My new series!

Lo and behold, my new deal announcement from PM:

Erica Hayes’ new dark paranormal romance series, beginning with REVELATION, set in a decadent, near-future Manhattan, in which a young medical examiner who’s lost her faith must team up with a fallen angel warrior to stop a gang of demons hijacking the Apocalypse and creating hell on earth, in a two-book deal to Leis Pederson at Berkley by Marlene Stringer at The Stringer Literary Agency (World).

If it's on PM, it must be real! I'm so excited. It's dark, and has lots of action and urban-fantasy elements, but it's more focused on the romance than my Shadowfae books. Angels with flaming swords, demon princes, stolen vials of holy wrath. It's not post-apocalyptic: the Apocalypse is happening, right now. There will be earthquakes. The sky will rain fire at some point. Oh, and a zombie plague. What more could you want?

Book 1 is currently called REVELATION (as in the Bible, geddit?) though that might change. The MS is done and on the desk of my new editor, the lovely Leis Pederson (who also edits my bud Kylie Griffin's fab new fantasy romance series! Small world...) And I'm cooking up Book 2, REDEMPTION, about an angel who's determined never to sin again but falls for a hellcursed vampire.

REVELATION is slated for a Fall 2012 release, from Berkley Sensation in ebook and mass market paperback.

Does this mean I'm not doing any more Shadowfae books? Yep. At least for the time being. There's a Shadowfae short story, CHERRY KISSES, in the anthology HEX APPEAL from St Martin's Press, due for release I think later in 2012, and edited by the fabulous P.N. Elrod. And I have some other maybe-plans you'll hear about in due course.

Apart from that, I've been working on some new stuff. A superhero story. A new UF tale about a selfish magical thief who stumbles over an archvillain's evil plot to rule the world. A Renaissance clockpunk story, set in a dark, alchemy-fuelled Venetian Republic. And my perennial favourite: angels vs. aliens!!

None of this is finished. None of it is sold. I promise, you'll be the first to know...

Why we love dark romance, and a little story about Diamond...

Angela at Dark Faerie Tales is hosting a really cool event called Fantastic Fables, where authors put their characters into fairy tales and see what evil shenanigans ensues. Bwahaha...

Want to see what happens when a wise-ass pink glassfairy gets the job as fairy godmother to Cinderella? Of course you do. So come join the fun and check out my little story here. As well as many other tales by some wonderful authors, and loads of prizes.




Also, I'm guest blogging today at the Qwillery, talking about why dark romance is so hot. And yeah, giving away a book. Please come visit! Thanks so much to Sally for inviting me.

Giveaway winner, and stuff

Thanks everyone for hitting my blog and Twitter and Facebook with so many lovely 'yay!' messages on my release day -- you guys rock!

Without further ado, the lucky randomly-chosen giveaway winner from Tuesday's post is...

Jenn/Seduced By Books!!

Congrats, Jenn -- if you see this, drop me an email and I'll arrange for your prize. Thanks to all for entering.

A quick linky: here's an interview with me on the blog of the fabulous Rowena Cory Daniells, author of KING ROLEN'S KIN. She's doing a series of interviews of female fantasy writers, and kindly invited me to take part.  So come and chat about gender differences in fantasy writers, and get a behind-the-scenes look at how I created the Shadowfae Chronicles, here. I believe there's also a free book up for grabs.

And in a little while, I'll be at Dark Faerie Tales as part of their fabulous Fantastic Fables blog event, where authors take their characters and put them into a fairy tale. Giggle... I'll post the link when it's up.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with The Cape and a block of Cadbury chocolate.

It's Blood Cursed day!!

After spending the last umpteen weeks seeking an answer to the important question is it possible to lurk at your own blog? (A: yes. Yes, it is.) I've resurfaced, to give a quick hurrah! for release day for BLOOD CURSED! Yay!

Enter the fierce, fantastical world of the Shadowfae, where blood is a drug, magic is a crime, and love is the most dangerous weapon of all...

To a vampire, nothing is sweeter than bloodfairy essence -- and Ember is the most sought-after fairy on the underworld circuit. Selling her blood to the highest bidder -- and robbing her clients in the process -- Ember has unwittingly become a target of dark and dangerous forces. Her enemies are everywhere. And if she hopes to survive, she needs protection...

