It's Christmas time... well, past Christmas Day now.

The swelling on my knee is finally coming down, leaving ugly yellow bruising behind which makes me look as though I'm part zombie. I've been having a nightmare with my PS3 not playing DVDs but have now fixed it via going into the system and restoring the files to fix any corrupt bits. Yay! And I'm off out this evening to my sister's house for yet another party!

On top of that, I've finished putting the proof work into the final doc of Arcadian, so we're ready to submit that to agents and publishers in the New Year. I'm really excited about that, but I'm sure the hard work of getting synopses and query letters together will dampen it.

Oh, and I've released a new short story, a free one in fact.

A Day in the Life: Kassian is part of my new A Day in the Life series, which is a series of free short romance stories which catch up with my heroes and heroines so we can see what they've been up to since their main story ended!

A Day in the Life: Kassian
A year has passed since Kassian rescued his vampire hunter, Alicia, from the hands of a powerful elder vampire. Since that night, they have fled the vampires pursuing them, and have ended up in London. Things haven’t been easy for Alicia, with the other hunters turning their backs on her because of her love for a vampire, and Kassian sometimes gets the feeling that Alicia still wants to run away from him and their feelings. With the Christmas season at hand, he decides that Alicia deserves a present to put under her tree, or at least on her finger—one that he hopes will give her happiness and will prove how much he loves her.

Kassian is the hero from A Promise of Passion. You can save 25% on the main story with a coupon code in this freebie!

On top of all this, I'm having a Winter Warmer Sale for the whole of January! You can SAVE 25% on ALL of my ebooks on the alinarpublishing.com website. Check out the excerpts...

Felicity Heaton Ebooks
F E Heaton Ebooks

It’s amazing just how much you forget about your childhood. My mum brought over some of my old schoolwork a few weeks ago and I just had to flick through it. We had to do regular book reports. I suppose they used them as a way of making sure that we read a lot. I must have been no more than seven or eight when I had written these reports and some of the comments were hilarious. What struck me most was the fact that I seemed to find a lot of the books boring… except every single story that had a paranormal twist. I don’t recall a lot of the stories and poems, but the ones about vampires, ghosts, witches and fictional characters such as Dracula and Frankenstein made a big impact on me and were duly rated as brilliant, although sometimes the pictures were boring.

I hadn’t realised just how far back I had been interested in the darker side of fiction—the demonic creatures and paranormal or fantasy. I had always thought it had started later. Looking back now, I realise that it is little wonder that I turned out the way I did.

When I couple my reading choices with my more formative years as I hit double figures, I can see where my passion for crafting characters and stories has come from.

When you’re young and you walk to school, spend time at school, or just time at home, with a bunch of vampires in your head, you think you’re a little abnormal. I had a whole world going on in my head and can still remember it vividly. There was a leading man, a vampire of course, with longish black hair and a penchant for black clothing. He could walk in daylight with me, but wasn’t strong then, much like Dracula, or my hero in Arcadian. He had blue/purple eyes. Of course, there wasn’t a heroine back then—just me. I guess my inner heroine was assuming the role. I built a world for him, with other vampires, all with names that were foreign and exotic at the time but probably quite standard in the world now. He was called Xavier. He had friends called things like Zachary and other quite normal names for these times.

Of course, I never told anyone that I had such a world going on in my head. My parents wouldn’t have minded. They’re very supportive and probably would have encouraged me rather than sent me to a shrink for being a teen with a mind full of vampires that had been with her for the past couple of years.

I guess you could say I’ve always had a very active imagination, a powerful one. (Which is why I just can’t watch horror paranormals where things nastily go bump in the night, or alien films where they come to Earth and are a bit creepy—I’m still freaked out because my husband made me go and see Signs at the cinema!)

I told my husband about my fictional world just the other day and he wasn’t surprised. He said it was just my inner writer coming out and I know that’s the truth.

