I am currently writing Out of the Shadows: A Witching Pen Series Prequel. While this book will deal with sexual themes (there is an incubus featuring quite heavily within the story) it is not a romance at all; it will fall under dark fantasy / paranormal fantasy / occult horror. And I am not interested in making Katherine Green a “likeable” character. I think readers will certainly resonate with her to an extent, but her attitude will always be questionable.

The joy of writing the unlikable character as the main character is that you can really get to the truth of who they are without worrying/caring what readers might think of her (or him) ... mostly, anyway. We are focusing on atmosphere and narrative here; we are focusing on keeping readers gripped by the story itself, without having to win aspects of their hearts through character loveability. Character truth is important, but not loveability.

This is the story of a teenage daughter who is angry, hurting, rebelling, craving so much, and in many ways should know better, but has a compulsion to act out. This is the story of a father who does not know how to be a father because he never stopped grieving his own past, thus emotionally disconnecting himself from everything that came after that grief, including his own daughter.

And right there, we have the breeding ground for everything that comes next.

Revisiting the vibe of The Witching Pen world, having left it behind in 2013, has been a bit of a revelation. There are parts of myself I had forgotten as a writer; things I wanted and desired as a writer in those early days. Every book is like self-development, whether intentional or not.

My last entry on this page was in September 2023. Since then, I've completed the After the Storm novelettes, brought out Blood Surge (the first novel in a series about vampires), and am about to bring out Fathoms Deep and The House Along the Way (written as Elysa Summers), with more publications due to be written and released in 2026. I have a schedule for 2027, too.

In changing the look of the Eye of the Storm series (written about in my last post from Sept 2023), I did what I had wanted to do for a while: brought my writing deeper into the dark/urban fantasy and horror categories, and farther from the paranormal romance categories. This is also one of the reasons for my revival of pen name Elysa Summers. Elysa Summers will be writing contemporary romance and women's fiction as Dianna Hardy goes deeper into the dark fantasy and horror realms. Because of this shift, the two quite different styles of books needed to be distinguished much more than when I initially wrote The Spell of Summer and Summer's End.

Out of the Shadows and 13 Days will both fall more into the horror / psychological horror category than any of the books I've written so far. Writing Gladys' backstory in Rise of the Wolf was the closest I have been to horror so far (gothic splatterpunk horror) and I absolutely loved it – I want more of that.

Because the prequels and companion novels are borne from existing series, there is, of course, a structured theme already to the upcoming stories that cannot stray too far from their initial roots; nevertheless, 2026 is about shifting my writing so I can challenge myself and take my books out of the pigeon-hole they were starting to sit in. Future books from 2027 onwards, both from Dianna Hardy and Elysa Summers, will continue along these new directions. In the next five years, I do have plans to write some standalones, too, that are nothing to do with the existing series.

Having said all the above, Fathoms Deep is very much a steamy paranormal romance with the usual twists and turns. It brings some needed closure to Selena's story arc. (Although she is Laura now, not Selena.) I envision finishing this book two weeks from now and have booked my editor for two weeks after that. It's a tight schedule, but we are running on time.

My SCHEDULE page is regularly updated for publication dates this year. Don't forget to grab yourself the paperback copy of After the Storm – it's out on 26th February.

Happy reading,
Dianna xx