Diamond is a glassfairy who, for better or worse, knows his way around the vampire underworld. Smooth as silk and tougher than trolls, Diamond is Ember’s only chance to keep her magical blood inside her body, where it belongs. But he also poses a threat to Ember, a strange kind of danger she’s never experienced before: She’s falling in love with him...

Sweet! This one got a 4-star review from RT Reviews, which is always nice :) You can read the first chapter online at my website, and there's an extended excerpt up at Heroes and Heartbreakers (you need to log in to read that one). Also a nice review at Among the Muses. Thanks!

I'll be traipsing around the internet talking about it over the next week or two, doing some giveaways of backlist and the like, so keep an eye out, and I'll post the links here when they happen. You can also follow me on Twitter for -- let's face it -- more frequent updates.

But right now, I'm feeling generous. Leave me a comment on this post -- yup, that's right here -- before midnight on 3 August (US west coast time) if you'd like to win -- I'll pick a couple of random commenters to win your choice of one of my books. One of my only giveaways for BLOOD CURSED -- because, y'know, I want y'all to buy it :) -- so get in while it lasts...

Cool Aussie authors

April is Aussie Author Month in celebration of AU/NZ authors of popular fiction.

Participating sites are BookThingo, A Writer Goes On A Journey, Fangtastic Books and Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, along with any Aussie authors and readers who want to have a go.

Seeing as the month's' half gone, I guess I'd better step up... here are a couple of cool books by Aussie authors that I've read and enjoyed this month.

Thief of Light by Denise Rossetti, second in the Four-Sided Pentacle fantasy/erotic romance series.

Denise is the author of the delightfully erotic Strongman (m/m) and The Gift of the Goddess (f/m/m) from Ellora's Cave, and The Flame and the Shadow from Berkley Sensation, which features (among other things) a menage/romance between a guy, a girl, and the guy's shadow. I shit you not.

Denise writes wonderfully realised fantasy, emotional romance and luscious eroticism. Her heroes are tough and sexy and real men without being assholes, and her fantasy heroines aren't wusses, but they're not leather-clad tramp-stamp bitches with annoyingly snarky mouths, either. Real people in fantasy, oyy.

The hero in this book is an opera singer, and he has a magical Voice that compels people to do his bidding, but he's sworn never to use it to control anyone, since once he gave a careless order and someone died. But he can't resist the challenge when the heroine seems to be the only one who's immune to his musical charms. It's fantastical, sweet and sexy. Check it out.

Endless Lust by Lexxie Couper, second in the Seven Deadly Daemons series.

Lexxie writes erotic romance for Ellora's Cave and others. Endless Lust is the lead novel-length title for EC's new Shivers line of erotic horror. And erotic horror is just what it is.

This is a spooky book about a woman who's visited by a persistent and deliciously violent ghostly lover she can't see. He gives her intense pleasure, but she's terrified -- who is he, and what does he want from her? And does her dark and sexy new colleague at work have anything to do with it? It's erotic and creepy and cool. It has stalkers and black magic and hot sex with an invisible dude. And it's a romance!

Next on my list of Aussie reads is Death's Sweet Embrace by Tracey O'Hara, book 2 in her Dark Brethren UF series. It has heart-eating serial killers and a snow-leopard shifter heroine. Also Power Unbound by Nicole Murphy, second in her Dream of Asarlai contemporary fantasy/romance series, about a secret society of magical beings who are hunting down their stolen sacred texts.

Oh, and in other news: I'm going to RWA national in New York! Apparently being half the world away wasn't a good enough excuse not to come. Hope to catch up with you all there.

Self-publishing: but dude, I just wanna be a writer

A lot of fuss at the moment about self-publishing, and whether it's the way of the future, when we've got big-name authors turning down six-figure contracts and people without a platform selling zillions of copies per month of their self-pubbed books.

Yay and good luck to those people. I'll buy a self-pubbed book to read if I like the look of it. No prejudice here.

But I don't want to self-publish, and here's why.

The main advantage of SP that's being touted seems to be money. As in, the author makes more of it per book, because they're getting the whole (or nearly all of) cover price, not just a small royalty. So why let a publisher profit from your work, when you can take all the money yourself?