I have all sorts of characters in my head now. There’s pretty much a waiting room at a train station in my mind, albeit a rather plush comfy one, and they come and go as they please. Some are pushier than others, and others just like to lounge around waiting their turn on the stage, watching the others perform. I think that to write well, and to create characters that seem real to people, they have to be real to you. You have to converse with them, know them, and have them locked in that waiting room unable to escape, so you can quiz them when you need to about what they are going to do to get out of the terrible situation you’ve written them into. You also have to be able to bend with them. Sometimes a character is going to put his foot down (I say his because it’s normally a bloke for me) and say that he isn’t going to fit the mould you’ve assigned to him and do what he’s told—he wants to be something different, do something different. You just have to roll with it, give him his way, and figure out how to make his new shape fit into your story.

You have to care about your characters or your readers won’t. You have to laugh with them, cry with them, and fall in love with them, or your readers just won’t react the way you want them to. Oh, and you have to want your readers to react. You’re writing a story with the intent of sucking them in, giving them a fantastic perfectly created world and characters, somewhere they can lose themselves for a while. Doing that but not thinking about how your reader should feel at certain points makes all that work redundant. If they’re not laughing, crying or smiling with happiness at the right points, you’ve fallen short of the mark. I always strive to hit the right emotional note with my readers, and I hope they see that. I want the characters in my head not to live on the page for them, but to move into their head and speak to them through the story, like a movie in their mind.

So, yeah, I feel a little crazy sometimes when characters are popping into my head for a quick catch up or long heart to heart, but I think it’s worth it. Besides, I get to meet some great people and you haven’t read all their stories yet, but they’ll be making themselves at home in your head and heart soon enough.

Miss Paranormal-From-A-Very-Early-Age signing out to continue her work on Forbidden Blood.

I’m going to start having monthly competitions on my blog now. They’ll be easy to enter as you’ll only have to reply to the blog post, and the post will be topical or fun so you will have something to say, I’m sure.

So, the competition is open for a month and I’ll announce the winner when I post the next competition. You don’t have to leave an email address, just your name. Just check the next month’s competition to see if you’ve won or not, and then email me at the given address. That way, I’ll get spam (I’m used to it) for giving out my addy online and you won’t!

What can you win? The ebook of your choice from my back catalogue.



This time I want to talk about vampire romance.

Has the nail finally been hammered into the coffin of the vampire romance genre as the industry would have you believe?

My answer: I don’t think so.

The industry loves to say that one genre is dead or over, or reached its peak, but often that just seems to be because there’s an influx of stories in that genre rolling into the publishing houses. And sure, I can understand that they’re probably getting a bit bored of the same old vampires doing the same old stuff, and I can sympathise with that. Anyone who knows me knows that I can’t stand the redemptionista vampires—those who hark on about how they can’t drink human blood or kill and they just want to be human. They weep on and on about wanting to be mortal, as though that would make them some better being. Oh, give me a break. Honestly, if you were reborn as an immortal killing machine superior to the human race, I don’t think you’d be particularly worried about the fact that you need human blood to survive. We kill animals all of the time for sustenance.  To a vampire, it would surely be the same? They’re doing as their bodies demand, just as we are, only unlike us, they can’t normally survive on a vegetarian diet instead. Essentially, we have a choice about killing living creatures, they probably don’t. And besides that, who’s to say that they have to kill? They could probably feed without killing if they really had a problem with it, it’s all down to the author.

But I have to say, if you’re a writer who is squeamish about having a killer as your hero or heroine (which a vampire essentially is), then you’re probably not cut out to write paranormal romance books. I believe in vampires behaving in the same way as we do because we see ourselves as top of the food chain—with little concern for what we’re killing because we’re boss and that’s final. In fact, my Vampires Realm vampires revel in the kill and the feed, they thrive on it and the way it feels for them, almost addictive and like a drug.

So yeah, the industry is probably finding there are too many similar vampire romance stories right now and they’re swamped with them, but there’s always room for a good vampire romance story, something different with a twist or a plot which makes it worth the read and worth putting it out there on shelves for everyone to enjoy.

