Hello, guys (After a long, long time!) I am here to share a quick update about my 2019 NaNoWriMo progress. For this year’s I am aiming to complete the 7th draft of Sinister Town and so far, i.e., in 15 days, I have written 29,132 words. I am trying to finish this draft this month itself as this is going to be the final manuscript, more or less.
Here’s how my NaNo stats are looking and I’m happy with the progress so far but I hope that I can keep up with it:
So that’s about it. How about you? Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? What are your goals and how far along in your project(s) are you?
I’m so, so, so excited to announce the worldwide release of Deceived e-book on the Kindle Store. Now Deceived can be read and enjoyed by people all around the world! This makes me so happy and grateful.
If you haven’t already have it, grab your copies today!
Deceived
You can get your copies of my book, Deceived, here:
I’d like to thank Citrus Publishers for fulfilling my lifelong dream of being a published author! It means so much to me to be able to live the life I have always dreamt of as a dreamy little girl 🤗🥰
And I’d like to thank Vishal for his relentless support, immense love and irrevocable belief in me. He was the only one who believed in me when even I doubted myself ❤💕
And lastly, thanks to all my readers, social media friends and followers for all your love and support ❤
Hello, all. This is a late post, so please forgive, but life’s been extremely busy (particularly this month.) Being the Editor In Cheif at Citrus, I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the first sample copy of Deceived.
This is a late post, so please forgive, but life’s been extremely busy (particularly this month.) Being the Editor In Cheif at Citrus, I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the first sample copy of Deceived.
The cover came out a bit dark in the sample, so the covers are getting reprinted at the moment and most probably we’ll have the first batch of ARCs delivered to the office by next weekend!
Anyway, here are a few pictures [I loved it even with a slightly dark cover and spent an entire day holding this baby]:
On a side note, as my responsibilities have increased at Citrus and as I’m writing the second draft of my second novel, I’ve decided to take a break from podcasting for a few months. So the podcast that I was preparing for this month won’t be going up anytime soon (it really takes a lot of time!)
Though, I’ll try and share flash fiction twice a month as an additional writing exercise.
I hope you guys liked the book’s sample. Please feel free to share your thoughts below. Comments are always welcome!
Today I’ll be hosting my first live Facebook Discussion session for Mystery Thriller Week. It’ll run from 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm, today evening as per IST (Tuesday, 21st Feb, 9am-10am as per EST). If you wish to know more about my upcoming release, Deceived, or my next novel, Sinister Town, or if you love Mystery & Thriller genre then do drop by to sayhello and have fun discussions about mystery/thriller books and movies.
If you wish to know more or have any questions, feel free to comment below.
I am hosting my first ever international giveaway for Deceived ARC! But wait, it’s an exclusive giveaway, which means there are terms and conditions – This giveaway is EXCLUSIVELY for my Newsletter subscribers!
So you need to be subscribed to my Newsletter in order to be able to participate in this giveaway. But that’s not a problem because this giveaway is open to new subscribers as well. So all you need to do is to subscribe to my monthly Newsletter and read the latest Newsletter in order to find out the details of this giveaway.
How well do you know your loved ones?
A girl struggling to cope with the murders of her mother and five-year-old brother. A journalist chasing the ghost of a potential serial killer. A thirteen-year-old girl who slaughtered her parents. And a revenge-driven psychopath who is about to destroy everyone’s life.
After 9 years, a young writer is still coping with the brutal murders of her mother and five-year-old brother, as she moves into a house of horrors, to start a new life with her lover. Will friends and family be able to redeem Ally out of the impending doom in time? Will her infallible love become the key to the destruction of her already fragile world? Will madness prevail over love; true love over revenge?
Deceived is a gripping psychological thriller that mazes through the deepest, darkest emotions of human mind through the story of a vulnerable girl who treads in the mist of deception bred from a long unforgiven betrayal.
There are a lot of perks to becoming my Newsletter subscriber, for example, new subscribers receive a free copy of my mini-ebook – Writing Manifesto, they get exclusive and fresh news about my books and also receive writing inspiration, prompts and other writer-ly stuff in their inboxes once a month!
You can also read this post to know more about what my Newsletters are all about: My NEWSLETTER.
In order to get access to all these awesome stuff and/or to enter in this AMAZING Giveaway(!), you can subscribe to my Newsletter here: SUBSCRIBE
The giveaway is open until 25th February only! So hurry up!
