Category Archives: science fiction romance

Well, it’s a new year which means it’s time to sit down and have a good think about what I want to get out of the next 12 months. There’s many things on my list–life stuff like achievement at work, fitness, learning new things, improving my Japanese–and then there’s writing stuff, which is the stuff I’ll talk about here.

I was working hard in the last quarter of 2008 to write stories for this year so I can work on a new novel of my. At the moment, it’s just called Project Arcadian, or Arcadian for short. I will be making posts following my work on this novel but won’t be revealing too much about it. I’m sure the suspense will just make the wait more worthwhile!

I have plenty of success to be thankful for in 2008. A lot of my releases were best sellers in the romance list at Fictionwise.com, which was amazing to see story after story make it into the top ten. All 4 of the Sons of Lyra stories made the top ten in romance, along with Seventh Circle, and two other short paranormal stories of mine.

It’s those two that really have meant the world to me because I wrote A Promise of Passion and Embracing the Wolf for the Harlequin Nocturne Bites short romance ebook line, and both were rejected. The Nocturne Bites stories barely break into the top 25 in romance on Fictionwise, so having my two rejected stories sitting pretty in the top 10, was heartwarming to say the very least! A Promise of Passion reached number 9, and Embracing the Wolf has reached number 3 (and also number 8 in the overall best seller list on Fictionwise). It just goes to show that just because someone rejects a story, it doesn’t mean it won’t sell or people won’t want to read it. If someone rejects a story of yours, try someone else, or try self-publishing.

Thanks to all the wonderful readers who bought a story by me last year, and to my faithful who buy all my stories and help me walk on clouds by emailing me about them.

In 2009 I hope to bring you more wonderful stories that you’ll enjoy reading. I have another Vampires Realm novel coming out (when it behaves itself and I finally finish edits!) called Winter’s Kiss, and I have the Daughters of Lyra series. Originally there were four novellas in this series, to match the Sons of Lyra series, but now there’ll be five.

I wish you all a happy new year, and good luck with all your resolutions. If you want to, share them with me on this blog and we can work towards completing them together!

Felicity

I’ve been quite busy recently, working through a mixture of writing, editing, and preparing submissions. It’s all a mixture of projects too, most of which will be available next year. Actually, all of it will probably be next year’s releases.

On the writing front, I have finished writing the next Vampires Realm release after Seventh Circle, which will be Winter’s Kiss. Winter’s Kiss follows a Watchman of Validus and a young woman whom he desired to turn. The young woman is attacked by a werewolf and the vampire rescues her but not before she’s been bitten by the werewolf, and essentially turned. It all turns a little frantic after that and there’s lots of my trademark UST 🙂

Speaking of Vampires Realm, I again toyed with the idea of submitting Seventh Circle to agents and publishers, and have (after a lot of preparation including writing a synopsis!) decided against it. It’s so difficult when it’s a story that is part of an ongoing series. I could have changed the story so it was a stand alone, but I didn’t want to do that. When it comes to stories to submit to publishers, I’ll focus on my series I’ll be writing next year instead.

Following the popularity and success of my Sons of Lyra series, I have planned and started writing a Daughters of Lyra series. At the moment, they’re running at a little longer than the Sons of Lyra stories. I think they’ll be an average of 18,000 words. The series follows one daughter from each of the four sons from the first series. I’ve already written two of the stories during my week off dog-sitting last week. I managed to clock in around 34,000 words written which is brilliant. A normal week for me is around 25,000.

The weekend I released Sons of Lyra: Stranded I submitted a second story to Harlequin’s Nocturne Bites series. This time it’s a werewolf story and I’m far more pleased with this submission than the first one I sent. I think this time I sounded more professional and sold the story better, and I do think this story is probably more suited to the line.

I think that’s about all in terms of writing from me. I’ve just discovered that there’s a new episode of Macross Frontier out online and I neeeed to watch it. I’m so addicted!

Here’s some tallys on the stories I finished this week…

Winter’s Kiss
67,726 / 65,000
[104.2%]

Daughters of Lyra 1
18,652 / 18,000
[103.6%]

Daughters of Lyra 2
23,043 / 18,000
[128%]