Interview with Margarita Felices Author of Judgement of Souls

Hi Margarita, Tell us something about yourself and where you’re based.
I live in Cardiff. For all its modernisation, there are still remnants of old Victorian Cardiff. I love the castle in the centre of the city and the fact that you have the sea on one side and the mountains on the other side of Cardiff.  I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. 

Can you tell us a bit about your book?
I don't want to say too much, I'd much rather your readers found it out.  But to give you an idea, JUDGEMENT OF SOULS is a Gothic horror in which a naïve pure-blood Vampire is tossed into the mortal world. Rachel meets Daniel, a nightclub owner and his group of friends and after Daniel’s best friend is murdered by Max, becomes embroiled in the search for an ancient vampire book. Rachel tries to fight off her feelings for Daniel, even siding with her Vampire friend Arun to think again about Daniel’s involvement, but he’s her love and she’s going to protect him, no matter what.




When and why did you start writing?
I started writing in school.   My teachers used to limit me to ten pages per essay - it killed me to have a limit.  After that I wrote short stories for magazines, it gave me a little extra while at college.  But I've always had stories rolling around in my head. I can write about anything and some days I just look up at the sky and say 'thank you very much.' 

What inspires you?
Other writers who have been in the same place that I am now. I’m new to all of this; all their advice is valuable because you’ll never find your way in this business without them and their help. 

Are you working on anything now?
I'm working on the prequel to Judgement of Souls. It spans over 300 years so its quite a task.  I'm doing a lot of research and I have to get the date lines right or it'll read a bit odd.

Is there anything you don't like about being a writer?
How hard it is. It’s not just sitting down and writing. I had a hard hitting editor who returned my first draft and made it look like a bloodbath!  It was a surprise.  But the end result is something you can’t possible imagine, you’ve brought these people to life and you control their lives. I love it. And I think the worse is having that great idea and by the time you get to write it down, forgetting it! And marketing.   I’ve never contacted so many people, websites and groups since the book became LIVE on the 27^th December 2011.

What do you think of the ebook revolution?
I think it’s brilliant.  There are so many talented writers out there that miss out because traditional publishers won’t accept their work. I know it costs a lot of money to produce books these days, but really? Would it hurt to be a bit more flexible?  Ebooks mean no more carrying heavy loads of them on holiday, we save trees, long may it reign.

Is there anything you will NOT write about?
Zombies! Sorry to all my Zombie friends and authors out there. I hate them! Scare me silly!  And perhaps anything biographical, I just don’t think I’d do that person any justice. 

In what genre do you prefer to write?  To read?
I love writing anything Supernatural. Vampires and demons, unknown realms where you can just let your mind wander through and go wild. I’ll read the same type of stories too.

Can you tell us about any ups and downs in your writing career so far.
The downs are always the rejections. When you get a reply from a publisher and its just 'no thanks' scribbled on the bottom of the letter you sent them it makes you think ;why bother' but you have to. 

Do you have any suggestions for people who might be considering writing as a career?
Don't give up. If you have a story that is dying to be told, then work hard to tell it. But make sure you are doing your best work and you get an editor that can help you make the most of your manuscript.

Don’t give up even though you may get rejection letters.  If everyone thought like that there’d be no books, no films.  Keep writing, even if its dribble! Then read, re-read and edit.  Try and write a little each day.  One hundred words a day is seven hundred a week, twenty-eight hundred a month and one hundred words a day is so simple!

And carry a Dictaphone or a notebook and pen! 

Anything else you want to add?
This is a series of 3 books. I started at the end. There isn’t anyone who will be able to tell me why I did that. When these three are finished, I’d like to write some shorter stories about Daniel and Rachel and maybe their quest to find supernatural occult items and somehow tie them in to working for The Righteous.  That should be interesting!

Thanks so much, Margarita. It's been great having you here!

Margarita's links:
Facebook
Judgement of Souls on Kindle UK
Judgement of Souls on Kindle US

Thicker Than Blood Release Date

I'm happy to announce that book 2 in the Marchwood Vampire Series

will be released April 17th 2012

Chilling and fast-paced, Thicker Than Blood is the supernatural sequel

to Hidden. It combines passion and drama with a historical twist.

Aelia lives in 6th century Byzantium. She is sixteen years old and her life is about

to change forever. She doesn't yet know it, but she holds the fate of thousands

in her hands and her actions will echo across the centuries.

Fourteen hundred years later the lives of Madison and Alexandre are once

again plunged into danger. To save Madison, Alexandre is forced back to a

world he thought was dead and buried. But time is running out.

The chase is on...