I’ll be announcing the winner on 28th February in the February Newsletter. The winner will be chosen randomly by either a chit system or by a random name picker program. And the winner will receive a PAPERBACK ARC (advance reader copy) of DECEIVED!
So what are you waiting for – SUBSCRIBE, ENTER & WIN!
I’m so sorry that I’ve been missing entirely from here for almost a month now. It’s been a crazy, crazy month and I’ve been literally running around in 100 different directions.
Anyway, I’d like to start by saying THANK YOU to everyone for the heart-warming comments, congratulations, reblogs and shares, re-shares, tweets, and re-tweets. It really means a lot to me! We’ve received a tremendously positive response from readers around the world regarding Deceived and it makes me really happy (and also terrified) to see so many people vouching for the book! Thank you, everyone!
We are done with all the editing rounds and the book is presently getting typeset and is almost ready for printing. 😀 The book will be listed on NetGalley in late December or early January.
I’m here to share the new and the final blurb of Deceived (hopefully it’ll give you some more insight into the story!):
How well do you know your loved ones?
A girl struggling to cope with the murders of her mother and five-year-old brother.
A journalist chasing the ghost of a potential serial killer.
A thirteen-year-old girl who slaughtered her parents.
And a revenge-driven psychopath who is about to destroy everyone’s life.
After 9 years, a young writer is still coping with the brutal murders of her mother and five-year-old brother, as she moves into a house of horrors, unwittingly to start a new life with her lover. Will friends and family be able to redeem Ally out of the impending doom in time? Will her infallible love become the key to the destruction of her already fragile world? Will madness prevail over love; true love over revenge?
Deceived is a gripping psychological thriller that mazes through the deepest, darkest emotions of human mind through the story of a vulnerable girl who treads in the mist of deception bred from a long unforgiven betrayal.
I hope you guys like it!
BTW, here is the list of all the awesome Cover Reveals we had last month in celebration of Deceived’s cover release:
There are a couple of Interviews and Guest Posts lined up for this month, so I’ll be sharing them by the end of the month or probably early next month. Do keep an eye out for them on my Twitter and Facebook, though, I always share them there the same day.
Heena Rathore P. is a 25-year-old full-time novelist, part-time Social Media Strategist, Novel Critique, Book Reviewer and a YouTube Podcaster.
She draws her inspiration from the works of legendary Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon.
She is an introvert, a thinker, a neat freak, a voracious reader and a GSD-lover. In her free time, she loves watching apocalyptic, thriller and slasher movies and series.
She lives in Pune with her beloved husband in a house full of books, music, and love.
She loves creating fictional worlds, but more than that she loves living in them.
Hello, everyone. Today is a very big day for me, as it is the Cover Release day of Deceived! Without saying anything else, I’d like to present to you the cover of my debut novel – Deceived.
Please feel free to share the cover image on your social media accounts and blogs. Reblogs are also welcome. 🙂
Heena Rathore P. is a 25-year-old full-time novelist, part-time Social Media Strategist, Novel Critic, Book Reviewer and a YouTube Podcaster.
She draws her inspiration from the works of legendary Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon.
She is an introvert, a thinker, a neat freak, a voracious reader and a GSD-lover. In her free time, she loves watching apocalyptic, thriller and slasher movies and series.
She lives in Pune with her beloved husband in a house full of books, music, and love.
She loves creating fictional worlds, but more than that she loves living in them.
I have a big news to share will you all today. My publicist, Emily, has added Deceived on Goodreads and now I’m an official Goodreads Author! As a writer, this is HUGE for me because I’ve been dying to see myself as a Goodreads author from a long time (almost 2 years) and now finally I am one 🙂
Here’s how my profile looks:
My Goodreads profile
The final cover jacket and the edited synopsis will be added there in November, but you can add my book on your to-read shelf already!
The way things are right now, the cover release is set for November. I’ll let you know the exact date in my October Newsletter, so don’t forget to subscribe to it if you haven’t already.
PS: If you want to participate in the Cover Release/Reveal of my book then kindly drop me an email at contact@heenarathorep.com
Exactly a year before, Deceived was only an idea in my head which kept on brewing constantly until I finally decided to get it on paper. And today here I am with Deceived getting published and another book’s first draft in hand. This sure has been one hell of a year for me.
