Category Archives: Love Immortal

romance e-book releases in 2011

Posted on 8th December 2010 by Felicity Heaton

I didn’t get a chance to update my blog at the weekend other than posting my new covers, which have received some seriously positive feedback from readers. Thanks to everyone who replied about them. It’s wonderful to hear your views.

I had wanted to talk more about my upcoming releases. 2011 has 11 planned releases, although at the moment there are only 10 definites. They’re all paranormal romance e-books, but there’s a chance that a sci-fi romance novel might sneak its way into the mix. I have so many ideas for stories at the moment that it’s difficult to tell which will be story number 11.

Here’s a breakdown of my planned releases as it stands. This list is subject to change but mostly that means some might get their dates shifted or switched around.

January 15th 2011 – Love Immortal 
Love Immortal is a long paranormal romance novel that mixes vampires,Greek mythology, werewolves, and humans with phenomenal powers into one potent and action-packed book! I think everyone is going to really enjoy this one and I’m very excited about its release. From next week, I’ll be posting a chapter per week at a special blog I’ve set up for the story. Keep your eyes peeled for it!

February 12th 2011 – Hunter’s Moon
Hunter’s Moon will be my Valentine’s Day release of 2011. The next story in the Vampires Realm series, it takes us away from Europe to the wilderness of Canada, where Tatyana, a vampire of the Nocens bloodline of Budapest, finds herself at the mercy of an ex-alpha and ex-compound werewolf, Nicolae. And the guy has a serious chip on his shoulder. Sparks will fly!

March 26th 2011 – Ascension
Ascension is an urban fantasy romance novel, mixing one stubborn half-demon hero, Taig, with his ex-lover and just as stubborn witch heroine, Lealandra. When her life is threatened and her Counter-Balance is killed, Lealandra turns to Taig for protection, but 6 years has done nothing to heal the hurt she caused by leaving him for another man and the coven, and he’s not about to help her without her paying a high price! Lealandra understands why Taig is acting up, but she hasn’t touched another man in all the years they’ve been apart. Her heart has remained constant, and only Taig has been in it. Seeing the pain she caused, Lealandra works to soothe it and hopes to finally help Taig face the issues he has about his demonic heritage and open his heart to her.

May 7th 2011 – Her Guardian Angel
The only novel in the Her Angel series, Her Guardian Angel promises to be a thrill ride from page one. Bringing back all of the angels from the first three novellas, this story is packed full of danger and intrigue, and a hero who will steal your heart. Marcus isn’t interested in his new role of protecting Amelia and posing as her neighbour, but when the two start to grow closer and Marcus discovers that Amelia is about to die, it becomes a race against time to save her life. But will he be successful? Can he stop something that has been foretold?

June 18th 2011 – Masquerade
The second story being released in the Vampires Realm series in 2011, Masquerade follows two elite guards as they battle both the threat of vampire hunters and their apparent hatred for each other to protect the lords and ladies of all the pure bloodlines of Europe at the Creator Day masquerade ball! But hate is so close to love, and a dance whilst hidden behind a mask can lead from one thing to another…

July 30th 2011 – Forbidden Blood
A dark vampire romance novel, Forbidden Blood is set in London and follows the vampire hero, Kearn, as he fights to catch a man he’s been after for three years. His elusive opponent appears before him in a London back street but a young beautiful woman named Amber hinders Kearn and the man escapes. But all is not lost. The enemy has given Amber a taste of his blood in order to control her and if Kearn’s suspicions are correct, he’ll come after her again. A decision to use her as bait turns into a struggle against a dangerous attraction as they fight to defeat the enemy and protect her life.

September 10th 2011 – Darkness & Light
A longer and improved adaptation of my previous and first release in the Tri-Kingdom series, Darkness & Light.

September 10th 2011 – The Night
An improved adaptation of my previous and second release in the Tri-Kingdom series, The Night.

