I’d like to get it out soonish but edits take time and I can’t rush them. People have asked about the summary and when they can read it, but I have none of that side of stuff done yet. I’ve only just written it! I hope that I’ll be able to get the story released this summer.

I have a couple of other novellas to write too. One is a werewolf/vampire romance, and the other is vampire/vampire romance. Both of them are Vampires Realm stories.

I need to go and plan out my writing schedule and see how punishing it will be!

Posted in forbidden blood, Her Angel Series, Her Dark Angel, paranormal romance, vampire romance, vampires, witches | Comments Off

Her Dark Angel – cover (angel/witch romance ebook)

Posted on 26th February 2010 by Felicity Heaton

I just got done making the cover for Her Dark Angel and I’m pretty pleased with it so in my excitement, I thought that I would share it with everyone. Comments are more than welcome. This one took quite a while so I’m pooped now and haven’t made much progress on my list since this wasn’t even on it!!!

Ooh, lookit the pretty!

Now I just have to edit, proof, and release the story! Not sure when it will be out. I’ll probably work out the schedule for it tomorrow and will let you all know in my weekly update post. I expect it will be this summer.

Posted in Her Angel Series, Her Dark Angel, paranormal romance, witches | Comments Off

Heart of Darkness – vampire romance novel complete in first draft – and Her Dark Angel

Posted on 20th February 2010 by Felicity Heaton

Well, I finished writing the first draft of my latest vampire romance novel, Heart of Darkness, this week. I finished it on Wednesday and it’s complete at 124,546 words, written in 3.5 weeks! That’s pretty good going I think. I’ve had a good time writing it and although I had a moment in the third week where I was stuttering a bit, and I had to push myself in the final week to get it finished, I’m rather happy with the outcome.

I don’t think I’ll be killing myself to get my next novel written so quickly, although I have freed up some time in which I decided to write a couple of the short stories for my A Day In The Life series of free ebooks, and I’ve even decided to write a rather steamy paranormal romance novella too which I’m burning through right now. I can hopefully find some time to write another few paranormal romance stories which I have ideas for, all shorts or novellas, in between editing my three bigger stories.

I wrote the A Day In The Life story for Lilith, from Seventh Circle, and Balt, from Sons of Lyra: Slave Princess, which are both due out over summer. Both of them turned out at 3000 words. The whole series is made up of free ebooks that are around that length or up to 4000 or so. I’m going to be proofing the stories for Kim, from In Heat, and Valentine, from the Prophecy Trilogy and Spellbound, tomorrow.

I’m going to start on the second draft of Forbidden Blood on Wednesday this week when I have some holiday time for a few days. The usual trick to start with, giving it a good read through on paper pretending to be just a reader and making notes on the obvious things to fix. I’ve allocated four weeks to do the second draft, which should be enough time based on how long it’s taken me to do second drafts on previous novels of similar length. Besides, this one is in pretty good shape already and there’s only a few things that I know I might want to fix or improve, besides the usual of fight scenes, death scenes and love scenes.

As for the new erotica paranormal romance novella I’m writing, that’s quite fun right now and I’m flying through it with almost 9000 words written for it only yesterday. I haven’t really planned this one, which is unusual for me. I only have a few scraps of notes for it which I’m working from and giving my muse free leave with the rest. I should have it done by Tuesday night though so I don’t impact on my second draft of Forbidden Blood. This story is a new sub-genre of paranormal romance for me. Her Dark Angel features a witch for a heroine and an angel for the hero. It’s going to be the same sort of heat level as my In Heat stories, with plenty of love scenes and passion, and a deep attraction between the hero and heroine. I can’t really say much about it without giving it all away! I’ve written angels before in Seventh Circle, both the good sort and the sort that have been corrupted, and I enjoy spinning a new take on them, and I’ll be doing the same with this one, only this time he’s the hero!

I’m over my parents right now gearing up for a birthday party and my father, with the announcement “This will get you going” handed me a section of The Guardian with its Ten Rules For Writers… Gee thanks. At least this time it’s only best selling authors giving their top ten tips for writing, and I definitely live by all of Neil Gaiman’s ones already. Last time it was a how to write type thing.

Update next week with progress on Her Dark Angel.