Let me start by telling you a little about my current WIP, which will be my second novel- Sinister Town. I have this irrational liking for the dark side of human nature and, after exploring the themes of psychopaths and sociopaths, I wanted to do something entirely different for my next book. As they say, variety is the spice of life…
The blub in my brain going pong!
I had a very basic idea last year, that I wanted to work on for my first book, but while writing the FD the entire plan changed and I ended up writing an entirely different plot. But the initial idea stuck with me. So what did I do? I left it at that to simmer on the back stove while I worked on the first book and, after a few months, I had the perfect plot in mind fot that initial idea.
Hence, I present my second novel Sinister Town.
Like last time, I’ve created a cover for this book for my vision board and also to tell my pub. (God, I love saying that!) how the book cover should be like. So here’s the cover that I designed:
Genre: Crime & Thriller Fiction Words (approx.): 65,000 Working blurb:
After hitting a rough patch of 3 years, Nick and Eva’s marriage is finally saved by the arrival of their first child. In order to forget all the bitterness amongst them, they want to start over their new life by picking up the pieces of their broken relationship and shifting to a small new town.
Nic is ready to make the sacrifice of leaving the luxuries of big city and his drowning career in order to take care of his family and Eva is ready to give this marriage another chance, but what they don’t know is that the Town they want to make their home is waiting for them eagerly… for all the wrong reasons.
Right now I’m working on a new draft as I have to make a lot of changes. So, basically I’m on the FD stage. And from past experience I know that the best way to write a FD is to participate in a WriMo. Fortunately, I received an email 2 days back saying that Camp NaNo is starting in April (next month.)
So, I’ve already cleared up my schedule for April as I won’t be able to take part in Camp NaNo July this year (I’ll be busy with the publishing of Deceived.) That means I’ll be busy next month like crazy and in order to save myself from added pressure, I’ll be talking a break from WOW posts for 2 months. I’ll rsume with it in May. 🙂 (Bye bye WOW! I’ll miss you 😦 )
Please feel free to voice out your thoughts on the cover and the blurb of my second novel. I’d love to know what you think about Sinister Town. If it creeps you out, I’ll consider myself a winner. 😀
I have a good news for those who haven’t read my recent tweets or Instagram. So here it goes,
In October, I sent out a handful e-mails to some of the best literary agents in India. The e-mail was regarding the submission of the first 4 chapters of Deceived, my first book. (You can read about Deceived and all my other WIPs here.)
And I’m really happy to tell you that I’ve already received replies from 5 of the agents. I was completely blown away as I was expecting the replies by mid-January.
Okay, so the good news is that 3 of the agents have asked me to send them the full MS of Deceived and the other two are already up to represent me. I’ll be going through the contracts before finalising my agent (yes! Now I get to choose! Totally amazeballs!)
Here’s my tweet about it:
Good news: 3 agents have contacted me to read my full MS and 2 are ready to represent me already! I'm on cloud 9! PS: My neck is better nw.
I’d like to thank you guys for all your amazing and encouraging comments because those comments REALLY kept me going!
So, THANK YOU to EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU ❤
You guys are the best 🙂
It might be a while before I make the final call as I don’t want to miss this golden chance to have the best one represent me. But whatever happens, I’ll keep all of you in the loop.
I hope all of you are enjoying the holiday season.
It’s been one hell of a month! I’ve been crazily busy – as you all know very well – from last 3 months and finally I’m close to getting done with everything.
I’ve completed the second draft and revised it as well and presently I’m doing the third and the final draft. Dagny, a dear friend of mine who has accepted to proofread and beta read my book, and I have worked out an arrangement, where I’ll send her my completed chapters and she’ll edit them one at a time. It’ll help me finalise all the chapters and be done with the book by 15-20th of this month.
I fell sick last month and wasn’t able to do any writing for almost a week and that really put me behind my planned schedule. So basically, I’m writing the third draft and revising it as I go along, making my hubby, Vishal, read the final thing before sending them to Dagny. I sent her my first chapter yesterday and I must say that I’m really nervous to see weather she likes it or not. Continue reading “Writing Progress #2”→
After successfully writing my first draft in June (JuNoWriMo) with a little more than 50,000 words (you can read about it ), I joined Camp NaNoWriMo for this month (July) with a target of 60,000 words.