On April 17th it will be available as an ebook from Smashwords and from Amazon for Kindle.
It may take a while longer to distribute to other outlets. The paperback will be available by the end of April.

First Bitten by Samantha Towle

Walking home after a night out drowning her sorrows with her best friend, Carrie, Alexandra Jones stupidly takes a phone call from her cheating ex-boyfriend, Eddie, and in her anger hurls her phone into the forest before her.

But when Alex goes to retrieve her phone from the undergrowth, she and Carrie come face-to-face with a monster they never even knew existed, a Vârcolac (a nightmarish vampire-werewolf hybrid) and he's in search of fresh blood. The next thing Alex knows, she is staring at the impossibly handsome but mysterious Nathan who has helped bring her back to life, but not to the life she left.

To her horror, she discovers she has now become a blood-drinking Vârcolac herself and  is the only female of her kind, with the potential for breeding a whole new army of Vârcolacs if they can only track her down and press her into service.

And while Alex gets to know Nathan and his shape-shifting family as they offer her the protection she so desperately needs, unbeknown to all of them, the Vârcolacs are getting closer

What I thought:

I'm ultra-excited to have found such a brilliant new series! First Bitten is Book 1 in The Alexandre Jones Series and I devoured it in a day. I don't want to give anything away, so all I'll say is it has all the elements to make up the perfect urban fantasy: a very real and sympathetic main character, a terrifying supernatural situation and the hottest love interest you could imagine. It's all these things, without being  at all predictable and I can't wait for Book 2!

Congratulations, Sam Towle, looks like you've got another page-turning bestseller on your hands.

Links:

Samantha's Blog

First Bitten on Amazon.com

First Bitten on Amazon.co.uk

The Forever Girl Book Tour - Guest Post & Giveaway

I first met Rebecca Hamilton on Authonomy, a writer's site run by Harper Collins. We chatted and bantered on the forums and then she gave me some very insightful advice on writing, specifically to do with a character's viewpoint, and how readers will often connect more fully with your protagonist if you write from inside their head and show events unfolding purely from their point of view.
Out of the hundreds of excerpts I read on the site, Becca's is one of the one's which stuck out most vividly and I'm beyond excited to see her novel has finally been published. It's on my kindle to read asap!

GIVEAWAY!!!

Rebecca has kindly agreed to give away an ebook copy of The Forever Girl  to one lucky winner. And if you live in the US, you'll also get this fantastic Forever Girl scented candle - gorgeous! 

All you have to do to win is leave your name in the comments box below.

The Forever Girl

Sophia Parsons’ family has skeletons, but they aren’t in their graves... Solving the mystery of an ancestor’s hanging might silence the clashing whispers in Sophia's mind, but the cult in her town and the supernaturals who secretly reside there are determined to silence her first. As Sophia unknowingly crosses the line into an elemental world full of vampire-like creatures, shapeshifters, and supernatural grim reapers, she meets Charles, a man who becomes both lover and ally. But can she trust him? It’s not until someone nearly kills Sophia that she realizes the only way to unveil the source of her family's curse: abandon her faith or abandon her humanity. If she wants to survive, she must accept her who she is, perform dark magic, and fight to the death for her freedom.

Rebecca Hamilton On Writing

I probably spend about 10% of my writing time actually writing. Writing is the easy part. All you have to do is follow your emotions, put your imagination to paper, and keep asking the ‘what if’ questions you’d never want to answer yourself in real life.

Beyond that, there’s listening to your beta readers, rewriting, trading critique, re-writing, revising, editing, copy-editing, proofreading, deciding that it still needs another re-write, having to revise, edit, copy-edit, and proofread again. And on it goes, with not one of those steps being as easy as they sound to those who don’t know what each of those skills entail.
Of course, we get all the help we can. Sometimes it’s free…other times, it only requires we sign over our life.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Writing isn’t a job. Some can say they will sit at their desk from 9:00 to 5:00 and write—or work on any of the above mentioned writing activities. But writing is a lifestyle. You are working on your writing while you read. You’re working on it while you shower. While you sleep, change a baby’s diaper, do the dishes…you’re writing. When you walk through a forest trail and you notice a large oak tree that looks completely out of place among a forest full of redwoods or when you notice the receptionist at your optometrist’s office is squinting to read her paperwork … you’re writing.

Writing is just one of those things that, in my experience, consumes you. It becomes part of who you are. You live your life, same as before, but everything means more now. Everything is valuable. Writing becomes an outlet for life.

This is where you can find Rebecca:
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads

Don't forget to leave your name in the comments box below if you'd like to win a copy of The Forever Girl and that gorgeous scented candle!
The contest closes at midnight on March 9th