See, thing is, that's like saying to me, "Wow, Erica, you could make much more money as a lawyer than you ever will from your books. Why don't you go work for a law firm?"

And I could, y'know. My uni (college) degree is law. I'm admitted to the bar. I could go work for Local Law Firm, Inc. doing divorces and traffic violations, and I can tell you right now, I'd make more on a junior lawyer's salary than I'm getting right this moment writing for a NY publisher.

But I want to be a writer. I don't want to be a lawyer.

Nor do I want to be a copy editor, a cover artist, a back cover copy cruncher, a printer, an e-book layout designer, a publicist, a distributor, a web marketer or a sales guru.

I want to be a writer. Every day, I get up, I exercise, I shop for food, and then I spend the rest of the day writing and plotting and revising and crunching revisions.

It's my dream job. And I'm not giving it up to spend my working day in hell. No matter how much the devil pays.


Sure, I do promo. Everyone does promo. But for me, it's an opportunity. It's not an imperative. I have a publisher's sales and publicity force to help me, and those people are doing stuff for authors, even if sometimes it looks like they aren't. If I didn't have them, I'd have to spend my writing time doing what they do. Ditto on cover artists, editors, layout people and so forth.

Look at interviews with the latest self-pubbed bestsellers, and see what they do all day. When do they write? Never, or as near to never as makes no difference. Sound like fun? Uh. No.

So forgive me if job satisfaction is more important to me than money. I'm weird like that. I've worked enough jobs I didn't like to know how miserable it makes me. I'd much rather use my publisher to help me reach readers, and spend my time doing what I love. Even if it means I only get a small percentage of cover price.

And hey. If that means I'm missing the chance to sell a squillion copies of my latest for $2.99 and become rich and famous? Well, shit. I guess that boat in the Bahamas will just have to wait a while. Like I'd have the time to sail it if I was self-pubbed anyway.

Seriously, people. It's not all about the money. So sue me.

Distance makes the plot grow snappier

So I was on the phone to my CP yesterday, and she was telling me about her WIP. She'd been brainstorming new ideas for like a hundred hours, but she gave me the fifteen-minute condensed version, with only the ideas she'd decided to keep. She got to the end of what she'd done, and said, "Yeah. And now I don't know what should happen next."

Pause. "Well, it's obvious, isn't it?"say I.

My CP: "No."

Me: "C'mon. You've set everything up perfectly. It has to be {insert plot here}."

Stunned silence. "Damn. Why didn't I think of that?"

Does this happen to you? Me, all the time. I work on an idea so much that I get too close, and I can't see the big picture any more. I get confused by all the little details, and the overall structure gets obscured. MY CP gave me the Reader's Digest version, and I was able to jump on the key points, where all she could see was mess. Cool, huh?

So leave it for a while. Work on something else. Get some distance, and then go back to basics.

Yesterday, in fact, this worked for me too (yeah, it was a busy day: save the world, cook up WIP, rescue CP's sanity, bake cookies). I was designing a new trilogy-based series. I had the backstory and characters all worked out, and knew kinda what happened in book 1. Then I spent an hour all confused about what should happen at the end of book 2.

Well, duh. Book 2 is like a 2nd act climax. The bad guys have to succeed, and the hero gets smacked down. Whatever your hero wanted at the beginning? It just got taken away. Big time. Along with everything else they've decided they wanted along the way. And more than that -- the very idea of what's good and bad in the book should get turned on its head. What they're striving for looks hopeless.

"Luke, I am your father. Oh, and I just cut your arm off. And guess what that means? The Dark Side of the Force is stronger than you, you puny little weed. You'll NEVER win."

So when I get stuck, I go back to first principles: what does the MC want? What do the bad guys want that's opposed to the MC's goal? And what could they do to make it as hard as possible for the MC? What's the worst thing that could happen to the MC, not just at a specific plot point, but in the big scheme of the story?

How the hell is the MC going to fix the mess you've made?

Answer? Who cares!! If *you're* asking that question ,you can bet the reader will be too. And that's exactly what you want.

Anyway. Later. Gotta fix book 3 now :)