I’ve been writing non-stop from last one and a half month and I’m going to keep writing till I get this book done 😀
The plan is to revise the first draft and write the second draft along with it. My word count as of Day-13 is 31,415 words and I’m halfway through my second draft. I’m planning to finish 50K by 20th July (fingers-crossed.) Continue reading “Writing Progress #1”→
A girl who’s trying to cope with the murders of her mother and 5 year old brother.
A journalist who is chasing the ghost of a long lost serial killer.
A teen who murders her parents.
And a revenge-driven psychopath who is about to destroy everyone’s life.
A psychological-thriller that weaves it’s way through the sadistic past of a traumatised child to the web of dark secrets of a beloved father.
Excerpt
I slowed down to a stop, bent on my knees and started to take in big gulps of air. I tried to listen for footsteps over the loud pounding in my head but I heard nothing. Continue reading “First brief glimpse of Deceived”→
And I’m done! Slogged a bit in these past few days but finally I made it!
Total word count: 51,284 words
I’m done with the first draft of my book with chapters in details and scenes in super details. Now, I’ll be joining Camp NaNo for editing my first draft and simultaneously writing the second one. Hopefully, I’ll be done by 15th of July… fingers crossed!
I’m so, so, so thankful to #JuNoWriMo for making it possible for me to write the entire first draft in 1 month (considering that I’ve never written anything of this magnitude before!) I’ll be sending out my second draft to two of my proofreader cum beta reader friends (Willow and Dagny) by the end of July. Then I’ll be editing the book again after receiving reports from them. So there is a lot of work still remaining… Hopefully I’ll be able to get my manuscript to the publishers by September…
I’d like to thank Vishal for being such a sweetheart and helping me with everything. I know I was a crazy, emotional mess this month and this book wouldn’t have been possible without you! Love you always!!! ❤
I’d also like to thank all my dear fellow writers at JuNoWriMo (you guys are the best!) I met a lot of beautiful writers here and made a lot of wonderful friends. They helped me stick to my goals and all the pep talks were really helpful! I’ll be dropping by JuNo’s page every once in a while even after the WriMo is over…
The main badges I earned in JuNoWriMo
And following are the snapshots of JuNoWriMo Word Tracker for this year:
Hi guys, I hope you all are having a great week-start. As promised I’m here to share about my progress with JuNoWriMo. If you are my friend on Facebook or Twitter, then you might already know about what I’ve been upto, but if not then read along.
JuNoWriMo Badge
I participated in JuNo hoping that atleast I’ll get a couple of hundred words written, but amazingly and unbelievably, I’ve outdone my own expectations already (and it’s only been 16 days!) I’ve already written 32,000 words (almost 20 chapters and a few scenes.) The story just seemed to flow as soon as I started writing. I had only 2-3 bad days where I wrote less than 500 words. But other than that, everything’s going great I’m a bit stuck with the end of the book, but I guess I’ll figure it out by the end of this month. There’s still a bit of research left to do but I’m sure I’ll be done with the first draft by the end of this month. I’m planning to write a total of 1,00,000 words so that after the edits and all I’ll still be left with a 400 page novel.
I’m planning to spend the next month making the changes and creating at the second and then the third draft of the book. Then it’ll be ready for the beta readers. After that I’ll be hiring an editor myself to get it edited. After that I’ll try and find an agent to represent me. Then I’ll be sending out the query mails to publishers (big and medium sized) and simultaneously with the agent. I’m hoping to be accepted by a big publisher (Harper Collins or Penguin)-fingers crossed.
So far my JuNoWriMo progress graph looks like this:
This graph is a part of the Word-Tracker provided by JuNoWriMo.
I’ll be sharing more about the book once I plan the final ending and tweak the sub-plots. For now I really need to know a few things from you all (if you guys will be kind enough to take some time out for me and answer these questions:
What do you expect when you hear “psychological thriller?”
Would you like to be able to get into the head of a psychopath or the victim?
Would you like the chapters to be long or short?
Do you like a book with strong emotional connect with the MC (Main Character) when you know something terrible is going to happen to them?
Will you be sympathetic towards a killer if you knew something really, really terrible happened to him/her? (Here I’m not asking sympathy to let him go freely, but just as a simple emotion.)
Would you prefer a stand-alone thriller novel or a series? (Mine is stand-alone, but I’m asking simply because I’m curious!)