I don’t think readers are bored with the genre. Vampires have been popular for a long time, since Dracula first came around, and I can’t see them going poof anytime soon. I think that they’ll be around for a while to come as long as the writers have the common sense to try to make their story a bit different. Not that I should be encouraging them as they are the competition after all. It’s much the same as any genre. If everyone ends up writing the same stuff, it gets boring. Just spice it up a little and think outside everyone else’s books (or in my case, don’t read them unless it’s for research purposes on what level of writing sells, that way you’re not influenced).

So what does everyone think about this ongoing message that it’s the end for vampires? Is it just the industry bored of reading about them, or are you getting that way too? Do you think it’s just a tactic by the industry to lessen the number of vampire stories and increase the number of other paranormal types to fill out their shelves?

I know variety is supposedly the spice of life, but if you like something you like it. I love chocolate. You don’t see me complaining there’s too much chocolate in the world and it’s all much the same! I’ve never seen a reader complain that there’s too much vampire romance out there.

For the whole month of October, you can SAVE 20% on the following stories.

To celebrate the release of the fifth and final story in my science fiction romance ebook series, Daughters of Lyra, I'm offering 20% OFF the first four stories in the series. That means you can buy them from Alinarpublishing.com for only $2.39 each! Check out the summaries below and click the links to read the excerpts and buy!

And don't forget that you can SAVE 15% on Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Assassin until MONDAY on Fictionwise.com. Check out the excerpt!

Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Emperor
Princess Sophia, one of the beautiful and strong daughters of Lyra, has had it with the never-ending row of suitors that her father, King Sebastian Lyra I, has lined up for her. When the latest suitor turns out to be the emperor of Varka, a species known for their lack of emotions, nocturnal lifestyle and bloodlust, Sophia wants little to do with him.

But when she greets the emperor and his two attendants, Sophia realises that a Varkan makes her heart beat like no other man before him and might just win her after all. Only, it isn't the emperor who was caught her eye.

Regis, Count of Sagres, is transfixed from the moment he meets Sophia. She pushes him to the brink of surrendering control to his bloodlust with every beautiful glance and smile she throws his way. But would she ever marry a male who doesn't know the meaning of love? Fear of the bloodlust makes Varkans retain an iron grip on their emotions, but Regis is willing to surrender control and risk everything to win Sophia. And Sophia will do whatever it takes to make him see that Varkans can love and that she wants no other man in the universe, including triggering his bloodlust and putting the whole palace in danger!

Will Regis's feelings for Sophia be enough to stop him from hurting her and killing the entire palace? Will Sophia be able to love a man that the universe sees as a monster? And will she still love him when she realises the Varkans' deception?

ALL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF LYRA STORIES STAND ALONE AND DO NOT NEED TO BE READ IN ORDER.

Read the excerpt or buy now


Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Mercenary
Princess Miali, one of the beautiful and strong daughters of Lyra, is an ambassador for Lyra. Her true identity is kept secret to protect her but it’s her beauty that puts her in danger when slavers attack her ship while she’s in cryo-sleep. When she wakes, she finds herself heading for the markets, her only company the ship’s handsome young Minervan doctor. Kosen makes Miali’s body react like no man before him, sending her hair floating with her positive emotions and making her wonder if she might just be falling for her captor.

Kosen has been part of Nostra’s crew since his two sisters were sold into slavery. His only desire is to gain enough money to buy them back, and Miali’s sale will get him just that. But the more time he spends with her, the more he realises that the path he chose was a mistake and the life he’s led is a shameful one. When he discovers Miali’s secret, he agrees to help her escape, and not just because she promises him the money he needs. Miali fascinates him with her beauty and the way her body reacts to him, and he can’t help believing that they might have a chance with each other, and he might have a chance at a better life.

Can Kosen help Miali escape the slaver vessel and the terrible future that awaits her at the markets? Will he be able to save his sisters and change the course of his life? And will Miali be able to convince Kosen to stay with her?

ALL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF LYRA STORIES STAND ALONE AND DO NOT NEED TO BE READ IN ORDER.

