Book #2 of The Human Gods: DONE

Get your copy: download the book files below.

Over the last year+ I’ve been working hard on editing, rewriting, and fixing the sequel to The Last Human. After finishing the final chapter in April, I discovered there was still quite a lot of polish left out. So, on top of the 100s of hours spent editing this book, I spent another unholy amount of time in April/May cutting one last editing pass on the book to make sure it read well. 

The result?

The story of Book #2 is generally the same, but the overall quality is so much better. I added in a ton of scenes and moments (and removed many that either didn’t make sense or were actively hurting the story).

I want to make sure you get a digital copy so you can read the new version. You can download the file here. I’ve put up the .epub and .azw3 file types, but if you need a .mobi or something else to read it, let me know. 

PATRON-ONLY COPY HERE

What is Book #2’s Title?

It’s not finalized yet. Here are some titles I’m mulling over at the moment:

• The Bringer of Change

• The Dead Heart

• The Prophet’s Curse

Book 2 questions the hopeful prophecies of Poire’s coming, so I want a title that reflects the darkening tone, while still invoking some sense of adventure (and maybe even a sense of wonder). 

So far, I’m leaning towards that first title, but if you’ve got thoughts on your favorite, please let me know in the comments. Titles are always a super challenging choice for me, which is half the reason I try to title every single chapter—to practice writing them.

Before Publishing This Book

Next steps: make the book market-ready. There are a few more steps before I officially publish Book #2:

• Finalize the Book’s title and book description

• Send this manuscript to my copy editor for a final polish (I’m really bad at splicing sentences, and I really appreciate books with a professional shine). 

• Get cover art

• Cover design

• Final formatting

• Publish

I’m still thinking through the cover art, because I’m thinking about hiring an artist to create covers for all 4 books at once so they have a unified style. Not sure yet. 

Once I do get professional cover art, I’ll drop it here, along with the book’s official publication date. 

Next Series

And now, I’m officially working on the new series. 

This time, the goal is to challenge myself to improve my writing output. 

Not speed, but output. 

As you can probably tell from the first part of this post, I tend to rework my writing. Perhaps too much. The Human Gods was the hardest story I’ve ever written in terms of structure. Prophecies are difficult to write, especially when they refer to moments that happen earlier AND later in the series. With so much recursion, I felt the need to go back to fix things, while simultaneously writing forward toward a predetermined point. New characters and concepts kept popping into my head, which continued to blow up the story. 

Because it was my first full-length series, I let perfectionism take hold. So, my challenge for this new series is to kill that perfectionism—and to focus on telling better stories, faster. 

I’m pleased with how The Human Gods turned out, and I can’t wait to put final edits on Books 3 and 4. 

But, if I’m being honest, I’m so much more excited to push into new worlds, to grow new characters, and to tell new stories—using everything I learned from writing The Human Gods. My hope is this new series will be more than 4 books long, but I’ve learned how crucial it is to be flexible. Even the master planners get it wrong. Tolkien originally planned for The Lord of the Rings to be published as a single volume (with six parts) instead of a trilogy. I’m not saying this new series is going to be an epic, global phenomenon. But I’m not saying it won’t be one either.