Margarita Felices

TV and film marketing and production taught her how to promote her books and writing.

Please, introduce yourself. Tell us about your personal life, family, education.

I live in Cardiff, Wales. It’s home to castles, waterfalls, mountains, beautiful coastlines, rugby, Doctor Who and Torchwood, and I used to work for a well-known TV broadcasting company. I love living in Cardiff because, even after most of its modernisations, there are still remnants of an old Victorian (and older) city. When I can, I go out to the coast and take photographs. We have a lovely castle in the centre of Cardiff and a fairytale one just on the outskirts, so when I feel I can’t write anything, I take a ramble to those locations, and it clears my head.

I have a TV production background. I used to be a professional photographer and decided to move into the TV world. I started off by working on our local news programmes and then moved on to Arts, Factual, Drama, back to Factual, back to Drama (Torchwood, Dr Who and a few regional shows) – a fascinating journey! Before taking voluntary redundancy in 2022, I worked for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales who produced some of the music for well-known TV shows, Doctor Who for example! I learnt so much from working there about Marketing and Promotions. It was an absolute blessing when looking for ways to promote my work.

I suppose it was inevitable that someday I would begin to write novels. My teachers at school used to limit me to write no more than ten pages. I was a reporter on the school magazine and later I became its Editor. When I left school, I paid my way through college by writing short stories for magazines. I later moved on to scriptwriting and came third in a BBC writing competition (that was before I started working for them). I am Gothic. I love the fashion, the architecture, and the music. The club in my novel Judgement of Souls 3 is real. While writing it I got all my club material and clientele ideas from there. I wouldn’t have finished that section without it.

Her Hobby

What do you like doing in your spare time?

Writing is my hobby. It has been with me most of my life and I love how ideas seem to come to me at the oddest of times. I also own a place in West Wales, just five minutes from the beach so I love to walk and explore the caves and the shorelines.

If you are a writer, are you an avid reader?

I love to read but only when I’m not in the middle of writing anything new. I find that sometimes you can’t help yourself and you begin to write this absolutely brilliant section for your current work and then you wake in the middle of the night with the realisation that you’ve just copied a section of the book you’ve been reading. And yes, it’s happened to me. So I don’t read while writing. I do like to support indie authors and buy their books and review them. I find many of them on Facebook book groups and if their prose impresses me, then I download their books.

What is your ultimate writing goal as you see it today?

I have had a lot of interest from film companies to adapt the trilogy into film, but none have offered the right terms to continue to do this. My goal is to find the right studio who is willing to take the story and translate it onto the big screen. I still have interest coming in, but this isn’t to be entered lightly, you have to read those proposals and negotiate!

What inspired you to write your first book?

There is always that voice in your head. It’s usually your main character who wants their voice to be heard. And it’s to silence those other voices too, so you have to write. Before you know it, you have a pretty solid story, and the rest is up to you.

How do you decide on the title of a book?

The titles come to you as you explore the story you’re writing. It isn’t something that you choose right at the start because you have no clue where this book/story is heading. But for my trilogy Judgement of Souls, I heard a song with the line “…it’s glory lies beyond judgement of souls” and that line gripped my attention as I was writing the story. The song is called The Sacrament and is by a band called HiM.

Writing Style

Have you developed a specific writing style and why?

My style is a little unorthodox. I prefer to write a sort of running order so that I know what part of the story goes where. It starts off being around thirty pages long but at least I know what steps I need to take. Of course, it’s just a guide as a lot of what I’ve written is either deleted or moved because the story has changed when it reaches that point. But it helps me keep it all in order.

How much of your books is realistic and experiences based on someone you know, or events in your life?

Only the third book of the trilogy has anything that resembles any part of my life. In the third book, my main vampire Rachel has met a mortal, and he owns a rock/goth club. I used to attend a club and a lot of the clientele there are described in the actual book.

Is there an author, past or present, you would love to meet? Why?

Anne Rice. Unfortunately, no longer with us but I spoke to her frequently and she gave me lots of advice, especially what to look out for with studios and producers. I miss our chats very much and was hoping to meet up with her in New Orleans where she promised to show me around. I’ll still go there some day and raise a glass to her memory, and I feel very lucky that I managed to at least speak to my favourite author.

When you see new authors struggling, what single piece of advice could you give them on a moment’s notice?

I have always told any new or struggling author to take a time out. Sitting over your laptop just makes writers block linger longer. Then after a few days I ask them to write a few sentences, not many, maybe just a hundred words because a hundred words a day is seven hundred in a week and twenty eight hundred in a month, and once you can do that, that creative talent starts to trickle through again and before you know it, you’re right back into your writing patterns.