Category Archives: Masquerade

An admin week for me…

Posted on 14th November 2010 by Felicity Heaton

It feels as though it’s been a bit of an admin week for me. I spent most of the week working on articles and interviews for various sites. A few people have asked me to talk about the Her Angel series, but a couple asked me to write about my journey as a self-publishing / independent author. Now, most of you out there know that I’ve been self-publishing my stories for four years now, since 2006, and in that time I have written around 40 stories… but I don’t like to shout about how well I’ve done or tout what experience I have as though I’m an expert. I prefer to write stories and let them do the talking. Those were the difficult articles for me to write. I was fine when they wanted me to talk about my romance books, but the moment I actually had to write about me, I didn’t know what to put!

As well as writing articles and filling out interviews, I’ve been proofing Her Warrior Angel ahead of its release on November 20th. The schedule for my past few stories has been tight so I’m looking forward to 2011 when I have more time planned in for my stories and the schedule is looking better. I don’t like it when I have to cram in proofing and polishing. It doesn’t feel good.

Next week I’m going to be writing the outline for Her Guardian Angel, the novel in the Her Angel series, and I’ll be doing some research for Masquerade. Masquerade is another Vampires Realm story but unlike Hunter’s Moon, it involves characters that we’ve met before and places we’ve been before in the series, so I have to do some research on what those places look like and refresh my memory about the characters I’m including in this story. There’s quite a few old faces that will be making an appearance. I’m sure it’ll excite everyone to see them again.

After I’ve done some plotting for Her Guardian Angel and Masquerade, I’m going to be proofing Love Immortal. And after that I’m going on holiday! Literally. December is going to be a busy month for me again. I’m going to try to get the second draft of Hunter’s Moon done and also the first draft of Masquerade, although I might switch that out for some reading. I really need to read the stack of novels I was bought for my birthday in April!

I have archery today… I’m looking forward to that. I think I’m getting better at it. I beat the men last week, which is always a nice feeling. Watch out world! I’m deadly with a recurve bow. Maybe I’m channelling my inner vampire hunter.

🙂

Posted in Her Guardian Angel, Her Warrior Angel, Hunter's Moon, Masquerade, paranormal romance, vampire romance, vampires, Vampires Realm, werewolf romance | Comments Off

Hunter’s Moon – first draft is now complete

Posted on 8th November 2010 by Felicity Heaton

I meant to post last week that I had finished Hunter’s Moon in first draft. It turned out to be almost 50,000 words in the end.

I’m quite surprised by that. I had chosen to write Hunter’s Moon first rather than Masquerade because I had calculated that it would be the shorter of the two Vampires Realm novellas that I want to release next year. Well, colour me wrong! I had anticipated that Hunter’s Moon, which is a werewolf and vampire romance based in Canada, away from the main stalking ground of the seven pure bloodlines of Europe, would only be around 30-35,000 words. While it has plot and action, it’s more of an emotional story compared with Masquerade, which has lots of emotion too but is more action-based. Lots of fight scenes. It turned out that there were more fight scenes in Hunter’s Moon than I had thought there would be, and it grew to accommodate them. Now I’m left wondering whether Masquerade might turn out to be a novel rather than a novella!

I still have some work to do on the outline of Masquerade, so it’s entirely possible that it will be a novel rather than a novella.

I’m quite pleased with how Hunter’s Moon has turned out though. I think fans of Winter’s Kiss will enjoy it. It has a lot of emotion, turmoil, and will probably have you rooting for the hero & heroine and wishing those pesky laws against such relationships didn’t exist.

Now I just have to let it sit for a while and then come back and tackle the second draft!

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

Vampires Realm – Masquerade and Hunter’s Moon

Posted on 26th September 2010 by Felicity Heaton

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!)

Posted in Her Fallen Angel, Her Warrior Angel, Hunter's Moon, Masquerade, paranormal romance, vampire romance, vampires, Vampires Realm, werewolf romance | Comments Off

Vampires Realm – Masquerade

Posted on 20th September 2010 by Felicity Heaton

I was supposed to have planned the next Vampires Realm story this weekend, as well as doing a lot of other writing related work, but took a little me time in the end and read some books instead (Terry Pratchett, not romance books) as I needed to unwind a bit. I’ll be planning the story this week instead, and also the next novella in the Vampires Realm series too.

The one I’ll be starting to write next week is Masquerade (although the title might change), which is going to be centred around the Creator’s Day ball and focuses on two Venia guards. The hero and heroine are usually at loggerheads with each other (apologies if that doesn’t translate across the pond/around the world — it means they’re basically fighting / arguing all the time) but everything changes after they don masks for the ball, working undercover to protect the important dignitaries of the seven pure bloodlines. Cue misunderstandings, one of them not knowing it was the other one they were with at the ball, and a lot of danger and action. Quite a lot to squeeze into a novella. Plus, we’ll be catching up with some of the vampires from my previous stories, and meeting a few from future novels.

The next one after this is Hunter’s Moon and this time it’s a werewolf/vampire romance novella. Won’t say too much about it but there’ll be plenty of conflict and a show of alpha maleness towards the end.

I’m writing Masquerade for it to come out in January. Short notice again but my crazy 11 stories in 2011 isn’t going to wait for anyone, especially me. The muse is up for a writing frenzy, but he’ll get lazy once he realises that the natural order of things is for an editing frenzy to following the writing part… and I have a stack of books sitting in the to be edited pile.