Read the excerpt or buy now


Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince
Princess Renie, one of the beautiful and strong daughters of Lyra, loves nothing more than exploring space with her twin brother, Rezic, but when they venture too close to the Black Zone, the barrier between Vegan space and the rest of the galaxy, things turn from exploration to a fight for their lives. With Rezic injured in a meteorite shower, Renie has no choice but to accept help from a vessel within the Black Zone, even when it turns out to be Vegan! Separated from her brother and taken hostage, to be held for ransom, Renie isn’t sure what she’s going to do…

Until she meets a man in the cells, the most unusual and gorgeous male she has ever seen, a man who seems to be willing to do anything to protect her and makes her pulse race.

Tres isn’t enjoying his stay in the cells. The commander has broken his thermal suit, leaving him cold and weak, and his last chance of leaving the Black Zone has been thwarted. But the galaxy comes to him instead, and she’s more beautiful, warm and full of feeling than he’d ever dreamed. When he discovers her and her brother’s plight, he vows to help her if she’ll help him, and when she touches him, showing him warmth, he wonders how touch can be so forbidden and realises that he’ll do anything for her.

When Renie is injured during their escape and Tres is forced to stay behind so Rezic can leave with her, will she ever see him again? Will she be able to convince her father, General Lyra II, to go back into the Black Zone and rescue the man she’s fallen in love with? And will she still love Tres when she realises just who he is?

ALL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF LYRA STORIES STAND ALONE AND DO NOT NEED TO BE READ IN ORDER.

Read the excerpt or buy now


Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Commander
Lieutenant Amerii, one of the beautiful and strong daughters of Lyra, wants nothing more than to prove herself to her captain and the army without her father, Captain Lyra III’s, help... except maybe one thing. Van, Count of Aeris and attendant to Emperor Varka has been on her mind since she met him at her cousin Sophia’s wedding, and she wants to see him again.

Charged with the duty of meeting the Varkan first fleet at Varka Two, Amerii is pleasantly surprised when the commander turns out to be Van, and he wants her to be the one to join him on his vessel to sign the contract between Varka and Lyra. When she meets him again, he’s more handsome than she remembered, and she resolves to risk the violence of his bloodlust to make him hers.

Van is sure bringing Amerii to his vessel is nothing short of dangerous and his fears are quickly realised. Amerii stirs his blood like no other female and he’s been battling his bloodlust since first meeting her, desperate to know what love is and to find a way of controlling himself so he can have her, but his feelings for her are too strong to resist, placing his whole crew in danger.

Can Amerii convince Van that he can love and that he’s worthy of becoming her mate? Can Van control his bloodlust enough that he won’t hurt Amerii when he bites her? And when Van is taken captive by the Wraiths of Varka Two, how far will Amerii go to rescue the man she loves?

ALL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF LYRA STORIES STAND ALONE AND DO NOT NEED TO BE READ IN ORDER.

Read the excerpt or buy now


And don't forget that you can SAVE 15% on Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Assassin until MONDAY on Fictionwise.com. Check out the excerpt!

I’m struggling to keep in edit mode right now with Arcadian. I’m doing a bit of spit-and-polish on the parts I’ve changed and extended or added in this draft, but I’m beginning to get lazy, so I’m taking a quick break to write a post and tell you what I’ve been up to.

In writing, I’ve obviously been spending too much time on Arcadian. It’s five weeks now since I began this draft and I have recognised that I’m starting to get lazy and that usually signals that I need to do something else and regroup or I just won’t do a good enough job. I’ve planned out everything that is left to do on this draft and it’s around 2 weeks work minimum. If I go with a complete read through again, it could be a lot longer. I think I just need to do the changed or added stuff for now and save the complete read through for when it’s rested for a while.

I’m going to Japan again for 3 weeks in November, which means I can’t participate in NaNoWriMo again this year either. I participated a few years back and it was a lot of fun, and I wrote the first draft of Cabin Fever for it. I would like to do it again sometime. Maybe next year.