October 22nd 2011 – Heart of Darkness
Set in the beautiful city of Prague in the dead of winter, Heart of Darkness is a novel of passion and possession. Aleksandr, once a prince of his vampire kind, has spent four centuries relentlessly pursuing the relatives of the man who murdered his sister and the constant bloodshed is taking its toll on him, turning him towards the darkness and into the beast all vampires once were. Battling the darkness after killing another hunter, Aleksandr meets Elise, a guard of the Cerny bloodline, and she instantly drives the black from his heart and his mind, restoring his balance. Curiosity about the effect she has on him, and her beauty, drive him to pursue her, but the charm that had once helped him have any woman he wanted fails to have an effect on Elise. If he wants to win her, he will have to change his ways and learn how modern men pursue the women they are falling in love with, but it’s a race against time as the darkness threatens to take control. Only Elise’s love can save him, but even then will it be enough when he faces the last hunter and the end of his vendetta?

December 3rd 2011 – Hellcat
A hunter by trade, he can’t resist the lure of a rare species, but is it wise to fall for a Hellcat? This shape-shifting kitty isn’t about to be caught, certainly not by a hunter, and definitely not by the alpha cat pursuing her across the globe, but the two men might just cancel each other out. It takes little more than a flicker of charm and a sultry smile to win the hunter over, but will he be able to keep her rightful mate off her tail long enough for her to escape? And why the heck is she feeling guilty about using the guy for protection?

Phew, that was a lot of writing! Now I just have to decide which story to write for the eleventh one!

🙂

Posted in 2011 releases, Ascension, forbidden blood, Heart of Darkness, Hellcat, Her Guardian Angel, Hunter's Moon, Love Immortal, Masquerade | Comments Off on romance e-book releases in 2011

Covers for Love Immortal and Hunter’s Moon!

Posted on 4th December 2010 by Felicity Heaton

I’ve just put the finishing touches to the covers for my next two releases and wanted to share them with everyone. I get quite excited when I finish covers 🙂

Love Immortal by Felicity Heaton

First cover up is the one for Love Immortal. Love Immortal is a long novel (157,000 words) and will be released on January 15th 2011, so not long to wait for that one. It mixes immortals, gods, werewolves, vampires and people with amazing powers. It’s action-packed, passionate, thrilling and very romantic.

Next up is the cover for Hunter’s Moon. Hunter’s Moon is the next Vampires Realm story and will be released on February 12th 2011, in time for Valentine’s Day. It’s a novella at around 50,000 words, and has a sexy ex-alpha ex-compound werewolf hero and a female vampire of the Nocens bloodline as the heroine. Sparks will fly when these two get together!

Hunter’s Moon by F E Heaton

I’m not going to ask which you prefer… but I will ask what you think of them? Do you feel more excited about the stories now that you’ve seen the covers?

🙂

Posted in covers, Hunter's Moon, Love Immortal, Vampires Realm | Comments Off on Covers for Love Immortal and Hunter’s Moon!

Vampires Realm paranormal romance series

Posted on 19th November 2010 by Felicity Heaton

I’ve been hard at work this week on my Vampires Realm series. I’ve now planned the next story after Hunter’s Moon. Masquerade will feature plenty of familiar faces, and plenty of new faces too. Being set in familiar territory at the Venia mansion, and featuring so many previous characters in the series, it took a bit of research to get everything sorted for the story. I’m pretty much there now and hopefully I can start writing it soon. There’s another story to write before that, and I need to proof Love Immortal and edit Hunter’s Moon too.

Masquerade is pencilled in for a mid-June release, around 6 months after I’ve released Hunter’s Moon. Plenty of time to get the story written and edited. I might need to do some more planning for it, or at least study the previous Vampires Realm stories so I have all my reference material right and know the characters I’ll be bringing into it. It’s quite exciting to write something with the previous characters in it. I’ve always liked the Creator Day masquerade as an idea so it should be fun to write an entire story that revolves around it and the freedom it gives to the vampires of the pure bloodlines.

