Lanie Stones is the necromancer that Death has been praying for.

Heartbroken, exiled from her homeland as a traitor, Lanie Stones would rather take refuge in good books and delicate pastries than hunt a deathless abomination, but that is the duty she has chosen.

The abomination in question happens to be her own great-grandfather, the powerful necromancer Irradiant Stones. Grandpa Rad has escaped from his prison and stolen a body, and is heading to the icy country of Skakhmat where he died, to finish the genocide he started. Fortunately for her, Lanie has her powerful death magic, including the power to sing the restless dead to their eternal slumber; and she has her new family by her side.

Grandpa Rad may have finally met his match.

Saint Death’s Herald is due for publication from Rebellion on 24th April – you can pre-order your copy HERE

On Writing a Sequel 

by C. S. E. Cooney

Things I never want to get used to: that flash of fond affection when I see my book on a shelf—in a home library, a local library, a bookstore. Or on someone’s blog. Or vlog. Or Insta. Or represented in fan art—great gods of Death, FAN ART! These are things that for so many years were just velleities and reveries, that “someday when my book gets published” dream-state that is as much a fantasy as “once upon a time.” 

In my twenties and thirties I was often holding down several jobs at once to pay rent, groceries, utilities, and student debt. I wrote in my free time—nights, weekends—motivated by that daydream of “someday”: that maybe, if my future book did well, then other things wouldn’t be so hard. Maybe I’d pay off my debt. Start saving for a house. Donate to the food pantry instead of getting groceries from it. Give back. “Someday” was powerfully energizing.

Flash forward. Here I am, in my forties. I’ve written two collections, two accidental novels that were meant to be novellas (oops), and one huge tombstone of a tome, Saint Death’s Daughter.  I’ve won the World Fantasy Award twice. In the meantime, I got married to Carlos, whose job as a professor covers the expenses. If you told twenty-year-old me I’d be living so swanky a literary life in Queens, New York, I’d’ve laughed in my face. Or maybe sobbed with envy. 

Point is, all my motivating factors are different these days. Writing is my daily work now. The job of motivating myself to “get my sitzfleisch on” isn’t fueled by poverty or youthful optimism, but by… professional work ethic? The commitments I made, not just to my editor and publisher, but to my readers? A deepening curiosity in the creative process itself? A swoony partiality for my characters, and a desire to know what happens next? 

Writing, like the skinchangers who populate the Nettlelands in Saint Death’s Herald, has taken on a new form for me. I had to adapt. Fast. And while I was adapting, I made several practical goals for writing my sequel. 

• In case there wasn’t a third book (one never knows), to tie up Saint Death’s Herald as if it were indeed the last book: Enough to satisfy the reader on a visceral level, but also leave them wanting more, just in case…
• If Herald happens to be the first book of mine a new reader picks up, to make it so welcoming that it feels like a standalone. That way, they’d maybe want to go back and read Saint Death’s Daughter for fun.
• If everything goes as planned and Saint Death’s Herald is indeed the middle book of a trilogy, to defy the “saggy middle-book syndrome” known the wide world over.
• To make it about 100,000 words shorter than the first.
• To play with POV! 

In the first book, Saint Death’s Daughter is firmly third person limited to Lanie, plus a few footnotes by an interested, if anonymous, future scholar. In Herald, I wanted to widen and diversify my camera angles. So I gave POVs to all interested parties: a ghost, his victim, a Falcon Defender, an undead flying tiger rug, and of course, the necromancer Lanie Stones. 

And yes, there are footnotes. That cheeky scholar won’t be silenced.

Did I succeed? Who knows? What I can say is that I feel so warm toward Saint Death’s Herald, so excited and nervous about its release. I am happy in my work. I wrote the sequel about eight times faster than I did the first novel. I did so much research about weird things, like limestone and crustaceans and Svalbard. I wrote more fight scenes than I ever did in my life! (Carlos and I laid out D&D grid maps and played out the battles so I know who did what when.) I thought deeply about generational trauma, the long-term consequences of war, and the duties (and boundaries) of the next generation.

Herald is such a different book from a different time in my life. But I like where my life has landed. And I really like this sequel.

Saint Death’s Herald is due for publication from Rebellion on 24th April – you can pre-order your copy HERE