Hadrian and Angeline’s Book

I was talking to a friend about the series this past week, and also I’ve been working on rewriting the descriptions to make them more appealing. I haven’t been taking advantage of some of the best ways to sell my work through the description. For example, The Catalyst… In chapter two, Z kidnaps Fiona to help him babysit this stray wolf pup he picked up because she can understand animals (sort of like a witchy Dr. Dolittle.)

But I don’t mention the kidnap element at ALL in the description. I’m being too coy, because I like for things like that to be a surprise. But the fact is… there are a lot of readers who really like the “hero kidnaps the heroine” trope. Obviously I do, or I wouldn’t write it so damn much. (I use some element of it in a lot of my work. Mated, is a good example, and it’s probably why Mated sold so well when it came out. The set-up… people like it.) Anyway… there are a lot of readers who like this trope. Not everybody of course, but a sizable chunk of the paranormal romance reading audience. By not mentioning the trope in the description, I’m hiding the thing that will sell the book to that demographic.

I’ve been thinking of a lot of things like that lately. When I first started publishing, it just wasn’t that competitive in the ebook world. It wasn’t hard to rise to the tops of the ranks. Now, too many people are bringing their A-game and I’m still playing like it’s the start of a gold rush. So I’ve been working on getting it together so that I can hopefully compete in a meaningful way and have my books found and read more like they used to be. I know releasing a new book will help this, but optimizing what I have out there already would be a step in the right direction as well.

Of course all this has gotten me more passionate and into the Pretverse and more excited about Hadrian and Angeline’s story. I really love their story because it starts with the novella Dark Mercy. And when you read that and get to the ending you think there is just NO way there is an HEA for these two… I mean… look at the ending. (Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it.)

But these two… they aren’t done. And I think when their full book comes out, Dark Mercy will mean more. I wrote that novella because it enriches their story in a way that I felt couldn’t be done justice through backstory. I’m excited that Dark Mercy will be at the front of the print and audiobook version of Hadrian and Angeline’s book because I really feel it’s a story you need to read to fully “get” these two and appreciate them.

I love both characters a lot, and this next book we’ll really be spending a lot of time in the Heaven dimension, which in this world I love. I wouldn’t want to live there (BORING!!!), but it’s fascinating how boring and perfect and zombie-like the whole place and everybody in it is. It’s like the cruel joke of the Pretverse. I’m really excited to share more of the inner-workings of Heaven in this series with you guys.

We’ll also get a LOT more into the Guardian mythology. Since they’ve only been mentioned a few times in the series.

Hadrian and Angeline will be book 5 and I’m thinking there will be 7 or 8 books total in this series. Originally I was going to leave it open ended, but I figured out something for the unfolding larger backstory to give it a definite ending. But we’ll see. I also want to get into the new urban fantasy series I’ve been planning.

The major difference in it and the pretverse is that the fantasy elements will be the front story with the romance being more of a subplot, whereas right now in the Pretverse the romance is the forefront and everything else is background elements (though the everything else becomes a bit stronger in each book, which is part of why I’m shifting in this direction. I like the romance, it’s important to me, but I want to explore other things, too.)