I wish I could start writing it now, but I have to stick to schedule, no matter how much the muse wants me to swerve off in another direction instead.

I also read the first draft of Hunter’s Moon over this week. I finished that this morning. The story is in good shape but there’s things that I want to fix and improve. There always is when I read a first draft over. It’s better to catch them now than during the polishing stages when deadlines are tighter. I’m away next weekend so I’ll put this story on hold until I return, which is why I’m squeezing in a quick proof of Love Immortal next week.

Love Immortal is the next story due out after Hunter’s Moon. This time it’s a novel… and a big one. I bet you’ve all been missing my novel-length stories! It’s a doozy at 157000 words too. I think everyone is going to love it and I put a lot of work into this one, so much that I have to up my game with all my other stories now to match it.

I’m still hoping that I get some time to read something other than my own stories soon. The flight to Barcelona is only a couple of hours but I might crack open Lara Adrian’s Shades of Midnight. I keep flicking through it and I really want to read it now. I like her Breed series, probably more than I like J R Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Don’t get me wrong, I love the BDB series, but Ward is sort of losing me a bit. Plus, I do prefer Lara Adrian’s style and way of writing. I get confused with the lingo in Ward’s BDB series.

Next year is going to be super-busy for me as I’m going to release 11 stories in 2011… I’ll post an update about that mad master plan soon!

Posted in 2011 releases, Hunter's Moon, Love Immortal, Masquerade, paranormal romance, vampire romance, vampires, Vampires Realm, werewolf romance | Comments Off on Vampires Realm paranormal romance series

Upcoming romance releases

Posted on 11th August 2010 by Felicity Heaton

It has been a while since I’ve had a release that hasn’t been a short freebie. Sorry about that. I focused so much on trying to get an agent that I didn’t have any releases. I’ve been working hard to rectify that and I’m happy to say that I now have one complete novella, Her Dark Angel, to release at the end of the month.

It has been sooooo long since I’ve had a new release that needed promoting that I’ve completely forgotten the process. Lol. It’s going to be a steep learning curve again. I need to get ads in place, and blog appearances, and reviews requested.

My release after that, at least releases that aren’t part of my free A Day in the Life, series, is going to be Her Fallen Angel around Halloween, and then following that it will be Her Warrior Angel, in December. Yes, the Her Angel series are all sort of linked. Much like my Sons of Lyra and Daughters of Lyra series, you don’t have to read them in order. Characters do make appearances in the other novellas though, so you might want to read them in order to know who is who.

I have the second draft of Her Fallen Angel finished, but now I’m thinking that I want to change the ending to make it more of an ending and more dramatic. At the moment, it’s more of a set up for the third novella, but I don’t want readers to feel they’ve read an incomplete story. So I’m changing the ending. I have one in mind. I’ll read the novella once I’ve finished typing up my Hades’ Boys notes and change the ending when I get there to make it better and just how I want it.

I’m really hoping everyone enjoys my angels. They’re rather yummy. Need I say more?

Next year I’ll release a bunch of novels that I have which are either complete or almost complete at the moment. Yes, those four novels you’ve all been reading about will be coming out. That’s Love Immortal (demi-gods, vampires, paranormal people, and werewolves), Ascension (a witch & her half-demon hero), Forbidden Blood (vampire romance) and Heart of Darkness (vampire romance).

I still need to make the covers for them, but I’ll work on those when my website is live. I’ll get the covers for Her Fallen Angel, Her Warrior Angel and Love Immortal done soon and then post them all so you can shout out what you think of them.

The releases of the four novels will be spread out over 2011, and I’ll be writing more novels and novellas.

At the moment, I have ideas in storage for three novellas (all paranormal romances), and six/seven novels (paranormal romance, dark fantasy romance, and science-fiction romance). I won’t get all of them written by the end of next year, but I can try. Some of the ideas have more notes for them than others. With novellas, I don’t generally write masses of notes. It’s quicker just to write them, and they have fewer twists than novels, so need less planning.