My Japan trip is going to hopefully provide me some time to read through Arcadian in paperback form again to find errors and fix it up for the final polish. I’ll probably go to the effort of taking it with me, and then I’ll end up just watching movies on the flights instead! You’d think that with 12 hours on a plane, I’d be up for reading, but quite often they have good movies. I have a few long train journeys while I’m in Japan with the husband, so maybe I could squeeze in some time for editing then too. Again, I’ll probably just stare out of the window instead. Hehe. It’s a holiday after all.

I’ve been searching for literary agents that deal with paranormal romance over the past year, on and off, and I have to admit that it’s rather difficult to find them in the UK. They don’t really list paranormal romance as an interest over here. It’s difficult enough to find ones that want romance. I have found some good ones in New York who accept emails, so I’ll be trying those as well as UK ones that I manage to dig up from somewhere. Unfortunately, Arcadian is longer than the maximum word count that a lot of publishing houses accept for a submission. It’s not as though I can cut it down either. It’s 155,000 words because that’s the length it needs to be as it has a lot of plot and characters. It’s not as though I’m being long-winded in any of it. All of the readers who received the second draft (six of them) have come back saying the pace was great, the plot was great, and they even wanted stuff added to it! There’s a few publishing houses on my list who don’t give you a limit so I’ll send it to them and then agents too.

I started going to archery classes again on Sunday. It’s a ten week course and I really enjoyed the last one that I did, so I thought I would give it a go again and see if I’m serious enough to try for a club and do it every week, with my own equipment. I think I would like to. It is a lot of fun and, being very logic-minded, I’m quite good at it.

Well, I think that’s everything that I’ve been up to. I’ve managed to fritter away the hour journey into work on the train this morning writing blog posts and even my time before work in the office. I think that’s quite an impressive bit of procrastination, although I could just say that it was necessary work, and I did need a break from Arcadian.

Now I’ll spend probably spend lunch with work colleagues rather than continuing my editing work, and then on the train home, I’ll probably watch anime.

(note: I did spend lunch with some work colleagues, but it was a damn nice Oreo milkshake and chips!)

I went to the cinema on the weekend with my husband (to see District 9, which was very good) and there was a trailer for the next film in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, New Moon. Husband turned to me with raised brows and I was looking much the same. I've never read the stories but I do see similarities in it to my Vampires Realm series--with the laws and those that uphold them, the separation of hero and heroine, and introduction of a sub-hero. It's all very Prophecy Trilogy to me.

I must admit that I have watched the first film, Twilight, because a few readers wrote to me at the time it was out and said that my Prophecy Trilogy / Vampires Realm series was better, which made me quite proud considering that it's only self-published romance ebooks. I would love to see it published in paperback one day by a big publishing house, but I don't think I will hold my breath! Maybe one day when they pick up Arcadian or Ascension and start trawling my back catalogue for more stories to make money from.

Still, it was interesting to see the trailer for New Moon, although I'm not sure I'll go and see it, and I'll be sticking with my Vampires Realm series in terms of books as I'm not really into the teen romance market. I prefer my stories with more bite, a touch more adult content (violence, not just the sex!) and I don't really like stories written in the first person as I want to know what both the hero and heroine are thinking.

Does anyone else see the similarities, or is it just me?

Does anyone think that Prophecy Trilogy would make a darn good series of movies?

The fifth and final story in my science fiction romance series, Daughters of Lyra, is out now and you can SAVE 15% all this week at Fictionwise.com!

Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Assassin
Princess Natalia, one of the beautiful and strong daughters of Lyra, has spent her whole life on Lyra Five behaving just as a princess should, except for one thing. After her daily duties she sneaks out at night to sing in the bars of Lyra Five, pretending to be someone else. Natalia loves to sing, more than anything else in the galaxy, until the night that Ixion, the handsome commander of the royal assassins, comes to the bar to bring her home.

Ixion is the only man Natalia has dreamed of since she first saw him seven years ago, but she’s sure he doesn’t notice her and she’s determined to change that. But Natalia couldn’t be more wrong.

