The Firstborn Are Stirring
After the events of Revelations, Uriel and the others have claimed a true foothold on Earth. They struck a mighty blow against the hordes of Hell, and things are looking up for them.
Well, not so much. Because the firstborn, those nightmares even the angels fear, are waking.
Firstborn is the third instalment in the Shadow’s Advent series and, barring any natural or manmade disasters, will be available in the last quarter of this year.
It’s been a heck of a ride turning Firstborn from an idea into a finished draft, and I can’t express enough how excited I am for this book to get in your hands.
It’s dark. It’s emotional. It’s action-packed. It has giant monsters and some of the most uncomfortable scenes I’ve ever written. I love it.
Here’s a little bit of lore you might not have known, though: Firstborn was originally going to be the second book in the series!
It was a beta reader—someone who reads a pre-published version of the story to give me feedback from a reader’s perspective—who told me the last few chapters of the original Archangel were too squished together and deserved to be their own book.
I took that advice to heart and the result was Revelations. Like, the whole thing. That whole book used to be three chapters at the end of Archangel.
That means I started the first draft of Firstborn way back when Archangel was out to those beta readers. As a result, I went to write this book in 2024 and got to look at chapters I had written back in… like 2018. Now, none of those earlier chapters made it into the Firstborn that you’ll be reading later this year, but they had some ideas that transformed into some of the things that did.
I’ll never tell you which, though.
Firstborn marks a major step forward in both the series and my own writing journey. It comes in at a whopping 195,000 words, which is ~80% longer than Archangel, and contains multiple plot lines as the world continues to expand. Where Archangel introduced us to Hell on Earth, and Revelations was the fight for our characters’ place in it, Firstborn let me explore the world on a scale I haven’t yet been able to.
It involves venturing into places under demonic rule, meeting the twisted monarchs of Hell itself, and understanding where the humans like you and I fit into a world run by celestial and demonic beasts.
Of course, all with a liberal dose of magic, action, and enough tension to stress you out in the best way possible. So when do you get to read this dang book? Excellent question (I say to myself).
If you’re reading this when it goes live, then Firstborn is out to beta readers. Like I mentioned before, beta readers are people who get to read a pre-published draft of the book to provide feedback from a reader’s perspective. Before this stage, all the feedback has come from writers and writing-adjacent folks like a coach and an editor. Those are all well and good (and make the story way better), but there comes a point where you need to make sure the story lands with the actual people who will read it. That’s why that reader perspective is so important.
They don’t look for stuff like character arcs and plot devices and comma placement, but they just experience the story the way it’s supposed to be experienced.
And sometimes they tell you to turn a few chapters into an entire book. Stuff happens.
Because Firstborn is so long, I don’t expect to get their feedback until the end of August. That means I can do my final revisions based on their feedback in September, then get Firstborn out to a copy editor ideally in October.
As the copy editor is doing their thing, I get to organize stuff like the cover design and creation, preparing marketing materials for launch, and organizing all the administrative stuff like ISBNs.
Once I get the copy edits back, I go through them with a fine-toothed comb. Then the book needs formatting for e-book and physical copies. Then more admin work, which includes ordering a proof copy of the paperback, which lets me look for formatting or typesetting errors before the book goes live for people to spend their hard-earned dollars on. Then, once all that’s done, it’s time to release the book.
It’s a lot, right? And it’s something I haven’t been able to do in a few years now, since all the backend stuff from my CERBERUS books was taken care of by my co-author.
Is it weird that I’m looking forward to it?
If everything goes according to plan, we’re looking at a fall release date for Firstborn. Worst case scenario, December. If you want to be the first to know when the book will be released, be sure to sign up for my mailing list. If you do, I’ll send you a free prequel book, Heavenfall, that takes place during the early years of the Apocalypse that occurred before the events of Archangel and the Shadow’s Advent series.
You’ll also get some cool bonus content between now and when Firstborn is released, too!
I can’t wait for you to get your hands on Firstborn and see where Uriel and the others are going next in this series. Until then, I hope life’s treating you well, and we’ll chat soon.
