Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Guest Post and Giveaway by Felicity Heaton

Felicity Heaton is here to let us in on how it was writing about her latest hero, Asmodeus, from her latest novel, Her Wicked Angel. Also, Ms. Heaton has gratioiusly offered a signed copy of the book to one of our followers.  Just enter the Rafflecopter below.  You can also follow her book tour here to win more fantastic prizes.


Writing Asmodeus from Her Wicked Angel

Thank you, Becky, for having me here today at Underworld Love Addiction as part of my Her Wicked Angel Virtual Book Tour!

First, here’s a little about me. I’m a paranormal romance author and I’ve been writing since 2005, and went indie in 2006. I love to write big worlds, populated by vampires, shifters, demons, fae and angels, and I have several series. This tour is about the Her Angel series, where passionate angels fight to protect the women they love in a deadly war between Heaven and Hell.

Today, I’m going to talk a little about writing Asmodeus, the hero of the newest release in the Her Angel series, Her Wicked Angel.

Writing Asmodeus was always going to be difficult but after releasing Her Demonic Angel, the fifth book in the series, I asked readers who they would love to see as a hero, and he came top of the poll. It was a fantastic result as I had always intended to write his story next. The trouble is, he’s also mostly evil and in Her Demonic Angel was one of the bad guys, and was best known for a moment when he was busy torturing one of the other characters in the book and then fighting another and generally being what he is—evil. Not exactly hero material, right?

Asmodeus is the clone of one of the previous heroes in the series, Apollyon, but he’s a clone with a difference. Apollyon and the Devil are locked in a constant cycle where they must fight each other every so many centuries and the outcome of that fight affects the world. If Apollyon wins, Heaven prevails and the Devil is trapped in the Bottomless Pit in Hell until their next battle. If Apollyon loses, the Devil can escape Hell and wreak havoc upon Earth. The first time Apollyon lost, the Devil tortured him to the brink of insanity, unleashing all that was dark in him and driving out all that was good. He used the blood of this evil side of Apollyon to create Asmodeus, and Asmodeus has spent millennia in Hell working for the Devil as his right hand man.

Turning Asmodeus into a hero was not going to be an easy task but I was willing to take on the challenge because I knew something about him that readers did not.

He might be 99.9% evil, but there is 0.01% good in him, and it’s that fragment of good that his heroine, Liora, sees in him. She grows determined to make him admit it exists and show him that he can be the man he wants to be, and doesn’t have to be the one everyone expects him to be, and that good can be a strength rather than a weakness.

It was difficult to strike a balance between the good and the evil in Asmodeus, and also his innocence and experience. I didn’t want to portray him as totally evil as he had appeared in the previous book. I wanted to show readers that while the scales were tipped towards evil, there was still some good in him, but it was buried deep. It took Liora to prod and poke at that seed of good to make it begin to grow, and begin to give him more balance in his character.

I really loved exploring this complicated and contradictory hero. He has been around for thousands of years, but all of those years were passed in Hell, working for the Devil. He knows of the mortal world, but has no experience of it. It was fun tossing him into that brash, noisy, colourful world and giving him a heroine who is bold and stubborn, and powerful in her own right. There was something satisfying about throwing this powerful, dark male off balance and watching him fight the current as he struggles to learn how to behave in that world, experiences new things, and discovers that there is more good in him than he had originally thought. He went through so many emotions in the story, feeling each one keenly, and coming to know new ones such as fear and love. It was wonderful to watch him grow and come to fight for Liora, and to eventually realise that he had fallen in love with the wicked little witch.

Asmodeus might not be a contender for hero of the year at the end of the book, but he’s on his way to finding balance between the evil and the good in him, and he’s stealing hearts along the way.

I hope you enjoyed this insight into writing Asmodeus, the hero of Her Wicked Angel.

Be sure to follow this fantastic tour to learn more about the passionate heroes and sassy heroines! You can also find yourself with a chance to WIN a $50 or $25 Amazon Gift Certificate if you follow the tour. More details, including how to enter and a full list of stops, are available at the Her Wicked Angel Virtual Book Tour page: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/her-wicked-angel-book-tour.php

Read more about Her Wicked Angel below, and visit my site for links to all the retailers and a 6 chapter excerpt:

Her Wicked Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 6)
Felicity Heaton
The King of Demons and the Devil’s right hand man, Asmodeus is a dark angel born of evil and created for destruction. When his master orders him to venture into the mortal world and retrieve a female for him, he seizes the chance to leave Hell for the first time, uncaring of what the Devil has planned for her… until he sets eyes on the most beautiful woman he has ever seen—a female who awakens new feelings within his black heart, unleashing passion so intense that it controls him and desire he cannot resist.

He will not let his wretched master have her. She will belong to him.

Liora is a witch with a bad reputation and an obsession with fighting demons. A mission gone wrong sees her sent to Paris to cool off, but when a dark and deadly warrior with a gaze of golden fire lands in her life, she ends up burning hotter than Hell for the wicked angel. Nothing will stand between her and the immense, forbidding male. Not her cousin. Not Asmodeus’s sworn enemy and twin, Apollyon. And certainly not the Devil.

Caught up in a tempest of danger and soul-searing passion, can they survive against the odds and seize their forever after?

Her Wicked Angel is available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iBooks stores and many other retailers. Also available in paperback. Find the links to your preferred retailer at: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/ebooks.php?title=Her%20Wicked%20Angel


Books in the Her Angel romance series:

 FREE EBOOK: Want to get a free taste of this series? You can download the first book, Her Dark Angel, for free at selected ebook stores (and two other free paranormal romance ebooks too). Find all the links at: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/paranormal-romance-ebook-offers.php


If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/felicityheaton


a Rafflecopter giveaway

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing. I have this author on my TBR stack and am so looking forward to reading her books. They look and sound awesome.
    :D
    Lori

    ReplyDelete

  2. I think I said so much about this book now, I can't praise it enough, I love all the Angel books in the series, but I do have to say... I think this is my favourite now!

    ReplyDelete
  3. following the blog tour a little late :D
    Missie Jones
    missie25524 @ netzero.com

    ReplyDelete