Ixion has loved his elusive princess, Natalia, since the night he revealed himself to her, and now he faces a daily struggle between his duty and his heart, between hoping a princess could love him, an assassin and man of no rank in society, and fearing that she loves another man more worthy of her heart.

When Natalia insists on going to the spring festival, Ixion is ordered to ensure her safety, just as she hoped, but things don’t go as smoothly as she had planned. An explosion in the port triggers a battle between the purist factions and the imperial army and Natalia is caught in the middle of it.

Will Ixion be able to protect Natalia? Will Natalia be able to convince Ixion that she loves him and that the passionate night they share won’t be their only time? When her family discovers she’s in love with an assassin, will Natalia be able to save him or will Ixion face a death sentence?

ALL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF LYRA STORIES STAND ALONE AND DO NOT NEED TO BE READ IN ORDER.

Price: $2.54 - SAVE 15%!

Buy now or read an excerpt at Fictionwise.com

Out Now! New sci-fi romance ebook and the next story in the best selling Daughters of Lyra series...

Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Commander
Lieutenant Amerii, one of the beautiful and strong daughters of Lyra, wants nothing more than to prove herself to her captain and the army without her father, Captain Lyra III’s, help... except maybe one thing. Van, Count of Aeris and attendant to Emperor Varka has been on her mind since she met him at her cousin Sophia’s wedding, and she wants to see him again.

Charged with the duty of meeting the Varkan first fleet at Varka Two, Amerii is pleasantly surprised when the commander turns out to be Van, and he wants her to be the one to join him on his vessel to sign the contract between Varka and Lyra. When she meets him again, he’s more handsome than she remembered, and she resolves to risk the violence of his bloodlust to make him hers.

Van is sure bringing Amerii to his vessel is nothing short of dangerous and his fears are quickly realised. Amerii stirs his blood like no other female and he’s been battling his bloodlust since first meeting her, desperate to know what love is and to find a way of controlling himself so he can have her, but his feelings for her are too strong to resist, placing his whole crew in danger.

Can Amerii convince Van that he can love and that he’s worthy of becoming her mate? Can Van control his bloodlust enough that he won’t hurt Amerii when he bites her? And when Van is taken captive by the Wraiths of Varka Two, how far will Amerii go to rescue the man she loves?

ALL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF LYRA STORIES STAND ALONE AND DO NOT NEED TO BE READ IN ORDER.

Price: $2.99

Buy now or read an excerpt at Alinar Publishing

Out Now! The next story in my science fiction romance ebook series, the Daughters of Lyra, is out now and you can SAVE 15% at Fictionwise.com!

Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Mercenary
Princess Miali, one of the beautiful and strong daughters of Lyra, is an ambassador for Lyra. Her true identity is kept secret to protect her but it’s her beauty that puts her in danger when slavers attack her ship while she’s in cryo-sleep. When she wakes, she finds herself heading for the markets, her only company the ship’s handsome young Minervan doctor. Kosen makes Miali’s body react like no man before him, sending her hair floating with her positive emotions and making her wonder if she might just be falling for her captor.

Kosen has been part of Nostra’s crew since his two sisters were sold into slavery. His only desire is to gain enough money to buy them back, and Miali’s sale will get him just that. But the more time he spends with her, the more he realises that the path he chose was a mistake and the life he’s led is a shameful one. When he discovers Miali’s secret, he agrees to help her escape, and not just because she promises him the money he needs. Miali fascinates him with her beauty and the way her body reacts to him, and he can’t help believing that they might have a chance with each other, and he might have a chance at a better life.

Can Kosen help Miali escape the slaver vessel and the terrible future that awaits her at the markets? Will he be able to save his sisters and change the course of his life? And will Miali be able to convince Kosen to stay with her?

ALL OF THE DAUGHTERS OF LYRA STORIES STAND ALONE AND DO NOT NEED TO BE READ IN ORDER.


Price: normally $2.99 - Get it this week for $2.54!!!!

Buy now or read an excerpt at Fictionwise.com