I also want to do second-editions of a few of my earlier 2006/2007 stories if possible. I have at least 4 that I want to edit again and improve. I’ll see how that goes and consider doing the rest. It’s all go again!

Posted in 2010 releases, 2011 releases, Ascension, forbidden blood, Hades' Boys, Heart of Darkness, Her Dark Angel, Her Fallen Angel, Her Warrior Angel, Love Immortal | Comments Off on Upcoming romance releases

The indie author in me

Posted on 7th August 2010 by Felicity Heaton

I’ve been thinking a lot this past year and a half. Last year, I spent a lot of time writing and editing Love Immortal, and a few other novels. I wasn’t very productive in terms of ebook releases, so apologies for that, but I’ll make up for it now. I’ve tried my hand at agents, but with a book that is 150,000 words long, and needs to be that length, I haven’t had much hope. I was going to try again with another novel, Ascension, a witch/demon romance that is only 90,000 words long, but then realised that I’m writing longer novels these days. My normal word count for a novel is now in the 125,000 word area. That’s far too long for most publishers at the moment. I think I’m better off sticking with ebooks and going full indie.

I sat down and considered why I wanted an agent. I guess it’s a matter of feeling validated. But then I started looking at all the great reviews, the wonderful emails and messages from readers, and how well my books sell, and I realised that I don’t really need an agent to feel validated. I’m an author. I write independently, but I still write, and I still take pride in my stories and do my best, and readers see that and enjoy my stories. When it comes down to it, that’s the most important thing to me—readers enjoying my stories. I want to reach as many as possible and share my stories with them.

So rather than spending time chasing agents, I’m going to spend time where it counts for more—chasing readers. I want to reach more of them and build my readership, and this is something that I can do as an indie author. I love being indie, and I was always torn between indie and contracted when I was submitting to agents. I think the larger part of me wanted to remain indie. I’m not just saying that because of the rejections. I really mean it. I love being hands-on with my stories, with readers, and with where I market and distribute my ebooks.

Right now, there’s a sort of indie revolution happening. It’s the revolution that myself and my friend, Maria, have been awaiting for four years, and it seems a bit silly to go switching sides now.

I’ve been a part of the indie author cooperative, Alinar Publishing, for those four years. We created the cooperative because in 2006, indie authors couldn’t get the distribution as freely as they can now thanks to Amazon, Smashwords, and other outlets. Now that I can distribute easily myself, I’m going to leave the haven of Alinar Publishing and strike out on my own. I want the world to see that I’m indie to the core and that isn’t going to happen whilst I have an umbrella company name attached to me. I love Alinar, but it’s time for me to fly the nest.

Of course, the transition isn’t that easy. I have to completely re-do my website as I want to sell my ebooks direct from there in HTML and PDF formats. This is tricky, and very time consuming, but since I built the Alinar Publishing website, most of the difficult code for checking out, basket, signing up for an account, etc is already at my disposal. Believe me, that’s a great thing since it took me around 4 months to initially build the Alinar website and all it entails.

I have a new design for my website, and I’ve been working hard on it these past few weeks, spending a lot of my weekend time coding it and testing. I’ve even managed to stave off my hunger for playing Final Fantasy XIII, which I foolishly started playing whilst near the middle of the grand re-design of my website. Silly. I’ve still managed to clock up a good 25+ hours on the game though. Where there’s a will, there’s always a way.

I’m almost done with my website, and it will launch soon. The first book released on my new website, and completely independently, will be Her Dark Angel. I have many more exciting releases lined up though, so it will be a big time for my website and for me, and also a busy time as I’ll need to arrange various blog appearances, interviews, reviews, etc.

Here’s to being a fully fledged indie author!

