Seven Archangels

You’ll hear a bit about Seven Archangels: Annihilation as you read here, so I figured I’d give a page introducing it.

I’ve written stories all my life (no kidding: I wrote my first story when I was three) and I’ve been writing novels since I was thirteen. At age sixteen, I discovered angels, and they fascinated me so much that I began writing about them. I’ve been a SFF reader since fourth or fifth grade, and angels fit right into the fantasy/speculative niche. There were so many unanswered (but answerable) questions!

My first published novel was The Guardian, under the name Jane Hamilton. After that, I took time to get married and start a family, and in 2004 I returned to the publishing world as a freelance writer. I’d never stopped writing novels, though. In 2005, Randy Ingermanson said to me, “Write what you really love, what you really want to write,” so I went back and started writing angels again.

In doing this, I looked back at an old novel, one I’d written in 1990. To be blunt, it stank. I’d written it in a fit of rage during the ten days after Thanksgiving. It had no tension whatsoever and too much pointless banter, but every so often I’d think, “There’s something really good in here.” It burned inside me, so with fifteen more years of writing under my belt, I rewrote the entire thing.

The result is Seven Archangels: Annihilation, released by Double Edged Publishing in January of this year, plus being serialized for free at their magazine MindFlights.

So what’s it about?

Angels are pure spirits, as opposed to humans who are both spirit and body. Because they’re pure spirits, they cannot die… Or so they think. In Annihilation, Satan has discovered a way to kill an angel. He starts with the Archangel Gabriel.

Heaven is in turmoil: if angels can die, that changes all their questions, and all their answers. What happens if your immortal soul…isn’t? What if your “eternal reward” ends next Thursday?

While the angels struggle to see if anything can be done to save Gabriel, the demons are having upheavals of their own, including Satan’s top four demons trying to seize power from one another, and second thoughts on the part of the mastermind who created the technique.

You’ll meet the Cherub Gabriel, Heaven’s “absent minded professor,” a dreamy theorist who loves learning and is insatiably hungry for knowledge, even if it means he inadvertently ends up helping the demon who wants to kill him. There’s Raphael, Gabriel’s bonded Seraph whose dominion is healing and health, and who would give anything in the world to save Gabriel. It’s the worst situation he could have imagined, until God gives him an order that makes it even worse. You’ll meet Remiel, the multi-earringed twin who masquerades as her fallen brother in order to win Gabriel a chance at survival. And there are so many more.

It begins with a struggle to save one life and ends in a storm that encompasses Heaven and Hell.

It was an awful lot of fun to write, and I’ve been told it’s just as much fun to read. There’s more information at the novel’s website. You can check out the free chapters over at MindFlights, and if you like it, you can order Seven Archangels: Annihilation and read it all at once.

On the weblog, I’ve got my own commentary about the book as well.

I’ve got a list of my other online stories in the sidebar, and I hope to have news about another upcoming novel in the future.

Thanks for checking it out!

Comments»

1. julie - July 2, 2008: Absoultely Loved the novel! The level of imagination to flesh out, as it were, the heavenly realm blew me away. It was a page turner and I anxiously await the next novel in the works!

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2. Cheryl - July 4, 2008: Loved the novel – looked forward anxiously to each new chapter, laughed at parts, cried at others – a wonderful, imaginative ride!

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3. Because I’m, like, you know, a writer and stuff « Seven angels, four kids, one family - February 12, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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4. Monday Morning Question: mansions « Seven angels, four kids, one family - February 23, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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5. Gabriel the Archangel « Seven angels, four kids, one family - March 24, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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6. Seven Archangels: Annihilation — THE MOVIE! « Seven angels, four kids, one family - April 2, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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7. In character « Seven angels, four kids, one family - April 20, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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8. A time to stop editing « Seven angels, four kids, one family - April 28, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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9. We’re defeating the lawn! « Seven angels, four kids, one family - June 3, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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10. Stop me before I edit again! « Seven angels, four kids, one family - June 17, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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11. Edit heaven « Seven angels, four kids, one family - June 22, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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12. Angels and food « Seven angels, four kids, one family - July 22, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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13. It’s a party! 100,000 hits! « Seven angels, four kids, one family - August 24, 2009: [...] Seven Archangels jump to navigation [...]

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14. let’s give away a…er…um…help? « Seven angels, four kids, one family - November 25, 2010: [...] Seven Archangels [...]

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Seven angels, four kids, one family