Thanks a lot for reading this post. Please feel free to answer to any or all of the above questions. I’m looking forward to know everyone’s answers. Also, if you have any advice for me for writing a thriller book, please go ahead and share it. I love talking to you guys 🙂
BTW, this is how my draft is looking (actually I took this pic last week, so presently it’s a bit more thick):
I’m so glad to finally get the time to tell you all guys about my book. From last 2 months I’ve been planning to get the outline straight for my debut book. I had a small idea and over the last two months I spent time watching a lot of slasher and horror movies in order to get an idea as to what really is a good thriller. I’ve watched quite a few dozen slasher movies as well and finally I had a rough idea for my book’s twists and turns.
I made a lot of notes and a few story boards, and finally I think I might have something that can be turned into a book that I myself would like to read. I wasted good 20 days procrastinating the first draft and hence, when I came across JuNoWriMo, I knew that it was what I needed!
I’ve outlined a bunch of chapters and have a foggy idea about the characters. So now as May is ending, I’m about to take a big leap of fait and jump start my first draft from 1st June for JuNoWriMo. I’m gonna explore the plot and characters thoroughly while writing the FD itself.
I’ve promised myself (and V) that I’m gonna get the first draft done by the end of June. I’m seriously considering to get this book published (with a big publisher) by the end of this year and I know it’s not that easy… but honestly, nothing in life ever is!
So I have high hopes for this book and I hope that you all will like it whenever it gets published!
Here a short blurb that I’ve penned down (of course it’s rough) and the cover that I’ve made in Canva (of course, it’s just a working cover with a working title… something to motivate myself- more like a real visualisation):
Designed by me @ Canva
It’s about a couple who’ve recently shifted to an isolated setting with just a bunch of neighbours to begin a happy new life. But soon they’ll discover the horror that awaits them. The psycho neighbours have been waiting for Alison from a long time!
The story completely turns in the last few pages and ends with a possibility of a sequel.
It’s a psycho thriller that’ll mainly focus on the female lead. I’m still confused about which person I should write the book in (I’m working with first-person for now.) This book will show different phases in my lead’s life and her growth as she realises how deceiving near and dear ones can be.
Later part of the book will focus on her survival and an ultimate plot twist in the last line.
I hope you guys can imagine now that why I’ve been MIA this entire month (or most of it) but I’ll be back to my normal posting routine and also on my blog-catching ups from 1st June.
I’ll be posting about my progress in WriMo regularly but still all of you are more than welcome to ask me about my book anytime (as it’ll really make me feel good and inspired!)
I hope you guys are all doing well… please let me know what all you’ve been upto this entire month in the comments below… would love to hear from each and every one of you!
Hey guys… It’s been quite a while since I posted something about what I’m doing these days. Actually I’ve been a bit busy writing the chapter-summaries of my debut novel and also organising stuff for the next month as I’m participating in JuNoWriMo.
Image Credit: JuNoWriMo Website
JuNoWriMo is June Novel Writing Month, started by Becca J. Campbell and Anna Howard to have a slightly different take on a month long noveling adventure. For starters, you don’t have to write fiction (You can write creative non-fiction, so bring on the funny/meaningful memoirs or whatever else), write a new work (Did you write 5 pages last month and you can’t get going? That’s okay, write the next 50,000 words with us!), or work on all one piece (Want to write short stories? Knock out 5 of 10K words each, and you’re there!).
I love interacting with Becca on JuNoWriMo’s Fb page. She is truly awesome and most importantly always addresses all the queries.
I’m planning to get my first draft done by the end of this WriMo, so that I can publish my book by the end of this year (hopefully!)
Honesty, I like JuNo better than NaNo as it is really welcoming. Nano is also welcoming but it’s just too hyped for my taste, plus whenever I’m at the NaNo page it always reminds me that there are like, more than 10,000 other authors better than me and that ultimately leads me to underestimate my work and talent. So this year I wanna start light. So, I’m participating in JuNoWriMo which feels comparatively less crowded.
If you are also participating in JuNo then let me know through comments as I’d love to share ‘the writing enthu!’
Heena Rathore P. is a 25-year-old full-time novelist, part-time Social Media Strategist, Novel Critic, Book Reviewer and a YouTube Podcaster.
Hi everyone!
