Time Flies

The bad news is time flies - the good news is you're the pilot.

Gosh, doesn’t time have a way of getting away from you. I just looked at my blog page and boy, it’s been a while! I haven’t written a blog post in a long time. Life took over, what with this pandemic striking and losing a couple of women who were foundation stones in my life. If I’m honest, I wasn’t in the mood.

So what have I been up to? Well, I finished and published House of Resurrection, the second book in my House of Scarabs series. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here or download a free extract by clicking here. I loved revisiting Ellie, Ben and Gerhard’s story and some of the new characters have become firm favourites of mine. The feedback so far has been phenomenal and humbling.

I’ve also written a series of short stories based on Kiya, the main protagonist in Genesis. It’s been like a palate cleanser going from a massive one hundred and thirty thousand words book to writing three to seven thousand words short stories. If you’re interested in reading them, they’re free for my reader club (join here) or on preorder on Amazon (A Theft: click here and Behold: click here).

I’ve also been planning a new four book series. Still set in Egypt (you can take the girl out of Egypt but never Egypt out of the girl) but with a more definite Urban Fantasy feel. That doesn’t mean I’m leaving House of Scarabs I already have the next story brewing in my mind, but I want to write something that I can market.

House of Scarabs was my passion piece, but it’s a marketer’s nightmare – it crosses so many genre lines it virtually needs its own passport. That wouldn’t matter, but when you are selling a book, you need to know what shelf to put it on and that’s too unclear for most sellers with House of Scarabs. Is it historical fantasy, urban fantasy, action/adventure, mystery, paranormal, occult or mythology and fairy tales? Well, it’s all of those, but not exactly any one of them. That’s a problem when you have a computer algorithm which deals only in black and white facts determining where to shelve your book in the Amazon store.

So the new series is called The Ministry, and it will be clearly, and only, Urban Fantasy. Making a newbie mistake once is okay, but repeating it – uh-uh! Nope, no sirree! I’ve outlined and planned all four books in the series, and I’m starting to write the first book now. I don’t have a publishing date yet, but I’ll let you know nearer the date.

So as a little thank you gift for reading to the end of this long shopping list of Hazel’s recent life activities, and because I’m in a kind and giving mood, I’m giving away a free word-search based on House of Resurrection. To get your copy, download it by clicking here.

That’s it for now and…

Happy reading

Hazel xx