Posted in Ascension, Her Angel Series, Her Dark Angel, Love Immortal | Comments Off on The indie author in me

Writing progress and taking a hiatus

Posted on 2nd July 2010 by Felicity Heaton

My writing is going to be taking a bit of a back seat over summer as I need to study some new skills for my career and this means dedicating time to it, and taking that time from my writing. I’ll continue to blog and post competitions and things. I’m sure that I’ll be doing something writing related and I do have a few releases to put out over summer.

There’s just a lot to do at work and I feel as though I need to split my time more effectively in order to keep progressing in my career. Unfortunately, writing does suck up a lot of my spare time, so it’s that which has to give on this occasion. I have been so focused on learning new things since coming back from holiday that I couldn’t really keep my attention fixed on completing the second draft of Heart of Darkness. I wasn’t giving it the attention it deserved and my editing was turning more into a lazy reading session. That’s not good! So I’ve decided to put it on hold for now, complete a massive list of learning tasks for my job, and then approach the edit with fresh eyes (after a good read of some of my editing books) and I’m sure everything will be much better for it.

I sometimes take breaks like this and it always refreshes me and gives me the energy to start writing again. Of course, I’m stuck in edit-Hell at the moment as I have so many stories to edit (and so many waiting to be written) that it just seems as though that’s all I’ll be doing forever!

I think reading a bit of Love Immortal the other day really hit it home that I was doing lazy editing on Heart of Darkness. With Love Immortal, I went all out, pulled out those stops and really got stuck in on the editing. Approached and defeated a lot of passives, he/she sentences, and weak constructions. I haven’t really been doing that with Heart of Darkness and some of my other stories as I was a bit disheartened by the number of rejections that Love Immortal received from agents (but I do think that was a result of the 155,000 word count!). I need to recapture that dedication to editing and really polish up my stories to give them the best chance they have, and I can’t do that when I have a head full of programming languages and other things. Lol.

Heavens… this is beginning to sound like a quit post. Don’t worry! I’m not hanging up my pad and pen just yet. I’ll be back on that editing wagon soon enough (hopefully the writing one too).

I have the release of Her Dark Angel coming at the end of August. That should be exciting. With my focus firmly fixed on gunning for print and an agent, I haven’t released a paid-for story in a long time. I’ve completely forgotten the whole review submission nightmare and promotion insanity! That should be a lovely way of getting back on the writing saddle… if a little manic.

Once that’s out there in the big wide world, it’ll be time to decide whether I’m going to do the final polish on Ascension first and send it out to agents, or whether I’m going to do the second draft of Heart of Darkness.

Decisions… decisions…

Posted in Ascension, Heart of Darkness, Her Angel Series, Her Dark Angel, Love Immortal, paranormal romance, vampire romance | Comments Off on Writing progress and taking a hiatus

Her Fallen Angel progress and Love Immortal

Posted on 2nd April 2010 by Felicity Heaton

Writing this week has been like pulling teeth, wisdom teeth in fact. It’s been slow, painful, and downright tiring. It took me a while on and off to write the final 8500 words for Her Fallen Angel. I had wanted to have it done by Tuesday but that rolled into Wednesday, and I finally finished it Wednesday lunchtime. I was severely relieved!

It’s not the story that was the problem. I was just so tired this week and didn’t have the energy to write. I blame the clock change to British Summer Time. I lost that hour and then it was like waking up at 5am for work even though it was 6… it was all dark and grim… and wet and cold… I kept sneaking time in to read snippets of Forbidden Blood and Heart of Darkness instead. In other words, I procrastinated. Rather badly.

But still, the first draft of Her Fallen Angel is now complete at 28,500 words and I’m pleased with it. I had to fiddle with the final chapter to get it satisfactory, but I got there in the end.

I need to plot out Her Warrior Angel now, which I’ll start writing in a couple of months because my schedule is rather hectic at the moment.

Why?

