WIP Wednesday – Working on a new hot paranormal romance series

It’s a WIP Wednesday post with a difference this week. You may have noticed the big shiny, but unfamiliar graphic up there. That’s my holding graphic to give you a taste of what I’m working on. Rather than talking about a series or book you’re all aware of, I’m going to be talking about a new paranormal romance series that I’m working on right now. I’m writing this as a proposal for my agent and hopefully she’ll think it’s good enough to tout around the publishing houses.

I know that many authors wonder why I’m interested in having an agent and breaking into NYC on a traditional publishing contract when I’m doing so well as an indie author. I’m a very cautious person, who prefers to deal in calculated risks, and I like to have my fingers in lots of pies. On top of that, one of my dreams has always been securing a big publishing deal and seeing my books in print with a major player, and I’m working to make that dream a reality. It doesn’t mean I’m giving up on being indie. It just means I’m extending my reach by choosing to play for both Team Indie and Team Contracted (I was going to say Published, but technically I’m published… so went with Contracted, as that’s the only major difference between the two really).

Back to the series. Originally, I was going to write the Guardians of Hades series for this proposal, but I had my reservations about using a series I definitely want to be seven books in length as material for approaching a publishing house in these unpredictable and rocky times. Basically, I was damned if I was going to risk my baby being butchered if the series didn’t do well in print and the publisher wanted it cut short.

I went back to the drawing board to come up with a series dreamed up solely for this proposal. I ended up with two. The Bonded by Blood series and the Eternal Mates series. I spoke about the fundamental differences between the two in this post, but didn’t mention the name of the series: http://www.felicityheaton.com/blog/2012/12/wip-wednesday-a-new-series-plus-updates-on-bonded-by-blood-and-unleash/

I thought hard about which to go with first and decided that I would take a shot with the Eternal Mates series as I was really into that world and I had three books straight off the bat, and knew very clearly what would happen in each.

I’ve spent this week so far, since Monday, working on the series. It’s mostly gathering notes together at this stage and splitting them into different files. We have a file for the world, including the species involved and other details, and one file for each of the first three stories with the scenes I had written down in those, and then one file for other story ideas. I already have another three bare-bone ideas on top of the fleshed out three I’ll be using in the proposal.

Tuesday was a wash out because I wanted to get most of the Vampirerotique Winter Tour posts done and sent out. I had really wanted to continue working on Eternal Mates in the evening, but was tired. Today, I set about pulling the notes for the first book together.

I wrote up what I like to call my plot checklist that I had scribbled down the other day, listing the protagonists wants, why they want it, what the crux of the story is, what the antagonist is after, etc. I typed up a rough outline of the main events and other ideas I had scribbled down during a brainstorming session about the book on Monday. Then, I had to pull those together with the 7000 words of notes I had in the book’s word document in my folder, lacing in those scenes with the events, and forming a complete outline I can work from. It’s done now, and I have it split into 17 rough chapters at present. It will probably expand closer to 20 or more. In the end, it’ll be around 90,000 words when written. I won’t be writing the whole thing right now. I just have to write around a third of it and polish it up, and add it to my proposal.

I’d love to write it all the way through, but with everyone baying for Unleash in my Vampire Erotic Theatre romance series, I don’t have the time. It’s a shame. I’ve never had to stop part way through a book before, and I just hope that if it gets picked up, I won’t have lost whatever style I had flowing when I was writing that first third of the book.

I suppose what you really want to know is who is the hero and who is his heroine, and what are they up against? I know how your mind works.

The hero is a dark elf prince. Elves in this world are the progenitors of vampires, and share traits with them still, such as fangs and a thirst for blood, but they’re far more powerful and don’t have corrupted souls. The elves do have pointy ears, generally all have black-blue hair, and have a tendency to mask what they are when in the mortal realm by changing eye colour from their natural purple and making their ears appear normal. They’re all rather tall, dark and very handsome, and have some pretty nifty tricks up their sleeves.

The heroine is a doctor working for a hunter organisation, who also happens to be the hero’s eternal mate, but neither know it until they’re thrust together and he unwittingly bonds them by taking her blood to heal himself.

That’s all I can say right now. It’s a very big world though, packed with demons, fae, elves, angels, fallen angels, vampires, werewolves, sorcerers / warlocks and sorceresses / witches, and shifters.

I’ll have more about the first book and the series next week. Hopefully, I’ll have all the character profiles and world-building work done by Friday and I can begin writing the first book on Monday.

What do you think about the sound of the series so far though?