The creation of the Fire Angel Universe Part 2

My original plan when I created Fire Angel was to write a short story series each ending on a cliff hanger so that hopefully people would buy the next book.

While getting the first story underway I began watching a series called ‘Heroes’ and found the look of the character ‘Claire’ played by Hayden Panettiere to be the perfect look for what I had in mind for Allison West.

After a few years of writing these short stories, I found myself going off the main story as I kept on adding one subplot too many. Eventually, I decided to restart the story again as a novel. (During this time I was also taking a novel-writing correspondence course which really helped me to flesh out my story more.)

I would go on to rename a few characters including Allison West who became… Hayley Scott. I would end up changing her to Hayley Hunter when I found out there was a character in a TV series with the same name. Later, when I found out that the name ‘Haley’ meant ‘hero’, I felt that was perfect to have a superhero whose secret identity’s name meant hero, so ‘Hayley Hunter’ became the Haley Hunter some of you all know and love.

I kept her friends Serenity, Jade, and David the same, however, there would be one change. During the writing of the short stories, I found that I enjoyed writing Jade more than I did Allison. That made me realize I had to get Jade out of the way, but I still wanted her and Serenity to be twins, so decided to have Jade be in boarding school in another state to keep her from stealing Haley’s thunder.

My father and daughter villains Franco and Bella Bianchi became Carmine and Bella Giovanni and after some brainstorming, I decided that their relationship would change as well. In the original version they got along with each other and were literal partners in crime but in the new version, not so much.

One thing I learned during the novel writing course was to start a story with tension. I’d never done this in my earlier stories, including my original Fire Angel short stories. I decided to keep some of my original ideas, changing them in places, and cutting out the parts that I felt no longer worked for the characters. Then halfway through chapter 7, with new ideas and backstory developing, I realized that this book was only the beginning of Fire Angel’s story and there would need to be another…

TO BE CONTINUED…

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