Because I’m desperately trying to clear my backlog of books for editing and proofing. At the moment, Forbidden Blood is resting. A friend of mine (male) is reading it as he likes to find all my mistakes for me, and generally give me feedback. I think he just likes seeing it before others and while it’s still evolving into a final draft. Perhaps it makes him feel involved and like an insider. Who knows. It’s helpful anyway so I’m not complaining.

I’ve also decided to edit down Love Immortal. A test run yesterday showed that I could chop around 18,000 words off it, bringing it down to a more reasonable 140,000 words. It’ll take me around 3 weeks but I think it will be worth it in the long run as it should improve the books chances of being published, and ultimately I think this story deserves it and I’ve put a lot of time and effort into it, so I want to see it out there on shelves.

I would also like to get the second draft of Ascension done before I go away on holiday at the end of May. That way, I can take it with me, along with Forbidden Blood, as paperbacks to read on the plane when I tire of movies. There’s no rest for the wicked. I edited Love Immortal in paperback when I was on holiday in Japan last year. Ah, the writer’s life. You squeeze it in wherever you can!

Of course, when I get back, I’ll have polishes to do and the second draft of Heart of Darkness and Her Fallen Angel… and it never ends.

I’m off to watch some telly, drink some tea, and eat some chocolate before shoehorning in some editing time on Love Immortal.

All this effort… one day an agent better request more of my book!

Posted in Ascension, forbidden blood, Heart of Darkness, Her Fallen Angel, Her Warrior Angel, Love Immortal, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, vampire romance, vampires, witches | Comments Off on Her Fallen Angel progress and Love Immortal

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 on Her Fallen Angel – first draft angel romance

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 on Vampire romance and Angel / witch romance editing

Editing Forbidden Blood and those pesky word counts!

Posted on 13th March 2010 by Felicity Heaton

It was another week of editing for me, working hard to get Forbidden Blood down from 121,594 words to a more reasonable 110,000. I’m not really one for editing and I tend to find it quite boring. Last week I did well, and was enthusiastic about it. This week started out very slow and I just could not be bothered with it on Monday, but I pushed myself and soon picked up where I left off last week, doing a good hard edit and draft. This week has been pretty stressful at work too, with a big project weighing me down and a lot of frustration, which didn’t help at all. It totally drained me and I just wanted to sleep.

I have decided that once I have this story done in second draft, and Her Dark Angel done in second draft too, that I’m going to give myself some much needed down time for a week or so. I’ll probably catch up with my Japanese learning, which has been suffering since November, and maybe do some reading.

Progress was good in the end this week. I’ve edited 215 pages now and have 45 to go. The current word count is now around 111,000 words, and I think I should be able to cut it down to around 108,500 and then improve a few scenes which will bring it back to 110,000.

I think that I’ll probably end up sending Forbidden Blood out to agents since I haven’t had any takers for Love Immortal (I think the length is hindering it since it’s 158000 words), and will use Love Immortal as a nice little enticement. Surely having two books complete is better than one?

I need to get the second draft done on Ascension because that’s not a vampire paranormal so probably stands more chance of being picked up right now and the length is around what every publisher and agent seems to be asking for these days (lord knows why though when I think 80-90,000 is very short for a decent novel). Ascension is currently only around 73,000 words, but it does need a bit of work. I originally wrote it as a 15,000 word short but it said it wanted to be a novel, so I asked some readers to take a look and they agreed, so I made it into a novel. By the time I’m done with it, it’ll probably be around 85,000 I reckon. I keep putting it off because I know it’s going to be hard work!

I’ve also been thinking up other stories to add into the pipeline. I really need to get writing my Hades’ Boys series though, even though I’m not sure what the market is for them right now. I don’t really care either. I’ve never written to market. I write what the muse tells me and he’s telling me a lot right now… mostly vampire romance novels and some werewolf romance novels… but there are demons, gods and witches in the wings too.

Posted in Ascension, forbidden blood, Hades' Boys, Love Immortal, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, vampire romance, vampires | Comments Off on Editing Forbidden Blood and those pesky word counts!