kellshaw

Time for one of those end of year/start of year posts. By way of introduction, or re-introduction, I'm Kell Shaw and I write books and short fiction in the secondary world urban fantasy Vestiges of Magic universe. I'd like to dig more into my fantasy world and creative choices this year in bloggery, so stay tuned for that. This is post is about publishing.

Last year, I released two books in my urban fantasy world! I started in 2022 with my first book, Final Night, which I produced in a COVID writing course. I had no idea what I was doing when I started, and now know a little bit more. In March 2025, I released the third book in the Revenant Records series (which started with Final Night). 

I’m planning another three books to finalize this series up, but will do it down the track, as the third book wraps thins up with a nice  ‘happy ending for now’ conclusion. I wrote Final Night in my COVID writing course, and then published it without dying of anxiety, and then thought, what next? A sequel! And then after that I thought, another book!  This series is about an undead teenager trying to grow up while dealing with the mess of her old mortal life and dealing with supernatural weirdness. It’s also about her friendship with her friend from high school, who’s now twenty years older than she is (as it took twenty years for her to return from the Underworld). I’m going to release an omnibus of this in March, with a nice paperback edition.

I didn't plan the series; each sequel grew organically from the previous one. I had a vague idea of getting Lukie to work for a secret government organisation, but every time I tried to push the story in that direction, it didn't work. But each book ended on a position for a sequel - Final Night ends with Lukie wanting to reconnect with her father, twenty years after her murder. This drives the second book, Feral Night. And then, that book ends with one of the supporting characters, Pavish, having lost a huge chunk of their memory to a supernatural predator. Lukie and Tamlyn agree to drive Pavish home to see if any of their relatives are still alive... of course, the remaining relative lives in a crumbling hotel on the edge of nowhere, and something terrible is about to occur...  Those first three books end on a nice found family/friendship theme, and I'll do a time jump before starting the next three books.

I heard that six books are  a good way to go for a series, so currently I'm planning to write six books per series. Which leads into my new series, the Cambion Chroncles. Set in the same world as the Revenant Records, this one is about two demonic foster sisters, born centuries apart that work as bounty hunters for Hell. I've planned this series a bit more in advance this time.

The first book is out, with Vex, the younger sister in the modern day and the second will be about her mentor/older sister, Thaena,  set in the 1960s. The two story lines will weave together towards the end. Is alternating characters a great idea?

The idea I had was -- you know when a mentor character tells their protege, "It's my old enemy, [Enemy Name]!" And the protege says, "[Enemy Name]? Who is [Enemy Name]?" And that usually triggers a flashback of some sort. But what if the reader knew who [Enemy Name] was before the protege? And went, "Oh shit."  And it's about carthasis and vengeance and making the best of a shitty existence. It's been fun to write and bring together.

After this I’d like to do more of these short series in the Vestiges of Magic world. I've flagged the major creature types in urban fantasy and designed them to fit into the universe: werewolves, wizards (occultists), changelings fae. Really, it all depends on what character I get excited about. (This also ties into the roleplaying game I'd planned to release along side the series, which is about playing these creature types amidst a shadowy world of factions and intrigues). I might be able to release a 'zine' version this year, as I've got a stable verion, although who knows what will change. The poor game has had more core system changes that expected.

So books - are they selling? Am I marketing them? Not really. I’m still at the ‘write more books’ phase, and probably won’t do any paid ads until I complete a series. With a full time day job, I don't have time to learn Tik Tok or video shorts; I'd rather spend that time writing stuff. And there's not much point on doing a big ad campaign for a book 1 in the series if there's no other books available for people to read next.

I’m aslo working on some short story submissions this year to magazines. I got into one anthology last year an dit was great. I'd like to have stuff published by some of the fantastic top SFF magazines. So it's more write, polish, submit, repeat for me in 2026.